1.
Beaux-Arts architecture
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Beaux-Arts architecture expresses the academic neoclassical architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The style of instruction that produced Beaux-Arts architecture continued without interruption until 1968. The Beaux-Arts style heavily influenced the architecture of the United States in the period from 1880 to 1920, in contrast, many European architects of the period 1860–1914 outside France gravitated away from Beaux-Arts and towards their own national academic centers. American architects of the Beaux-Arts generation often returned to Greek models, for the first time, repertories of photographs supplemented meticulous scale drawings and on-site renderings of details. Beaux-Arts training emphasized the production of quick conceptual sketches, highly finished perspective presentation drawings, close attention to the program, site considerations tended toward social and urbane contexts. In the façade shown to the right, Diana grasps the cornice she sits on in an action typical of Beaux-Arts integration of sculpture with architecture. A sense of appropriate idiom at the craftsman level supported the teams of the first truly modern architectural offices. The prestige of the École gave the style Beaux-Arts a second wind in combining the new manner with the traditional training and they were followed by an entire generation. Henry Hobson Richardson absorbed Beaux-Arts lessons in massing and spatial planning and his Beaux-Arts training taught him to transcend slavish copying and recreate in the essential fully digested and idiomatic manner of his models. Richardson evolved a personal style freed of historicism that was influential in early Modernism. The White City of the Worlds Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago was a triumph of the movement, the Beaux-Arts curriculum was subsequently begun at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. From 1916, the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York City schooled architects, painters, bosworth, Carnegie Mellon University, designed by Henry Hornbostel, and the University of Texas, designed by Paul Philippe Cret. Beaux-Arts architecture also brought a civic face to the railroad, two of the best American examples of the Beaux-Arts tradition stand within a few blocks of each other, Grand Central Terminal and the New York Public Library. Another prominent U. S. example of the style is the largest academic dormitory in the world, in the late 1800s, during the years when Beaux-Arts architecture was at a peak in France, Americans were one of the largest groups of foreigners in Paris. Many of them were architects and students of architecture who brought this back to America. Beaux-Arts was very prominent in public buildings in Canada in the early 20th century, notably all three prairie provinces legislative buildings are in this style. Buenos Aires is a center of Beaux-Arts architecture which continued to be built as late as the 1950s, national Theatre, Melbourne General Post Office building, Forrest Place, Perth Argus Building. Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York, A Photographic Guide United States, sixteenth Street Architecture – profiles of Beaux-Arts architecture in Washington D. C
2.
Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco
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Van Ness Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare in San Francisco, California, running from Market St north to the Bay. Originally named Marlette Street, the street was renamed Van Ness Avenue in honor of the seventh mayor. Van Ness Avenue begins at Market Street near the Civic Center, of the more striking landmarks along the route are the San Francisco City Hall, the War Memorial Opera House, and Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. South Van Ness Avenue is the portion of Van Ness south of Market Street, continuing through the citys South of Market and it was formerly a continuation of Howard Street, having been renamed by resolution of the Board of Supervisors on August 22,1932. The route is designated US101 from the Central Freeway at the convergence of South Van Ness, Howard Street, and 13th Street, north to Lombard Street. Originally a quiet neighborhood of mansions, the street was used as a firebreak by the U. S. Army during the 1906 earthquake. Many of the buildings were dynamited along the street by soldiers in a successful attempt to prevent the firestorm from spreading west to the entire city. It still remains an upscale area with large and grand apartment buildings, restaurants. Streetcar service started on Van Ness in 1915 for the opening of the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, the rail lines were removed in the 1950s and replaced with a tree-lined median. The entire route is within the borders of the City and County of San Francisco
3.
San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
4.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
5.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
6.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
7.
