Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the United States. With 6,953,927 visitors to its three locations in 2018, it was the third most visited art museum in the world, its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, on the eastern edge of Central Park along Museum Mile in Manhattan's Upper East Side is by area one of the world's largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art and artifacts from Medieval Europe. On March 18, 2016, the museum opened the Met Breuer museum at Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side; the permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Oceanian and Islamic art.
The museum is home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments and accessories, as well as antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries; the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 for the purposes of opening a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. It opened on February 20, 1872, was located at 681 Fifth Avenue; the Met's permanent collection is curated by seventeen separate departments, each with a specialized staff of curators and scholars, as well as six dedicated conservation departments and a Department of Scientific Research. The permanent collection includes works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, an extensive collection of American and modern art; the Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Oceanian and Islamic art. The museum is home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments and accessories, antique weapons and armor from around the world.
A great number of period rooms, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Met's galleries. In addition to its permanent exhibitions, the Met organizes and hosts large traveling shows throughout the year; the current chairman of the board, Daniel Brodsky, was elected in 2011 and became chairman three years after director Philippe de Montebello retired at the end of 2008. On March 1, 2017, the BBC reported that Daniel Weiss, the Met's president and COO, would temporarily act as CEO for the museum. Following the departure of Thomas P. Campbell as the Met's director and CEO on June 30, 2017, the search for a new director of the museum was assigned to the human resources firm Phillips Oppenheim to present a new candidate for the position "by the end of the fiscal year in June" of 2018; the next director will report to Weiss as the current president of the museum. In April 2018, Max Hollein was named director. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Met started acquiring ancient art and artifacts from the Near East.
From a few cuneiform tablets and seals, the Met's collection of Near Eastern art has grown to more than 7,000 pieces. Representing a history of the region beginning in the Neolithic Period and encompassing the fall of the Sasanian Empire and the end of Late Antiquity, the collection includes works from the Sumerian, Sasanian, Assyrian and Elamite cultures, as well as an extensive collection of unique Bronze Age objects; the highlights of the collection include a set of monumental stone lamassu, or guardian figures, from the Northwest Palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II. Though the Met first acquired a group of Peruvian antiquities in 1882, the museum did not begin a concerted effort to collect works from Africa and the Americas until 1969, when American businessman and philanthropist Nelson A. Rockefeller donated his more than 3,000-piece collection to the museum. Today, the Met's collection contains more than 11,000 pieces from sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific Islands, the Americas and is housed in the 40,000-square-foot Rockefeller Wing on the south end of the museum.
The collection ranges from 40,000-year-old indigenous Australian rock paintings, to a group of 15-foot-tall memorial poles carved by the Asmat people of New Guinea, to a priceless collection of ceremonial and personal objects from the Nigerian Court of Benin donated by Klaus Perls. The range of materials represented in the Africa and Americas collection is undoubtedly the widest of any department at the Met, including everything from precious metals to porcupine quills; the Met's Asian department holds a collection of Asian art, of more than 35,000 pieces, arguably the most comprehensive in the US. The collection dates back to the founding of the museum: many of the philanthropists who made the earliest gifts to the museum included Asian art in their collections. Today, an entire wing of the museum is dedicated to the Asian collection, spans 4,000 years of Asian art; every Asian civilization is represented in the Met's Asian department, the pieces on display include every type of decorative art, from painting and printmaking to sculpture and metalworking.
The department is well known for its comprehensive collection of Chinese calligraphy and painting, as well as for its Indian sculptures and Tibetan works, the arts of Burma and Thailand. All three ancient religions of India – Hinduism and Jainism – are well represented in these s
Huxley family
The Huxley family is a British family of which several members have excelled in science, medicine and literature. The family includes members who occupied senior positions in the public service of the United Kingdom; the patriarch of the family was comparative anatomist Thomas Henry Huxley. His grandsons include Aldous Huxley and his brother Julian Huxley, Nobel laureate physiologist Andrew Huxley. Thomas Henry Huxley was an English biologist. Known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his defence of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. A self-educated man, he had an extraordinary influence on the British educated public, he was instrumental in developing scientific education in Britain, opposed those Christian leaders who tried to stifle scientific debate. He was a member of two other commissions. A noted unbeliever, he used the term "agnostic" to describe his attitude to theism. Though Huxley was a great comparative anatomist and invertebrate zoologist his most notable scientific achievement was his work on human evolution.
