1.
St. Louis
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St. Louis is an independent city and major U. S. port in the state of Missouri, built along the western bank of the Mississippi River, on the border with Illinois. Prior to European settlement, the area was a regional center of Native American Mississippian culture. The city of St. Louis was founded in 1764 by French fur traders Pierre Laclède and Auguste Chouteau, in 1764, following Frances defeat in the Seven Years War, the area was ceded to Spain and retroceded back to France in 1800. In 1803, the United States acquired the territory as part of the Louisiana Purchase, during the 19th century, St. Louis developed as a major port on the Mississippi River. In the 1870 Census, St. Louis was ranked as the 4th-largest city in the United States and it separated from St. Louis County in 1877, becoming an independent city and limiting its own political boundaries. In 1904, it hosted the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the Summer Olympics, the economy of metro St. Louis relies on service, manufacturing, trade, transportation of goods, and tourism. This city has become known for its growing medical, pharmaceutical. St. Louis has 2 professional sports teams, the St. Louis Cardinals of Major League Baseball, the city is commonly identified with the 630-foot tall Gateway Arch in Downtown St. Louis. The area that would become St. Louis was a center of the Native American Mississippian culture and their major regional center was at Cahokia Mounds, active from 900 AD to 1500 AD. Due to numerous major earthworks within St. Louis boundaries, the city was nicknamed as the Mound City and these mounds were mostly demolished during the citys development. Historic Native American tribes in the area included the Siouan-speaking Osage people, whose territory extended west, European exploration of the area was first recorded in 1673, when French explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette traveled through the Mississippi River valley. Five years later, La Salle claimed the region for France as part of La Louisiane. The earliest European settlements in the area were built in Illinois Country on the east side of the Mississippi River during the 1690s and early 1700s at Cahokia, Kaskaskia, migrants from the French villages on the opposite side of the Mississippi River founded Ste. In early 1764, after France lost the 7 Years War, Pierre Laclède, the early French families built the citys economy on the fur trade with the Osage, as well as with more distant tribes along the Missouri River. The Chouteau brothers gained a monopoly from Spain on the fur trade with Santa Fe, French colonists used African slaves as domestic servants and workers in the city. In 1780 during the American Revolutionary War, St. Louis was attacked by British forces, mostly Native American allies, the founding of St. Louis began in 1763. Pierre Laclede led an expedition to set up a fur-trading post farther up the Mississippi River, before then, Laclede had been a very successful merchant. For this reason, he and his trading partner Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent were offered monopolies for six years of the fur trading in that area
2.
Washington University in St. Louis
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Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1853, and named after George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all 50 U. S. states, twenty-five Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Washington University, nine having done the major part of their pioneering research at the university. Washington Universitys undergraduate program is ranked 19th by U. S. News & World Report, the university is ranked 23rd in the world in 2016 by the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Washington University is made up of seven graduate and undergraduate schools that encompass a range of academic fields. To prevent confusion over its location, the Board of Trustees added the phrase in St. Louis in 1976, Washington University was conceived by 17 St. Louis business, political, and religious leaders concerned by the lack of institutions of higher learning in the Midwest. Missouri State Senator Wayman Crow and Unitarian minister William Greenleaf Eliot, grandfather of the poet T. S. Eliot, the universitys first chancellor was Joseph Gibson Hoyt. Crow secured the university charter from the Missouri General Assembly in 1853, early on, Eliot solicited support from members of the local business community, including John OFallon, but Eliot failed to secure a permanent endowment. Washington University is unusual among major American universities in not having had a financial endowment. The institution had no backing of an organization, single wealthy patron. During the three following its inception, the university bore three different names. In 1854, the Board of Trustees changed the name to Washington Institute in honor of George Washington, naming the University after the nations first president, only seven years before the American Civil War and during a time of bitter national division, was no coincidence. During this time of conflict, Americans universally admired George Washington as the father of the United States, the Board of Trustees believed that the university should be a force of unity in a strongly divided Missouri. In 1856, the University amended its name to Washington University, although chartered as a university, for many years Washington University functioned primarily as a night school located on 17th Street and Washington Avenue in the heart of downtown St. Louis. Owing to limited resources, Washington University initially used public buildings. Classes began on October 22,1854, at the Benton School building, at first the university paid for the evening classes, but as their popularity grew, their funding was transferred to the St. Louis Public Schools. Eventually the board secured funds for the construction of Academic Hall, later the university divided into three departments, the Manual Training School, Smith Academy, and the Mary Institute. In 1867, the university opened the first private law school west of the Mississippi River. By 1882, Washington University had expanded to numerous departments, which were housed in buildings across St. Louis
3.
