Washington, D.C.
Washington, D. C. formally the District of Columbia and referred to as Washington or D. C. is the capital of the United States. Founded after the American Revolution as the seat of government of the newly independent country, Washington was named after George Washington, first President of the United States and Founding Father; as the seat of the United States federal government and several international organizations, Washington is an important world political capital. The city is one of the most visited cities in the world, with more than 20 million tourists annually; the signing of the Residence Act on July 16, 1790, approved the creation of a capital district located along the Potomac River on the country's East Coast. The U. S. Constitution provided for a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the U. S. Congress, the District is therefore not a part of any state; the states of Maryland and Virginia each donated land to form the federal district, which included the pre-existing settlements of Georgetown and Alexandria.
The City of Washington was founded in 1791 to serve as the new national capital. In 1846, Congress returned the land ceded by Virginia. Washington had an estimated population of 702,455 as of July 2018, making it the 20th most populous city in the United States. Commuters from the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the city's daytime population to more than one million during the workweek. Washington's metropolitan area, the country's sixth largest, had a 2017 estimated population of 6.2 million residents. All three branches of the U. S. federal government are centered in the District: Congress and the U. S. Supreme Court. Washington is home to many national monuments, museums situated on or around the National Mall; the city hosts 177 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of many international organizations, trade unions, non-profit, lobbying groups, professional associations, including the World Bank Group, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of American States, AARP, the National Geographic Society, the Human Rights Campaign, the International Finance Corporation, the American Red Cross.
A locally elected mayor and a 13‑member council have governed the District since 1973. However, Congress may overturn local laws. D. C. residents elect a non-voting, at-large congressional delegate to the House of Representatives, but the District has no representation in the Senate. The District receives three electoral votes in presidential elections as permitted by the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1961. Various tribes of the Algonquian-speaking Piscataway people inhabited the lands around the Potomac River when Europeans first visited the area in the early 17th century. One group known as the Nacotchtank maintained settlements around the Anacostia River within the present-day District of Columbia. Conflicts with European colonists and neighboring tribes forced the relocation of the Piscataway people, some of whom established a new settlement in 1699 near Point of Rocks, Maryland. In his Federalist No. 43, published January 23, 1788, James Madison argued that the new federal government would need authority over a national capital to provide for its own maintenance and safety.
Five years earlier, a band of unpaid soldiers besieged Congress while its members were meeting in Philadelphia. Known as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, the event emphasized the need for the national government not to rely on any state for its own security. Article One, Section Eight, of the Constitution permits the establishment of a "District as may, by cession of particular states, the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States". However, the Constitution does not specify a location for the capital. In what is now known as the Compromise of 1790, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson came to an agreement that the federal government would pay each state's remaining Revolutionary War debts in exchange for establishing the new national capital in the southern United States. On July 9, 1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which approved the creation of a national capital on the Potomac River; the exact location was to be selected by President George Washington, who signed the bill into law on July 16.
Formed from land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia, the initial shape of the federal district was a square measuring 10 miles on each side, totaling 100 square miles. Two pre-existing settlements were included in the territory: the port of Georgetown, founded in 1751, the city of Alexandria, founded in 1749. During 1791–92, Andrew Ellicott and several assistants, including a free African American astronomer named Benjamin Banneker, surveyed the borders of the federal district and placed boundary stones at every mile point. Many of the stones are still standing. A new federal city was constructed on the north bank of the Potomac, to the east of Georgetown. On September 9, 1791, the three commissioners overseeing the capital's construction named the city in honor of President Washington; the federal district was named Columbia, a poetic name for the United States in use at that time. Congress held its first session in Washington on November 17, 1800. Congress passed the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801 that organized the District and placed the entire territory under the exclusive control of the federal
World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, the large water pool, represented the long voyage Columbus took to the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D. C. and St. Louis for the honor of hosting the fair; the Exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self-image, American industrial optimism. The layout of the Chicago Columbian Exposition was, in large part, designed by John Wellborn Root, Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles B. Atwood, it was the prototype of what his colleagues thought a city should be. It was designed to follow Beaux Arts principles of design, namely French neoclassical architecture principles based on symmetry and splendor; the color of the material used to cover the buildings façades gave the fairgrounds its nickname, the White City.
