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Visually, the finished look is one of pure line with few design elements. The atmosphere is one of pure tranquillity during the day; the reflection of sky in the water and very little to distract the eye. At night the lighting scheme creates a magical pathway fading into the distance, and always there is the gentle sound of running water.
Part of a larger scheme, these clients wanted an ultra-simple, minimalist waterfeature on two levels. The main material used was a pale cream Travertine detailed with a dark slate-grey.
At the lower level, a canal runs across the garden. The main steps are accessed by stepping stones across the water.
The upper level features two rills. Water flows away from the house and cascades via two stainless steel waterfalls onto the lower level beyond, aerating and purifying. The paving features LED flush lighting to highlight the edge of the scheme and the steps and all three bodies of water are floodlit discreetly below the water surface.
The only plant material is six ball-shaped box trees, providing a simple, sculptural look to this otherwise angular scheme.
Converted grain silo north of Aarhus:
Many towns in Denmark have centrally located industrial silos; most are no longer in use, but continue to visually dominate the local skyline. This is also the case in the town of Løgten north of Aarhus, where the former silo complex has been transformed into a 'rural high-rise', with 21 high-quality residences composed as individual and unique 'stacked villas'.
They are an alternative to standard apartments or to detached suburban sprawl, and are a mix of single storey flats and maisonettes, meaning that even the lower levels fully get to enjoy the views, and that no two flats are the same.
The actual silo contains staircases and lifts, and provides the base of a common roof terrace. Around the tower, the apartments are built up upon a steel structure in eye-catching forms which protrude out into the light and the landscape – a bit like Lego bricks.
This unusual structure with its protrusions and displacements provides all of the apartments with generous outdoor spaces, and views of Aarhus Bay and the city itself. Similarly, every apartment enjoys sunlight in the morning, mid-day and evening, whether placed to the north or south of the silo structure.
At the foot of the silo, a new ‘village centre’ is created, with a public space surrounded by a mix-use complex with shops, supermarket and terraced housing, and a green park containing small allotments for the residents.
The nature of the silo’s ‘rural high-rise’ remains unique – since it is a conversion, no other building in the area can be built to the same height, and it will remain a free-standing landmark. It is an example of how the transformation of redundant structures can hold the potential to both give a new identity, and introduce density to suburban outskirts.
The body of the silo is deliberately left visible on the side of the building facing the new centre, to ensure a continued legibility of the history of the site, and to acknowledge that these types of structures have an equal validity as rural historical markers as do for instance the church bell-tower or historic windmills.
www.cfmoller.com/p/Siloetten-i2029.html
(It was never my intention to turn this photostream into a showcase of my own architectural work, but I couldn't resist putting up a few of these)
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During a very recent round scanning more of Clem Smith's negatives I came across several very crisp B&W images, some of which I'll share here.
This offering shows one of PMT's 1962 built Willowbrook B54F bodied Leyland Leopards, 928 UVT, passing through the Staffordshire town of Stone. PMT split their order this year and took identical numbers of these Leopards, and visually similar AEC Reliances. Both types had manual gearboxes and were the first examples of 36ft long service buses in the fleet.
The photo would have been taken in the later years of its career as its wearing NBC 'Poppy Red'. From memory, most were withdrawn by 1979/80.
Castlerigg Stone Circle is one of the most visually impressive prehistoric monuments in Britain, and is the most visited stone circle in Cumbria. Every year thousands of people visit it to look, photograph, draw and wonder why and when and by whom it was built. The stone circle is on the level top of a low hill with nice views to the towns in the valleys. There are 38 stones in a circle approximately 30 metres in diameter. Within the ring is a rectangle of a further 10 standing stones. The tallest stone is 2.3 metres high. It was probably built around 3000 BC - the beginning of the later Neolithic Period - and is one of the earliest stone circles in Britain. It is important in terms of megalithic astronomy and geometry, as the construction contains significant astronomical alignments. Although its origins are unknown it is believed that it was used for ceremonial or religious purposes.
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Cercul de pietre de la Castlerigg este unul dintre cele mai imporante monumente preistorice şi cel mai vizitat de acest fel din Cumbria. In fiecare an, mii de persoane vin sǎ priveascǎ, sǎ fotografieze, sǎ deseneze şi sǎ se întrebe când, de ce şi cine construit bizarul ansamblu. Cercul de pietre se aflǎ pe o platformǎ situatǎ pe vârful unui deal de micǎ înǎlţime, cu privelişti frumoase cǎtre oraşele din vale. Ansamblul este format din 38 de pietre aşezate într-un cerc cu diametrul de cca. 30 metri. In interiorul cercului se aflǎ un dreptunghi alcǎtuit din 10 pietre. Cea mai înaltǎ piatrǎ are 2.3 metri. Ansamblul a fost construit probabil la începutul perioadei neolitice (în jurul anului 3000 î.Ch.) şi este unul dintre cele mai vechi cercuri de piatrǎ din Marea Britanie. Este un monument important din punct de vedere al astronomiei şi geometriei megalitice, întrucât construcţia conţine unele similitudini astronomice semnificative. Deşi originea ansamblului nu este cunoscutǎ, se presupune cǎ a fost folosit în scopuri ceremoniale şi religioase.
This visually stunning Art Deco enamel badge, promotes the famous tyre brand, Avon Tyres. It bears the company's early 1908, registered trademark which is a stylised Trilithon (Stonehenge) structure, made up of two large vertical stone posts supporting a third stone that lies horizontally across the top. On this badge, the horizontal stone announces the company name, Avon. From 1908, through to the 1930s, the Trilithon was either used as a focal point within advertisements, or as a refined logo within a corner of an advertisement. Beneath the Trilithon trademark the phrase 'Symbols of Endurance' appeared.
Within the early advertisements, before and just after the 1920s, a car and driver, with Avon tyres, would be portrayed passing through a mighty Trilithon. The adoption of this Trilithon trademark was explained by the company as follows: ".......this noble and historical trademark was decided upon in full consciousness of the high standard of excellence which such an emblem implied … because Avon products, in addition to other noble characteristics, possessed in a remarkable degree the two skills of strength and durability."
Of course, another reason for adopting the Trilithon device was linked to the company's location in Wiltshire, the home of Stonehenge. The badge uses the company's distinctive, somewhat spikey, upper case font, and this was first used in the late 1920s through to the 1960s. By the 1970s the signature logotype 'Avon' was changed to a modernist sans serif design with the letter 'o' rendered in solid red.
Avon started making rubber based products as far back as 1885 and by 1890 the business operated entirely from Melksham. At this point the Avon India Rubber Company Ltd was formed and in 1906 Avon car tyres were advertised for the first time along with their already established line in cycle tyres. Throughout WW1, Avon Tyres were used on forces bicycles, motorcycles, cars, trucks, aeroplanes and ambulances. Other Avon rubber products such as tubing and hoses were used to extract water from waterlogged trenches.
By the late 1920s, Avon had a number of tyre distribution centres across Britain and their product range diversified to include carriage and pram tyres, rubber soles and heels for footwear, household bath mats and rubber carpets. In 1933 the Avon 'cooled duo-tread tyre' was chosen by Rolls Royce as a standard feature on their cars. Avon's racing pedigree gained momentum in the 1920s and continued through to the mid-century period, building up strong relationships with international riders and drivers.
Avon maintained a high profile in the rubber based product market and the post WW11 period witnessed rapid growth through a number of acquisitions and further product diversification. Cooper Tire & Rubber Company (Ohio, USA), purchased Avon Tyres in 1997 in an agreement that allowed the company to focus on its core automotive components, technical products and protective equipment. The Avon brand remains within the Cooper Tire & Rubber Company portfolio and the Melksham, Wiltshire plant remains active today.
Photography, layout and design: Argy58
(This image also exists as a high resolution jpeg and tiff - ideal for a
variety of print sizes e.g. A4, A3, A2 and A1. The current uploaded
format is for screen based viewing only: 72pi)
Prompt
A stunning woman, composed through a fusion of geometric shapes and fluid lines, rendered in a captivating abstract style. The scene transforms into a Steampunk mixed media masterpiece featuring a sunflower with polished metal petals. The single tall stem, crafted from rusty metal, integrates shades of rich browns, blacks, reds, golds, whites, and rust moss and stone. The composition highlights a harmonious blend of angular and curvilinear forms, delivering a visually striking and modern take on timeless beauty. --ar 1:2 --stylize 750
Toute reproduction sur un support imprimé ou publication sur internet devra faire l'objet d'une demande expresse auprès du service communication de la Fédération Française Handisport.
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Toute utilisation ainsi autorisée devra mentionner le crédit photo (voir nom du fichier ci-dessus : “©…” ou métadonnées de la photo dans sa taille originale).
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Contact : photos [at] handisport.org
Marilyn Rushton, a well-known Burnaby citizen, is awarded with the province’s newest honour, the Medal of Good Citizenship.
Rushton is honoured for her for inspirational life of service to the visually impaired community, her contributions to families with blind and visually impaired children, and her energetic support for the musical community.
Learn more: news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2016IGR0025-001407
The lower register of the north aisle west window depicts the Judgement of Solomon. The upper register mainly contains supplementary details.
The west windows of the aisles were heavily damaged by the great storm of 1797 and until the recent restoration had many missing sections and areas composed of patched fragments. The restorers of the Barley Studios bravely reinstated the missing sections using as much original material and evidence as possible (a thorough examination of the fragments when disassembled yielded much information). The result has transformed the effect of these windows, visually completing the cycle of windows again for the first time since the storm damage of 1797.
St Mary's at Fairford is justly famous, not only as a most beautiful building architecturally but for the survival of its complete set of late medieval stained glass, a unique survival in an English parish church. No other church has resisted the waves of iconoclasm unleashed by the Reformation and the English Civil War like Fairford has, and as a result we can experience a pre-Reformation iconographic scheme in glass in its entirety. At most churches one is lucky to find mere fragments of the original glazing and even one complete window is an exceptional survival, thus a full set of 28 of them here in a more or less intact state makes Fairford church uniquely precious.
The exterior already promises great things, this is a handsome late 15th century building entirely rebuilt in Perpendicular style and dedicated in 1497. The benefactor was lord of the manor John Tame, a wealthy wool merchant whose son Edmund later continued the family's legacy in donating the glass. The central tower is adorned with much carving including strange figures guarding the corners and a rather archaic looking relief of Christ on the western side. The nave is crowned by a fine clerestorey whilst the aisles below form a gallery of large windows that seem to embrace the entire building without structural interruption aside from the south porch and the chancel projecting at the east end. All around are pinnacles, battlements and gargoyles, the effect is very rich and imposing for a village church.
One enters through the fan-vaulted porch and is initially met by subdued lighting within that takes a moment to adjust to but can immediately appreciate the elegant arcades and the rich glowing colours of the windows. The interior is spacious but the view east is interrupted by the tower whose panelled walls and arches frame only a glimpse of the chancel beyond. The glass was inserted between 1500-1517 and shows marked Renaissance influence, being the work of Flemish glaziers (based in Southwark) under the direction of the King's glazier Barnard Flower. The quality is thus of the highest available and suggests the Tame family had connections at court to secure such glaziers.
Entering the nave one is immediately confronted with the largest and most famous window in the church, the west window with its glorious Last Judgement, best known for its lurid depiction of the horrors of Hell with exotic demons dragging the damned to their doom. Sadly the three windows in the west wall suffered serious storm damage in 1703 and the Last Judgement suffered further during an 1860 restoration that copied rather than restored the glass in its upper half. The nave clerestories contain an intriguing scheme further emphasising the battle of Good versus Evil with a gallery of saintly figures on the south side balanced by a 'rogue's gallery' of persecutors of the faith on the darker north side, above which are fabulous demonic figures leering from the traceries.
The aisle windows form further arrays of figures in canopies with the Evangelists and prophets on the north side and the Apostles and Doctors of the Church on the south. The more narrative windows are mainly located in the eastern half of the church, starting in the north chapel with an Old Testament themed window followed by more on the life of Mary and infancy of Christ. The subject matter is usually confined to one light or a pair of them, so multiple scenes can be portrayed within a single window. The scheme continues in the east window of the chancel with its scenes of the Passion of Christ in the lower register culminating in his crucifixion above, while a smaller window to the south shows his entombment and the harrowing of Hell. The cycle continues in the south chapel where the east window shows scenes of Christ's resurrection and transfiguration whilst two further windows relate further incidents culminating in Pentecost. The final window in the sequence however is of course the Last Judgement at the west end.