Gotham City
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Gotham City or Gotham is a fictional city appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, best known as the home of Batman. Batmans place of residence was first identified as Gotham City in Batman #4, the city is depicted as being within close proximity to Metropolis, and the vast majority of DC Comics references place Gotham City specifically in New Jersey. Cities such as New York City and Chicago have also influenced the look, within the DC Extended Universe, the 2016 film Suicide Squad reveals Gotham City to be located in New Jersey. Writer Bill Finger, on the naming of the city and the reason for changing Batmans locale from New York City to a city, said. Then I tried Capital City, then Coast City, then I flipped through the New York City phone book and spotted the name Gotham Jewelers and said, Thats it, Gotham City. We didnt call it New York because we wanted anybody in any city to identify with it, irving took the name from the village of Gotham, Nottinghamshire, England, a place inhabited, according to folklore, by fools. The villages name derives from Old English gāt goat and hām home, literally homestead where goats are kept, the Joker references this etymology in Detective Comics #880, in which he tells Batman that the word means a safe place for goats. In contrast, Gotham as used for New York has a different pronunciation by analogy to other words spelled with th and is pronounced as /ˈɡɒθəm/ GOTH-əm, like the word Goth. In Amazing World of DC Comics #14, publisher Mark Gruenwald discusses the history of the Justice League, Worlds Finest Comics #259 also confirms that Gotham is in New Jersey. In the World’s Greatest Super Heroes comic strip, a map is shown placing Gotham City in New Jersey, New Adventures of Superboy #22 and the 1990 Atlas of the DC Universe both show maps of Gotham City in New Jersey and Metropolis in Delaware. Detective Comics #503 includes several references suggesting Gotham City is in New Jersey, a location on the Jersey Shore is described as twenty miles north of Gotham, and Robin and Batgirl drive from a secret New Jersey airfield to Gotham City and then drive on the Hudson County Highway. Hudson County is the name of a county in New Jersey. Batman, Shadow of the Bat, Annual #1 further establishes that Gotham City is in New Jersey, sal E. Jordans drivers license in the comic reveals his address is 72 Faxcol Dr Gotham City, NJ12345. Gotham City is the home of Batman, just as Metropolis is the home of Superman, given the close proximity of the two cities, Batman and Superman often work together and frequent each others cities. Gotham City is usually depicted to be within driving distance of Metropolis, the Atlas of the DC Universe from the 1990s places Metropolis in Delaware and Gotham City in New Jersey. During the Bronze Age of Comic Books, the Metro-Narrows Bridge was depicted as the route connecting the twin cities of Metropolis. It has been described as being the longest suspension bridge in the world, a map appeared in The New Adventures of Superboy #22, that showed Smallville within driving distance of both Metropolis and Gotham City. However, the location of the two cities has varied
4.
