Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest city in the state of Maryland within the United States. Baltimore was established by the Constitution of Maryland as an independent city in 1729. With a population of 611,648 in 2017, Baltimore is the largest such independent city in the United States; as of 2017, the population of the Baltimore metropolitan area was estimated to be just under 2.808 million, making it the 20th largest metropolitan area in the country. Baltimore is located about 40 miles northeast of Washington, D. C. making it a principal city in the Washington-Baltimore combined statistical area, the fourth-largest CSA in the nation, with a calculated 2017 population of 9,764,315. Baltimore is the second-largest seaport in the Mid-Atlantic; the city's Inner Harbor was once the second leading port of entry for immigrants to the United States. In addition, Baltimore was a major manufacturing center. After a decline in major manufacturing, heavy industry, restructuring of the rail industry, Baltimore has shifted to a service-oriented economy.
Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University are the city's top two employers. With hundreds of identified districts, Baltimore has been dubbed a "city of neighborhoods." Famous residents have included writers Edgar Allan Poe, Edith Hamilton, Frederick Douglass, Ogden Nash, H. L. Mencken. During the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner" in Baltimore after the bombardment of Fort McHenry, his poem popularized as a song. Baltimore has more public statues and monuments per capita than any other city in the country, is home to some of the earliest National Register Historic Districts in the nation, including Fell's Point, Federal Hill, Mount Vernon; these were added to the National Register between 1969–1971, soon after historic preservation legislation was passed. Nearly one third of the city's buildings are designated as historic in the National Register, more than any other U. S. city. The city has 33 local historic districts. Over 65,000 properties are designated as historic buildings and listed in the NRHP, more than any other U.
S. city. The historical records of the government of Baltimore are located at the Baltimore City Archives; the city is named after Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore of the Irish House of Lords and founding proprietor of the Province of Maryland. Baltimore Manor was the name of the estate in County Longford on which the Calvert family lived in Ireland. Baltimore is an anglicization of the Irish name Baile an Tí Mhóir, meaning "town of the big house." The Baltimore area had been inhabited by Native Americans since at least the 10th millennium BC, when Paleo-Indians first settled in the region. One Paleo-Indian site and several Archaic period and Woodland period archaeological sites have been identified in Baltimore, including four from the Late Woodland period. During the Late Woodland period, the archaeological culture, called the "Potomac Creek complex" resided in the area from Baltimore south to the Rappahannock River in present-day Virginia. In the early 1600s, the immediate Baltimore vicinity was sparsely populated, if at all, by Native Americans.
The Baltimore County area northward was used as hunting grounds by the Susquehannock living in the lower Susquehanna River valley. This Iroquoian-speaking people "controlled all of the upper tributaries of the Chesapeake" but "refrained from much contact with Powhatan in the Potomac region" and south into Virginia. Pressured by the Susquehannock, the Piscataway tribe, an Algonquian-speaking people, stayed well south of the Baltimore area and inhabited the north bank of the Potomac River in what are now Charles and southern Prince George's counties in the coastal areas south of the Fall Line. European colonization of Maryland began with the arrival of an English ship at St. Clement's Island in the Potomac River on March 25, 1634. Europeans began to settle the area further north, beginning to populate the area of Baltimore County; the original county seat, known today as "Old Baltimore", was located on Bush River within the present-day Aberdeen Proving Ground. The colonists engaged in sporadic warfare with the Susquehanna, whose numbers dwindled from new infectious diseases, such as smallpox, endemic among the Europeans.
In 1661 David Jones claimed the area known today as Jonestown on the east bank of the Jones Falls stream. The colonial General Assembly of Maryland created the Port of Baltimore at old Whetstone Point in 1706 for the tobacco trade; the Town of Baltimore, on the west side of the Jones Falls, was founded and laid out on July 30, 1729. By 1752 the town had just 27 homes, including two taverns. Jonestown and Fells Point had been settled to the east; the three settlements, covering 60 acres, became a commercial hub, in 1768 were designated as the county seat. Being a colony, the Baltimore street names were laid out to demonstrate loyalty to the mother country. For example King George, King and Caroline streets. Baltimore grew swiftly in the 18th century, its plantations producing grain and tobacco for sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean; the profit from sugar encouraged the cultivation of cane in the Caribbean and the importation of food by planters there. As noted, Baltimore was as the county seat, in 1768 a courthouse was built to serve both the city and county.