The glass has been greatly valued and protected over the centuries from the ravages of history, being removed for protection during the Civil War and World War II. The windows underwent a complete conservation between 1988-2010 by the Barley Studio of York which bravely restored legibility to the windows by sensitive releading and recreating missing pieces with new work (previously these had been filled with plain glass which drew the eye and disturbed the balance of light). The most dramatic intervention was the re-ordering of the westernmost windows of the nave aisles which had been partially filled with jumbled fragments following the storm damage of 1703 but have now been returned to something closer to their original state.
It is important here not to neglect the church's other features since the glass dominates its reputation so much. The chancel also retains its original late medieval woodwork with a fine set of delicate screens dividing it from the chapels either side along with a lovely set of stalls with carved misericords. The tomb of the founder John Tame and his wife can be seen on the north side of the sanctuary with their brasses atop a tomb chest. Throughout the church a fine series of carved angel corbels supports the old oak roofs.
Fairford church is a national treasure and shouldn't be missed by anyone with a love of stained glass and medieval art. It is normally kept open for visitors and deserves more of them.
Stadt-Tastmodell der Altstadt von Erfurt in der Altstadt von Erfurt mit Beschriftung vieler Straßen in Brailleschrift für Blinde und Sehbehinderte. Erfurt 2017.
City model of Erfurt to grope for the blind and visually impaired people with braille descriptions. Erfurt 2017.
Visually they looked damp, so the Macro photography was a delight in discovering the almost furry top surface, seen at the edges of these fungi.
These ranged in size up to 15mm diameter.
Visually Impaired - Color Blind
Using LomoChrome film to raise awareness of the visually impaired. RZ67 - turquoise
Visually dominated by a type of infrastructure that was installed over the Blue Mountains primarily for an expected upsurge in coal traffic in the 1950s, three AC-traction 93 class power over a short rise at Werrington with a long rake of empty coal wagons the like of which in terms of train length and tonnage capacity were unthinkable at the time of Western line electrification six decades ago this year (2017).
080356 9 Aug 2017
• Telspleem: An omnivore of neutral disposition that can be found on Virslagly as a common and archetypical form of wildlife. It dwells in most regions across the planet but prefers environments that are somewhat less barren than the average Virslagly climate. The Telspleem is a squishy, typically slouched creature that one might easily mistake to be slow and dumb based on its appearance, but which is in actuality craftier than most and rather inexplicably fleet–footed. Their fully–grown specimens ranging between three and five feet tall, Telspleems have stout, squarish torsos, two standard arms, four (deceptively) short and thick legs with feet to match, and very long necks that jut horizontally from the front–tops of their bodies and arc upwards so that the head ends up being positioned at a fairly typical angle regardless. Their eyes are very outwardly complex, visually consisting of rows of "stripes", and their mouths are composed of several "flaps" that rather messily slurp and suck up food material. Telspleems also have singular horn–like structures atop their skulls which are actually neural accessory organs similar to those of the local humanoids, the Hexpultis. Compared to the "horns" of a Hexpultis, the Telspleem's cranial protrusion serves a lesser function, semi–superfluously enhancing existing senses rather than being essential for key mental abilities.
The most obvious candidate for this creature's most defining physical trait, however, is not any of the above, but instead its immensely long, winding, slender tail which generally totals 15–20 feet in length and is usually held up in a networked "knot" behind the Telspleem's main body. This tail has a weighted, buzz–producing noisemaker at its end and is very maneuverable and powerful, being able to act as both a striking "whip" and as a constrictive weapon.
Telspleem durability values range from 500–800.
• Phiortrask: An avian of small–to–medium size native to Namyufefe. Phiortrasks stand upright at about three feet and have durability values of 400–600. They are omnivores, more specifically describable as equal–opportunity eaters with tendencies of resourceful scavenging, whose main populations are naturally situated on and around mesas and prairies, two types of terrain that can be found in adjacency at many locations across Namyufefe's planetary landscape. The Phiortrask has an appearance that can semi–paradoxically be described as both "scruffy" and "majestic". Its body is largely covered in feathers of various, but predominantly "hot", colors and frizzy, uneven orientation. It has a moderate wingspan, with its pair of wings occupying the entire shoulder space in terms of their origin points; as a result, the Phiortrask's arms originate midway down the length of its body as opposed to just below the head. While such a limb arrangement would likely disorient most other beings, the Phiortrask has naturally adapted to it and is able to make ample use of its arms.
As for the wings, while the Phiortrask can indeed fly, its ability to do so is limited. It requires rest after a relatively short period of aviation, and has a seemingly irrational aversion to extreme heights, meaning that it is generally unwilling to ascend too high into the air; the bird's self–imposed "limit" on elevation appears to be somewhere near 500 feet. The mating, egg–birthing and childrearing methods and patterns of this creature are comparable to those of most other avians.
The simple Hernolalls occasionally eat (or try to eat) Phiortrasks and seldom otherwise interact with them, while the much more advanced Yunstoxars, who dominate Namyufefe, are much more appreciative of the rugged birds and have domesticated many of them, keeping some as pets while training and utilizing others as short–distance delivery carriers. The likeness of the Phiortrask has become a common, general–purpose symbol seen throughout Yunstoxar society and culture (to a greater extent than any other animal–based symbol), and through that race's presence in many colonies throughout the Prime Galaxy, the creature's image has come to be recognized by numerous members of other races.
• Gaiggoot: A brutish, bulky and cold–blooded creature from Olsuclund, most commonly found dwelling in moderately–elevated settings and existing more or less consistently across all regions of the planet's geographical map. Gaiggoots are slow tripodal beasts with strong and muscular but rather short arms, bladed shoulders and heads that are almost seamless with the upper–fronts of their bodies, for they have no necks of any description. While having only a single large eyeball, they have multiple pupils, giving them a wide range of vision both spatially and in terms of the light spectrum. The Gaiggoot is herbivorous, but is highly prone to (often irrationally) violent outbursts toward other beings that it perceives as threats, whether or not they actually pose any; it is highly territorial and, in a way, "paranoid" of creatures besides its own kind. Commencement of hostility is usually "announced" by a warning gesture consisting of the creature slamming its hands/fists together several times. Conversely, Gaiggoots get along very well with each other most of the time, and despite solitude being their "default" mode of living, it is far from unheard of to find small packs of them living together.
A Gaiggoot's most notable uncommon ability lies in its feet and their immense gripping power which allows the animal to climb up very steep inclines and across jagged series of rocks with relative safety and stability. Even if it does fall, it will usually manage to literally land on its feet and be cushioned by their strength, though landing on any other part of its body after a significant drop is more often than not fatal.
The nearly–consistent durability value of the Gaiggoot is 1,200, and it stands between five and six feet tall on average. It can live for up to eight decades, giving it the longest lifespan of any creature native to Olsuclund due to the short one of the planet's humanoid race, the Favredians.
• Bethraether: A now–"lost" animal of great caliber and majesty that could be found on Ultavnah and presumably (and hopefully) still dwells on that planet which is cut off from contact with all others for what will probably amount to eternity. Like the Drajelaos and the other inhabitants and general features of Ultavnah, the Bethraether is a very large and powerful creature, though even it pales in comparison to the aforementioned Drajelaos, which were created with the specific intent that they be the most powerful of all mortals, humanoid and otherwise. As of the only scientific census of Ultavnah's properties ever taken, Bethraethers are/were similar in population to Drajelaos, numbering near but under one million as a total estimate and being on neutral terms with the giant humanoids. The Bethraether is classified as a mammal, though it was noted when categorizing it that the creature only barely met the qualifications for being able to be called such and was considered quite nonstandard in form and appearance for a mortal beast.
Measuring approximately twenty feet tall, the animal walks on four short legs attached to a "base" that is similar in shape and size to what constitutes the main overall bodies of many lesser quadrupeds and, in the Bethraether's case, supports a tall, lean midsection. On the back of the upper dorsal is a hump of muscle sporting a small number of large and thick quills, and atop the whole midsection is a neckless, almost perfectly dome–shaped head. The Bethraether's facial area is yellowish–to–reddish in pigment, and sports three eyes, the middle of which is distinctly different from the ones to either of its sides, being smaller and simpler. The reason for this strange optical arrangement is unknown, for the methods that would otherwise have allowed this peculiarity and the function, if any, behind it were not developed until long after Ultavnah was rendered inaccessible. The Bethraether's most "signature" feature of all, and one whose purpose is knowable, is entailed by its arms, or rather their "sub–appendages". Attached by carbonic rods to either of the creature's forearms (which themselves have an unusually decorative, gauntlet–like appearance for belonging to a mortal creature) are long, bladed poles of likewise carbonic composition. These natural accessories, which are not present in newborn Bethraethers but develop very quickly following birth, are used not only as weapons but also as more general tools for tasks such as reaching.
The typical Bethraether's durability value was estimated at 3,500. As an inhabitant of Ultavnah, this being's entire body has a moderately strong resistance to heat and burning.
• Honbonky: A vicious predatory mammal living on Barserinv that is the closest thing to a truly threatening natural foe that the Kierraplip race has to deal with. The Honbonky is fairly large, and the ratio of its size to that of other creatures of comparable nature is similar to that of a Kierraplip's size to the average humanoid's. It has a very unique body structure; its four long legs are attached to the corners of its very large head, from the bottom of which hangs a small and simple torso with a small and simple pair of arms that are used mainly for trivial manual tasks, the monster's mouth and large feet being its main utilities when attacking. Honbonkies are very fast and can chase their intended victims for miles on end with great stamina and tenacity. They are capable of lunging significant distances, though performing such a leap seems to take a lot of energy out of the Honbonky in question, the post–landing recovery time lasting several seconds; thus, while giving chase, the creatures will generally only attempt to lunge at their prey if confident that they will successfully catch them then and there by doing so. Other unusual features of the Honbonky include a large, protruding snout with a pair of long, tube–like parts that serve as "nostrils" dangling from it as well as an extra, extra–sharp tooth jutting from the bottom of said nose and overlaying the creature's main mouth. The level of threat posed by these beasts to the Kierraplips and other more peaceful animals on Barserinv is mitigated by several factors: their low population, their severe lack of cooperation with other specimens when they are present, their sub–par intelligence and their moderate lack of motivational direction when unable to find prey (in contrast to their tenacity when it is in sight).
The Honbonky's mean durability value is 900. Overall, it is comparable in many ways to the Krinchu of Terramos, also located in the Alpha Octant, though it is considered marginally less "evil" than that creature and, unlike the Krinchu, has never needed to be "quelled" or "purged" due to its aforementioned "shortcomings" as a threat.
• Zelrofience: An angel found in both Neo–Skyhold and Paradise and created by EldaChusii, being constructed specifically and exclusively by the face of "The Guardian". It is the most powerful type of being spawned from any aspect of the Heavenly Lord of Tolerance. The Zelrofience is a highly unique creature with many unusual attributes, and it is widely placed among the higher tiers in unofficial hierarchical rankings of Heavenly beings. It has two distinct components or "bodies", one extra–corporeal and the other extra–extra–corporeal, that together comprise an overall entity similar in perceivable nature to that of a mortal person piloting a vehicular machine, though the Zelrofience's existence predates all humanoid–made forms of such technology within the Nava–Verse. What could easily, and quasi–erroneously, be considered the angel's "main" or "true" body consists centrally of a massive eyeball–like sphere, two meters in diameter almost exactly, and peripherally of various tentacle–like appendages, including a pair that function essentially as the creature's "arms" and a bundle of five on which it may shamble about on the ground, them being its "legs". The Zelrofience's "other body" consists of a unique frame–like apparatus, sometimes called an "Overcarriage" (unofficial name), that connects to and securely fastens the eyeball–esque body via both physical grips and anchors and magical bonds. The name "Overcarriage" is considered a derivative of "Oversoul", the official name of a similar "sub–body" belonging to Bestamiak and to which the Zelrofience's "vehicle" has been likened. The angel's nature has also been compared to that of yet another Heavenly Lord, Vaynmizs, and his power source, Qual.
