Oxford Properties
Oxford Properties, established in 1960 is a global real estate owner, investor and property manager with a portfolio of office, industrial, multi-residential and hotel assets. Wholly owned by the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System since 2003, the organization has 2,000 employees and over $40 billion of real assets that it manages for itself and on behalf of its co-owners and investment partners. Oxford’s portfolio of properties represents more than 50 million square feet of office, hotel, industrial and multi-residential assets in key markets across Canada, the US and Europe. Some of its most recognized assets include Royal Bank Plaza, The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, Yorkdale Shopping Centre, Olympic Tower and The Leadenhall Building. Oxford owns seven Canadian Fairmont luxury hotels which were acquired in 2006, Oxford Leaseholds was established in 1960 in Edmonton by Don Love and John and George Poole, founders of PCL Construction. In the early days of the formation the partners decided there was a need for a medical clinic.
Seven years and a few later, Great-West Life, Confederation Life Insurance Co. To reflect its growing desire to develop towers as well as operate them, the firm entered the 1970s as a publicly traded company, with an offering on the Toronto Stock Exchange, with its assets surpassing $1 billion. At the time, large acquisitions included Y&R Properties portfolio and 25 shopping centres from Cambridge Leaseholds, a decade later, a new ownership structure was introduced as Oxford went private in 1980 in a management-led leveraged buyout. To pay for the deal, it sold its shopping centres, the decade didnt pass quietly however, with assets rising above $3 billion. Oxford Properties set up its headquarters in Torontos Richmond-Adelaide Centre, eight years later, the two companies merged and once again went public with help from a $60 million investment from a Hong Kong investor. The company made significant real estate investments buying entire portfolios from Marathon, Greiner-Pacaud, Hammerson Canada, Royal Bank, Don Love had arrived in Edmonton in 1955 as an enterprising young stockbroker working for a national securities firm.
A physician client approached him about building a clinic in Edmonton. He knew E. E. Poole, another one of his clients, and when Don made the proposal Ernest Poole declined, the three young men started a new company called “POLO” – PO for Poole, and LO for Love. Don provided the imagination, while John and George provided the capital, the trio secured a mortgage and built the Baker Clinic, which they sold back to the doctors of the practice. They were officially in the development business, GRESB is an industry-driven organization committed to assessing the ESG performance of real assets globally, including real estate portfolios and infrastructure assets. Oxford Properties has measured a 26 per cent improvement in the efficiency of their managed portfolio, on a per square foot basis. RBC WaterPark Place was the first LEED Core and Shell Platinum Office Tower in Toronto
Dance
Dance is a performance art form consisting of purposefully selected sequences of human movement. This movement has aesthetic and symbolic value, and is acknowledged as dance by performers and observers within a particular culture, Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoire of movements, or by its historical period or place of origin. Other forms of movement are sometimes said to have a dance-like quality, including martial arts, figure skating, synchronized swimming. Theatrical dance, called performance or concert dance, is intended primarily as a spectacle and it often tells a story, perhaps using mime and scenery, or else it may simply interpret the musical accompaniment, which is often specially composed. Examples are western ballet and modern dance, Classical Indian dance and Chinese and Japanese song, most classical forms are centred upon dance alone, but performance dance may appear in opera and other forms of musical theatre. Such dance seldom has any narrative, a group dance and a corps de ballet, a social partner dance and a pas de deux, differ profoundly.
Even a solo dance may be solely for the satisfaction of the dancer. On the other hand, some cultures lay down strict rules as to the dances in which, for example. Archeological evidence for early dance includes 9, 000-year-old paintings in India at the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka and it has been proposed that before the invention of written languages, dance was an important part of the oral and performance methods of passing stories down from generation to generation. The use of dance in trance states and healing rituals is thought to have been another early factor in the social development of dance. References to dance can be found in very early recorded history, Greek dance is referred to by Plato, Plutarch, the Bible and Talmud refer to many events related to dance, and contain over 30 different dance terms. In Chinese pottery as early as the Neolithic period, groups of people are depicted dancing in a line holding hands, Dance is further described in the Lüshi Chunqiu. Primitive dance in ancient China was associated with sorcery and shamanic rituals, during the first millennium BCE in India, many texts were composed which attempted to codify aspects of daily life.