Starting in 1858, Huxley gave lectures and published papers which analysed the zoological position of man. The best were collected in a landmark work: Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature; this contained two themes: first, humans are related to the great apes, second, the species has evolved in a similar manner to all other forms of life. These were ideas which the careful and cautious Darwin had only hinted at in The Origin of Species, but with which Huxley was in full agreement. In 1855, he married an English émigrée whom he had met in Sydney, they had five daughters and three sons: Noel Huxley, died aged 4. Jessie Oriana Huxley, married architect Fred Waller in 1877. Marian Huxley married artist John Collier in 1879. Leonard Huxley, married Julia Arnold. Rachel Huxley married civil engineer Alfred Eckersley in 1884. Henrietta Huxley, married Harold Roller, travelled Europe as a singer. Henry Huxley, became a fashionable general practitioner in London. Ethel Huxley married artist John Collier in 1889.
John Collier was not a Huxley by birth, but by marriage twice over: both his wives were daughters of Thomas Henry Huxley. The Honourable John Maler Collier OBE RP ROI was a painter in the Pre-Raphaelite style, he was one of the leading portrait painters of his generation. The National Portrait Gallery's collection of his portraiture is weak, but in 2007 it bought his first wife's portrait of him painting her. Collier's views on religion and ethics are interesting for their comparison with the views of Thomas Henry Huxley and Julian Huxley, both of whom gave Romanes lectures on that subject. In The religion of an artist Collier explains "It is concerned with ethics apart from religion... I am looking forward to a time when ethics will have taken the place of religion... My religion is negative. Can be attained by other means which are less conducive to strife and which put less strain on upon the reasoning faculties". On secular morality: "My standard is frankly utilitarian; as far as morality is intuitive, I think it may be reduced to an inherent impulse of kindliness towards our fellow citizens".
On the idea of God: "People may claim without much exaggeration that the belief in God is universal. They omit to add that superstition of the most degraded kind, is just as universal", and "An omnipotent Deity who sentences the vilest of his creatures to eternal torture is infinitely more cruel than the cruellest man". And on the Church: "To me, as to most Englishmen, the triumph of Roman Catholicism would mean an unspeakable disaster to the cause of civilization", his views were close to the agnosticism of Thomas Henry Huxley and the humanism of Julian Huxley. Collier and his first wife Marian had Joyce, a portrait miniaturist, she married twice, first to Leslie Crawshay-Williams. They had Rupert Crawshay-Williams and Gillian. Joyce next married Drysdale Kilburn. By his second wife Ethel he had a daughter and a son, Sir Laurence Collier, British Ambassador to Norway 1939–1950. In life Ethel became known as The Dragon, The Grand-Dragon to her grandchildren, she vetted all the family marriages. The bridegroom became a philosopher and writer.
He was the author of The Comforts of Unreason. Ethel's daughter Joan married Captain Frank Anstie Buzzard, they had three children: John Huxley Buzzard, Richard Buzzard, Pamela. Collier painted numerous portraits of members of the family, he painted both his wives and Ethel. A biographer reports a total of thirty-two Huxley family portraits during the half-century after his marriage to Mady, his favourite sitter was his eldest daughter Joyce, of. Second wife Ethel sat for four portraits.
John La Farge
John La Farge was an American painter, stained glass window maker and writer. La Farge was raised bilingually, his interest in art began during his studies at Mount St. Mary's University in Maryland and St. John's College in New York, he intended to study law, but this changed after his first visit to Paris, France in 1856. Stimulated by the arts in the city, he studied with Thomas Couture and became acquainted with notable literary people. La Farge studied with the painter William Morris Hunt in Newport, Rhode Island. La Farge's earliest drawings and landscapes, from his studies in Newport, show marked originality in the handling of color values. Many of La Farge's mythological and religious paintings, including Virgil, were executed in an area of Rhode Island known as "Paradise", in a forest which La Farge called "The Sacred Grove" after Virgil, he was a pioneer in the study of Japanese art, the influence of, seen in his work. During his life, La Farge maintained a studio at 51 West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, which now is part of the site of Eugene Lang College at the New School University.