Many prominent architects designed its 14 "great buildings". Artists and musicians were featured in exhibits and many made depictions and works of art inspired by the exposition; the exposition covered 690 acres, featuring nearly 200 new buildings of predominantly neoclassical architecture and lagoons, people and cultures from 46 countries. More than 27 million people attended the exposition during its six-month run, its scale and grandeur far exceeded the other world's fairs, it became a symbol of the emerging American Exceptionalism, much in the same way that the Great Exhibition became a symbol of the Victorian era United Kingdom. Dedication ceremonies for the fair were held on October 21, 1892, but the fairgrounds were not opened to the public until May 1, 1893; the fair continued until October 30, 1893. In addition to recognizing the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New World by Europeans, the fair served to show the world that Chicago had risen from the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire, which had destroyed much of the city in 1871.
On October 9, 1893, the day designated as Chicago Day, the fair set a world record for outdoor event attendance, drawing 751,026 people. The debt for the fair was soon paid off with a check for $1.5 million. Chicago has commemorated the fair with one of the stars on its municipal flag. Many prominent civic and commercial leaders from around the United States participated in the financing and management of the Fair, including Chicago shoe company owner Charles H. Schwab, Chicago railroad and manufacturing magnate John Whitfield Bunn, Connecticut banking and iron products magnate Milo Barnum Richardson, among many others; the fair was planned in the early 1890s during the Gilded Age of rapid industrial growth and class tension. World's fairs, such as London's 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition, had been successful in Europe as a way to bring together societies fragmented along class lines; the first American attempt at a world's fair in Philadelphia in 1876, drew crowds but was a financial failure.
Nonetheless, ideas about distinguishing the 400th anniversary of Columbus' landing started in the late 1880s. Civic leaders in St. Louis, New York City, Washington DC and Chicago expressed an interest in hosting a fair to generate profits, boost real estate values, promote their cities. Congress was called on to decide the location. New York's financiers J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, William Waldorf Astor, among others, pledged $15 million to finance the fair if Congress awarded it to New York, while Chicagoans Charles T. Yerkes, Marshall Field, Philip Armour, Gustavus Swift, Cyrus McCormick, offered to finance a Chicago fair. What persuaded Congress was Chicago banker Lyman Gage, who raised several million additional dollars in a 24-hour period and above New York's final offer. Chicago representatives not only fought for the world's fair on monetary reasons, but on practicality reasons. On a Senate hearing held in January 1890, representative Thomas B. Bryan argued that the most important qualities for a world's fair were'abundant supplies of good air and pure water... ample space and transportation for all exhibits and visitors...
" He argued that New York had too many obstructions, Chicago would be able to use large amounts of land around the city where there was "not a house to buy and not a rock to blast.." and that it would be so located that "the artisan and the farmer and the shopkeeper and the man of humble means" would be able to access the fair. Bryan continued to say that the fair was of'vital interest' to the West, that the West wanted the location to be Chicago; the city spokesmen would continue to stress the essentials of a successful Exposition and that only Chicago was fitted to fill these exposition requirements. The exposition corporation and national exposition commission settled on Jackson Park and an area around it as the fair site. Daniel H. Burnham was selected as director of works, George R. Davis as director-general. Burnham emphasized architecture and sculpture as central to the fair and assembled the period's top talent to design the buildings and grounds including Frederick Law Olmsted for the grounds.
The temporary buildings were designed in an ornate Neoclassical style and painted white, resulting in the fair site being referred to as the "White City". The Exposition's offices set up shop in the upper floors of the Rand McNally Building on Adams Street, the world's first all-steel-fram
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, with about 6,700 undergraduate students and about 15,250 postgraduate students. Established in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, clergyman John Harvard, Harvard is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning, its history and wealth have made it one of the world's most prestigious universities; the Harvard Corporation is its first chartered corporation. Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College trained Congregational and Unitarian clergy, its curriculum and student body were secularized during the 18th century, by the 19th century, Harvard had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites. Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's long tenure transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a modern research university. A. Lawrence Lowell, who followed Eliot, further reformed the undergraduate curriculum and undertook aggressive expansion of Harvard's land holdings and physical plant.
James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College; the university is organized into eleven separate academic units—ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area: its 209-acre main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge 3 miles northwest of Boston. Harvard's endowment is worth $39.2 billion, making it the largest of any academic institution. Harvard is a large residential research university; the nominal cost of attendance is high, but the university's large endowment allows it to offer generous financial aid packages. The Harvard Library is the world's largest academic and private library system, comprising 79 individual libraries holding over 18 million items; the University is cited as one of the world's top tertiary institutions by various organizations.