The two components that comprise the Zelrofience are intrinsically linked and drawn to one another, and if separated, they will actively and intelligently seek to reunite, for they are next–to–powerless without each other compared to what they can do together while the angel is in its complete state; truly, the "total" form of this being is far greater than the sum of its parts. When in its complete state, the Zelrofience boasts a greater number of distinct abilities than any other non–Archangel. The "eyeball" body's main power is telekinesis of a strength equal to roughly 1/3 that of Junt'Vubis (the single most powerful telekinetic being in the Nava–Verse), while the "Overcarriage" possesses a level of Rainbow Energy–based firepower that no non–magical machine with its physical form could possibly match. When both are together, not only are the base abilities of either amplified significantly in raw strength, but the complete Zelrofience gains access to multiple combinational techniques utilizing the powers of both its components in direct conjunction. On the whole, it is essentially a flying, psychic tank that only the most advanced and recently–created of humanoid–made war machines could even hope to match.
Zelrofiences have additional potential roles outside of combat, and additional abilities to facilitate these duties, such as absorbing, storing and transferring additional Rainbow Energy into and out of themselves and mending damaged structures with a special repair beam that is emitted from the "pupil" of the "eyeball". They are fully sentient and fluent in all common languages, and speak telepathically in a voice that is calm and soothing at all times, and would never be raised even if one of the angels were to make a furious death threat (which would obviously never happen, given its particularly wise and stoic nature even by angelic standards).
The durability value of a Zelrofience whose components are fully synchronized is nearly 4,000. The durability of either body when separated from the other is closer to 1,000.
• Movalorrt: A rare and particularly insidious demon, often considered to be one of the most despicable varieties of all due to the prolonged suffering that many of its victims are subjected to and to which most would consider death preferable. The Movalorrt is a truly rogue being, lacking allegiance to or association with Satan, Meth Stoph, Genome, Lord Reson or any other higher demonic power, and its general place of origin within the Underworld, assuming there even is a specific spatial plane designated as its place of spawning, is unknown. It is, however, known that this demon is able to travel to and from (as well as throughout) the mortal realm far more freely than almost any other known Hellish entity… though exactly how it does this is also unknown. Movalorrts are sentient and capable of speech, though their overall intellect level seems to be below that of a majority of mortal humanoids and they seldom have anything to say beyond wicked cackling. They are average in size compared to mortal humanoids – between four and five feet – but have comparatively immense strength and resilience almost on par with that of humanoid Archfiends, the demon's durability value being estimated at around 3,000.
The Movalorrt is a wholly corporeal and mostly organic demon. Its form is that of a hideous, grinning, many–armed humanoid with necrotic flesh and legs that are permanently, bloodily stitched together and dangle with unsettling stillness as the monster hovers from place to place. The two pairs of arms oriented near the front of its body are standard in form and hand structure, while the other pair of pairs, growing from the fiend's upper dorsal area, have appendages that are far more ghastly in both appearance and function: massive, blood–red scissors/clippers and oversized syringes filled with glowing green liquid, respectively. These instruments, the syringes in particular, serve as the Movalorrt's tools for inflicting harm, and are also the only non–organic parts of its body. While the "clippers" are generally used in a fairly standard manner and have no "special" properties beyond simply being powerful instruments of cutting, the syringes constitute a far more complex and disturbing weapon, as elaborated upon below.
Movalorrt attacks, like the demons themselves, are rare, with the average number reported annually rounding down to nine. When one of these monsters attacks a person, its intention is not necessarily to kill the victim. Rather, its very specific goal is to inject that specific person with one or both of their syringes. The scissor–like weapons are rarely implemented during such attacks, and when they are, it is usually against others who attempt to stop the demon from injecting its target rather than the actual target. They are never deliberately used on the main target with the specific intention of killing them, and conversely, "interfering" parties besides the target are never deliberately injected. There have been several separate eyewitness reports of attacking Movalorrts uttering intelligible words and phrases, usually of "Out of the way!" or "Resistance is futile!"–type sentiments. Once it has successfully administered its "shot", the Movalorrt will flee the scene, dashing away for a short distance before disappearing, presumably back to the Underworld or outer space, in a flashing burst of Infernal Energy and usually cackling as it does so. Once the demon has resolved to attack someone and initiated its assault on them, it will not relent nor flee until it has either succeeded in its goal or been killed. While it is uncertain, it is more likely than not that Movalorrts' victims are chosen on a random whim.
The effects of what has been termed "Movalorrt Toxin" are various and variable, seemingly randomly so, and cannot be stopped from taking effect once it has been injected into a person. The following have all been verifiably witnessed in multiple victims:
• Near–instant and seemingly painless death with no visible physical atrophy.
• A much slower and agonizing death caused by extreme inflammation and swelling throughout all parts of the body.
• A coma that lasts no less than one year and no more than a decade; if cared for and kept safe for its duration, the victim may eventually make a full recovery.
• Varying degrees of general brain damage.
• A permanent semi–vegetative state, similar to the effects of a lobotomy.
• An extended bout of extreme pain, more severe than what seems to be felt during the fatal "swelling" effect, which has no visible physical symptoms and eventually goes away after anywhere from a few hours to a few days. This is actually considered one of the least horrible results of Movalorrt Toxin injection due to its short–term nature.
• Rapid, progressive necrotic decay of one or more limbs, starting at and spreading upwards from the extremities. If the affected areas are not amputated, the decay will eventually consume the whole body, resulting in the most painful death that any effect of Movalorrt Toxin can bring about.
• Permanent, inexplicable chronic depression, often leading to eventual suicide.
• A complete wiping of all memories, including much of the basic knowledge learned in early life, basically resetting the victim's mind to what it was during their infancy.
• General insanity, turning the victim into a demented lunatic.
• Horrific hallucinations catering to the victim's particular fears; usually has an end result similar to the previous effect.
• Perpetual severe illness (with typical symptoms such as fever, vomiting, etc.) that can be treated indefinitely but will never cease causing various complications.
• A short coma, followed by the victim awakening as a murderous, rabid lunatic that will attack almost anyone and everyone they see, as if their mind has been replaced with that of a vicious animal.
…Among other possibilities, some of which have only ever been observed once. Needless to say, the effects of Movalorrt Toxin are invariably malign, with some of them entailing fates far worse than the average death. On related notes, the back ends of the Movalorrt's syringes seem to exist in pocket dimensions from which the vials may be replenished with an endless supply of toxin, and which spot on one's body any injection is made into does not seem to affect what the toxin's effects will be, even if the spot pierced does not lead into the bloodstream at all. The amount of toxin doesn't seem to matter, either; among known cases where both syringes and their contents were used, the ratio of "lesser" symptoms to more extreme effects has been similar to that among known cases in which the victim received only one "dose" or Movalorrt Toxin. Once a Movalorrt has gotten its needle into its target, the injection process takes less than two seconds; it is unknown what would happen if someone was injected with less than one vial's worth of the demon's toxin.
The Movalorrt is considered similar to the dream–invading Sybruchar in the sense that both demons seemingly wander the universe in search of people to attack and often leave their surviving victims with permanent mental or spiritual damage. Despite being somewhat more mundane in its methods (compared to the Sybruchar), the Movalorrt has managed to remain just as elusive and mysterious a beast as its unofficial "counterpart". While several of them have been killed, no Movalorrt has ever been captured alive or otherwise questioned, and all specimens that have been killed were slain in battle before they could poison their targets; in every single case where a Movalorrt has successfully made an injection, it has subsequently been just as successful in making its escape. The exact nature of the demon's apparent ability to travel throughout the Nava–Verse and between its realms with relative ease is unclear, unlike with the Sybruchar, as sightings of it in the Underworld are few and fleeting while sightings in outer space are nonexistent. Sightings of more than one specimen together are just as rare as the former; it is highly unlikely that the total number of Movalorrts exceeds three digits… and thank goodness for that!
Visually, NGC 6891 seems fairly simple. I can only see some very small knots of H-alpha. One of them is easy to spot. It's a very small, red dot near the left edge of the outer halo of material. I almost cleaned it up, thinking it was a cosmic ray.
Red: hst_08390_09_wfpc2_f658n_pc_sci
Green: hst_08390_09_wfpc2_f555w_pc_sci
Blue: hst_08390_09_wfpc2_f502n_pc_sci
North is NOT up.
Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.
Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. It's objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news, on the contrary it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it.
Visually, the finished look is one of pure line with few design elements. The atmosphere is one of pure tranquillity during the day; the reflection of sky in the water and very little to distract the eye. At night the lighting scheme creates a magical pathway fading into the distance, and always there is the gentle sound of running water.
Part of a larger scheme, these clients wanted an ultra-simple, minimalist waterfeature on two levels. The main material used was a pale cream Travertine detailed with a dark slate-grey.
At the lower level, a canal runs across the garden. The main steps are accessed by stepping stones across the water.
The upper level features two rills. Water flows away from the house and cascades via two stainless steel waterfalls onto the lower level beyond, aerating and purifying. The paving features LED flush lighting to highlight the edge of the scheme and the steps and all three bodies of water are floodlit discreetly below the water surface.
The only plant material is six ball-shaped box trees, providing a simple, sculptural look to this otherwise angular scheme.
There's something visually satisfying about a row of matching row homes in multiple colors. All built in 1878. 1816–1826 16th St NW (south of Swann St), Washington, DC.
New lego instruction!) pacific rim . Zane mech inspired with atlas destroyer (visually created by @francescobog87 with this amazing body work) (link in my bio) #legopacificrim #lego #mech #legomech #legomecha #ninjago #legoninjago
We went to the National Leprechaun Museum yesterday and was so surprised at how visually stunning it was!!!! totally unexpected :) www.leprechaunmuseum.ie
I think I may have mentioned this before, but the big joke in my most intimate crowd of friends is "Oh that's Karen... she sees things VISUALLY". (beat) (beat) (beat) Duh-uh!
It's my own fault. I think it mighta been at the Thanksgiving table a few years ago when I- without adequate aforethought- blurted out in the middle of a conversation "Well that's because I see everything visually". Meaning that I'm more highly attuned to visual stimuli than to anything else in a given situation. If the light's too bright- in my opinion- in a room I will have a hard time concentrating on what is being said until I adjust it. Certain colors- or color combinations- will make my teeth clench. I can remember minute details of the rooms of houses I was in years ago even when I can't call to mind the name of the host. And visual chaos, other than of course my own clutter, will render me incapable of productivity... and even my own visually cacophonous environment will get to me when it reaches a certain point. Didn't have my camera with me on my walk home today from my nutritionist appointment, so of course I saw two dozen imaginary oblong frames over perfect photo ops through my built-in organic viewfinder in the course of two miles.
I'm sure the visual bunch around here can relate!
For some reason this penchant of mine seems particularly acute near the holidays. In both good and bad ways. I love, for instance, how illumination can be used so beautifully to set mood for the "dark of winter" holidays that hover around the solstice. And I have a healthy appreciation for some good old fashioned kitsch... good thing in my neighborhood! But I have no tolerance for the "over the top" sensibilities of the "bigger is better" crowd. Last night when I was over at Matt's for the weekly viewing of my favorite show "Pushing Daisies"- beloved by me mostly for it's fabulous visual sense, but also it's slightly absurd point of view- I hit my limit of bad holiday advertising visuals in less than three hours. A new record I believe. Luckily, I have a significant counterbalance in memories of holidays past.
Last week when I was making pies the day before the holiday, with a buncha friends and family laughing and talking at a table across the room, just the act of looking down into the bowl at the pastry blender mixing fat and flour conjured up a breathtaking remembrance of the barren front yard and manual water pump of my Indiana grandmother. As a very young child I would sit on her ramshackle sagging porch staring out at that pump while we waited impatiently for the pie-day treat she always made us... little individual piecrusts to eat plain and salty and warm from the oven. And then, as always happens when that visual comes to mind, I remembered too how her kitchen looked when my grandad would take a bath in the galvanized tub, with water from the pump heated in kettles on the stove while she was baking the pies. If I was paid to I don't believe I could recall the timbre of my grandfather's voice, or what kind of fillings grandma put in the full-sized piecrusts.... but I could paint you an accurate picture of that front yard, and can draw a groundplan of that kitchen with its farmhouse table and well-used butter churn and the hole in one of the sagging floorboards that you had to avoid. It's not that I didn't love them.... it's that my visual memories overwhelm most of the others.