Between 1859 and 1870, he illustrated Tennyson's Enoch Arden and Robert Browning's Men and Women, worked on children's magazine illustrations with engraver Henry Marsh. In the 1870s, La Farge began to paint murals, which became popular for public buildings as well as churches, his first mural was painted in Trinity Church, Boston, in 1873. Followed his decorations in the Church of the Ascension and St. Paul's Chapel, New York. For the Minnesota State Capitol at St. Paul, he executed at age 71 four great lunettes representing the history of law, he created a similar series based on the theme of Justice for the State Supreme Court building at Baltimore, Maryland. He took private commission from wealthy patrons and was reputedly worth $150,000 at one point. La Farge traveled extensively in the South Pacific, which inspired his painting, he visited Japan in 1886 in the company of Henry Adams, the South Seas in 1890 and 1891, in particular spending time absorbing the culture of Samoa, Tahiti. and Fiji, again in Adams' company.
In Hawaii in September 1890 he painted scenic spots on Oahu and traveled to the Island of Hawaii to paint an active volcano. These travels are extensively recounted in his book, Reminiscences of the South Seas and in Adams' letters. In 1892, La Farge was brought on as an instructor with the Metropolitan Museum of Art Schools to provide vocational training to students in New York City, he served as President of the National Society of Mural Painters from 1899 to 1904. He learned several languages, was erudite in literature and art. Though a questioner, he venerated the traditions of religious art, preserved his Catholic faith. La Farge experimented with problems of shifting and deteriorating color in the medium of stained glass, his work rivaled the beauty of medieval windows and added new resources by his use of opalescent glass and by his original methods of layering and welding the glass. Opalescent glass had been used for centuries in tableware, but it had never before been formed into flat sheets for use in stained-glass windows and other decorative objects.
For his early experiments, La Farge had had to custom-order flat sheets of opalescent glass from a Brooklyn glass manufacturer. La Farge introduced Tiffany to the new use of opalescent glass sometime in the mid 1870s, showing him his experiments. Sometime in the late 1870s or early 1880s, relations between the artists soured due to a lawsuit between the two men. La Farge filed a patent application on Nov. 10, 1879, shortly after a newspaper account praised a recent window he made for Richard Derby of Long Island as "the first application of a new material to windows." He was granted patent no. 224,831 on February 24, 1880, for a "Colored-Glass Window", with technical details about manufacturing opalescent sheet glass and layering it to create windows. Eight months Tiffany applied for a similar patent, granted in 1881 as no. 237,417. The major difference in their patents is that Tiffany lists somewhat different technical details, for instance relating to the air space between glass layers. Since La Farge's patent focused more on the material and Tiffany's more on its use in construction, it appeared that the two patents might be mutually dependent, prohibiting either artist from making stained-glass windows without the other's permission.
There is some indication that La Farge may have come to some kind of agreement with Tiffany on the use of La Farge's patent, but the details are unclear and disputed by scholars. What does seem certain is that around 1882 La Farge planned to sue Tiffany, claiming that Tiffany had infringed his patent by appropriating some of his working methods for opalescent sheet glass. Official records of the lawsuit have not been found, suggesting it was never filed, but there are multiple references to it in the correspondence of both men; as stained glass increased in popularity, drawing other artists to the medium, both La Farge and Tiffany decided it would be too much trouble to defend their patents. Among La Farge's many stained-glass works are windows at: Trinity Church, Boston Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina Church of St. Joseph of Arimathea in Greenburgh, New York Unity
RMS Titanic
RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1912, after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, making it one of modern history's deadliest commercial marine disasters during peacetime. RMS Titanic was the largest ship afloat at the time she entered service and was the second of three Olympic-class ocean liners operated by the White Star Line, she was built by the Wolff shipyard in Belfast. Thomas Andrews, chief naval architect of the shipyard at the time, died in the disaster. Titanic was under the command of Capt. Edward Smith, who went down with the ship; the ocean liner carried some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as hundreds of emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland and elsewhere throughout Europe who were seeking a new life in the United States. The first-class accommodation was designed to be the pinnacle of comfort and luxury, with an on-board gymnasium, swimming pool, high-class restaurants and opulent cabins.