Bharata Munis Natyashastra is one of the earlier texts and it mainly deals with drama, in which dance plays an important part in Indian culture. It categorizes dance into four types - secular, abstract, the text elaborates various hand-gestures and classifies movements of the various limbs, steps and so on. A strong continuous tradition of dance has since continued in India, through to modern times, where it continues to play a role in culture, and, the Bollywood entertainment industry. Many other contemporary dance forms can likewise be traced back to historical, ceremonial, Dance is generally, though not exclusively, performed with the accompaniment of music and may or may not be performed in time to such music. Some dance may provide its own audible accompaniment in place of music, many early forms of music and dance were created for each other and are frequently performed together
Theatre director
The directors function is to ensure the quality and completeness of theatre production and to lead the members of the creative team into realizing their artistic vision for it. If the production he or she is mounting is a new piece of writing or a translation of a play, in contemporary theatre, after the playwright, the director is generally the primary visionary, making decisions on the artistic concept and interpretation of the play and its staging. Different directors occupy different places of authority and responsibility, depending on the structure, Directors use a wide variety of techniques and levels of collaboration. In ancient Greece, the birthplace of European drama, the writer bore principal responsibility for the staging of his plays, the author-director would train the chorus, sometimes compose the music, and supervise every aspect of production. The fact that the director was called didaskalos, the Greek word for teacher, a miniature by Jean Fouquet from 1460 bears one of the earliest depictions of a director at work.
Holding a prompt book, the central figure directs, with the aid of a long stick, from Renaissance times up until the 19th century, the role of director was often carried by the actor-manager. This would usually be an actor in a troupe who took the responsibility for choosing the repertoire of work, staging it. This was the case for instance with Commedia dellArte companies and English actor-managers like Colley Cibber, the modern theatre director can be said to have originated in the staging of elaborate spectacles of the Meininger Company under George II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. The management of large numbers of extras and complex stagecraft matters necessitated an individual to take on the role of overall coordinator. This gave rise to the role of the director in modern theatre, Constantin Stanislavski, principally an actor-manager, would set up the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia and similarly emancipate the role of the director as artistic visionary. The French regisseur is used to mean a stage director.
A more common term for theatre director in French is metteur en scène, post World War II, the actor-manager slowly started to disappear, and directing become a fully fledged artistic activity within the theatre profession. The director originating artistic vision and concept, and realizing the staging of a production, a cautionary note was introduced by the famed director Sir Tyrone Guthrie who said the only way to learn how to direct a play, is. To get a group of actors simple enough to allow you to let you direct them, most European countries nowadays know some form of professional directing training, usually at drama schools or conservatoires, or at universities. In the early days such programmes typically led to the staging of one major production in the third year. At the University of California, Keith Fowler led for many years a programme based on the premise that directors are autodidacts who need as many opportunities to direct as possible. Under Fowler, graduate student directors would stage between five and ten productions during their residencies, with each production receiving detailed critiques.
Directing is an artform that has grown with the development of theatre theory, with the emergence of new trends in theatre, so too have directors adopted new methodologies and engaged in new practices
New York City
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, 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
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association is the major mens professional basketball league in North America, and is widely considered to be the premier mens professional basketball league in the world. It has 30 teams, and is a member of USA Basketball. The NBA is one of the four professional sports leagues in the United States. NBA players are the worlds best paid athletes by average annual salary per player, the league was founded in New York City on June 6,1946, as the Basketball Association of America. The league adopted the name National Basketball Association on August 3,1949, the leagues several international as well as individual team offices are directed out of its head offices located in the Olympic Tower at 645 Fifth Avenue in New York City. NBA Entertainment and NBA TV studios are directed out of offices located in Secaucus, the Basketball Association of America was founded in 1946 by owners of the major ice hockey arenas in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States and Canada. On November 1,1946, in Toronto, the Toronto Huskies hosted the New York Knickerbockers at Maple Leaf Gardens, the first basket was made by Ossie Schectman of the Knickerbockers.