There's another visual memory I was trying to describe to Matt recently. Much harder to describe. One Christmas Eve when I was maybe 8 or 9 or 10 years old, and we lived in a happy but crowded small duplex, I escaped to the tiny bathroom- the only room with a lock on the door- to elude the party downstairs and the inevitable festive chaos for a few minutes. It had snowed that day, which prompted some of the celebration below, and in there, with the lights turned off, the quality of the light that came through the venetian blinds- reflected off the cold white untrammeled-as-yet snow twenty feet below- had a serenity and a magical quality to it that I've never forgotten. Almost blue, but feeling both warm and cool at the same time. Bright enough that there must have been a full moon, though I don't recall seeing it. The din belowstairs seemed far away for a moment, and there was a feeling of promise to it that I know had to do with anticipation of Christmas, but that felt- in that moment- something more portentous than that.
I bring this one up because, over the many years since that night, maybe once every few years, I will be in a dark room somewhere and the quality of the light will immediately transport me back to that moment.... and I'll see it again as if I'm a child sitting in that tiny bathroom, just hours before Santa's anticipated arrival by sleigh. It's a very happy feeling.
Not all of the visual memories are holiday related, of course. Seeing lavendar growing anywhere near silver artemesia will bring to mind herbalist Adelma Simmons- now long dead- bending over a row of her plants in her signature capelette and skullcap tackling an unwanted weed. Any image hereabouts of a straight highway through a desert will recall to me precisely the way New Mexico looked over the dashboard of our rental car when Matt introduced me to the beauty of that part of the country via route 40. My friend Zen Granny posted a photograph from a mountaintop in Switzerland recently that brought back a memory of sitting on a misty mountaintop high above lake Lucerne so vivid and clear that I swear I could feel the chill in the air that I felt there 34 years ago. I've been known to miss my bus stop when someone on the route reminds me of my mother, and I get lost in a photorealistic picture in my head of a day she was across from me on the Newington to Hartford bus explaining to a newcomer where the best bargains were to be found in the area. I was a sullen teenager at the time too embarrassed to sit next to my mom, but not so jaded that I don't remember the exact way the late afternoon sun sat on her shoulder, or the grateful smile of the mousy blond woman in the incongruous black fishnet stockings who- though she didn't know it at the time- was being inducted into the exclusive cabal of my mother's G Fox & Company cronies.
Oh, you know I could go on and on, but I'll spare you the tedium. Sometimes this acute visual memory feels like a curse, but most of the time I'm grateful for it. Would I trade it for some of the memories that are less developed in me? ...names. ...dates. ...how to make money reliably. Those would be tempting ones to have. But not if I'd have to give this one up. Even if my friends do make fun of me for it.
Toute reproduction sur un support imprimé ou publication sur internet devra faire l'objet d'une demande expresse auprès du service communication de la Fédération Française Handisport.
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Toute utilisation ainsi autorisée devra mentionner le crédit photo (voir nom du fichier ci-dessus : “©…” ou métadonnées de la photo dans sa taille originale).
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Contact : photos [at] handisport.org
Toute reproduction sur un support imprimé ou publication sur internet devra faire l'objet d'une demande expresse auprès du service communication de la Fédération Française Handisport.
–
Toute utilisation ainsi autorisée devra mentionner le crédit photo (voir nom du fichier ci-dessus : “©…” ou métadonnées de la photo dans sa taille originale).
–
Contact : photos [at] handisport.org
Midtown, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
The Windermere, constructed in 1880-81, is significant as the oldest-known large apartment complex remaining in an area that was one of Manhattan's first apartment-house districts. With its exuberant display of textured, corbelled, and polychromatic brickwork, the Windermere complex is a visually compelling, imposing, eclectic, and unified group of three buildings anchoring the southwest corner of Ninth Avenue and West 57th Street. Adding to its significance is the Windermere's role in the history of women's housing in New York City. In the late 1890s, in an era in which housing options for single, self-supporting women were relatively limited, the Windermere was recognized as a remarkable home for a substantial population of these so-called "New Women." As such, it appears to have anticipated later residential projects in the city catering specifically to bachelor women.
Upon its completion, the Windermere, which is attributed to architect Theophilus G. Smith, stood within an area that had been sparsely settled only ten years before. By the mid-1880s, this area was home to several prominent examples of the apartment house, which was then a new and evolving residential building type. Today, the Windermere and the later, 1883-85 Osborne (a designated New York City Landmark) are the only- known large apartment houses or large apartment complexes dating from this district's early years.
The seven-story Windermere buildings are of impressive scale, topped by story-high cornices, and crowned, at No. 400 West 57th Street, by a high, false pediment with an inset, blind brick arch. Although they vary in width, the three Windermere buildings are united by common materials, decorative elements, and design into an asymmetrical group combining features of the Queen Anne style with brick polychromy and horizontal banding typical of the High Victorian Gothic, and with Romanesque elements including round- arched windows and the round arches of the Windermere's massive, machicolated cornices.
Among the Windermere's most notable features are the three-story bowed oriels at No. 400 West 57th Street; the segmental arches used as a framing device on both the 57th Street and Ninth Avenue facades; the use of contrasting Ohio stone trim; and the robust, channeled brick pilasters, which corbel upon reaching the cornices. Changes to the buildings over the years have included the addition of windows at the cornice level on the Ninth Avenue façade, and alterations to the ground floor of No. 400, including the removal of the original paired entrance portico and stoop, and the resurfacing of the façade with stone veneer. The Windermere's primary facades, which remain substantially intact after nearly 125 years, are among the features that distinguish the Windermere as an outstanding example of a large apartment complex of its time.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
The Early New York Apartment House
Although merchants in Colonial New York lived "over the store" with their families, servants, and apprentices, by the early nineteenth century, new residential neighborhoods were developing away from Lower Manhattan's business district. By the 1830s, with the weakening of the apprentice system, New York's wage- earners found lodging in boarding houses, rented rooms, or the early tenement buildings, while artists and merchants typically lived in private three- or four-story rowhouses. But by 1860, New York's skyrocketing population - which increased from 33,171 in 1790 to more than half a million in 1850 - had pushed private- house prices out of the reach of most members of the middle class. By 1866, those who could not afford their own houses included "professional men, clergymen, shopkeepers, artists, college professors, and upper-level mechanics." Some middle-class families adapted by moving into boarding houses, but living with other families in a subdivided former rowhouse conflicted with the era's middle-class values, which stressed the "individual private house as the protector of family privacy, morality, and identity." In the years following the Civil War, new types of multiple dwellings emerged to cater to those of greater means than the poor or working-class, who remained largely confined to the tenement or rooming house.
Among New York's first apartment houses were two designed by Richard Morris Hunt: the Stuyvesant Apartments (1869-70, demolished) at 142 East 18th Street, and Stevens House (1870-72, demolished), on the south side of 27th Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway. Buildings such as these led one observer to write in 1874 that "the successful establishment of a few elegant apartment houses for the rich demonstrated to those of moderate means the possibility of multiple tenancy without the risk of social debasement."
Although the Panic of 1873 slowed the construction of flats buildings in New York, construction took off, with an improving economy, after 1876. (As opposed to tenements, in which residents shared bathing facilities and toilets, both flats buildings and apartment houses had self-contained suites of rooms; the latter term generally referred to the more luxurious buildings, particularly those with elevators.) Between 1875 and 1879, approximately 700 new flats buildings were erected in New York; 516 were built in 1880 alone. By 1880, "the French flat, catering to the middle class, was a fixture of the city's architecture." Relatively few of these new buildings were architecturally distinguished; nevertheless, a "revolution in living," as the New York Times deemed it in 1878, was occurring, and by the mid-1880s, more New Yorkers lived in multiple dwellings than in rowhouses.
Most of the early flats buildings were located on the Upper East Side, east of Third Avenue. But as the city's architects moved, in the late 1870s, toward the creation of the "mammoth apartment house," much of the new apartment house construction occurred in the Ladies' Mile district and in "the new apartment district west of the luxury quarter." This area in the West 50s and low West 60s, largely undeveloped in the early 1870s, was bordered on the east by Fifth Avenue, then the city's poshest residential street; it was above the infamous Tenderloin, and east of the Lower West End, a working-class neighborhood between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues that would later become known as San Juan Hill. The extension of the Sixth Avenue Elevated to West 58th Street, and of the Ninth Avenue Elevated through the Upper West Side in the late 1870s, sparked the area's growth, particularly along West 59th Street; the pioneering apartment house there was the Bradley (John G. Prague, 1877, demolished), a luxury building at 30 West 59th. Nearby, directly on Fifth Avenue between West 52nd and West 53rd Streets, was a slightly earlier luxury building, the first Osborne (Duggin & Crossman, 1876, demolished), which was considered at the time to be "the finest apartment house in New York."
Despite their importance as early luxury apartment houses, both the six-story, six-bay-wide Bradley, and the five-story, seven-bay-wide Osborne, were relatively modest in scale. By the late 1870s, numerous medium-sized and larger apartment houses would fill the blocks of this rapidly developing area. To these were added the 80-foot-high, seven-story Windermere, in 1881.
The early 1880s would see a huge leap in apartment-house scale and sophistication, epitomized by such massive structures as the eleven-story new Osborne (James E. Ware, 1883-85, a designated New York City Landmark) at Seventh Avenue and West 57th Street; and by the Central Park Apartments, or "Spanish Flats" (Hubert, Pirsson & Co., 1883, 1885, demolished), a complex of eight, ten-story buildings located east of Seventh Avenue between West 58th and West 59th Streets. Farther uptown, on Eighth Avenue between West 72nd and West 73rd Streets, Edward Clark would build the Dakota (Henry J. Hardenburgh, 1882-84, a designated New York City Landmark), the first major residential building on the Upper West Side. Construction of such large apartment buildings was halted soon afterwards, however, as the 1885 passage of the Daly Law limited dwelling houses to 80 feet in height on the avenues, and 70 feet on side streets. These height restrictions would remain in effect until 1901.
During its early years, the apartment house remained "an experiment," as "what constituted the best or the most convenient or the most luxurious flat had to be subjected to constant revision, for there was no body of experience or literature to guide either architects or architectural critics." Architects drew upon various styles, often mixing them together. Developers and architects sought to strike a balance between communal living and the privacy of the rowhouse, in a climate in which the apartment house's long-term success was not a foregone conclusion. In 1877, with large numbers of vacancies in the Albany and Osborne, the Real Estate Record concluded that apartment houses were failing to draw the "better class of people" from private houses; by the mid-1880s, with the Dakota half-vacant, the Spanish Flats a financial failure, and numerous examples existing of unprofitable apartment-house ventures, some concluded that "the majority of upper- middle- and upper-class people still preferred houses over apartments."
By 1885, during the early years of the New York apartment house, the "new apartment district" west of Fifth Avenue had seen the construction of a diverse array of medium and large apartment houses, from the early luxury Bradley building, to numerous five- and six-story buildings like the Albany and Sonoma, to massive, towering apartment houses and apartment complexes like the 1883-85 Osborne and the Central Park Apartments. The Windermere, with its imposing bulk - its massive, story-high cornice and false pediment making it appear even larger than its seven-story height - is distinguished from the modestly scaled, pre-1885 residential buildings remaining in the area. Older than the Osborne Apartments to its east, the Windermere constitutes the oldest-known large apartment house or large apartment complex remaining in this district. With the exception of the Manhattan (Charles W. Clinton, 1879-80) at Second Avenue and East 86th Street, the Windermere may be the oldest large apartment house or large apartment complex remaining in New York City today.
Construction and Early History
Located at the southwest corner of Ninth Avenue and West 57th Street, the Windermere is comprised of three separate buildings - a corner building and two narrower buildings to its west - all of which are faced with red Philadelphia brick and trimmed with tan and black Philadelphia brick, stone, and tile. Although these buildings vary in width and have distinctive facades, the use of the same materials on all facades and the display of common decorative features - such as horizontal banding elements that extend across the Ninth Avenue façade and carry over to the West 57th Street facades of all three buildings - endow the Windermere with the appearance of a unified group. Press accounts from the early years of the Windermere often implied that it was a single building, or reinforced the conception of the three buildings as part of a common complex by using the Windermere name to refer to separate individual buildings. The 1899 G.W. Bromley map showed the complex as a single large building labeled "Windemere."