Harvard's alumni include eight U. S. presidents, more than thirty foreign heads of state, 62 living billionaires, 359 Rhodes Scholars, 242 Marshall Scholars. As of October 2018, 158 Nobel laureates, 18 Fields Medalists, 14 Turing Award winners have been affiliated as students, faculty, or researchers. In addition, Harvard students and alumni have won 10 Academy Awards, 48 Pulitzer Prizes and 108 Olympic medals, have founded a large number of companies worldwide. Harvard was established in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1638, it acquired British North America's first known printing press. In 1639, it was named Harvard College after deceased clergyman John Harvard, an alumnus of the University of Cambridge, who had left the school £779 and his scholar's library of some 400 volumes; the charter creating the Harvard Corporation was granted in 1650. A 1643 publication gave the school's purpose as "to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust".
It offered a classic curriculum on the English university model—many leaders in the colony had attended the University of Cambridge—but conformed to the tenets of Puritanism. It was never affiliated with any particular denomination, but many of its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Congregational and Unitarian churches; the leading Boston divine Increase Mather served as president from 1685 to 1701. In 1708, John Leverett became the first president, not a clergyman, marking a turning of the college from Puritanism and toward intellectual independence. Throughout the 18th century, Enlightenment ideas of the power of reason and free will became widespread among Congregational ministers, putting those ministers and their congregations in tension with more traditionalist, Calvinist parties; when the Hollis Professor of Divinity David Tappan died in 1803 and the president of Harvard Joseph Willard died a year in 1804, a struggle broke out over their replacements. Henry Ware was elected to the chair in 1805, the liberal Samuel Webber was appointed to the presidency of Harvard two years which signaled the changing of the tide from the dominance of traditional ideas at Harvard to the dominance of liberal, Arminian ideas.
In 1846, the natural history lectures of Louis Agassiz were acclaimed both in New York and on the campus at Harvard College. Agassiz's approach was distinctly idealist and posited Americans' "participation in the Divine Nature" and the possibility of understanding "intellectual existences". Agassiz's perspective on science combined observation with intuition and the assumption that a person can grasp the "divine plan" in all phenomena; when it came to explaining life-forms, Agassiz resorted to matters of shape based on a presumed archetype for his evidence. This dual view of knowledge was in concert with the teachings of Common Sense Realism derived from Scottish philosophers Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart, whose works were part of the Harvard curriculum at the time; the popularity of Agassiz's efforts to "soar with Plato" also derived from other writings to which Harvard students
Art Deco
Art Deco, sometimes referred to as Deco, is a style of visual arts and design that first appeared in France just before World War I. Art Deco influenced the design of buildings, jewelry, cars, movie theatres, ocean liners, everyday objects such as radios and vacuum cleaners, it took its name, short for Arts Décoratifs, from the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes held in Paris in 1925. It combined modern styles with rich materials. During its heyday, Art Deco represented luxury, glamour and faith in social and technological progress. Art Deco was a pastiche of many different styles, sometimes contradictory, united by a desire to be modern. From its outset, Art Deco was influenced by the bold geometric forms of Cubism, it featured rare and expensive materials, such as ebony and ivory, exquisite craftsmanship. The Chrysler Building and other skyscrapers of New York built during the 1920s and 1930s are monuments of the Art Deco style. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the Art Deco style became more subdued.
New materials arrived, including chrome plating, stainless steel, plastic. A sleeker form of the style, called Streamline Moderne, appeared in the 1930s. Art Deco is one of the first international styles, but its dominance ended with the beginning of World War II and the rise of the functional and unadorned styles of modern architecture and the International Style of architecture that followed. Art Deco took its name, short for Arts Décoratifs, from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925, though the diverse styles that characterize Art Deco had appeared in Paris and Brussels before World War I; the term arts décoratifs was first used in France in 1858. In 1868, Le Figaro newspaper used the term objets d'art décoratifs with respect to objects for stage scenery created for the Théâtre de l'Opéra. In 1875, furniture designers, textile and glass designers, other craftsmen were given the status of artists by the French government. In response to this, the École royale gratuite de dessin founded in 1766 under King Louis XVI to train artists and artisans in crafts relating to the fine arts, was renamed the National School of Decorative Arts.