During its early years, the quality of play in the BAA was not significantly better than in competing leagues or among leading independent clubs such as the Harlem Globetrotters. For instance, the 1948 ABL finalist Baltimore Bullets moved to the BAA and won that leagues 1948 title, Following the 1948–49 season, the BAA took in the remainder of the NBL, Anderson, Tri-Cities, Sheboygan and Waterloo. The new league had seventeen franchises located in a mix of large and small cities, as well as arenas and smaller gymnasiums. The process of contraction saw the leagues smaller-city franchises move to larger cities, the Hawks shifted from the Tri-Cities to Milwaukee in 1951, and to St. Louis in 1955. The Rochester Royals moved from Rochester, New York, to Cincinnati in 1957, japanese-American Wataru Misaka broke the NBA color barrier in the 1947–48 season when he played for the New York Knicks. He remained the only player in league history prior to the first African-American, Harold Hunter. During this period, the Minneapolis Lakers, led by center George Mikan, won five NBA Championships, to encourage shooting and discourage stalling, the league introduced the 24-second shot clock in 1954.
If a team does not attempt to score a goal within 24 seconds of obtaining the ball, play is stopped. In 1957, rookie center Bill Russell joined the Boston Celtics, who already featured guard Bob Cousy and coach Red Auerbach, and went on to lead the club to eleven NBA titles in thirteen seasons. Center Wilt Chamberlain entered the league with the Warriors in 1959 and became a dominant individual star of the 1960s, russells rivalry with Chamberlain became one of the greatest rivalries in the history of American team sports. The 1960s were dominated by the Celtics, led by Russell, Bob Cousy and coach Red Auerbach, Boston won eight straight championships in the NBA from 1959 to 1966
Broadway theatre
Along with Londons West End theatres, Broadway theatres are widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. The Theater District is a popular tourist attraction in New York City, the great majority of Broadway shows are musicals. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggars Opera, in 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg and opened with The Merchant of Venice, the company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, by the 1840s, P. T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in lower Manhattan.
In 1829, at Broadway and Prince Street, Niblos Garden opened, the 3, 000-seat theatre presented all sorts of musical and non-musical entertainments. In 1844, Palmos Opera House opened and presented opera for four seasons before bankruptcy led to its rebranding as a venue for plays under the name Burtons Theatre. The Astor Opera House opened in 1847, booth played the role for a famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865, and would revive the role at his own Booths Theatre. Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, lydia Thompson came to America in 1868 heading a small theatrical troupe, adapting popular English burlesques for middle-class New York audiences. Thompsons troupe called the British Blondes, was the most popular entertainment in New York during the 1868–1869 theatrical season, the six-month tour ran for almost six extremely profitable years. Theatre in New York moved from downtown gradually to midtown beginning around 1850, in 1870, the heart of Broadway was in Union Square, and by the end of the century, many theatres were near Madison Square.
Broadways first long-run musical was a 50-performance hit called The Elves in 1857, New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keenes musical burletta The Seven Sisters shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances. It was at a performance by Keenes troupe of Our American Cousin in Washington, the production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a musical comedy, Tony Pastor opened the first vaudeville theatre one block east of Union Square in 1881, where Lillian Russell performed. Comedians Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 and 1890, with book and lyrics by Harrigan and music by his father-in-law David Braham. They starred high quality singers, instead of the women of repute who had starred in earlier musical forms. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading to better profits, as in England, during the latter half of the century, the theatre began to be cleaned up, with less prostitution hindering the attendance of the theatre by women
Chicago
Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, film, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language.
The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S.