Seating capacity
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Seating capacity is the number of people who can be seated in a specific space, in terms of both the physical space available, and limitations set by law. Seating capacity can be used in the description of anything ranging from an automobile that seats two to a stadium that seats hundreds of thousands of people. The International Fire Code, portions of which have adopted by many jurisdictions, is directed more towards the use of a facility than the construction. It specifies, For areas having fixed seating without dividing arms and it also requires that every public venue submit a detailed site plan to the local fire code official, including details of the means of egress, seating capacity, arrangement of the seating. Once safety considerations have been satisfied, determinations of seating capacity turn on the size of the venue. For sports venues, the decision on maximum seating capacity is determined by several factors, chief among these are the primary sports program and the size of the market area. Seating capacity of venues also plays a role in what media they are able to provide, in contracting to permit performers to use a theatre or other performing space, the seating capacity of the performance facility must be disclosed. Seating capacity may influence the kind of contract to be used, the seating capacity must also be disclosed to the copyright owner in seeking a license for the copyrighted work to be performed in that venue. Venues that may be leased for private functions such as ballrooms and auditoriums generally advertise their seating capacity, seating capacity is also an important consideration in the construction and use of sports venues such as stadiums and arenas. The seating capacity for restaurants is reported as covers, a restaurant that can seat 99 is said to have 99 covers, seating capacity differs from total capacity, which describes the total number of people who can fit in a venue or in a vehicle either sitting or standing. Use of the term public capacity indicates that a venue is allowed to more people than it can actually seat. Again, the total number of people can refer to either the physical space available or limitations set by law
8.
San Francisco, California
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
9.
Acre
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The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is defined as the area of 1 chain by 1 furlong, lucia, St. Helena, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Turks and Caicos, the United Kingdom, the United States and the US Virgin Islands. The international symbol of the acre is ac, the most commonly used acre today is the international acre. In the United States both the international acre and the US survey acre are in use, but differ by two parts per million, see below. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land, one international acre is defined as exactly 4,046.8564224 square metres. An acre was defined in the Middle Ages, being the amount of land that could be ploughed in one day with a yoke of oxen. One acre equals 0.0015625 square miles,4,840 square yards,43,560 square feet or about 4,047 square metres. While all modern variants of the acre contain 4,840 square yards, there are definitions of a yard. A square enclosing one acre is approximately 69.57 yards, as a unit of measure, an acre has no prescribed shape, any area of 43,560 square feet is an acre. In the international yard and pound agreement of 1959 the United States, consequently, the international acre is exactly 4,046.8564224 square metres. The US survey acre is about 4,046.872609874252 square metres, its value is based on an inch defined by 1 metre =39.37 inches exactly. Surveyors in the United States use both international and survey feet, and consequently, both varieties of acre. Since the difference between the US survey acre and international acre is only about a quarter of the size of an A4 sheet of paper, areas are seldom measured with sufficient accuracy for the different definitions to be detectable. In India, residential plots are measured in cents or decimal, in Sri Lanka the division of an acre into 160 perches or 4 roods is common. To be more exact, one acre is 90.75 percent of a 100 yards long by 53.33 yards wide American football field, the full field, including the end zones, covers approximately 1.32 acres. For residents of countries, the acre might be envisaged as approximately half of a 105 metres long by 68 metres wide association football pitch. It may also be remembered as 44,000 square feet, in English it was historically spelled aker. The acre was approximately the amount of land tillable by a yoke of oxen in one day and this explains one definition as the area of a rectangle with sides of length one chain and one furlong
10.
Hectares
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The hectare is an SI accepted metric system unit of area equal to 100 ares and primarily used in the measurement of land as a metric replacement for the imperial acre. An acre is about 0.405 hectare and one hectare contains about 2.47 acres, in 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1⁄100 km2. When the metric system was further rationalised in 1960, resulting in the International System of Units, the are was not included as a recognised unit. The hectare, however, remains as a non-SI unit accepted for use with the SI units, the metric system of measurement was first given a legal basis in 1795 by the French Revolutionary government. At the first meeting of the CGPM in 1889 when a new standard metre, manufactured by Johnson Matthey & Co of London was adopted, in 1960, when the metric system was updated as the International System of Units, the are did not receive international recognition. The units that were catalogued replicated the recommendations of the CGPM, many farmers, especially older ones, still use the acre for everyday calculations, and convert to hectares only for official paperwork. Farm fields can have long histories which are resistant to change, with names such as the six acre field stretching back hundreds of years. The names centiare, deciare, decare and hectare are derived by adding the standard metric prefixes to the base unit of area. The centiare is a synonym for one square metre, the deciare is ten square metres. The are is a unit of area, equal to 100 square metres and it was defined by older forms of the metric system, but is now outside of the modern International System of Units. It is commonly used to measure real estate, in particular in Indonesia, India, and in French-, Portuguese-, Slovakian-, Serbian-, Czech-, Polish-, Dutch-, in Russia and other former Soviet Union states, the are is called sotka. It is used to describe the size of suburban dacha or allotment garden plots or small city parks where the hectare would be too large, the decare is derived from deka, the prefix for 10 and are, and is equal to 10 ares or 1000 square metres. It is used in Norway and in the former Ottoman areas of the Middle East, the hectare, although not strictly a unit of SI, is the only named unit of area that is accepted for use within the SI. The United Kingdom, United States, Burma, and to some extent Canada instead use the acre, others, such as South Africa, published conversion factors which were to be used particularly when preparing consolidation diagrams by compilation. In many countries, metrication redefined or clarified existing measures in terms of metric units, non-SI units accepted for use with the International System of Units
11.