Batman
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Batman is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, originally named the Bat-Man, the character is also referred to by such epithets as the Caped Crusader, the Dark Knight, and the Worlds Greatest Detective. Batmans secret identity is Bruce Wayne, a wealthy American playboy, philanthropist, after witnessing the murder of his parents Thomas Wayne and Martha Wayne as a child, he swore vengeance against criminals, an oath tempered by a sense of justice. Wayne trains himself physically and intellectually and crafts a bat-inspired persona to fight crime, Batman operates in the fictional Gotham City, with assistance from various supporting characters, including his butler Alfred, police commissioner Gordon, and vigilante allies such as Robin. A large assortment of villains make up Batmans rogues gallery, including his archenemy, Batman became popular soon after his introduction in 1939 and gained his own comic book title, Batman, the following year. As the decades went on, differing interpretations of the character emerged, the late 1960s Batman television series used a camp aesthetic, which continued to be associated with the character for years after the show ended. Various creators worked to return the character to his dark roots, the success of Warner Bros. live-action Batman feature films have helped maintain the publics interest in the character. The character has also intrigued psychiatrists, with trying to understand the characters psyche. In 2015, FanSided ranked Batman as number one on their list of 50 Greatest Super Heroes In Comic Book History. Kevin Conroy, Bruce Greenwood, Peter Weller, Anthony Ruivivar, Jason OMara, Batman has been portrayed in both film and television by Lewis Wilson, Robert Lowery, Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, and Ben Affleck. In early 1939, the success of Superman in Action Comics prompted editors at National Comics Publications to request more superheroes for its titles, in response, Bob Kane created the Bat-Man. Collaborator Bill Finger recalled that Kane had an idea for a character called Batman, I went over to Kanes, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of. Reddish tights, I believe, with boots, with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two wings that were sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign, the bat-wing-like cape was suggested by Bob Kane, inspired by Leonardo Da Vincis sketch of an ornithopter flying device as a child. Finger suggested giving the character a cowl instead of a domino mask, a cape instead of wings. Finger said he devised the name Bruce Wayne for the secret identity, Bruce Waynes first name came from Robert Bruce. Wayne, being a playboy, was a man of gentry, I searched for a name that would suggest colonialism
5.
Woolworth Building
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The Woolworth Building, at 233 Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, designed by architect Cass Gilbert and constructed between 1910 and 1912, is an early US skyscraper. The original site for the building was purchased by F. W. Woolworth and his estate agent Edward J. Hogan by April 15,1910, from the Trenor Luther Park Estate. By January 18,1911, Woolworth and Hogan had acquired the site for the project. More than a century after the start of its construction, it remains, at 241.4 meters and it has been a National Historic Landmark since 1966, and a New York City landmark since 1983. Originally designed to be 420 feet high, the building was elevated to 792 feet. At its opening, the Woolworth Building was 60 stories tall and had over 5,000 windows, the construction cost was US$13.5 million. On completion, the Woolworth building topped the record set by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower as the worlds tallest building, construction was completed in 1912 and the building opened on April 24,1913. President Woodrow Wilson turned the lights on by way of a button in Washington, given its resemblance to European Gothic cathedrals, the structure was called The Cathedral of Commerce by the Reverend S. Parkes Cadman in a booklet of the same title published in 1916. The buildings tower, flush with the frontage on Broadway. The exterior decoration was cast in limestone-colored, glazed architectural terra-cotta panels, strongly articulated piers, carried—without interrupting cornices—right to the pyramidal cap, give the building its upward thrust. The Gothic detailing concentrated at the highly visible crown is over scaled, engineers Gunvald Aus and Kort Berle designed the steel frame, supported on massive caissons that penetrate to the bedrock. The high-speed elevators were innovative, and the buildings high office-to-elevator ratio made the structure profitable, the ornate, cruciform lobby, is one of the most spectacular of the early 20th century in New York City. It is covered in Skyros veined marble, has a ceiling, mosaics. Over the balconies of the mezzanine are the murals Labor and Commerce, corbel sculptures include Gilbert with a model of the building, Aus taking a girders measurements, and Woolworth counting nickels. Woolworths private office, revetted in marble in the French Empire style, has been preserved, the buildings facade was restored between 1977 and 1981 by the Ehrenkrantz Group, during which much of the terra-cotta was replaced with concrete and Gothic ornament was removed. The building was owned by the Woolworth company for 85 years until 1998, until recently, that company kept a presence in the building through a Foot Locker store. Prior to September 11,2001, the World Trade Center was often photographed in such a way that the Woolworth Building could be seen between 1 and 2 World Trade Center. Increased post-attack security restricted access to most of the lobby, previously a tourist attraction
6.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
7.