The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP is an American architectural, urban planning, and engineering firm. It was formed in Chicago in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings, with a portfolio spanning thousands of projects across 50 countries, SOM is one of the largest architectural firms in the world. Their primary expertise is in commercial buildings, as it was SOM that led the way to the widespread use of the modern international-style or glass box skyscraper. They have designed several of the tallest buildings in the world, including the John Hancock Center, Willis Tower, due to their faithful following of Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohes ideas, Frank Lloyd Wright nicknamed them The Three Blind Mies. Notable SOM architects include, Edward Charles Bassett, Natalie de Blois, Gordon Bunshaft, David Childs, Myron Goldsmith, Bruce Graham, Gertrude Kerbis, Fazlur Rahman Khan. Lucien Lagrange, Walter Netsch, Larry Oltmanns, Brigitte Peterhans, Adrian Smith, Khan is responsible for developing the algorithms that made the Hancock building and many subsequent skyscrapers possible.
Another notable SOM engineer is Bill Baker, who is best known as the engineer of Burj Khalifa, to support the towers record heights and slim footprint, he developed the buttressed core structural system, consisting of a hexagonal core reinforced by three buttresses that form a Y shape. Davis Allen, a pioneer in corporate interior design, had a tenure at SOM. Throughout its history, SOM has been recognized more than 1,700 awards for quality. More than 900 of these awards have received since 1998. In 1996 and 1962, SOM received the Architecture Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects, SOM is the only firm to have received this honor twic13 R+D Awards from Architect Magazine. In addition, a collaboration between SOM and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, The Center for Architecture and Ecology, was honored with a fifth award. SOM has completed over 10,000 projects around the United States and in more than 50 other countries around the world, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Abu Dhabi. Smaller field offices supplement these in such as the Philippines.
Burj Khalifa is the tallest man-made structure ever built, at 829.8 m, construction began on 21 September 2004, and the building officially opened on 4 January 2010. The towers architect and engineer was Skidmore and Merrill, george J. Efstathiou was the Managing Partner for the project. Bill Baker, the Chief Structural Engineer for the project, invented the buttressed core structural system in order to enable the tower to achieve such heights economically, Adrian Smith, who worked with Skidmore and Merrill until 2006, was the Consulting Design Partner. The primary builder is a joint venture of South Korean Samsung C&T, one World Trade Center, known as the Freedom Tower, is located in Manhattan, New York City, and is 1,776 ft high, making it the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere
Cabaret (musical)
Cabaret is a musical based on a book written by Christopher Isherwood, with music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit, inspiring numerous subsequent productions in London and New York and it is based on John Van Drutens 1951 play I Am a Camera, which was adapted from the short novel Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood. A sub-plot involves the doomed romance between German boarding house owner Fräulein Schneider and her elderly suitor Herr Schultz, a Jewish fruit vendor, overseeing the action is the Master of Ceremonies at the Kit Kat Klub. The club serves as a metaphor for ominous political developments in late Weimar Germany, Prince commissioned Joe Masteroff to work on the book. When Prince and Masteroff agreed that Wilsons score failed to capture the essence of late-1920s Berlin, John Kander, the new version was initially a dramatic play preceded by a prologue of songs describing the Berlin atmosphere from various points of view. Isherwoods original characters were changed as well, the musical ultimately expressed two stories in one, the first a revue centered on the decadence of the seedy Kit Kat Klub, the second a story set in the society of the club.
After seeing one of the last rehearsals before the company headed to Boston for the pre-Broadway run, in Boston, Jill Haworth struggled with her characterization of cabaret performer Sally Bowles. Critics thought the blonde dressed in a white dress suggested senior prom more than tawdry nightclub, princes staging was unusual for the time. As the audience filled the theater, the curtain was already up, revealing a stage containing nothing, There was no overture, instead, a drum roll and cymbal crash led into the opening number. Replacements in the run included Anita Gillette and Melissa Hart as Sally, Ken Kercheval and Larry Kert as Cliff, in addition, John Serry Sr. performed as the orchestral accordionist. The 1967-1968 US national tour featured Melissa Hart, Signe Hasso, the tour included the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut in December 1967, the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, Ohio, Baltimore and Atlanta, Georgia. In 1986, the show was revived in London at the Strand Theatre starring Kelly Hunter as Sally, Peter Land as Cliff and Wayne Sleep as the Emcee, the first Broadway revival opened on October 22,1987, with direction and choreography by Prince and Field.