Civic Center, San Francisco
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It has two large plazas and a number of buildings in classical architectural style. The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, the United Nations Charter was signed in the War Memorial Veterans Buildings Herbst Theatre in 1945 and it is also where the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco was signed. The San Francisco Civic Center was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987, the Civic Center is bounded by Market Street on the south, Franklin Street on the west, Turk Street on the north, and Leavenworth and Seventh streets on the east. The Civic Center was built in the early 20th century after a city hall was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. Although the noted architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham had provided the city plans for a neo-classical Civic Center shortly before the 1906 earthquake. A temporary city hall was put up on Market Street, but planning for a permanent structure. The current civic center was planned by a group of local architects, the current City Hall was completed in 1915, in time for the Panama-Pacific Exposition. The War Memorial Opera House and its twin, the War Memorial Veterans Building, the Main Library. During World War II, Army barracks and Victory gardens were constructed in the plaza in front of City Hall. The Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall and Harold L. Zellerbach Rehearsal Hall were added in 1980, the 1990s saw the construction of a new Main Library with the conversion of the old Main Library building into the Asian Art Museum, and the removal of all public benches. In 1998, the city officially renamed part of the plaza the Joseph L. Alioto Performing Arts Piazza after the former mayor. Its central location, vast open space, and the collection of government buildings have made and it has been the scene of massive anti-war protests and rallies since the Korean War. It was also the scene of major moments of the Gay Rights Movement, activist Harvey Milk held rallies and gave speeches there. After his assassination on November 27,1978, a candlelight vigil was held there. Later, it was the scene of the White Night Riots in response to the lenient sentencing of Dan White, recently, Civic Center was the center point of the Gay Marriage activism, as Mayor Gavin Newsom married couples there. The centerpiece of the Civic Center is the City Hall, which heads the complex, the section of the street in front of the building was renamed for Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett, a local African American activist, across the street on McAllister Street is the headquarters of the Supreme Court of California. Across from that building is the Asian Art Museum, opened in 2004 in the building of the San Francisco Library which is now in a newer building constructed in 1995
12.
Opera
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Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. In traditional opera, singers do two types of singing, recitative, a style and arias, a more melodic style. Opera incorporates many of the elements of theatre, such as acting, scenery. The performance is given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition, in the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, attracting foreign composers such as George Frideric Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Christoph Willibald Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his operas in the 1760s. The first third of the 19th century saw the point of the bel canto style, with Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti. It also saw the advent of Grand Opera typified by the works of Auber and Meyerbeer, the mid-to-late 19th century was a golden age of opera, led and dominated by Richard Wagner in Germany and Giuseppe Verdi in Italy. The popularity of opera continued through the era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Giacomo Puccini. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe, the 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism, Neoclassicism, and Minimalism. With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso, since the invention of radio and television, operas were also performed on these mediums. Beginning in 2006, a number of opera houses began to present live high-definition video transmissions of their performances in cinemas all over the world. In 2009, an opera company offered a download of a complete performance. The words of an opera are known as the libretto, some composers, notably Wagner, have written their own libretti, others have worked in close collaboration with their librettists, e. g. Mozart with Lorenzo Da Ponte. Vocal duets, trios and other ensembles often occur, and choruses are used to comment on the action, in some forms of opera, such as singspiel, opéra comique, operetta, and semi-opera, the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, the terminology of the various kinds of operatic voices is described in detail below. Over the 18th century, arias were accompanied by the orchestra. Subsequent composers have tended to follow Wagners example, though some, the changing role of the orchestra in opera is described in more detail below
13.