Its square was a center of community discussions. Baltimore established its public market system in 1763. Lexington Market, founded in 1782, i
Hemming Park station
Hemming Park station is a Jacksonville Skyway monorail station in Jacksonville, Florida. It is located on Monroe Street in Downtown Jacksonville; the station is adjacent to Hemming Park and is nearby Jacksonville City Hall and various other government buildings and amenities. The Hemming Park station was planned as part of the Jacksonville Skyway's first extension: a north-south route leading from Central station up to Florida State College at Jacksonville. Work on the new segment began in 1993 and coincided with the Skyway's transition from Matra to Bombardier Transportation technology; the extension, including Hemming Plaza Station and Rosa Parks Transit Station near FCCJ, began operation on December 15, 1997. The next stations on the line are Rosa Parks Transit Station to the north and Central station to the south. Nearby points of interest include Hemming Park, the Jacksonville Main Library, Jacksonville City Hall, the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, the John Milton Bryan Simpson United States Courthouse.
Hemming Park's managers have announced plans to build a 50-by-50-foot permanent stage at the base of the Skyway station for events held in the park
Laura Street Trio
The Laura Street Trio is a group of three historic buildings located on and near Laura Street in downtown Jacksonville, Florida. The Trio consists of two perpendicularly arranged skyscrapers, the Florida Life Building and the Bisbee Building, plus a third structure, the Old Florida National Bank, framed by the other two in a unique pattern; the three buildings, constructed in the wake of the Great Fire of 1901, are architecturally significant, but are endangered. The oldest of the three, the Old Florida National Bank known as the Marble Bank, sits on the corner of Forsyth and Laura Streets, it was built as the Mercantile Exchange Bank in 1902, just after the Great Fire of 1901 had destroyed nearly all of downtown Jacksonville. Architect Edward H. Glidden designed it in the Classical Revival style. In 1905 it was bought by Florida Bank & Trust, predecessors to the modern Florida National Bank, who renovated and expanded it, it was renovated again in 1916 to include a large banking room with a skylight, plaster detailing, a coffered ceiling.
Another refurbishing in the 1950s added dropped ceilings that covered the detail work. By the 1990s, the building had been sold, its subsequent owners allowed it to deteriorate dramatically; the second of the three buildings to be built, the Bisbee Building was constructed between 1908 and 1909, adjacent to the Marble Bank on Forsyth Street. It was designed by prominent Jacksonville architect Henry J. Klutho in a Chicago School-influenced Prairie Style, it was constructed amid a race against two other ten-story projects, 121 Atlantic Place and the Seminole Hotel, to build Jacksonville's first skyscraper. The Bisbee won the race, but 121 Atlantic Place was taller, making it Florida's tallest building at the time; the Bisbee Building was the first reinforced concrete highrise anywhere in the Southern United States, was designed to be only 26 feet wide, about half its present width, but demand for office space in the trendy new edifice led the owner to have Klutho add on. As with the other buildings, the Bisbee Building was left empty and deteriorated.
The Florida Life Building was designed by Klutho, between 1911 and 1912. It stands next to the Marble Bank's back wall, is the only one of the Trio that faces Laura Street, it was constructed at the same time as Klutho's St. James Building. Standing 45 meters and 11 floors high, it was Jacksonville's – and Florida's – tallest building when it was built, though it was superseded less than a year by the Heard National Bank Building. Still, Wayne Wood of the Jacksonville Historic Landmarks Commission writes that with its narrow and well-proportioned tower, the building "was and still is Jacksonville's purest statement of a'skyscraper.'" Like the Bisbee Buildings, it is an example of Klutho's Chicago-influenced Prairie Style. On April 18, 2012, the AIA's Florida Chapter placed the Florida Life Building on its list of Florida Architecture: 100 Years. 100 Places. The building was constructed for the Florida Life Insurance Company, but the firm folded in 1915, the structure changed hands a number of times over the years.
In 1994, its owners, Nations Bank, removed the original capitals on the top floor, doing structural damage in the process. Like the other buildings, the Florida Life building fell into disrepair. In the 2000s the Laura Street Trio were recognized as some of Jacksonville's most significant – and endangered – historic buildings. In 2002, under Mayor John Delaney, the City of Jacksonville purchased all three buildings to transfer them to a developer who could restore them. Orlando developer Cameron Kuhn purchased the Laura Street Trio, as well as the nearby Barnett National Bank Building, but went bankrupt in the 2008 housing market crash before restoring them; the project subsequently sat idle. In 2010 Jacksonville investment group Atkins Group, together with the Tallahassee-based Capital City Partners, presented a new, $70 million plan to restore the Laura Street Trio and the Barnett National Bank Building, as well as construct a fifth building. In June 2011 Atkins Group requested $5 million in historic tax credits to move forward with Phase I of the project.