The revival opened at the Imperial Theatre, eventually transferring to the Minskoff to complete its 261-performance run, the song Dont Go was added for Cliffs character. In 1993, Sam Mendes directed a new production of the show for the Donmar Warehouse in Londons West End and it starred Jane Horrocks as Sally, Adam Godley as Cliff, Alan Cumming as the Emcee and Sara Kestelman as Fräulein Schneider. Cumming received an Olivier Award nomination for his performance and Kestelman won the Olivier for Best Supporting Performance in a Musical, Mendes conception was very different from either the original production or the conventional first revival. The most significant change was the character of the Emcee, the role, as played by Joel Grey in both prior incarnations, was an asexual, edgy character dressed in a tuxedo with rouged cheeks. Alan Cummings portrayal was highly sexualized, as he wore suspenders around his crotch, staging details differed as well, instead of Tomorrow Belongs To Me being performed by a male choir, the Emcee plays a recording of a boy soprano singing it.
In the final scene, the Emcee removes his clothes to reveal a striped suit of the type worn by the internees in concentration camps, on it are pinned a yellow badge
New York (state)
New York is a state in the northeastern United States, and is the 27th-most extensive, fourth-most populous, and seventh-most densely populated U. S. state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut and Vermont to the east. With an estimated population of 8.55 million in 2015, New York City is the most populous city in the United States, the New York Metropolitan Area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. New York City makes up over 40% of the population of New York State, two-thirds of the states population lives in the New York City Metropolitan Area, and nearly 40% lives on Long Island. Both the state and New York City were named for the 17th-century Duke of York, the next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. New York has a diverse geography and these more mountainous regions are bisected by two major river valleys—the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley, which forms the core of the Erie Canal.
Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes Region and straddles Lake Ontario, between the two lakes lies Niagara Falls. The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. The first Europeans to arrive were French colonists and Jesuit missionaries who arrived southward from settlements at Montreal for trade, the British annexed the colony from the Dutch in 1664. The borders of the British colony, the Province of New York, were similar to those of the present-day state, New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. On April 17,1524 Verrazanno entered New York Bay, by way of the now called the Narrows into the northern bay which he named Santa Margherita.
Verrazzano described it as a vast coastline with a delta in which every kind of ship could pass and he adds. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats and he landed on the tip of Manhattan and possibly on the furthest point of Long Island. Verrazannos stay was interrupted by a storm which pushed him north towards Marthas Vineyard, in 1540 French traders from New France built a chateau on Castle Island, within present-day Albany, due to flooding, it was abandoned the next year. In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Corstiaensen, rebuilt the French chateau, Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, and was located along the Hudson River, within present-day Albany. The small fort served as a trading post and warehouse, located on the Hudson River flood plain, the rudimentary fort was washed away by flooding in 1617, and abandoned for good after Fort Orange was built nearby in 1623. Henry Hudsons 1609 voyage marked the beginning of European involvement with the area, sailing for the Dutch East India Company and looking for a passage to Asia, he entered the Upper New York Bay on September 11 of that year
52nd Street (Manhattan)
52nd Street is a 1. 9-mile long one-way street traveling west to east across Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was known as the center of jazz performance from the 1930s to the 1950s. Following the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, 52nd Street replaced 133rd street as Swing Street of the city, the blocks of 52nd Street between Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue became renowned for the abundance of jazz clubs and lively street life. The street was convenient to musicians playing on Broadway and the nightclubs and was the site of a CBS studio. Musicians who played for others in the evening played for themselves on 52nd Street. Although musicians from all schools performed there, after Mintons Playhouse in uptown Harlem, in fact, a tune called 52nd Street Theme by Thelonious Monk became a bebop anthem and jazz standard. By the late 1940s the jazz scene began moving elsewhere around the city, by the 1960s, most of the legendary clubs were razed or fell into disrepair. The last club there closed its doors in 1968, the street is full of banks and department stores and shows little trace of its jazz history.