While in 1867, the lots between 55th and 59th Streets, and between Eighth and Tenth Avenues, held only a few scattered buildings, by 1879, the area had begun to fill in with structures. Still, at the end of the 1870s, the Windermere site, which was valued at $22,500 in 1880, had not been built upon.
Construction on all three buildings proceeded concurrently, with work on the corner building beginning on July 26, 1880, and the other two started on August 17, 1880. The three buildings would vary in size, with the corner building, extending for 115 feet along Ninth Avenue and 50 feet along West 57th Street, being the largest. It would house three families on each of its upper floors and two on the first floor, or a total of 20 families, and would also have two ground-floor stores. The center building would be only 20 feet wide, and would house one family on each of the first five floors; the upper two stories were "to be used as drying rooms or by families on [the] top stories of [the] adjoining house." The 30-foot-wide, westernmost building would house a total of 14 families - two on each floor. In total, the Windermere would contain 39 units.
All three buildings were completed on August 30, 1881. William E. Stewart was listed as their owner, and Theophilus George Smith as their architect. An attorney, Nathaniel A. McBride, was also involved with the project; all three men, at the time of the Windermere's construction, were listed as being at the same address, 152 Broadway.
Little information has been found on other building projects that McBride, Stewart, and Smith may have been involved with in New York City. McBride was born around 1842, and although a lawyer by profession, he was listed as a "real estate speculator" in the early 1900s. Stewart, a New York City native, was also a lawyer. Smith, listed only once in city directories as an architect, and at other times as a surveyor or civil engineer, designed a handful of tenements and rowhouses on the Upper West Side between 1877 and 1881.
In April 1881, several months before its completion, the Windermere was profiled in a New York Times article on "the growing West Side." It was described, along with several other new buildings, as representative of the high-quality construction occurring in the area west of Fifth Avenue and north of 42nd Street, which was then undergoing rapid urbanization. In addition to the completion of new elevated railroad lines, additional factors spurring apartment house construction in the area, according to the Times, were that "times are good, money is plentiful and cheap, and capitalists and owners of property are encouraged by these circumstances to improve their real estate." As described in the article, each Windermere apartment of seven to nine rooms would be
"furnished with a buffet, sideboard, and pier glass. For the convenience of tenants who do not wish to cook in their own apartments, large kitchens are situated in the basement. Three hydraulic elevators, which are to run day and night, will be provided. The building will be heated with steam throughout, and a telephone connecting with all parts of the City will be placed at the disposal of all tenants. Electric bells in all the suites communicate with the janitor's rooms, and an automatic electric fire-indicator will notify the janitor of the breaking out of a fire in any part of the building, even if the tenants of the burning apartment are out."
The article also mentioned the provision of automatic fire-gongs in the inner courtyard and the suites, "abundant" fire escapes, and a rear passageway allowing for deliveries, as well as the presence of uniformed "hall boys" who were "to be on duty day and night."
It is unclear whether the Windermere was conceived of as a luxury apartment complex. According to a second-story floor plan filed near its time of construction, only two elevators were provided - in the corner and westernmost buildings - making the middle building a walk-up and its suites, technically, flats. Despite this, the middle building's flats were spacious, consisting of eight rooms each, including front and back parlors, a sitting room, and three bedrooms, as well as two fireplaces. The apartments in the westernmost building lacked the middle building's sitting room, extra parlor, and second fireplace, but had an additional bedroom. There were slight variations among the corner building's apartments, each of which had seven rooms.
The Times article gave the impression of the Windermere as a high-class apartment complex, mentioning its $350,000 cost and including it among buildings that were "to be first class in every particular." The promised amenity of telephone service likely would have been considered a luxury feature, as it was new at the time. In 1882, Real Estate Record called the "Windmere" (sic) a "magnificent apartment house" in telling of its sale by Nathaniel McBride; one year later, it included apartments there among a "list of first-class apartments unrented" in "most of the principal apartment houses in the city." The prices listed for the Windermere's available apartments, however, were considerably lower than for those in buildings like the Berkshire, Gramercy, or Palermo; seven- and nine-room suites at the Gramercy, for example, rented for $2,000 to $3,000 annually, while the Windermere's rooms were listed at between $600 and $1,100.
It seems likely that the presence of the noisy and sooty Ninth Avenue elevated train only a few feet from the Windermere's east façade would preclude the Windermere from achieving luxury status; the Windermere was also well west of most of the luxury apartment houses of the time, such as the Bradley and the Vancorlear (Henry J. Hardenburgh, 1879, demolished), which were located two blocks or more to the east. Finally, the promise of the owners, before construction was completed, to "furnish coal to the tenants at summer prices all the year round," implies a cost-consciousness among prospective tenants that would presumably be out of place in a true luxury apartment complex.
The Windermere, in its early years, attracted tenants that, if not wealthy, could be considered comfortably middle class. Among those living in the corner building (No. 400 West 57th Street) in 1890 were the superintendent, Henry Sterling Goodale; a druggist; an artist; three brokers; and a lawyer. Those living in the center building included Charles H. Harvey, who served as a delegate to the New York State Democratic Convention in 1894. Among the residents of the westernmost building (No. 406) were a company president, a trunk merchant, and a minister. Also living at the Windermere in its early years were the superintendent of the Protestant Episcopal City Mission (in 1887), and the president of the city's board of health (also in 1887).
By the end of the decade, the Windermere would attract attention as an unusual residential complex catering to the "New Woman."
The Post-Goodale Windermere
Henry Sterling Goodale left New York in 1900, apparently moving to Amherst Massachusetts, where he died in 1906. Although Goodale's reasons for leaving are unclear, he may have been driven away, at least in part, by a fire that occurred at the Windermere in 1899. Although the fire did not spread far, "the observatory and the greater part of Goodsell's (sic) apartments were destroyed," the New York Times reported.
With Goodale's departure, changes appear to have occurred at the Windermere. The building may have been undergoing renovations in 1900: the U.S. Census of that year shows only four families living in the 400 building, none in No. 404, and four families in No. 406. The families in No. 400 included a doctor, his wife, and son; a male head of household with two daughters and one female boarder; a civil engineer, who lived with his wife and daughter, and a servant; and a druggist who had been present in the building in 1890 and who lived with his wife and a servant. The families in No. 406 included a doctor, his wife, and two daughters; a minister who had been in the building in 1890, and who was there in 1900 with his four daughters; a male doctor, living alone; and an engineer, his wife and daughter, and their male boarder, who was a doctor.
Fires plagued the Windermere during the first decade of the twentieth century. After a major fire in 1907, the Times reported that the tenants of the Windermere were "mostly women."
By 1910, the area that the Windermere was in - north of 44th Street and west of Eighth Avenue - was losing population, as the new subways spurred the development of, and drew tenants to, attractive new apartment houses in Harlem and other areas of northern Manhattan. In 1912 Real Estate Record and Guide characterized the area between Seventh and Tenth Avenues and between 14th and 70th Streets as a "tenement and dwelling" district, distinguishing it from areas of "high class dwellings and apartments" north of 70th Street on the West Side and along the eastern side of Central Park.
The 1910 census gives the first clear picture of the building's tenant make-up following Goodale's departure. No. 400, the corner building, had approximately 40 residents, about 38 of them boarders. About 25 of the boarders were single women; typical occupations included stenographer, telephone operator, cashier, nurse, dressmaker, and saleslady. There were also three models; one of them, Amelia Rose, was profiled in a 1905 New York Times article on the "Evolution of the New York Artist's Model." Rose, who had posed for Charles Dana Gibson when she was eight years old, was "one of the best-known models in New York," modeling for, among others, Mary Lawrence Tonetti, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Daniel Chester French. Three of the male boarders were actors.
In 1910, the middle building, No. 404, apparently continued to be vacant. No. 406 appears to have remained almost entirely as individual flats, with 12 of the 14 flats occupied. Ten of the 12 families had boarders living under a male or female head of household; four of the families with boarders had at least one child. Of those households with boarders, seven had at least one female and at least one male boarder. The female boarders of No. 406 included two stenographers and two clerks, a nurse, a dressmaker, and a wax master; the male boarders included a railroad conductor, several chauffeurs and waiters, and two medical students, as well as a museum clerk, detective, hotel worker, plumber, doctor, and a driver for a milk company.
Between 1910 and 1920, the population of the Windermere exploded to approximately 225 residents. About 150 people were living at No. 400, within about 15 households; almost all of these households included "roomers," with one having ten, and another fifteen. Of No. 406's approximately 12 households, eight were headed by a husband and wife, and only one of them took in roomers. The 1920 Census showed a precipitous decline in the number of single women at the Windermere; only about 18 self-supporting women, with occupations including shopper, clerk, nurse, saleslady, laundress, and cashier, were living in all three buildings in that year. This trend in occupancy held in 1930, as relatively few women who were working outside the home lived at the Windermere. The occupations of the approximately 22 single working women included waitress, jeweler at the Tiffany store, general work at a hospital, waitress, operator at a factory, department store clerk, actress, and nurse.
The presence of a wax master and three actors in the Windermere in 1910 indicates that the building retained some artistic flavor into the 20th century. In 1905, Lillie Spencer, an artist and the daughter of the English-born painter Lilly Martin Spencer (1822-1902) was reported to be living there. Later residents would include Quinto Magnani (1897-1974), who composed the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera "The Argonauts" and who lived in the Windermere in 1929; and writer, painter, photographer, and sculptor May Mott-Smith (1879-1952), who lived at the Windermere from 1944 until her death. From to 1954 to 1958, the corner building was the home of Alonzo Hanagan (1911-1999), better known as Lon of New York, and his photography studio. Lon, known for his pioneering photographs of the male physique - which were both taboo and illegal in the 1940s and '50s - "created iconic images that both glorified the physiques of some of the most well-known bodybuilders of the time and documented the golden era of the sport," according to Reed Massengill. Lon moved to the Windermere, where he set up his studio in a large first-floor apartment, on the recommendation of Lou Elson, who also lived in the building and published the physique magazine Tomorrow's Man. Lon and Elson, working together, would launch four new physique magazines between 1954 and 1957. Later residents of the Windermere would include the actor Yaphet Kotto (1937- ) and silver screen icon Steve McQueen (1930-1980).
The Windermere was in the news in the 1980s when the building's agent, manager, and superintendent were convicted as part of a conspiracy to harass tenants into leaving the building. In 1998, the Times reported that the Windermere, at that time, had 165 single-room occupancy units and eight apartments; in 2002, it reported that only about a half-dozen tenants remained.
Design
With its seven-story Ninth Avenue and 57th Street facades topped by story-high cornices and crowned, on the 57th Street façade of the corner building by a one-story-high false pediment, the Windermere is notable, in part, for its impressive scale. This quality, along with its display of Queen Anne-, High Victorian Gothic-, and Romanesque Revival-style elements, and the exuberant corbelled, textured, and polychromatic brickwork of
both primary facades, make the Windermere a visually compelling, imposing, and eclectic architectural complex.
The Windermere's eclecticism is typical of large, 1880s apartment buildings. According to Elizabeth Cromley, in that decade, architects of large apartment houses sought "an individualism of style" to "mark out a large apartment block from nearby buildings.... Architects of the 1880s apartment houses favored eclectic styles ... which in turn served as identifying markers for apartment buildings." It was common for these new buildings, as does the Windermere with its segmented and complexly ornamented and textured facades, to exhibit "disjunctiveness," with "architectural details creat[ing] variety and disrupting] a single unified image.
The Windermere is comprised of three adjoining seven-story buildings. The functional independence of these buildings is made clear on their 57th Street facades, where they are separated from each other by brick pilasters. The presence, at each building, of a separate entrance portico and stoop - portions of which remain today, at Nos. 404 and 406 - also distinguishes the buildings from each other, as does the individualized handling of their window openings and window types. No. 400, the large corner building, is the only one to have three-story oriel windows; like No. 406, it also features square-headed windows paired below segmental arches. Both of these buildings differ in fenestration not only from each other but from the middle building, No. 404, which has neither the oriels nor the paired, square-headed windows.