Symphony
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A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often written by composers for orchestra. Symphonies are scored for string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30–100 musicians, Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the music for their instrument. A small number of symphonies also contain vocal parts, the word symphony is derived from the Greek word συμφωνία, meaning agreement or concord of sound, concert of vocal or instrumental music, from σύμφωνος, harmonious. The word referred to a variety of different things, before ultimately settling on its current meaning designating a musical form. In late Greek and medieval theory, the word was used for consonance, as opposed to διαφωνία, in the Middle Ages and later, the Latin form symphonia was used to describe various instruments, especially those capable of producing more than one sound simultaneously. Isidore of Seville was the first to use the word symphonia as the name of a two-headed drum, in late medieval England, symphony was used in both of these senses, whereas by the 16th century it was equated with the dulcimer. In German, Symphonie was a term for spinets and virginals from the late 16th century to the 18th century. 16, published in 1607, Lodovico Grossi da Viadanas Sinfonie musicali,18, published in 1610, and Heinrich Schützs Symphoniae sacrae, op. 6, and Symphoniarum sacrarum secunda pars, op,10, published in 1629 and 1647, respectively. Except for Viadanas collection, which contained purely instrumental and secular music, the opera sinfonia, or Italian overture had, by the 18th century, a standard structure of three contrasting movements, fast, slow, fast and dance-like. It is this form that is considered as the direct forerunner of the orchestral symphony. The terms overture, symphony and sinfonia were widely regarded as interchangeable for much of the 18th century, when composers from the 17th century wrote pieces, they expected that these works would be performed by whatever group of musicians were available. A performance of the piece might be done with a basso continuo group as small as a single cello, during the 18th century, the symphony was cultivated with extraordinary intensity. It played a role in areas of public life, including church services. Since the normal size of the orchestra at the time was quite small, laRue, Bonds, Walsh, and Wilson trace the gradual expansion of the symphonic orchestra through the 18th century. At first, symphonies were string symphonies, written in just four parts, first violin, second violin, viola, occasionally the early symphonists even dispensed with the viola part, thus creating three-part symphonies. A basso continuo part including a bassoon together with a harpsichord or other chording instrument was also possible, the first additions to this simple ensemble were a pair of horns, occasionally a pair of oboes, and then both horns and oboes together
14.
Modern dance
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Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance, primarily arising out of Germany and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Modern dance is considered to have emerged as a rejection of. Socioeconomic and cultural factors contributed to its development. In the late 19th century, dance artists such as Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan, moving into the 1960s, new ideas about dance began to emerge, as a response to earlier dance forms and to social changes. Eventually, postmodern dance artists would reject the formalism of modern dance, and include such as performance art, contact improvisation, release technique. American modern dance can be divided into three periods or eras, Modern dance has evolved with each subsequent generation of participating artists. Artistic content has morphed and shifted from one choreographer to another, artists such as Graham and Horton developed techniques in the Central Modern Period that are still taught worldwide, and numerous other types of modern dance exist today. In America, increasing industrialization, the rise of a class, and the decline of Victorian social strictures led to, among other changes. It was in this atmosphere that a new dance was emerging as much from a rejection of social structures as from a dissatisfaction with ballet, womens colleges began offering aesthetic dance courses by the end of the 1880s. Emil Rath, who wrote at length about this emerging artform at the stated, Music and rhythmic bodily movement are twin sisters of art. 1877, Isadora Duncan was a predecessor of modern dance with her stress on the center or torso, bare feet, loose hair, free-flowing costumes, and incorporation of humor into emotional expression. She was inspired by classical Greek arts, folk dances, social dances, nature, natural forces, and new American athleticism such as skipping, running, jumping, leaping and she thought that ballet was ugly and meaningless gymnastics. Although she returned to the United States at various points in her life and she returned to Europe and died in Nice in 1927. 1891, Loie Fuller began experimenting with the effect that gas lighting had on her silk costumes, Fuller developed a form of natural movement and improvisation techniques that were used in conjunction with her revolutionary lighting equipment and translucent silk costumes. She patented her apparatus and methods of lighting that included the use of coloured gels and burning chemicals for luminescence. 1905, Ruth St. Denis, influenced by the actress Sarah Bernhardt and Japanese dancer Sada Yacco, developed her translations of Indian culture and her performances quickly became popular and she toured extensively while researching Oriental culture and arts. Other pioneers included Kurt Jooss and Harald Kreutzberg, an accomplished choreographer, she was a founding artist of the first American Dance Festival in Bennington. Holm choreographed extensively in the fields of dance and musical theater
15.