The block from 5th to 6th Avenues is formally co-named Swing Street, the 21 Club is the sole surviving club on 52nd Street that existed during the 1940s. The venue for the original Birdland at 1674 Broadway, which came into existence in 1949, is now a gentlemens club, the current Birdland is on 44th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues. This is a list of places within one block of 52nd Street. The route begins at the West Side Highway, Duncan Center on the block after moving from its original location. The Duncan Center is named for a patrolman who was shot while chasing a car in the neighborhood on May 17,1930. Closed Midtown Branch of Saint Vincents Catholic Medical Center The Manhattan School – Public School 35, radio City Station Post Office The Link, 43–story, 215–unit, glass tower condominium, opened in 2007 on site of the S. I. R. Building at 310 W 52nd, known as the Palm Gardens Building, occupied the building from 1974 until 2004. Cheetah, the club that had once been at 53rd and Broadway.
Cheetah became a popular Latin-American dance club that helped popularize Salsa to mainstream America. C, sixth Avenue to Fifth Avenue is signed Swing Street AXA Financial Center 43-story 174 m 571 ft completed in 1963. It has a large Thomas Hart Benton mural in lobby, CBS Building, headquarters of the network and popularly referred to as Black Rock 31 West 52nd Street 30-floor 125 m 411 ft completed in 1986 originally for the E. F. Hutton headquarters
Willis Tower
The Willis Tower, built as and still commonly referred to as Sears Tower, is a 108-story,1, 450-foot skyscraper in Chicago, United States. The building is considered an achievement for its architect Fazlur Kahn. The Willis Tower is the second-tallest building in the United States, more than one million people visit its observation deck each year, making it one of Chicagos most popular tourist destinations. The structure was renamed in 2009 by the Willis Group as part of its lease on a portion of the towers space, the buildings official address is 233 South Wacker Drive, Illinois 60606. In 1969, Roebuck & Co. was the largest retailer in the world, Sears executives decided to consolidate the thousands of employees in offices distributed throughout the Chicago area into one building on the western edge of Chicagos Loop. Sears asked its counsel, Gluck, Weitzenfeld & Minow to suggest a location. This latter site was decided upon, and preliminary inquiries determined that the necessary permits could be obtained, the next step was to acquire the property, a team of attorneys from the Arnstein law firm, headed by Andrew Adsit, began buying the property parcel by parcel.
Sears purchased 15 old buildings from 100 owners and paid $2.7 million to the City of Chicago for the portion of Quincy Street that divided the property. Their team of architect Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan designed the building as nine square tubes, all nine tubes would rise up to the 50th floor of the building. At the 50th floor, the northwest and southeast tubes end, at the 66th floor, the northeast and the southwest tubes end. At the 90th floor, the north and south tubes end, the remaining west and center tubes continue up to the 108th floor. The Willis Tower was the first building to use Khans bundled tube structure and this innovative design was structurally efficient and economic, at 1,450 feet, it provided more space and rose higher than the Empire State Building, yet cost much less per unit area. This structural system would prove influential in skyscraper construction. It has been used in most supertall buildings since then, including the worlds tallest building, to honor Khans contributions, the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois commissioned a sculpture of him for the lobby of the Willis Tower.
The latter floor areas had to be designed to a plate, with a high window-space to floor-space ratio, to be attractive. Smaller floorplates required a structure to yield sufficient square footage. The height was restricted by a limit imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration to protect air traffic, the financing of the tower was provided by the Sears company. It was topped with two antennas to permit local television and radio broadcasts and the City of Chicago approved the design, and the first steel was put in place in April 1971