A high-powered radiotelegraph transmitter was available for sending passenger "marconigrams" and for the ship's operational use. Although Titanic had advanced safety features such as watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors, it only carried enough lifeboats for 1,178 people—about half the number on board, one third of her total capacity—due to outdated maritime safety regulations; the ship carried 16 lifeboat davits. However, Titanic carried only a total of 20 lifeboats, four of which were collapsible and proved hard to launch during the sinking. After leaving Southampton on 10 April 1912, Titanic called at Cherbourg in France and Queenstown in Ireland before heading west to New York. On 14 April, four days into the crossing and about 375 miles south of Newfoundland, she hit an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. ship's time. The collision caused the hull plates to buckle inwards along her starboard side and opened five of her sixteen watertight compartments to the sea. Meanwhile and some crew members were evacuated in lifeboats, many of which were launched only loaded.
A disproportionate number of men were left aboard because of a "women and children first" protocol for loading lifeboats. At 2:20 a.m. she foundered with well over one thousand people still aboard. Just under two hours after Titanic sank, the Cunard liner RMS Carpathia arrived and brought aboard an estimated 705 survivors; the disaster was met with worldwide shock and outrage at the huge loss of life and the regulatory and operational failures that led to it. Public inquiries in Britain and the United States led to major improvements in maritime safety. One of their most important legacies was the establishment in 1914 of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, which still governs maritime safety. Additionally, several new wireless regulations were passed around the world in an effort to learn from the many missteps in wireless communications—which could have saved many more passengers; the wreck of Titanic was discovered in 1985 during a US military mission, it remains on the seabed.
The ship was split in two and is disintegrating at a depth of 12,415 feet. Thousands of artefacts have been displayed at museums around the world. Titanic has become one of the most famous ships in history. Titanic is the second largest ocean liner wreck in the world, only beaten by her sister HMHS Britannic, the largest sunk, although she holds the record as the largest sunk while in service as a liner due to Britannic being used as a hospital ship at the time of her sinking; the final survivor of the sinking, Millvina Dean, aged two months at the time, died in 2009 at the age of 97. The name Titanic derives from the Titan of Greek mythology. Built in Belfast, Ireland, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the RMS Titanic was the second of the three Olympic-class ocean liners—the first was the RMS Olympic and the third was the HMHS Britannic. Britannic was to be called Gigantic and was to be over 1,000 feet long, they were by far the largest vessels of the British shipping company White Star Line's fleet, which comprised 29 steamers and tenders in 1912.
The three ships had their genesis in a discussion in mid-1907 between the White Star Line's chairman, J. Bruce Ismay, the American financier J. P. Morgan, who controlled the White Star Line's parent corporation, the International Mercantile Marine Co.. The White Star Line faced an increasing challenge from its main rivals Cunard, which had launched the Lusitania and the Mauretania—the fastest passenger ships in service—and the German lines Hamburg America and Norddeutscher Lloyd. Ismay preferred to compete on size rather than speed and proposed to commission a new class of liners that would be larger than anything that had gone before as well as being the last word in comfort and luxury; the company sought an upgrade in their fleet in response to the Cunard giants but to replace their oldest pair of passenger ships still in service, being the SS Teutonic of 1889 and SS Majestic of 1890. Teutonic was replaced by Olympic. Majestic would be brought back into her old spot on White Star's New York service after Titanic's loss.