Ballet
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Ballet /ˈbæleɪ/ is a type of performance dance that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread, highly technical form of dance with its own based on French terminology. It has been influential and has defined the foundational techniques used in many other dance genres. Becoming a ballet dancer requires years of training, Ballet has been taught in various schools around the world, which have historically incorporated their own cultures to evolve the art. Ballet may also refer to a dance work, which consists of the choreography. A well-known example of this is The Nutcracker, a ballet that was originally choreographed by Marius Petipa. Ballets are choreographed and performed by trained artists, the word came into English usage from the French around 1630. Ballet originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th and 16th centuries before being spread from Italy to France by an Italian aristocrat, Catherine de Medici, in France, ballet developed even further under her aristocratic influence. The dancers in these early court ballets were mostly noble amateurs, Ballets in this period were lengthy and elaborate and often served a political purpose. Ornamented costumes were meant to impress viewers and restricted freedom of movement. The ballets were performed in large chambers with viewers on three sides, French court ballet reached its height under the reign of King Louis XIV. Known as the Sun King, Louis symbolized the brilliance of France, in 1661 Louis founded the Académie Royale de Danse to establish standards and certify dance instructors. In 1672, Louis XIV made Jean-Baptiste Lully the director of the Académie Royale de Musique from which the first professional ballet company, Lully is considered the most important composer of music for ballets de cour and instrumental to the development of the form. Ballet went into decline in France after 1830, though it continued to develop in Denmark, Italy, the arrival in Europe on the eve of First World War of the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, revived interest in the ballet and started the modern era. The Russian choreographer Michel Fokine challenged tradition and called for reforms that reinvigorated ballet as an art form, in the 20th century, ballet had a wide influence on other dance genres, and subgenres of ballet have also evolved. In the United States, choreographer George Balanchine developed what is now known as neoclassical ballet, other developments include contemporary ballet and post-structural ballet. Also in the century, ballet took a turn dividing it from classical ballet to the introduction of modern dance. Stylistic variations have emerged and evolved since the Italian Renaissance, early, classical variations are primarily associated with geographic origin
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Theatre
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The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence, the specific place of the performance is also named by the word theatre as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον, itself from θεάομαι. Modern theatre, broadly defined, includes performances of plays and musical theatre, there are connections between theatre and the art forms of ballet, opera and various other forms. The city-state of Athens is where western theatre originated, participation in the city-states many festivals—and mandatory attendance at the City Dionysia as an audience member in particular—was an important part of citizenship. The Greeks also developed the concepts of dramatic criticism and theatre architecture, Actors were either amateur or at best semi-professional. The theatre of ancient Greece consisted of three types of drama, tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play, the origins of theatre in ancient Greece, according to Aristotle, the first theoretician of theatre, are to be found in the festivals that honoured Dionysus. The performances were given in semi-circular auditoria cut into hillsides, capable of seating 10, the stage consisted of a dancing floor, dressing room and scene-building area. Since the words were the most important part, good acoustics, the actors wore masks appropriate to the characters they represented, and each might play several parts. Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an important part of the culture of the city-state. Having emerged sometime during the 6th century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE, no tragedies from the 6th century BCE and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in during the 5th century BCE have survived. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the origins of tragedy remain obscure, though by the 5th century BCE it was institution alised in competitions held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysus. As contestants in the City Dionysias competition playwrights were required to present a tetralogy of plays, the performance of tragedies at the City Dionysia may have begun as early as 534 BCE, official records begin from 501 BCE, when the satyr play was introduced. More than 130 years later, the philosopher Aristotle analysed 5th-century Athenian tragedy in the oldest surviving work of dramatic theory—his Poetics, Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy. Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the surviving plays of Aristophanes. New Comedy is known primarily from the papyrus fragments of Menander. Aristotle defined comedy as a representation of people that involves some kind of blunder or ugliness that does not cause pain or disaster. In addition to the categories of comedy and tragedy at the City Dionysia, finding its origins in rural, agricultural rituals dedicated to Dionysus, the satyr play eventually found its way to Athens in its most well-known form. Satyrs themselves were tied to the god Dionysus as his loyal companions, often engaging in drunken revelry