Although each building features a massive brick cornice with corbelled brick arches, crowned by a heavy stone cymatium, the differing sizes and spacing of the arches, the projection of the middle building's roofline above the two other rooflines, and the prominent false pediment atop No. 400, also set off each building from the others. Each of the 57th Street facades is essentially symmetrical, except in the off-center placement of No. 404's entryway, but the three facades vary in width, with No. 400 the widest at 50 feet, No. 406 next at 30 feet, and No. 404, the middle building, the narrowest at 20 feet. Together, these three symmetrical facades combine to create, on 57th Street, a distinctive and picturesque, asymmetrical composition that is unified by common massing, materials, and design elements, but that communicates each building's independence. The Ninth Avenue elevation is similar to that of 57th Street in the manner in which shared ornament, features, and fenestration are brought together to create an expansive, asymmetrical, but unified façade.
The asymmetrical massing of the Windermere is representative of the Queen Anne style, as is the building's picturesque roof silhouette. The most distinctive feature of the roofline, which varies in height on both the Ninth Avenue and 57th Street elevations, is the false pediment on top of the 57th Street façade of the corner building. This pediment, which mimics the gables typically found on Queen Anne buildings, features the often-seen Queen Anne motif of a contrasting, inset arch, which is realized here in tan-colored brick. The oriel windows on the 57th Street façade are also representative Queen Anne-style features; semicircular in plan and supported by stone ancons, they recall, in simplified form, the oriel of Bruce Price's 1878 flats building at 21 East 21st Street. Other features consistent with the Queen Anne include the Windermere's red, Philadelphia-brick body and contrasting stone trim, the channeling on the chimney near the north end of the Ninth Avenue façade, and the manner in which the chimney corbels outward near its peak.
The chimney shares this channeling and corbelling with the Windermere's robust brick pilasters, which break down the 57th Street and Ninth Avenue facades into divisions of two and three bays. The channeling, also present on the body of the building, and the pilasters themselves, which are also consistent with the Queen Anne style, provide depth to the façade; they also provide surface texture, as does dogtoothed brick laid in horizontal and soldier courses, in panels below selected windows, and as infill between segmental arches and the square- headed window heads below. (The grouping of square-headed windows below a segmental arch, as at the fourth floor on the 57th Street façade, is another often-seen Queen Anne motif.)
Typical of the Romanesque Revival style, which was often combined with the Queen Anne on New York City rowhouses, are the Windermere's round-headed windows. At the fourth floor on both the 57th Street and Ninth Avenue facades, the extrados of these arches are trimmed with stone. Also typical of the Romanesque Revival are the round arches of the primary facades' monumental, machicolated cornices.
In designing the Windermere, Smith also drew upon the then-waning High Victorian Gothic style. The most representative High Victorian Gothic features of the Windermere are its bold constructional polychromy and its horizontal banding, achieved chiefly through the use of tan- and black-colored, and dogtoothed brick courses, and Ohio stone belt courses, that contrast with the facades' red brick, and tan-colored decorative brickwork in diamond-, cross-, and zigzag-shaped motifs below the fifth floor on both primary facades. Additional color is provided by a band of diamond-patterned, blue-and-white tile on the 57th Street façade. These High Victorian features are complemented by more generic Gothic Revival elements, including the quatrefoils present on the extant entrance porticos of Nos. 404 and 406, and the label moldings that are implied in stone at the fifth floor on the 57th Street façades of Nos. 400 and 406, and at the fifth-floor windows on the Ninth Avenue façade.
Smith's decision to use pilasters to break up both facades, including the 115-foot expanse of the Ninth Avenue façade, into the two- and three-bay divisions typical of rowhouses, may have represented a conscious effort to appeal to and comfort prospective tenants. In 1880, the large middle-class apartment house was still a new phenomenon, and as historian Elizabeth Cromley points out, designing one for prospective tenants who saw the rowhouse as the norm presented special challenges. "Since the private house had been the only kind of architecture that provided mid-century New Yorkers with the image of home," she writes, "designers of apartments were faced with serious problems. How were they to make larger-than-house-size multiple dwellings fit that image?" It was not unusual, into the 1880s, for new apartment houses and apartment complexes, including the Central Park Apartments, to have multiple entrances; by using these entrances to, in effect, break down large buildings or complexes into smaller components, architects may have been seeking to assuage tenants who were used to smaller-scale residences.
In these early years of the flats and apartment house, architects also drew upon rowhouse imagery, as in the 1878 flats building at 21 East 21st Street, which "rested comfortably within the image of a house." An unrealized 1874 proposal by Henry Hudson Holly for a "family hotel" similarly included seven separate entrances, all with high stoops, "to create the impression of a row of houses, comforting to families made uneasy by multiple dwellings." In this climate, in which architects were finding their way towards a new vocabulary for the large apartment house, and in which the rowhouse was the chief symbol of home for middle-class New Yorkers, it may well have made sense for Smith to draw upon rowhouse imagery to attract prospective tenants. With its Ninth Avenue and 57th Street facades broken down into two- and three-bay divisions, its multiple entrances - off-center at No. 404, and originally paired at No. 400, possibly to give the impression of two entrances to adjoining, three-bay houses - and its stoops, the Windermere appears to exhibit a tension between the rowhouse and the emerging large apartment house that would be appropriate for a new apartment house of its time.
Differentiating the three buildings from each other may have assisted the Windermere's owners in targeting each one to different clienteles. This appears not to have been an uncommon practice at the time: at the Florence, completed in 1878 at Fourth Avenue and 18th Street, three different classes of residents were expected to occupy its 42 suites, including bachelors, families, and young married couples. The presence of oriel windows at the corner building of the Windermere, for example, may have represented an effort to make that building more attractive to higher-paying tenants and to distinguish them from those living in the adjoining walk-up flats building.
Description
Ninth Avenue
The Windermere's asymmetrical, 115-foot long Ninth Avenue façade is divided into five large bays. Each of these bays is essentially symmetrical, except for the second-northernmost bay; there, the two windows per floor are slightly off center. Each of the five bays is defined by channeled brick pilasters. The northernmost three of these pilasters appear to have been removed below the second floor's sill level; the other three pilasters run from below the second story's stone sill course to the top of the Ninth Avenue cornice. The northernmost bay of the Ninth Avenue façade is split by a chimney, which projects from the façade and features channeling, dogtoothed brick panels and courses, and recessed brick panels. The chimney extends from a point that is horizontally in line with the springlines of the second-story's round window arches to the top of the cornice, where it has six channels and corbels outward, ultimately piercing the cymatium. The other pilasters on the Ninth Avenue façade, except for the second-southernmost, engage the cymatium rather than piercing it. The central bay's roofline rises slightly above the rooflines of the other bays.
The window openings on the Ninth Avenue façade are horizontally and vertically aligned, and are grouped in a pattern, from south to north, of 3-2-3-2-2. Round-arched window openings with brick voussoirs and stone springers and keystones, are present at the second and sixth floors. Round-arched window openings with brick voussoirs, without keystones, and with stone extrados trim, are present in the southernmost, central, and second-northernmost bays at the fourth floor. At the second floor, these window openings are above a stone sill course; the round-headed openings at the fourth floor are above a stone ledge; and the windows at the sixth floor have stone sills. Square-headed window openings with stone lintels are present at the third, fifth, and seventh floors, and at the fourth floor, where they are placed below segmental arches with stone springers in the second-southernmost and northernmost bays. At the third and seventh floors, these windows have stone sills; at the fifth floor, they are above a stone ledge located at sill level. At the square-headed window openings, two additional courses of stone - one just below lintel level, and other just above sill level - are present in between and flanking the windows. At the fifth floor windows, a stone course is present just above sill level, in between and flanking the windows; stone blocks wrap the window heads in a form recalling that of a label molding.
The second floor of the Ninth Avenue façade is similar in design and use of materials to the corresponding floor of the 57th Street façades. Three single courses of tan brick, interrupted by the façade's windows and pilasters, run horizontally between the sills and lintels. A stone sill course also runs the length of the façade, pierced by its pilasters.
At the third floor, in all of the bays except the northernmost, brick channeling is present between the windows. Zigzag, cross-shaped, diamond-shaped, and other decorative elements in tan brick flank, and are located between, the window openings in the three central bays. Cross-shaped elements in tan brick flank are located between the outer window openings and their flanking pilasters in the southernmost bay. A single course of tan brick runs across the façade at the third floor, interrupted by the window openings, pilasters, channeling, and chimney. Running across each of the bays below the third-floor windows' sills is a single soldier course of dogtoothed brick.
At the fourth floor, in the northernmost and second-southernmost bays, the Ninth Avenue façade features square-headed window openings, each of which is located below a segmental arch. The area between the windows' lintels and the arches above is filled with dogtoothed brickwork. In the second-southernmost bay, the window openings are not centered below their arches, and three single courses of tan brick run horizontally between the window openings and between the openings and their flanking pilasters. In the northernmost bay, each window opening is centered below its arch; two single courses of tan brick run horizontally between the openings, as does a course of stone, which is horizontally aligned with the stone springers of the fourth floor's round-headed windows. A diamond-shaped element in tan brick is present between the two northernmost window openings. A stone ledge runs across the fourth floor, pierced by every pilaster and by the chimney. Below this ledge, beneath each window, is a dogtoothed brick panel. In the southernmost, third-southernmost, and second-northernmost bays, round-headed window openings similar to those on the corresponding floor of No. 404 West 57th Street are present. The arches feature stone springers with brick voussoirs and are without keystones. Their extrados are trimmed with stone. Triangular decorative elements in tan brick are present above the window openings, horizontally placed between the openings and abutting the pilasters.
At the fifth floor, channeling is present between, and flanking, the window openings. A stone ledge runs the length of the façade, pierced by the southernmost and third-northernmost pilasters.
The sixth floor is similar in design and use of materials to the corresponding floor of the 57th Street façade, with five dogtoothed brick courses abutting the seventh-floor window sills above. A single stretcher course of tan brick runs directly below the dogtoothing. Two pairs of tan-brick courses run horizontally between the sill and lintel levels, sandwiching two rows of brick dogtoothed soldier courses.
The seventh floor is similar in design and use of materials to the corresponding floor of the 57th Street facade, with alternating rows of stretchers and brick dogtoothed courses above the lintels, and four single courses of tan-brick banding, and channeling between the sills and lintels.
The Ninth Avenue facade is crowned by a broad stone and brick cornice, which is topped by a large cymatium. It is pierced by four window or door openings, one in each of the four southernmost bays. At the central bay, corbelled brickwork supports a stone belt course, from which ten arches with brick voussoirs spring. These arches' extrados are trimmed with stone. The cornice at the southernmost bay has ten round arches with stone springers; below the two northernmost arches are circular openings. The cornice at the second-southernmost bay has eight round arches with stone springers; below all except the northernmost arch are circular openings. The cornice at the second-northernmost bay has nine round arches with stone springers; the cornice at the northernmost bay has eight round arches with stone springers; below all of these arches are circular openings.
All of the window openings in the northernmost bay have been bricked up. All of the window openings in the four southernmost bays at the second, third, and fifth floors have been covered over. Ten windows - six one-over-ones, two one-over-twos, and two two-over-twos - are present at the fourth floor. Seven windows - five one-over-ones, one two-over-one, and one two-over-two - are present at the sixth floor. Three windows - one two-over-two and two one-over-ones - are present at the seventh floor. Windows or doors are present in two of the four openings at the cornice level.
A metal fire escape is attached to the facade in the second-southernmost bay. It extends from the second floor to the cornice level, where a metal platform runs the length of the three central bays. Graffiti has been written on the facade at the second through seventh floors in the second-southernmost bay, and below the second-floor sill level.
No original material appears to remain at the ground floor on the Ninth Avenue facade. The setback entrance to the upper floors of No. 400 is located there, and is surrounded by metal panels. There are two storefronts, both currently vacant; one is metal, and the other is covered with stone veneer. Stone or brick veneer, or metal, cover most of the ground floor facade.
No. 400 West 57th Street- South Facade
On the partially visible, secondary south facade of 400 West 57th Street, four window openings are present at each of the second through seventh floors. Most of these window openings have been covered over. Three window openings are present at the cornice level, including one tripartite window. These openings do not appear to be original to the building and may indicate the existence of a rooftop addition behind them.
- From the 2005 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Marilyn Rushton, a well-known Burnaby citizen, is awarded with the province’s newest honour, the Medal of Good Citizenship.
Rushton is honoured for her for inspirational life of service to the visually impaired community, her contributions to families with blind and visually impaired children, and her energetic support for the musical community.
Learn more: news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2016IGR0025-001407
High on a hill in Helensburgh, overlooking the River Clyde, sits what is universally regarded as Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s finest domestic creation.