The ships were constructed by the Belfast shipbuilders Harland and Wolff, who had a long-established relati
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a war fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865, between the North and the South. The Civil War is the most studied and written about episode in U. S. history. As a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people, war broke out in April 1861 when secessionist forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina shortly after Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated as the President of the United States; the loyalists of the Union in the North proclaimed support for the Constitution. They faced secessionists of the Confederate States in the South, who advocated for states' rights to uphold slavery. Among the 34 U. S. states in February 1861, secessionist partisans in seven Southern slave states declared state secessions from the country and unveiled their defiant formation of a Confederate States of America in rebellion against the U. S. Constitutional government; the Confederacy grew to control over half the territory in eleven states, it claimed the additional states of Kentucky and Missouri by assertions from exiled native secessionists without territory or population.
These were given full representation in the Confederate Congress throughout the Civil War. The two remaining slave holding states of Delaware and Maryland were invited to join the Confederacy, but nothing substantial developed; the Confederate States was never diplomatically recognized by the government of the United States or by that of any foreign country. The states that remained loyal to the U. S. were known as the Union. The Union and the Confederacy raised volunteer and conscription armies that fought in the South over the course of four years. Intense combat left 620,000 to 750,000 people dead, more than the number of U. S. military deaths in all other wars combined. The war ended when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Confederate generals throughout the southern states followed suit. Much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed the transportation systems; the Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, four million black slaves were freed.
During the Reconstruction Era that followed the war, national unity was restored, the national government expanded its power, civil rights were granted to freed black slaves through amendments to the Constitution and federal legislation. In the 1860 presidential election, led by Abraham Lincoln, supported banning slavery in all the U. S. territories. The Southern states viewed this as a violation of their constitutional rights and as the first step in a grander Republican plan to abolish slavery; the three pro-Union candidates together received an overwhelming 82% majority of the votes cast nationally: Republican Lincoln's votes centered in the north, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas' votes were distributed nationally and Constitutional Unionist John Bell's votes centered in Tennessee and Virginia; the Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured a plurality of the popular votes and a majority of the electoral votes nationally. He was the first Republican Party candidate to win the presidency.
However, before his inauguration, seven slave states with cotton-based economies declared secession and formed the Confederacy. The first six to declare secession had the highest proportions of slaves in their populations, with an average of 49 percent. Of those states whose legislatures resolved for secession, the first seven voted with split majorities for unionist candidates Douglas and Bell, or with sizable minorities for those unionists. Of these, only Texas held a referendum on secession. Eight remaining slave states continued to reject calls for secession. Outgoing Democratic President James Buchanan and the incoming Republicans rejected secession as illegal. Lincoln's March 4, 1861, inaugural address declared that his administration would not initiate a civil war. Speaking directly to the "Southern States", he attempted to calm their fears of any threats to slavery, reaffirming, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the United States where it exists.
I believe I have no lawful right to do so, I have no inclination to do so." After Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy, efforts at compromise failed and both sides prepared for war. The Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on "King Cotton" that they would intervene, but none did, none recognized the new Confederate States of America. Hostilities began on April 1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter. While in the Western Theater the Union made significant permanent gains, in the Eastern Theater, the battle was inconclusive during 1861–1862. In September 1862, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. To the west, by summer 1862 the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy much of its western armies, seized New Orleans; the successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Robert E. Lee's Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg.
Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grant's command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled the resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions, leading to the fall of Atlanta to William T. Sherman and his march to th
Cleveland
Cleveland is a major city in the U. S. state of Ohio, the county seat of Cuyahoga County. The city proper has a population of 385,525, making it the 51st-largest city in the United States, the second-largest city in Ohio. Greater Cleveland is ranked as the 32nd-largest metropolitan area in the U. S. with 2,055,612 people in 2016. The city anchors the Cleveland–Akron–Canton Combined Statistical Area, which had a population of 3,515,646 in 2010 and is ranked 15th in the United States; the city is located on the southern shore of Lake Erie 60 miles west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania state border. It was founded in 1796 near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, it became a manufacturing center due to its location on both the river and the lake shore, as well as being connected to numerous canals and railroad lines. Cleveland's economy relies on diversified sectors such as manufacturing, financial services and biomedicals. Cleveland is home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Cleveland residents are called "Clevelanders".