Daily News Building
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Built in 1929–1930, it was headquarters for the New York Daily News newspaper until 1995. It was also the headquarters of United Press International until the service moved to Washington. It was among the first skyscrapers to be built without an ornamental crown, the building, including the newspapers new printing presses, cost $10,700,000 – about $135 million in 2010 dollars. The lobby of the building includes a glass domed ceiling. This was conceived by the Daily News as a permanent educational science exhibit, the Daily News Building was designated a New York City Landmark in 1981 and its interior in 1998. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1989 and is now owned by SL Green Realty Corp, the building is the home for the former Daily News TV broadcast subsidiary WPIX, channel 11, an affiliate of The CW network. The station is owned by the Tribune Company, the former parent of the Daily News. It was also home to WQCD, the jazz station The News had operated as WPIX-FM. Some time after former News parent Tribune Company took over WQCD directly, other tenants include the United Nations Development Programme and the New York office of public relations firm FleishmanHillard. The News Building was the model for the headquarters of the fictional newspaper Daily Planet, the building itself was used for filming exterior scenes at the Daily Planet in the 1978 film Superman, The Movie. Notes Official website in-Arch. net, The Daily News Building
8.
Harper's Magazine
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Harpers Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in June 1850, it is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U. S, the current editor is James Marcus, who replaced Christopher Cox in March 2016. Harpers Magazine has won twenty National Magazine Awards, Harpers Magazine was launched as Harpers New Monthly Magazine in June 1850, by the New York City publisher Harper & Brothers. The company also founded the magazines Harpers Weekly and Harpers Bazaar, the first press run of Harpers Magazine—7,500 copies—sold out almost immediately. Circulation was some 50,000 issues six months later, the early issues reprinted material pirated from English authors such as Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and the Brontë sisters. The magazine soon was publishing the work of American artists and writers, portions of Herman Melvilles novel Moby Dick were first published in the October 1851 issue of Harpers under the title, The Town-Hos Story. In 1962, Harper & Brothers merged with Row, Peterson & Company, in 1965, the magazine was separately incorporated, and became a division of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune Company, owned by the Cowles Media Company. In the 1970s, Harpers Magazine published Seymour Hershs reporting of the My Lai Massacre by United States forces in Vietnam, robert Shnayerson, a senior editor at Time magazine, was hired to replace Morris as Harpers ninth editor, serving in that position from 1971 until 1976. Lewis H. Lapham served as managing editor from 1976 until 1981, on June 17,1980, the Star Tribune announced it would cease publishing Harpers Magazine after the August 1980 issue. As of the March 2011 issue, contributing editor Zadie Smith, under the Lapham-MacArthur leadership, Harpers Magazine continued publishing literary fiction by John Updike, George Saunders, and others. Politically, Harpers was a vocal critic of U. S. domestic. Editor Laphams monthly Notebook columns have lambasted the Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations. Since 2003, the magazine has concentrated on reportage about U. S. war in Iraq, with articles about the battle for Fallujah. Other reporting has covered abortion issues, cloning, and global warming, in 2007, Harpers added the No Comment blog, by attorney Scott Horton, about legal controversies, Central Asian politics, and German studies. Since that time these two blogs have ceased publication, Lapham left shortly thereafter and launched Laphams Quarterly. The August 2004 issue contained an essay by noted photojournalist Peter Turnley. The eight-page spread in August 2004 showed images of death, grieving, on the U. S. side, Turnley visited the funeral of an Oklahoma National Guard member, Spc. Kyle Brinlee,21, who was killed when his vehicle ran over an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan, during his funeral, Turnley shot the open casket as it lay in the back of the auditorium and this photo was used in the photo essay
9.