The Trio is being renovated into a Courtyard Marriot Hotel. Architecture of Jacksonville Wood, Wayne. Jacksonville's Architectural Heritage. University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-0953-7. Bing aerial List of Jacksonville's tallest buildings
Schultz Building
The Schultz Building the Atlantic National Bank Annex, is a historic building in Jacksonville, United States. It was built between 1925 and 1926 for the Atlantic National Bank as an annex to the Atlantic National Bank Building, located behind it, it stands at 118 West Adams Street, was added to the U. S. National Register of Historic Places in 1997 as part of the Downtown Jacksonville Multiple Property Submission; the Atlantic National Bank, established in 1903, had built the Atlantic National Bank Building on 121 West Forsyth Street in 1909. By 1925 the bank had grown such. To accommodate their needs, the bank built the Annex directly behind the headquarters at 118 West Adams Street; the Annex was designed by Jacksonville architects Marsh and Saxelbye and constructed by New York City firm George A. Fuller Co. between 1925 and 1926. Though it had a different architect than the headquarters, its facade is similar to the older building's, with white terra cotta and decorative elements such as cartouches, a balustrade, a dentiled cornice.
The building stands cost around $400,000 to build. The Atlantic National Bank merged with First Union in 1985, both buildings subsequently changed hands; the Annex's lower facade was altered. In the 1990s it was recognized as one of Jacksonville's most significant historic buildings, was included in the Downtown Jacksonville Multiple Property Submission, a Multiple Property Submission to the National Register of Historic Places, it was added to the National Register on November 7, 1997. Architecture of Jacksonville Duval County listings at National Register of Historic Places Atlantic National Bank Annex at Florida's Office of Cultural and Historical Programs
Urban decay
Urban decay is the sociological process by which a functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude. It may feature deindustrialization, depopulation or deurbanization, economic restructuring, abandoned buildings and infrastructure, high local unemployment, fragmented families, political disenfranchisement, a desolate cityscape, known as greyfield or urban prairie. Since the 1970s and 1980s, urban decay has been associated with Western cities in North America and parts of Europe. Since major structural changes in global economies and government policy created the economic and the social conditions resulting in urban decay; the effects counter the development of most of North America. In contrast, North American and British cities experience population flights to the suburbs and exurb commuter towns. Another characteristic of urban decay is blight—the visual and physical effects of living among empty lots and condemned houses. Urban decay has no single cause. During the Industrial Revolution, from the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century, rural people moved from the country to the cities for employment in manufacturing industry, thus causing the urban population boom.
However, subsequent economic change left many cities economically vulnerable. Studies such as the Urban Task Force, the Urban White Paper, a study of Scottish cities posit that areas suffering industrial decline—high unemployment, a decaying physical environment —prove "highly resistant to improvement". Changes in means of transport, from the public to the private—specifically, the private motor car—eliminated some of the cities' public transport service advantages, e.g. fixed-route buses and trains. In particular, at the end of World War II, many political decisions favored suburban development and encouraged suburbanization, by drawing city taxes from the cities to build new infrastructure for towns; the manufacturing sector has been a base for the prosperity of major cities. When the industries have relocated outside of cities, some have experienced population loss with associated urban decay, riots. Cut backs on police and fire services may result, while lobbying for government funded housing may increase.
Increased city taxes encourage residents to move out. Rent controls are enacted due to public pressure and complaints regarding the cost of living. Proponents of rent controls argue that rent controls combat inflation, stabilize the economic characteristics of a city's population, prevent rent gouging, improve the quality of housing. Capitalist economists have documented that rent control affects the supply and demand relationship in housing markets which can contribute to urban blight and does not provide the benefits its proponents advocate. Rent control contributes to urban blight by reducing new construction and investment in housing and deincentivizing maintenance. If a landlord's costs to perform maintenance consume too large a proportion of profit, revenue minus costs, from rent, the landlord will feel pressure to drastically reduce or eliminate maintenance entirely; this effect has been observed in New York City, a 2009 study by a lobbying firm found 29% of rent-controlled buildings were categorized as either deteriorated or dilapidated in contrast with 8% of non-rent-controlled housing.
The largest example of urban decay is Traverse City Michigan's Boardman Neighborhood. In the United States, the white middle class left the cities for suburban areas because of higher crime rates and perceived danger caused by African-American migration north toward cities after World War I —the so-called "white flight" phenomenon; some historians differentiate between the first Great Migration, numbering about 1.6 million Black migrants who left Southern rural areas to migrate to northern and midwestern industrial cities, after a lull during the Great Depression, a Second Great Migration, in which 5 million or more African-Americans moved, including many to California and various western cities. Between 1910 and 1970, Blacks moved from 14 states of the South Alabama, Louisiana and Texas to the other three cultural regions of the United States. More townspeople with urban skills moved during the second migration. By the end of the Second Great Migration, African Americans had become an urbanized population.