It took its present name of ENSAD in 1927. During the 1925 Exposition the architect Le Corbusier wrote a series of articles about the exhibition for his magazine L'Esprit Nouveau under the title, "1925 EXPO. ARTS. DÉCO." which were combined into a book, "L'art décoratif d'aujourd'hui". The book was a spirited attack on the excesses of the lavish objects at the Exposition; the actual phrase "Art déco" did not appear in print until 1966, when it featured in the title of the first modern exhibit on the subject, called Les Années 25: Art déco, Stijl, Esprit nouveau, which covered the variety of major styles in the 1920s and 1930s. The term Art déco was used in a 1966 newspaper article by Hillary Gelson in the Times, describing the different styles at the exhibit. Art Deco gained currency as a broadly applied stylistic label in 1968 when historian Bevis Hillier published the first major academic book on the style: Art Deco of the 20s and 30s. Hillier noted that the term was being used by art dealers and cites The Times and an essay named "Les Arts Déco" in Elle magazine as examples of prior usage.
In 1971, Hillier organized an exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which he details in his book about it, The World of Art Deco. The emergence of Art Deco was connected with the rise in status of decorative artists, who until late in the 19th century had been considered as artisans; the term "arts décoratifs" had been invented in 1875, giving the designers of furniture and other decoration official status. The Société des artistes décorateurs, or SAD, was founded in 1901, decorative artists were given the same rights of authorship as painters and sculptors. A similar movement developed in Italy; the first international exhibition devoted to the decorative arts, the Esposizione international d'Arte decorative moderna, was held in Turin in 1902. Several new magazines devoted to decorative arts were founded in Paris, including Arts et décoration and L'Art décoratif moderne. Decorative arts sections were introduced into the annual salons of the Sociéte des artistes français, in the Salon d'automne.
French nationalism played a part in the resurgence of decorative arts. In 1911, the SAD proposed the holding of a major new international exposition of decorative arts in 1912. No copies of old styles were to be permitted; the exhibit was postponed until 1914 because of the war, postponed until 1925, when it gave its name to the whole family of styles known as Déco. Parisian department stores and fashion designers played an important
Century of Progress
A Century of Progress International Exposition was a World's Fair registered under the Bureau International des Expositions, held in Chicago, as The Chicago World's Fair, from 1933 to 1934 to celebrate the city's centennial. The theme of the fair was technological innovation; the fair's motto was "Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Adapts", giving out a message that science and American life were wedded. Its architectural symbol was the Sky Ride, a transporter bridge perpendicular to the shore on which one could ride from one side of the fair to the other. One description of the fair noted that the world, "then still mired in the malaise of the Great Depression, could glimpse a happier not-too-distant future, all driven by innovation in science and technology." Fair visitors saw the latest wonders in rail travel, automobiles and cigarette-smoking robots. The exhibition "emphasized technology and progress, a utopia, or perfect world, founded on democracy and manufacturing." A Century of Progress was organized as an Illinois nonprofit corporation in January 1928 for the purpose of planning and hosting a World's Fair in Chicago in 1934.
City officials designated three and a half miles of newly reclaimed land along the shore of Lake Michigan between 12th and 39th streets on the Near South Side for the fairgrounds. Held on a 427 acres portion of Burnham Park, the $37,500,000 exposition was formally opened on May 27, 1933, by US Postmaster General James Farley at a four hour ceremony at Soldier Field; the fair's opening night began with a nod to the heavens. Lights were automatically activated; the star was chosen as its light had started its journey at about the time of the previous Chicago world's fair—the World's Columbian Exposition—in 1893. The rays were focused on photoelectric cells in a series of astronomical observatories and transformed into electrical energy, transmitted to Chicago; the fair buildings were multi-colored, to create a "Rainbow City" as compared to the "White City" of Chicago's earlier World's Columbian Exposition. The buildings followed Moderne architecture in contrast to the neoclassical themes used at the 1893 fair.
One famous feature of the fair were the performances of fan dancer Sally Rand. Other popular exhibits were the various auto manufacturers, the Midway, a recreation of important scenes from Chicago's history; the fair contained exhibits that would seem shocking to modern audiences, including offensive portrayals of African-Americans, a "Midget City" complete with "sixty Lilliputians", an exhibition of incubators containing real babies. The fair included an exhibit on the history of Chicago. In the planning stages, several African-American groups from the city's newly growing population campaigned for Jean Baptiste Point du Sable to be honored at the fair. At the time, few Chicagoans had heard of Point du Sable, the fair's organizers presented the 1803 construction of Fort Dearborn as the city's historical beginning; the campaign was successful, a replica of Point du Sable's cabin was presented as part of the "background of the history of Chicago". Admiral Byrd's polar expedition ship the City of New York was visited by President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he came to the fair on October 2, 1933.