Harvey Wiley Corbett
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Harvey Wiley Corbett was an American architect primarily known for skyscraper and office building designs in New York and London, and his advocacy of tall buildings and modernism in architecture. Corbett was a San Francisco native and he was an 1895 graduate of the engineering program at the University of California, Berkeley and then was educated at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. After his graduation in 1900, he started work in the firm of Cass Gilbert, the tower, with its prominent position and slight setbacks in buff, white and black brick, marked his début as an influential skyscraper designer. Later in the 1920s, Harvey Wiley Corbett was part of one of the three firms that designed Rockefeller Center in New York, the complex was designed with Charles B. Meyers and completed in 1941. According to his obituary in the New York Times, Corbett was a longtime and ardent champion of skyscrapers, in 1922, Corbett commissioned delineator and architect Hugh Ferriss to draw a series of four step-by-step perspectives demonstrating the architectural consequences of New Yorks setback zoning law. These four drawings would later be used in Ferrisss 1929 book The Metropolis of Tomorrow, in the late 1920s, the impact of skyscrapers on cities and downtowns was still hotly debated. Harvey Corbett defended the benefits of tall buildings against skyscraper detractors in articles published in the New York Times Magazine, H. W. Corbett lectured at the Columbia School of Architecture at Columbia University in New York from 1907 to the 1930s, further influencing a generation of architects. Later, Corbett shaped the course of architecture by heading the committee of the 1933 Worlds Fair in Chicago. He was also chairman of the committee of architects that created the theme for the modernistic 1939 New York Worlds Fair. Both fairs were influential examples of modern architecture, because of his work in America and England, Harvey Corbett was simultaneously a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and the Royal Institute of British Architects. The Architecture of Harvey Wiley Corbett Madison, University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries Willis, macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects, ed. Adolf K. Placzek. New York, The Free Press, pp. 451–452
10.
National Academy Museum and School
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Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, and others to promote the fine arts in America through instruction and exhibition. The Academy is an honorary organization, a school. The school offers instruction, master classes, intensive critiques, various workshops. The museum houses a collection of over 7,000 works of American art from the 19th, 20th. The Academy has been located at several locations over the years, notable among them was a building built during 1863-1865, designed by architect P. B. Wight in Venetian Gothic style, which was modeled on the Doges Palace in Venice, another locale was at West 109th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan. Since 1942 the academy has occupied a mansion that was the home of sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington and Archer Milton Huntington at Fifth Avenue. The original founders of the National Academy of Design were students of the American Academy of the Fine Arts, samuel F. B. Morse and other students set about forming the drawing association to meet several times each week for the study the art of design. Still, the association was viewed as a dependent organization of the American Academy, an attempt was made to reconcile the difference and maintain a single academy by appointing six of the artists from the association as directors of the American Academy. When four of the nominees were not elected, however, the frustrated artists resolved to form a new academy, among the teaching staff were numerous artists, including Will Hicok Low, who taught from 1889 to 1892. The famous American poet William Cullen Bryant also gave lectures, architect Alexander Jackson Davis taught at the Academy. Painter Lemuel Wilmarth was the first full-time instructor Gulian C, verplanck, a Congressman and a man of letters, gave an address at the school in 1824. and Silas Dustin was a curator
11.