More than 80 percent lived in cities. A majority of 53 percent remained in the South, while 40 percent lived in the North and 7 percent in the West. From the 1930s until 1977, African-Americans seeking borrowed capital for housing and businesses were discriminated against via the federal-government–legislated discriminatory lending practices for the Federal Housing Administration via redlining. In 1977, the US Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, designed to encourage commercial banks and
RTKL Associates
RTKL was a global architecture and design firm. The firm was founded in 1946 by Archibald Rogers and Francis Taliaferro in Rogers’ grandmother’s basement in Annapolis and grew to be one of the largest architectural firms in the world prior to its acquisition by Arcadis NV in 2007. In October 2015, RTKL was formally merged with another Arcadis subsidiary, Seattle-based Callison, to form CallisonRTKL headquartered in Baltimore."RTKL" comes from the initials of the initial members: Rogers Taliaferro Kostritsky Lamb. The firm was founded by Archibald Rogers in his grandmother’s basement in Annapolis. Francis Taliaferro joined shortly afterwards. In 1949, the pair hired Charles Lamb, whose design for the Anne Arundel County Girl Scouts Teepee Lodge gained the firm national attention by winning an award from the American Institute of Architects. Rogers and Taliaferro's reputation grew when, in 1954, internationally renowned architect Pietro Belluschi selected the firm as his associate architect for the design of the Church of the Redeemer in Baltimore.
The project received an AIA Award of Merit and, in 1986, a special 25-Year Award from the AIA's Baltimore Chapter. In 1956, Lamb was made a partner in the firm, which changed its name to Rogers and Lamb; the addition of urban design specialist George Kostritsky in 1961 completed the foursome, the “Rogers, Taliaferro and Lamb” name was condensed to “RTKL”. In that same year RTKL was commissioned to design the public spaces for the Charles Center, which contributed to Baltimore’s urban renewal movement; because of the success of this involvement, the firm was commissioned to develop downtown plans for Cincinnati, Hartford and Charlotte, North Carolina, among other US cities. The firm continued to expand in opening offices across the company and overseas. RTKL grew through acquisitions. In 2000, RTKL acquired Dallas-based FDS International, a health practice ranked among the top ten in the country. In 2000, RTKL bought the Miami-based Howard Snoweiss Design Group, a design company, with an eye towards expanding its business in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In 2007, RTKL became a wholly owned subsidiary of Arcadis NV, an international company that delivers consulting, engineering, urban planning and project management services for infrastructure and buildings. In August 2010 the firm purchased Beijing-based AHS International, a practice that specialized in healthcare and medical-facility architecture. In 2011, Building Design ranked RTKL’s retail sector first in the world, its planning services third and its urban design services fifth. Edward A. Garmatz Federal Building and U. S. Courthouse, Baltimore, MD, USA Fifth Third Center, Ohio, USA Chase Financial Plaza, Ohio, USA 1991 Fairfax County Government Center, Fairfax County, Virginia, USA Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Florida, USA Redesign of the damaged Pentagon following the September 11th attacks which occurred in 2001. Arlington, Virginia, USA North East Mall, Texas Royal Pavilion, Aldershot, UK Shanghai Museum of Science and Technology, China Chinese Museum of Film, China Principe Pio, Spain The Heart Hospital Baylor Plano, Texas New Jiang Wan Cultural Center, Shanghai China Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, Maryland, USA Silver Cross Hospital Campus, New Lenox, Illinois, USA John Radcliffe Hospital, England Westfield San Francisco, USA Community Hospital North Expansion, Indiana, USA Tokyo Bay Rehabilitation Hospital, Japan L.