The city has many nicknames, the oldest of which in contemporary use being "The Forest City". Cleveland was named on July 22, 1796, when surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company laid out Connecticut's Western Reserve into townships and a capital city, they named it "Cleaveland" after General Moses Cleaveland. Cleaveland oversaw design of the plan for what would become the modern downtown area, centered on Public Square, before returning home, never again to visit Ohio; the first settler in Cleaveland was Lorenzo Carter, who built a cabin on the banks of the Cuyahoga River. The Village of Cleaveland was incorporated on December 23, 1814. In spite of the nearby swampy lowlands and harsh winters, its waterfront location proved to be an advantage, giving access to Great Lakes trade; the area began rapid growth after the 1832 completion of the Erie Canal. This key link between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes connected the city to the Atlantic Ocean via the Erie Canal and Hudson River, via the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Its products could reach markets on the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River. Growth continued with added railroad links. Cleveland incorporated as a city in 1836. In 1836, the city located only on the eastern banks of the Cuyahoga River, nearly erupted into open warfare with neighboring Ohio City over a bridge connecting the two. Ohio City remained an independent municipality until its annexation by Cleveland in 1854; the city's prime geographic location as a transportation hub on the Great Lakes has played an important role in its development as a commercial center. Cleveland serves as a destination for iron ore shipped from Minnesota, along with coal transported by rail. In 1870, John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil in Cleveland. In 1885, he moved its headquarters to New York City, which had become a center of finance and business. Cleveland emerged in the early 20th century as an important American manufacturing center, its businesses included automotive companies such as Peerless, People's, Jordan and Winton, maker of the first car driven across the U.
S. Other manufacturers located in Cleveland produced steam-powered cars, which included White and Gaeth, as well as the electric car company Baker; because of its significant growth, Cleveland was known as the "Sixth City" of the US during this period. By 1920, due in large part to the city's economic prosperity, Cleveland became the nation's fifth-largest city; the city counted Progressive Era politicians such as the populist Mayor Tom L. Johnson among its leaders, its industrial jobs had attracted waves of European immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, as well as both black and white migrants from the rural South. In commemoration of the centennial of Cleveland's incorporation as a city, the Great Lakes Exposition debuted in June 1936 along the Lake Erie shore north of downtown. Conceived as a way to energize the city after the Great Depression, it drew four million visitors in its first season, seven million by the end of its second and final season in September 1937; the exposition was housed on grounds that are now used by the Great Lakes Science Center, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Burke Lakefront Airport, among others.
Following World War II, Cleveland continued to enjoy a prosperous economy. In sports, the Indians won the 1948 World Series, the hockey team, the Barons, became champions of the American Hockey League, the Browns dominated professional football in the 1950s; as a result, along with track and boxing champions produced, Cleveland was dubbed "City of Champions" in sports at this time. Businesses proclaimed that Cleveland was the "best location in the nation". In 1940, non-Hispanic whites represented 90.2% of Cleveland's population. Wealthy patrons supported development of the city's cultural institutions, such as the art museum and orchestra; the city's population reached its peak of 914,808, in 1949 Cleveland was named an All-America City for the first time. By the 1960s, the economy slowed, residents sought new housing in the suburbs, reflecting the national trends of suburban growth following the subsidized highways. In the 1950s and 1960s, African Americans worked in numerous cities to gain constitutional rights and relief from racial discrimination.