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Recital
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A concert is a live music performance in front of an audience. A recital is a concert by a soloist or small group which follows a program, a recitalist is a musician who gives frequent recitals. The invention of the piano recital has been attributed to Franz Liszt. The performance may be by a musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, choir. Indoor concerts held in the largest venues are sometimes called arena concerts or amphitheatre concerts, informal names for a concert include show and gig. Regardless of the venue, musicians perform on a stage. Concerts often require live event support with professional audio equipment, before recorded music, concerts provided the main opportunity to hear musicians play. The nature of a concert varies by musical genre, individual performers, concerts by a small jazz combo or small bluegrass band may have the same order of program, mood, and volume—but vary in music and dress. In a similar way, a musician, band, or genre of music might attract concert attendees with similar dress, hairstyle. For example, concert goers in the 1960s often had hair, sandals. Regular attendees to a concert venue might also have a style that comprises that venues scene. Other Types of concerts, To plan or arrange by mutual agreement, some performers or groups put on very elaborate and expensive shows. To create a memorable and exciting atmosphere and increase the spectacle, some singers, especially popular music, augment concert sound with pre-recorded accompaniment, back-up dancers, and even broadcast vocal tracks of the singers own voice. Activities during these concerts can include dancing, sing-alongs, and moshing, concerts involving a greater number of artists, especially those that last for multiple days, are known as festivals. Unlike other concerts, which remain in a single genre of music or work of a particular artist, festivals often cover a broad scope of music. Due to their size, festivals are almost exclusively held outdoors, new platforms for festivals are becoming increasingly popular such as Jam Cruise, which is a festival held on a cruise ship, as well as Mayan Holidaze, which is a destination festival held in Tulum. Often concert tours are named, to differentiate different tours by the same artist, different segments of longer concert tours are known as legs. In the largest concert tours it is becoming common for different legs to employ separate touring production crews and equipment
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Play (theatre)
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A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. Plays are performed at a variety of levels, from Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theater, to Community theatre, there are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference as to whether their plays were performed or read. The term play can refer to both the works of playwrights and to their complete theatrical performance. Comedies are plays which are designed to be humorous, comedies are often filled with witty remarks, unusual characters, and strange circumstances. Certain comedies are geared toward different age groups, comedies were one of the two original play types of Ancient Greece, along with tragedies. An example of a comedy would be William Shakespeares play A Midsummer Nights Dream, a generally nonsensical genre of play, farces are often overacted and often involve slapstick humor. An example of a farce includes William Shakespeares play The Comedy of Errors, a satire play takes a comic look at current events people while at the same time attempting to make a political or social statement, for example pointing out corruption. An example of a satire would be Nikolai Gogols The Government Inspector, satire plays are generally one of the most popular forms of comedy, and often considered to be their own genre entirely. This is a genre that explored relationships between men and women, and was considered risqué in its time, however, since restoration comedy dealt with unspoken aspects of relationships, it created a type of connection between audience and performance that was more informal and private. It is commonly agreed that restoration comedy has origins in Molière’s theories of comedy, the inconsistency between restoration comedy’s morals and the morals of the era is something that often arises during the study of this genre. This may give clues as to why, despite its original success, however, in recent years, it has become a topic of interest for theatre theorists, who have been looking into theatre styles that have their own conventions of performance. These plays contain darker themes such as death and disaster, often the protagonist of the play has a tragic flaw, a trait which leads to their downfall. Tragic plays convey all emotions and have extremely dramatic conflicts, tragedy was one of the two original play types of Ancient Greece. Some examples of tragedies include William Shakespeares Hamlet, and also John Websters play The Duchess of Malfi and these plays focus on actual historical events. They can be tragedies or comedies, but are neither of these. History as a genre was popularized by William Shakespeare. Examples of historical plays include Friedrich Schillers Demetrius and William Shakespeares King John, ballad opera, a popular theatre style at the time, was the first style of musical to be performed in the American colonies. The first musical of American origin was premiered in Philadelphia in 1767, and was called “The Disappointment”, however, around the 1920s, theatre styles were beginning to be defined more clearly