Columbia University
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Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1754 as Kings College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain, after the American Revolutionary War, Kings College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the United States to grant the M. D. degree. The university also has global research outposts in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Asunción, Columbia administers annually the Pulitzer Prize. Additionally,100 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Columbia as students, researchers, faculty, Columbia is second only to Harvard University in the number of Nobel Prize-winning affiliates, with over 100 recipients of the award as of 2016. In 1746 an act was passed by the assembly of New York to raise funds for the foundation of a new college. Classes were initially held in July 1754 and were presided over by the colleges first president, Dr. Johnson was the only instructor of the colleges first class, which consisted of a mere eight students. Instruction was held in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan, in 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by Myles Cooper, a graduate of The Queens College, Oxford, and an ardent Tory. In the charged political climate of the American Revolution, his opponent in discussions at the college was an undergraduate of the class of 1777. The suspension continued through the occupation of New York City by British troops until their departure in 1783. The colleges library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a hospital first by American. Loyalists were forced to abandon their Kings College in New York, the Loyalists, led by Bishop Charles Inglis fled to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where they founded Kings Collegiate School. After the Revolution, the college turned to the State of New York in order to restore its vitality, the Legislature agreed to assist the college, and on May 1,1784, it passed an Act for granting certain privileges to the College heretofore called Kings College. The Regents finally became aware of the colleges defective constitution in February 1787 and appointed a revision committee, in April of that same year, a new charter was adopted for the college, still in use today, granting power to a private board of 24 Trustees. On May 21,1787, William Samuel Johnson, the son of Dr. Samuel Johnson, was unanimously elected President of Columbia College, prior to serving at the university, Johnson had participated in the First Continental Congress and been chosen as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. The colleges enrollment, structure, and academics stagnated for the majority of the 19th century, with many of the college presidents doing little to change the way that the college functioned. In 1857, the college moved from the Kings College campus at Park Place to a primarily Gothic Revival campus on 49th Street and Madison Avenue, during the last half of the 19th century, under the leadership of President F. A. P. Barnard, the institution assumed the shape of a modern university
12.
National World War I Museum and Memorial
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The National World War I Museum and Memorial of the United States is located in Kansas City, Missouri. Opened to the public as the Liberty Memorial museum in 1926, the Museum and Memorial are managed by a non-profit organization in cooperation with the Kansas City Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners. The museum re-opened to the public in December 2006 with an expanded, the National World War I Museum tells the story of the Great War and related global events from their origins before 1914 through the 1918 Armistice and 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Visitors enter the space within the 32, 000-square-foot facility across a glass bridge above a field of 9,000 red poppies. The declared mission of the museum and memorial is to be dedicated to remembering, interpreting and understanding the Great War and its enduring impact on the global community. Soon after World War I ended, a group of 40 prominent Kansas City residents formed the Liberty Memorial Association to create a memorial to those who had served in the war. They chose lumber baron and philanthropist Robert A. Long, who had given a large sum of money. Others included, James Madison Kemper was treasurer of the association, for a short time in 1919 he was President of City Center Bank that was founded by his father, William T. Kemper. His brother, Rufus Crosby Kemper Sr. became president when he left to take over as president of Commerce Bancshares, jesse Clyde Nichols, a real estate developer, was a lead proponent of the Liberty Monument. William Volker, businessman and philanthropist, helped the city acquire the land for the memorial, george Kessler, designer of the landscaping at the memorial. There would not be the problems that plagued the Bunker Hill Monument in Boston a century earlier. The local veteran chosen to present flags to the commanders was a Kansas City haberdasher, Harry S. Truman, the finished monument was dedicated on November 11,1926, by President Coolidge, in the presence of Queen Marie of Romania. Coolidge announced that the memorial “. has not been raised to commemorate war and victory, today I return in order that I may place the official sanction of the national government upon one of the most elaborate and impressive memorials that adorn our country. The magnitude of this memorial, and the base of popular support on which it rests, can scarcely fail to excite national wonder and admiration. ”In 1935, bas reliefs by Walker Hancock of Jacques, Beatty, Diaz, Foch. In 1981-1982, corresponding to its 60th anniversary, the building revealed new exhibits under improved lighting sources, the memorial was closed in 1994 due to safety concerns, after aging revealed problems with drainage and the original construction. Local shopping malls voluntarily helped to put part of the collection on display while the memorial was unavailable. When the poor condition of the building became an embarrassment for the city, plans were also made at this time to expand the site with a museum to accommodate the LMAs growing collection. Local, national and international support provided $102 million for this undertaking, the year this was completed, Liberty Memorial was designated a National Historic Landmark