As change lagged despite federal laws to enforce rights and racial unrest occurred in Cleveland and numerous other industrial cities. In Cleveland, the Hough Riots erupted from July 18 to 23, 1966; the Glenville Shootout took place from July 23 to 25, 1968. In November 1967, Cleveland became the first major American city to elect a black mayor, Carl Stokes. Industrial restructuring in the railroad and steel industries, resulted in the loss of numerous
Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain
The Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain is a memorial fountain located in the President's Park in Washington, D. C. in the United States. Dedicated in October 1913, it commemorates the deaths of Francis Davis Millet. Both men died during the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912. Archibald Butt was a Captain in the United States Army Quartermaster Corps who had served in The Philippines from 1898 to 1904. C. from 1904 to 1906, Cuba from 1906 to 1908. Theodore Roosevelt had become acquainted with Butt's logistics and animal husbandry work in the Philippines and was impressed by his hard work and thoughtfulness. Taft had served as chair of the Second Philippine Commission from 1900 to 1901 and as Governor-General of the Philippines from 1901 to 1904. Taft knew Butt well from their time together overseas. Roosevelt asked Butt to serve as his military aide in April 1908; when Taft became president in March 1909, he asked Butt to stay on as military aide. Butt proved to have strong negotiating skills and a good head for numbers, which enabled him to become Taft's de facto chief negotiator on federal budget issues.
In 1911, Butt was promoted to the rank of major. Butt lived in a large mansion at 2000 G Street NW, sold to Senator Underwood from Alabama in 1914. Since about 1910, Butt and Millet had lived together in the house. "Millet, my artist friend who lives with me" was Butt's designation for his companion. They were known for throwing spartan but large parties that were attended by members of Congress, justices of the Supreme Court, President Taft himself. Newspapers characterized the intense, deep friendship the men shared as a "Damon and Pythias" relationship. By 1912, Taft's first term was coming to an end. Roosevelt, who had fallen out with Taft, was known to be considering a run for president against him. Close to both men and fiercely loyal, Butt began to suffer from exhaustion. Millet asked Taft to give him a leave of absence to recuperate before the presidential primaries began. Taft ordered Butt to go on vacation. Butt left on a six-week vacation to Europe on March 1912, accompanied by Millet.
Butt booked passage on the RMS Titanic for his return to the United States. He boarded the Titanic on April 10, 1912. Butt and Millet were playing cards on the night of April 14 in the first-class smoking room when the Titanic struck an iceberg; the ship sank two and half hours with a loss of over 1,500 lives. Both Butt and Millet went down with the Titanic. Butt's remains were never found. Millet's body was recovered on April 27, he was buried in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Taft was devastated by Butt's death; when he learned Butt had not survived, he "broke down and wept,'his whole body was shaken with convulsive sobs'." On May 2, 1912, a memorial service was held in the Butt family home in Georgia. Taft spoke at the service breaking down twice as he said: If Archie could have selected a time to die he would have chosen the one God gave him, his life was spent in self–sacrifice, serving others. His forgetfulness of self had become a part of his nature. Everybody who knew him called. I couldn't prepare anything in advance to say here.
I couldn't. He was too near me, he was loyal to my predecessor, Mr. Roosevelt, who selected him to be military aide, to me he had become as a son or a brother. A second ceremony was held in Washington, D. C. on May 5, during which Taft broke down and wept—bringing his eulogy to an abrupt end. On May 16, 1912, Senator Augustus Octavius Bacon of Georgia submitted a resolution in the U. S. Senate authorizing private persons to construct a memorial to Butt and Millet on federally owned land somewhere in the District of Columbia. Bacon argued that Butt and Millet were both public servants who deserved to be memorialized separately from the rest of the dead. Bacon said that a number of memorials in the city had been financed by private dollars, the Butt-Millet memorial would be no different; as introduced, the resolution barred the memorial from being placed on the grounds of the Capitol, Library of Congress, or White House. Bacon asked that the resolution be adopted by the Senate but Senator William Borah objected and the resolution was referred to the Committee on the Library.
Plans for erecting a memorial to Butt and Millet began shortly after the introduction of the Senate resolution. Taft agreed to chair the memorial committee. Taft's personal secretary, Charles D. Hilles, his military aide, Colonel Spencer Cosby, led the fund-raising on behalf of the committee. Charles J. Bell of the American Security and Trust Company was the treasurer. Members of the foreign diplomatic corps and several high government officials had donated several thousand dollars to the memorial fund by mid-May. Taft himself had made the first contribution. At this point in time, The Ellipse was chosen for the site of the memorial. However, the memorial committee was thinking only of erecting a bronze tablet. An attempt to pass the resolution on June 8 failed after Senator Porter J. McCumb
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