The Hill House is a visually arresting mix of Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, Scottish Baronial and Japonisme architecture and design.
Mackintosh designed nearly everything inside the Hill House too, from the decorative schemes and the furniture to the fittings and contents.
His wife, Margaret Macdonald, designed and made many of the textiles as well as a beautiful fireplace panel. Much of the house has been restored so it looks almost exactly as it did in 1904 when its first residents, Glasgow publisher Walter Blackie and his family, moved in.
The beautiful, formal gardens have also been restored in line with the early designs, using plants that would have been available at the time.
Not my sharpest image!
But I think it's interesting visually.
On the menu: 2 Boeing 777 - 2 Boeing 767- 3 Boeing 737- 1 Boeing 747-
1 MD11 - 1 Airbus A320 and 1 Dash8 Q-400
Nikon D300 Nikkor 200-400mm f/4 VR
The whole concept of visually updating cars on a yearly basis has always seemed a bit extravagant to many people outside of the U.S. Whereas our cars could look pretty much the same year on year before finally being replaced in America sheet metal changes were often done after 12 months in a continuous effort to get people to buy the latest seasons vehicle.
One one hand you could say it got potential buyers to continually seek out your latest products and on the other it would bring about the term "built in obsolescence" making a pretty new purchase seem old hat! It must have caused a nightmare with model makers even now but I guess also a goldmine of potential for maximising a certain casting with only minimal changes.
This is the second Auto World Buick Estate Wagon Santa brought me this Christmas yet being a 1975 example and not a 1974 means its front panel and grille have been altered accordingly. Everything else looks pretty much the same meaning a true 1/64 scale Station Wagon laden with lashings of chrome and gaudy fake wood appliqué. I absolutely love this type of model and Auto World seem to be very good at making them! Mint and boxed.
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Toute utilisation ainsi autorisée devra mentionner le crédit photo (voir nom du fichier ci-dessus : “©…” ou métadonnées de la photo dans sa taille originale).
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Contact : photos [at] handisport.org
Visually identical to the Jenoptem models, this example came in great condition but out of collimation. Performance is not as good as my Jenoptem 7x50, image goes soft towards the edge of the field quicker than I would expect from this model. Still has the great Zeiss smell though!
Usable with Spectacles =No
Really, a visually spectacular place.
Everything about it seems to be on an epic scale. Loved the drive from LA down through Nevada. Really, if you go to the States you have to go to Vegas.
I took this shot across from my hotel as I was going to find some breakfast.
I want to go back and take a lot more photographs but doubt that's possible. Holidaying in the US is bloody expensive.
I don't typically buy anything from the Revoltech series, mostly likely because the licenses that they play with aren't usually my thing. However, once in a while, an interesting figure pops up.
For the last little while, one of the more visually impressive sublines from the Revoltech is the Figure Complex: Amazing Yamaguchi line featuring various beloved X-Men characters sculpted by Yamaguchi Katsuhisa. I know a Wolverine and Magneto were released, and a Gambit will be released. I also believe the line has moved onto at least non-X characters with the recently solicited Iron Man.
Obviously, this figure is none of those - this is Psylocke.
For someone that likes figures and toys, it's surprising how few comics I've read. My introduction to the character was from the original Capcom Vs. Game, X-Men: Children of the Atom in all her uninhibited bouncy glory.
The character naturally has a long and storied past that I'd probably lose much sleep over if I actually tried to research. I believe that "too long, didn't read" version of it is that she is a mutant (duh) named Elizabeth "Betsy" Braddock, the sister of Captain Marvel. Through a series of events such as self sacrifice and transference of mental capacities, she ends up in a body of an Japanese woman who is the brain dead wife of the leader of the Hand, an assassin clan, and is brainwashed into become one of them. She develops Psionic powers (ability to form things out of mental energy, mostly for her being blades), and eventually breaks free of this brainwashing, and that, friends is the genesis of the X-Men character Psylocke.
None of that matters, of course. I bought the figure because the previews made her look really, really, good, and Psylocke herself being a very sharp character design with long flowing purple hair and her purple kind-of-there outfit. While it's been out for probably 6 months now, I only recently got mine because I insist that the guy who sold it to me bring it to me personally... even if I had to wait six months.
If you've never watched gameplay of Psylocke, just think slinky female ninja dressed in purple capable of making various energy things. And, as mentioned, the prototype pictures show cased that very well. So, how did it do?
Well, let's start from the top.
Psylocke comes with the figure, two face plates (one neutral, one smiling), a sheathed katana, an empty sheath, twin katanas, twin energy katanas, twin Psyblades, 4 sets of hands, a detachable sash, and a dynamic stand with both a peg connector, along with a clamp that I guess would give you a bit more height with your aerial stuff but I never actually used it. I personally would have like an additional angry/attacking face plate because as it is, she's a bit too serene looking.
Also kind of neat is that on the cardboard insert (and side flaps of the box) are full colour prints of I guess what comic art inspired this particular design.
The Revoltech joint system is a bit different from the Figma and Figuart systems.. at least I guess they are, and at the very least this one is.
Articulation is very, very, very good. I cannot emphasize how much you can get this figure to do despite it's small size. The trade off is that some of the joints look really weird when not positioned properly, specifically the shoulders and knees, which are double or triple joints depending on which one we're talking about. Whomever designed the tray for holding Psylocke really didn't do the figure any favours to say the least. However, the amount of knee bend and chest press that this figure more than overshadows this first impression issue, and that range or movement is something you want for a figure like Psylocke.
In addition to the aforementioned, all your standard points of articulation are present. Bonus ones include a toe swivel, articulation for her sash, thigh swivel, independent neck and head articulation, and hair that can be lifted to all for greater neck movement, with the latter head/neck related items allowing for some great crouching poses.
Sadly, while her shoulders worked out just fine despite their wonky appearance, her ass suffers from the dreaded "thigh separation" scenario where the movement of the legs creates an unsightly gap where the thigh meets the back of the body, particularly notable given that she doesn't wear pants. But, again, at least the trade off is great articulation.
Psylocke I guess would technically be the action figure (or at least middle of the pack Japanese figure) equivalent of a Butterface release. To be fair, it is generally what was promised on the box, so I don't really have anyone to blame but myself for buying her if this was the key aspect that ruins the experience for me. Both the prototype and the final item feature the same round almost featureless face with the undersized nose.
No it's other things that serve not only as a topic of discussion, but also kind of give you a feeling as to why Figma and Figuarts are kind of priced the way they are.
Psylocke has an MSRP of about 6,000 Yen, which is about the price of your run of the mill Figuart, with Figma coming in closer to what.. 7,000 if not more these days? The releases are about the same size, but lets remember that Figuarts have no stand and very few accessories, and clearly Psylocke destroys any run of the mill Figuart figure in terms of value.
Part of the pricing on everything is of course the cut paid for the actual license, but it's not like a Marvel license is particularly cheap. So what else is there?
It pretty much comes down to paint.
If you look closely, you'll probably notice that Psylocke has no paint whatsoever on her fleshy bits. Not only does this look a bit meh, but it makes photographing her a major pain in the ass, especially if you're trying to bring out details.. like her nose and eye sockets. You'll notice that the paint masking on her leg bands isn't bad, but there are more weak spots than on its Figma and Figuarts competitors, especially if we're talking about figure with a relatively simple colour scheme. Some minor paint issues were also spotted on her neck piece, but those are primarily paint transfers. There were also some areas with paint overspray, but it wasn't anything bootleg bad, just something worth noting.
Her translucent purple hair is also a big seller for this figure. The overall final product is pretty good, but if you look closely (and in the instance of the back of her head, not even that close), you'll notice some very rough spots that I don't know were a QC issue or a design flaw. By comparison, nothing this was spotted on either KOS-MOS or T-ELOS, both of which are at least 7 years older than Psylocke.
For what it is worth, her effect parts are very well done, particularly her Psiblades with the gradient from cold to warm Purple. The quality of the stand itself is, from my analysis, more solid than a Figma stand, mostly due to a combination of better plastic, a thicker arm, and better designed joints. There were also no issues with regards to rough plastic finishes other than the aformentioned hair problems.
One other issue that I read about was the face plate itself. Some owners seem to be indicating that due to the way the face is mounted on the head (friction based, one slot, straight above the face) the figure arrived with the socket on the hair already worn out and wouldn't hold the face in place, or would be in danger of doing so in the future. I didn't have that issue on mine, but I do understand where they're coming from with these statements.
I should probably also mention the eyes. Those who are familiar with the Hot Toys world will know the term PERS, which is their fancy term for eyes that can be moved on the sculpts to facilitate an even greater amount of posing. Amazingly this figure also features eyeballs that can be moved, though it's not as complicated as the PERS system. This is actually pretty neat given the size of the eyeballs, though you might want to ditch the included white pick in favour of a tiny screw driver or something to move the eyes as I believe the 90 degree bend actually makes it harder to manipulate the eyes into the right direction.
In the end, a very good release, and probably the best Psylocke action figure I've ever seen.. of course, the only others I have seen are the Marvel Legends one which again, aren't bad given the price. Those looking for a more legit comic sculpt need not apply here, naturally.
But there is no doubt that this is a sharp looking figure, and for the price it comes with quite a few goodies. It just lacks that final bit of spit polish that would push it from being very good to being outstanding. Still, if you like your ninjas purple and slinky, you can't go wrong.
Never let who you are limit what you can do. I honestly believe that anyone can accomplish anything in life if they have the will to do it.
Pictured are two runners seen at the Ma On Shan Promenade after they have finished their run and are walking home. One of the men is visually impaired. But he is able to run outside with the help of a guide runner. A cotton rope binds their hands together, thus allowing the visually impaired athlete to be able to run out in open air.
I have never seen anything like this before. Hong Kong is awesome. And very accessible. Crazyisgood. SML Love.
# SML Data
+ Date: 2013-02-08 11:20:37 GMT+0800
+ Dimensions: 3196 x 4794
+ Exposure 1/200 sec at f/5.6
+ Focal Length: 102 mm
+ ISO: 640
+ Flash: Did not fire
+ Camera: Canon EOS 7D
+ Lens: Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + Canon EF 1.4x Extender III
+ GPS: 22°25'14" N 114°13'27" E
+ 中國香港馬鞍山海濱長廊 中国香港马鞍山海滨长廊 Ma On Shan Promenade, Hong Kong, China
+ Serial: SML.20130208.7D.21490
+ Workflow: Lightroom 4
+ Series: Crazyisgood
“領跑員 Guide Runner + 視障運動員 Visually Impaired Athlete” / Crazyisgood / SML.20130208.7D.21490
/ #Crazyisgood #CCBY #SMLPhotography #SMLUniverse #SMLMen #SMLProjects
/ #中國 #中国 #China #香港 #HongKong #馬鞍山 #MaOnShan #人 #people #男 #Men #街 #Street #攝影 #摄影 #photography #run #體育 #体育 #運動 #运动 #sports
Some time ago, I posted an image of my own adaptation of a Rubik's cube into a tactile cube for the blind.
Well, today I got this brand new Rubik's Cube. It's a cube that is intended for the blind and visually impaired, but can be solved by the sighted, too. It's got its usual coloured tiles with the addition of the 3D shapes on them, so it can be solved visually or just by touch. It's absolutely fantastic! And what I like most about it is that this cube can connect blind and sighted people in a fun activity!
Keep the comments clean! No banners, awards or invitations, please!
2014 Gore Aussie Muscle Mania Car Show (12-4-14)
The Holden Torana is a car that was manufactured by General Motors–Holden's (GM-H), the Australian subsidiary of General Motors (GM) from 1967 to 1980. The name comes from an Aboriginal word meaning "to fly". The first Torana (HB series) appeared in 1967 and was a four-cylinder compact vehicle with origins in the British Vauxhall Vivas of the mid-1960s.