A. Live, Los Angeles, California, USA U. S. Capitol Visitor Center, Washington, DC, USA City Crossing, China American Society of Hematology, Washington, DC, USA eBay Data Center, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA Mirdif City Centre, United Arab Emirates Food and Drug Administration Headquarters, White Oak, MD, USA Shanghai Changzheng New Pudong Hospital, China Official website
Isaiah Hart
Isaiah David Hart was an American plantation owner and the founder of Jacksonville, Florida. From Georgia, Hart took up arms against Spain in the Patriot Rebellion of 1812. After moving to a location near the cow ford on the narrows of the St. Johns River, he began platting the town in 1822, served as postmaster, court clerk, commissioner of pilotage, judge of elections, major in the local militia during the Seminole War, as a Whig member of the Florida Territorial Senate; the Isaiah D. Hart Bridge over the St. Johns River in Jacksonville is named after him. Isaiah Hart's father, William Hart, a native of Pennsylvania, was a saddler by trade who moved south to Virginia and settled in Burke County, where Isaiah was born on November 6, 1792. In 1801, William Hart moved his family to East Florida when he received a land grant of 640 acres on Moncrief Creek and the Trout River from the Spanish governor, he and his sons Isaiah and Dan were citizens of Spanish Florida and served in the Spanish militia, but joined the so-called "Patriots of East Florida" during the Patriot War of East Florida, in which disaffected farmers and woodsmen from Georgia and led by rich planters, tried to seize control of East Florida from the Spanish in 1812.
As a young man participating in Patriot raids, Isaiah Hart organized bands of marauders that raided Florida plantations for slaves and cattle, drove them northward into Georgia, sold them. Isaiah Hart married Nancy Nelson in 1818 and settled at King's Ferry where the old King's Road crossed the St. Marys River. After the United States took control of Florida, Hart observed an increase in traffic on the road as settlers came south from Georgia and the Carolinas to the Florida Territory. In 1819, William Dawson and Stephen Buckles opened a general merchandise store on the King's Road, near the cow ford at the narrows of the St. Johns River, where John Brady operated a busy ferry service. Hart realized that the location offered economic opportunities, on May 18, 1821, he bought 18 acres on the north bank of the St. Johns from Lewis Zachariah Hogans, owner of the surrounding land, part of the Taylor Grant, for $72 worth of cattle. Here, to the west of present-day Market Street, he built a store-cum-tavern that served as his residence, as well as a riverfront dock called Hart's Landing.
Over the years Hart became prosperous enough to establish himself as a man of means. He appears in the 1850 Jacksonville, Florida census taken 14 Oct 1850 with his wife and 7 children: Isiah D. Hart, age 57, planter, b Georgia, with wife Nancy, age 50, b South Carolina, children: Oscar Hart, age 31, b South Carolina, a lawyer, Ossin Hart, age 29, b Georgia, a lawyer, Laura Hart, age 27, Lodiska Hart, 25, Daniel Hart, age 20, a clerk, all born in Florida, Berry Briers, age 25, a laborer, born New York, Nancy Hart, age 18, listed as "idiotic", Julia Hart, age 16, both born in Florida, it is written either in a history of the Hart family or the City of Jacksonville that Laura and Julia Streets in downtown Jacksonville were named for two of Isaiah and Nancy's daughters. When Duval County was incorporated in 1822, Hart saw new opportunities for development, persuaded his neighbors John Brady and Lewis Z. Hogans to join his enterprise of platting a town. In 1822, Hart and Hogans began to lay out the plan of the town, naming it after Gen. Andrew Jackson, the provisional governor of the Florida Territory.
The men laid out a grid of eight streets. By this time, Hart was becoming prominent in the Territory. S. Marshal of East Florida, in 1826 as the Clerk of the County Court, an office he held until 1845, he successively held public office as postmaster, commissioner of pilotage, judge of elections in Duval County. By 1830 Hart owned four slaves and managed his own farming and ranching operations, as well as a timber business, he continued to buy more real estate, by the mid-1830s had acquired 2,000 acres of land ten miles west of Jacksonville near present-day Marietta, where he established a plantation he called "Paradise". Hart's various enterprises prospered, as his fortune increased, he invested in railroads and banks, bought more slaves owning 57 human beings, he was admitted to the bar. Hart served as a major in the local militia during the Second Seminole War, in 1839 was elected as a Whig to the Florida Territorial Senate. Although a slave owner himself, Hart supported the Union vocally and opposed secession becoming one of the founders of the Florida Whig Party.
He maintained his stance on the issue while in the Territorial Senate. In 1859, Hart extended the original plat of Jacksonville to include all of his property, moved the town business center to higher ground on a sand ridge. Here he set aside land for a public square, surveyed smaller lots facing the square for the new shops and businesses that he anticipated would be built on Duval and Monroe streets; when he died in 1861, Isaiah Hart was one of the richest men in Florida. He owned extensive real estate in north Florida, had substantial stockholdings in the Florida, Atlantic & Gulf Central Railroad, the Jacksonville Natural Gas Company, the Bank of St. Johns County, a steamship line, as well as 53 African-American slaves, his son, Ossian B. Hart, was active in the Republican Party, became the tenth governor of Florida in 1873. Isaiah Hart at Find a Grave