The City was on show for the full length of the exhibition. One of the highlights of the 1933 World's Fair was the arrival of the German airship Graf Zeppelin on October 26, 1933. After circling Lake Michigan near the exposition for two hours, Commander Hugo Eckener landed the 776-foot airship at the nearby Curtiss-Wright Airport in Glenview, it remained on the ground for twenty-five minutes took off ahead of an approaching weather front bound for Akron, Ohio. For some Chicagoans, the appearance of the Graf Zeppelin over their fair city was not a welcome sight, as the airship had become a prominent reminder of the ascendancy of Adolf Hitler to power earlier that same year; this triggered dissension in the days following its visit within the city's large German-American population. The "dream cars" which American automobile manufacturers exhibited at the fair included Cadillac's introduction of its V-16 limousine, but it was Packard. One interesting and enduring exhibit was the 1933 Homes of Tomorrow Exhibition that demonstrated modern home convenience and creative practical new building materials and techniques with twelve model homes sponsored by several corporations affiliated with home decor and construction.
Marine artist Hilda Goldblatt Gorenstein painted twelve murals for the Navy's exhibit in the Federal Building for the fair. The frieze was composed of twelve murals depicting the influence of sea power on America, beginning with the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 when sea power first reached America and carrying through World War I; the first Major League Baseball All-Star Game was held at Comiskey Park in conjunction with the fair. In May 1934, the Union Pacific Railroad exhibited its first streamlined train, the M-10000, the Chicago and Quincy Railroad its famous Zephyr which, on May 26, made a record-breaking dawn-to-dusk run from Denver, Colorado, to Chicago in 13 hours and 5 minutes
New York City
The City of New York called either New York City or New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2017 population of 8,622,698 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles, New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 20,320,876 people in its 2017 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 23,876,155 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural and media capital of the world, exerts a significant impact upon commerce, research, education, tourism, art and sports; the city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.
Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of, a separate county of the State of New York. The five boroughs – Brooklyn, Manhattan, The Bronx, Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898; the city and its metropolitan area constitute the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. New York City is home to more than 3.2 million residents born outside the United States, the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world. In 2017, the New York metropolitan area produced a gross metropolitan product of US$1.73 trillion. If greater New York City were a sovereign state, it would have the 12th highest GDP in the world. New York is home to the highest number of billionaires of any city in the world. New York City traces its origins to a trading post founded by colonists from the Dutch Republic in 1624 on Lower Manhattan.
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, the Duke of York. New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790, it has been the country's largest city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the U. S. by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is an international symbol of the U. S. and its ideals of liberty and peace. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance, environmental sustainability, as a symbol of freedom and cultural diversity. Many districts and landmarks in New York City are well known, with the city having three of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions in 2013 and receiving a record 62.8 million tourists in 2017. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world. Times Square, iconic as the world's "heart" and its "Crossroads", is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District, one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, a major center of the world's entertainment industry.
The names of many of the city's landmarks and parks are known around the world. Manhattan's real estate market is among the most expensive in the world. New York is home to the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is the largest single-operator rapid transit system worldwide, with 472 rail stations. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, Rockefeller University, which have been ranked among the top universities in the world. Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world, the city is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. In 1664, the city was named in honor of the Duke of York.
James's older brother, King Charles II, had appointed the Duke proprietor of the former territory of New Netherland, including the city of New Amsterdam, which England had seized from the Dutch. During the Wisconsinan glaciation, 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth; the erosive forward movement of the ice contributed to the separation of what is now Long Island and Staten Island. That action left bedrock at a shallow depth, providing a solid foundation for most of Manhattan's skyscrapers. In the precolonial era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by Algonquian Native Americans, including the Lenape, whose homeland, known as Lenapehoking, included Staten Island; the first documented visit into New York Harbor by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown. He named it Nouvelle Angoulême. A Spanish expedition led by captain Estêvão Gomes, a Portuguese sailing for Emperor Charles V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named Río de San Antonio.