(Ref: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden_Torana#LJ)
Holden Torana -LJ (series 1972-1974)
LJ Torana: LJ was just another set of initials in the non-specific GMH fashion. The " L" still referred to, the "light" car concept, but the mysteries of the "J" are probably not worth trying to unravel. As for the cars themselves they are basically face-lifted LC models with substantial improvements. GMH heavies wanted them to sell in the showroom alongside the newly released HQ, keeping the Torana name healthy in the market but without stealing too much of the bigger Holden's thunder. HQ was the biggest Holden news in years, bigger even than the LC Torana had been late in 1969. Thus it made plenty of sense for GMH to establish a strong connection between HQ and the cheaper Torana. Visually, this connection was achieved by giving the LJ an egg-crate style grille, similar in shape to the HQ's. At the rear, three piece tail lights replaced the original one piecers. The changes introduced with LJ and the strengthening of its links with the full size Holdens went much further. In side the cabin, the bond was emphasised with identical steering wheels, ignition switch, steering locks and door ashtrays. And, where the LC six-cylinder sedans had offered a choice between the 2250 and 2600 engines, LJ was available with the newly released 202 engine. In Torana application the 202 was dubbed " 3300 ".With LJ there was still no V8 option, but the Torana could be specified with the biggest six, which hadn't been the case before. This went some way to narrowing the gap between Torana and Kingswood and helped prepare the public for the forth coming LH model. The LJ was launched for sale in January 1972. Altogether there were no less than eight engines from which to choose, ranging from the venerable 56 horsepower 1159 cm3 four (which preferred flat terrain and lots of revs!)to the 190 horsepower version of the 202 (which loved mountains!) used in the LJ XU-l. Most models were upgraded. The standard GTR, for example, now used a 202 engine instead of the "S" version of first the l6l and then the 173 (2850). A bored-out version of the 1159 cm3 four displaced 1256cm3 and was standard fitment in the Deluxe four. It's output was 62 bhp (and it still Preferred flat terrain and lots of revs!) The biggest of the fours was the slant SOHC 1600 introduced in July l97l as a running mod on LC. Unfortunately, this engine promised far more than it delivered. With a quoted maximum power output of 80 horsepower at 5500 rpm, you'd expect a substantial performance gain over the 55 bhp l256 cm3 four. Infact, you'd expect a 1600 Torana to match any of the l.5/1.6 litre SOHC Japanese fours of its era. It couldn't, There was impressive mid-range top gear flexibility, but outright acceleration was sad to say the least, with zero to 60 mph taking a whopping 17 seconds. The standing quarter time was genuine are-we-keeping-you- up? material at 20.5 seconds, only a second or so clear of the l.3 litre version and barely on the same page of the calendar as any of the sixes.
All the sixes displayed good torque at low engine speeds, but to get any thing approaching real performance, you were looking at a 2850 version, minimum. A four speed geared 2850 could cover the quarter in 18.5 seconds, having dispatched 0 to 60 mph in a tad over 13 seconds. Top speed was about 97 mph, compared with 85 for the 1600 and even less for the 1.3. Interestingly enough, the 2250 could stretch its legs to 95, even if the speedo took a while to arrive. The interior of the LJ Torana in all its variants was a much nicer place to spend time. The seats were greatly improved. Chief Engineer of the time, George Roberts admitted that the earlier seats were like miniature trampolines. Apparently they were designed without any reference to the suspension and were totally out of tune with the springs, The effect was worst on the stiffer GTR and XU-l models. Over uneven surfaces the hot shot LC's were painfully uncomfortable.
Although the instrument layout itself was unchanged, GMH's styling team had wisely decided to rid the Torana of its droopy fascia. In LJ models the padding ran the width of the car in an unbroken line and looked much neater. The radio was relocated in the entree of the fascia. On LC it had been hung some where underneath. All 1972 cars had to have an ignition/steering lock as standard fitment. So the switch moved off the dash, leaving room for the heater/ventilation controls. Gone was the dash top ash tray and a pair of fiddly HQ door trim-mounted units took its place.
Other detail changes lifted the Torana's game. For example, the protruding glovebox knob was replaced by a neater recessed grip. Front head restraints were standard so occupant comfort in the firm-riding GTR and XU-I models was much greater, with the risk of incurring whiplash having been reduced dramatically! Suddenly a Torana could tackle bad roads without too much trouble. The GTR and XU-1 were reinforced in their position as the leading GMH sporties by the fitment of the GTS steering wheel. All LJs featured softer front suspension rates and wider disc brakes (still optional on some variants). But softer didn't mean floatier. In fact, all LJs rode noticeably better, thanks largely to improved damper rebound rates. Evidently, GMH hit the spot with LJ because its sales performance was better than LC's. A total of 81,453 were produced. They were sold between January 1972 and March l974 when the LH was unveiled. So average monthly sales were around 3100. Admittedly this was only 100 or so units per month a head of the old model, but by 1972 the Torana shape was already half a decade old. Despite the smaller car's facelift with HQ-style grille and rear light clusters LJ's looked positively out dated. The fact that this car could sell strongly was proof that the light six concept was here to stay. Even Ford Australia found it necessary to get a piece of the action with 3.3 and 4.1 litre versions of the TC Cortina. As the 70s wore on, the major failing of the six-pack Toranas became more apparent. The cars were simply too narrow. Not only did they look narrow and increasingly so in company of cars such as HQ and the XA Falcon, even the TC Cortina, but they lacked interior space. To solve the problem an all Aussie team would be needed to create a new car, that is when GMH came up with the 1974 LH Torana.
(Ref: hh.hansenits.com/model/torana/lj_torana_1972-74.html)
Holden also developed a 308ci V8-powered version of the GTR XU-1, often referred to as the GTR XU-2, but the car never made it past the prototype stage.
Visually Speaking: The People's Photographer
Brooklyn Public Library
Noelle Flores Théard
Joseph Rodriguez
Jamel Shabazz
www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/visually-speaking-people-ce...
Ivatt 2MT class 2-6-0 No 46512 entering Llynlcys with an up Llanfyllin to Oswestry service on the 11th February 1964. Artistically and visually it has all the elements and 'ingredients' for a splendid composition Vertical, parallel and diagonal lines and an arched bridge are the centrepiece while the train shot going away and about to go past the former abutments of the Crickheath Tramway and
under the road bridge are secondary. The engineman and the young girl waving to the cameraman all add to its character.
Crickheath Tramway
ORIGINALLY KNOWN AS THE PORTHYWAEN IRON RAILWAY.
The Montgomeryshire Canal's eastern section and the Ellesmere Canal met at "Porthywaen Lime Rocks", both being opened in 1797. To develop traffic, the Montgomeryshire Canal Company Act of 1794 authorised "That in case the Proprietor...of any Manor...containing...any quarries of Limestone or other stone...lying within a distance of Three Miles from the said Canal...shall find it expedient or necessary to make any Rail Way or Road for the purpose of conveying his...Limestone ..then it shall be lawful for him to make such Rail Way, Road, or Bridges, and Wharf". This tramway was one built under this clause by the Earl of Powys, from Crickheath Wharf (GR 32923234) generally westwards to the limestone quarries at Whitehaven. The opening date is unknown, Baxter has c1794, but this was before the canal was opened. W. Davies "General View of the Agriculture of North Wales," published in 1810 refers to the tramway and Christiansen & Miller have 1820 from Crickheath Wharf to Llynclys and on to Porthywaen about 1826.
The line is shown on the 2" Ordnance Surveyors Drawings of 1827, east of the Oswestry to Welshpool turnpike and the 1830-1831 surveyed section west of the turnpike. Beginning at 'Crick Heath Wharf' on the Ellesmere Canal the route ran generally westwards to cross the Oswestry to Welshpool turnpike (A483) on the level and then the Llynclys to Porthywaen road (B4396) also on the level, continuing west to the Limestone Quarries where it split into two short branches. The line is next shown on the 1" OS map published on the 14th of June 1837 following the same route to terminate at 'White Haven' at GR 32723242 about one and a half miles from Crickheath.
The Oswestry & Newtown Railway received its Act on the 26th of June 1855 and was opened from Oswestry to Pool Quay on the 1st of May 1860. As the line crossed the tramway at Llynclys, a bridge was built to carry the tramway across at GR 32843240 under a clause in the Act ordering the company not to interfere with the gradient of the tramway. The O & NR received a further Act for a short branch from Llynlys Junction to the quarries at Porthywaen adjacent to Whitehaven on the 3rd July 1860 and the Act prohibited the company from altering or interfering with the line or level of the tramway. The line opened on the 1st of May 1861, removing some traffic from the tramway which however remained in use to carry stone and lime for distribution by a canal. The Porthywaen branch ran alongside but to the north of the western part of the tramway.
In 1862 at the suggestion of the O&NR, two public sidings were to be provided on their Porthywaen branch for use by the quarries lessees in substitution for the existing siding on the line at Llynclys, where a short tramway branch ran to an exchange siding, was accepted on the 25th June. The implication of this is that the branch was initially used exclusively by Thomas Savin and other lessees had to move stone and lime down the tramway for transhipment to the O&NR. It is unclear if the interchange siding at Llynclys was built, the earthworks are shown on the 1875 OS map, so perhaps it was, but its life would have been very short one or two years. The 1875 OS map shows the same basic tramway route as 1837, detailing the single siding that reversed to reach the wharf at Crickheath, the bridge across the Cambrian, and the unused earthworks of the short interchange siding at Llynclys. At Whitehaven, the tramway served a timber yard and then curved to run beneath the Porthywaen Branch before running through a loop to terminate further north than earlier at the end of an enlarged Whitehaven Quarry at GR 32683244. Leases located in Powysland Reference Library, Welshpool, by Davies filed under "Savin & Co, leases" indicate that Thomas Savin leased Porthywaen Quarry in 1881 and 1887 and the tramway is described in the leases.
The said Earl (of Powys) was the owner of an Iron Tramway which for many years past had been used for conveying limestone from the Porthywaen Lime Rocks to the Ellesmere Canal at a place called Crickheath Wharf... the said Tramway was not wholly carried over lands of the said Earl but passed in part over lands belonging to other persons and a yearly payment was made by the said Earl to each of them in respect of the loss of land and trespass occasioned thereby..." A letter dated the 23rd January 1897 from Powys Castle Estate Office to H.Le Neve Foster (a director of the Porthywaen Lime Co Ltd, then working the quarries) headed Crickheath Tramway states "I am as anxious as you are to get this matter settled. I hope to see Lord Powys's Solicitor on Monday..." A second letter dated 16th February 1897 from H. Le Neve Foster to E.D Nicholson, the secretary and general manager of the Porthywaen Lime Co Ltd who was then working the Porthywaen quarries includes "How is the Crickheath Railway doing? I presume you are working this now and by this means will be able to clear more stone at Pear Tree (Quarry) and at the same time push on with Nut Tree (presumably another quarry) " The implication is that the "matter" was the purchase or lease of the Crickheath Tramway from the Estate but this is not yet confirmed.
The 1901 OS map shows the siding at Crickheath Wharf had been converted into a loop whilst, at Whitehaven, the line crossed a standard gauge siding on the level before continuing beneath the Porthywaen Branch to a crusher in Whitehaven Quarry. The Tanat Valley Light Railway, authorised on the 4th of June 1899 and opened on the 5th of January 1904, branched from the Porthywaen Branch and the initial portion of the branch was then upgraded for passenger use. Signals were provided to protect the tramway crossing under the control of the signalman at Porthywaen Signal Box with an additional signal to control the mixed gauge track to Whitehaven crusher. The 1926 OS map shows these changes at Whitehaven with the tramway crossing the Tanat Valley line on the level before running as a three-rail line behind Porthywaen Signal Box, beneath the Porthywaen line and terminating at a modified crusher in Whitehaven Quarry.
The line later closed, probably following the bursting of a canal culvert over the Morda Brook about 1932, following which the canal was not restored. The track was lifted in 1939. In 1932 the Steetley Lime & Basic Co took over the quarry and the Porthywaen signal box was reduced to a ground frame probably in the early 1930s, both perhaps indicating the demise of the tramway. A photograph of Whitehaven quarry dated the 31st of July 1934 certainly appears to show the tramway in the quarry, out of use and overgrown. The Davies paper read in 1945 notes "has been disused for some years, but the embankment across the field from the Oswestry -Welshpool road to the railway near Llynclys Station can be plainly seen". Today (2015) the wharf at Crickheath alongside the partially filled canal lies on private land, the stone abutments of the bridge over the O&NR at Llynclys plus a short length of the tramway embankment westwards and the girder bridge (cast Brymbo 1861) carrying the road over the tramway as it approached Whitehaven, constructed by the Oswestry & Newtown Railway, remain. what may be the remains of the crossing gate guarding the tramway crossing the access road to Llynclys goods yard are buried in the hedge?
Source P. Teather.