The Padrón Rea
Los Angeles Public Library
The Los Angeles Public Library system serves the residents of the City of Los Angeles. The system holds more than six million volumes, with over 18 million residents in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, it serves the largest population of any publicly funded library system in the United States; the system is overseen by a Board of Library Commissioners with five members appointed by the mayor of Los Angeles in staggered terms in accordance with the city charter. Library cards are free to California residents. Circulating books, periodicals, computer access and audiovisual materials are available to patrons. Books and audiobooks are loaned for 3 weeks. Music cassettes, music CDs, documentary videos, documentary DVDs are loaned for 1 week. Entertainment videos and entertainment DVDs are loaned for 4 days. Fines are charged. There is a loan limit of 10 books, 10 magazines, 4 DVDs or videos at one time up to maximum of 30 items on the patron's record. Items checked out from Los Angeles Public Library may be returned to any of its 72 branches or to the Central Library.
Most items may be renewed a maximum of two times. Entertainment DVDs and videos may be renewed one time; the Los Angeles Public Library has many community support organizations which work with the library to raise funds and sponsor programs to enhance library service throughout the community. The Library's Rare Books Department is located in its downtown Los Angeles location. There is an extensive selection of databases covering a wide variety of topics, many of which are available to remote users who hold an LAPL library card. Examples include full-text databases of periodicals, business directories, language learning tools; the Central Library at 630 West 5th Street, between Grand Avenue and Flower Street in Downtown Los Angeles, remains an important research library, despite the development of accessible databases and public access to the Internet. The library offers an online program that allows adult patrons who have not completed high school to earn their high school diploma; the Los Angeles Library Association was formed in late 1872, by early 1873, a well-stocked reading room had opened under the first librarian, John Littlefield.
Aggressive expansion and growth of the system began in the 1920s. Under Library Board of Commissioners Chairman Orra E. Monnette, the system was improved with a large network of branch libraries with new buildings. Thelma Jackman founded the Business & Economics section of the library sometime prior to 1970; the historic Central Library Goodhue building was constructed in 1926 and is a Downtown Los Angeles landmark. The Central Library was designed by Bertram Goodhue; the Richard Riordan Central Library complex is the third largest public library in the United States in terms of book and periodical holdings. Named the Central Library, the building was first renamed in honor of the longtime president of the Board of Library Commissioners and President of the University of Southern California, Rufus B. von KleinSmid. The new wing of Central Library, completed in 1993, was named in honor of former mayor Tom Bradley; the complex was subsequently renamed in 2001 for former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, as the Richard Riordan Central Library.
The Los Angeles Public Library received the National Medal for Museum and Library Service, the nation's highest honor given to museums and libraries for service to the community. City Librarian John F. Szabo and community member Sergio Sanchez accepted the award on behalf of the library from First Lady Michelle Obama during a White House Ceremony on May 20, 2015; the Los Angeles Public Library was selected for its success in meeting the needs of Angelenos and providing a level of social and cultural services unmatched by any other public institution in the city. The award recognizes the library's programs that help people on their path to citizenship, earn their high school diploma, manage personal finances and access health and well-being services and resources. Architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue designed the original Los Angeles Central Library with influences of ancient Egyptian and Mediterranean Revival architecture; the central tower is topped with a tiled mosaic pyramid with suns on the sides with a hand holding a torch representing the "Light of Learning" at the apex.
Other elements include sphinxes and celestial mosaics. It has sculptural elements by the preeminent American architectural sculptor Lee Lawrie, similar to the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln, Nebraska designed by Goodhue; the interior of the library is decorated with various figures, statues and grilles, notably a four-part mural by illustrator Dean Cornwell depicting stages of the History of California, completed around 1933. The building is a designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, is on the National Register of Historic Places; the Central Library was extensively renovated and expanded in a Modernist/Beaux-Arts architecture, according to Norman Pfeiffer, the principal architect of the renovation by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates from 1988 through 1993. It included an eight-story atrium wing dedicated to former mayor Tom Bradley. Now, the library contains an area of 538,000 square feet, has nearly 89 miles of shelves and seating for over 1,400 people; the building's limited access had caused a number of problems.
The accessible public stacks in the reading rooms only displayed about 10 to 20 percent of the actual collections of the Central Library. For anything else, a patron had to submit a request slip and a clerk would retrieve the desired material from the internal stacks. Internal stacks