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Lectures
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A lecture is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to critical information, history, background, theories. A politicians speech, a sermon, or even a businessmans sales presentation may be similar in form to a lecture. Usually the lecturer will stand at the front of the room, though lectures are much criticised as a teaching method, universities have not yet found practical alternative teaching methods for the large majority of their courses. Critics point out that lecturing is mainly a one-way method of communication that does not involve significant audience participation, therefore, lecturing is often contrasted to active learning. Lectures have a significant role outside the classroom, as well, academic and scientific awards routinely include a lecture as part of the honor, and academic conferences often center around keynote addresses, i. e. lectures. The public lecture has a history in the sciences and in social movements. Union halls, for instance, historically have hosted numerous free, similarly, churches, community centers, libraries, museums, and other organizations have hosted lectures in furtherance of their missions or their constituents interests. Lectures represent a continuation of tradition in contrast to textual communication in books. Lectures may be considered a type of grey literature, the noun lecture dates from 14th century, meaning action of reading, that which is read, from the Latin lectus, pp. of legere to read. Its subsequent meaning as oral discourse on a subject before an audience for purposes of instruction is from the 16th century. The verb to lecture is attested from 1590, the noun lectern refers to the reading desk used by lecturers. The practice in the university was for the instructor to read from an original source to a class of students who took notes on the lecture. The reading from original sources evolved into the reading of glosses on an original, throughout much of history, the diffusion of knowledge via handwritten lecture notes was an essential element of academic life. Even in the century, the lecture notes taken by students. Many lecturers were, and still are, accustomed to reading their own notes from the lectern for exactly that purpose. Nevertheless, modern lectures generally incorporate additional activities, e. g. writing on a chalk-board, exercises, class questions and discussions, or student presentations. The use of presentation software such as Microsoft PowerPoint has changed the form of lectures, e. g. video, graphics, websites
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Meeting
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For multi-event athletic competitions see Track and Field Competitions, section Meetings. In a meeting, two or more come together to discuss one or more topics, often in a formal setting. One Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a meeting as an act or process of coming together - for example as an assembly for a common purpose. A meeting is a gathering of two or more people that has been convened for the purpose of achieving a goal through verbal interaction. Meetings may occur face-to-face or virtually, as mediated by communications technology, such as a conference call. One can distinguish a meeting from other gatherings, such as an encounter, a sports game or a concert, a party or the company of friends. Meeting planners and other meeting professionals may use the meeting to denote an event booked at a hotel. In this sense, the term meeting covers a lecture, seminar, conference, congress, exhibition or trade show, workshop, training course, team-building session and kick-off event. The meeting is normally hosted by the customer or engineer who wrote the project specification to ensure all bidders are aware of the details. Attendance at a Pre-Bid Meeting may be mandatory, failure to attend usually results in a rejected bid. Staff meeting, typically a meeting between a manager and those that report to that manager Stand-up meeting, a meeting with attendees typically standing, the discomfort of standing for long periods helps to keep the meetings short. Options generally include the following, A one-time meeting is the most common meeting type, while they may repeat often, the individual meeting is the entirety of the event. This can include a 2006 conference, the 2007 version of the conference is a stand-alone meeting event. A recurring meeting is a meeting that recurs periodically, such as an every Monday staff meeting from 9, the meeting organizer wants the participants to be at the meeting on a constant and repetitive basis. A recurring meeting can be ongoing, such as a team meeting, or have an end date, such as a 5-week training meeting. A series meeting is like a recurring meeting, but the details differ from meeting to meeting, one example of a series meeting is a monthly lunch and learn event at a company, church, club or organization. The placeholder is the same, but the agenda and topics to be covered vary and this is more of a recurring meeting with the details to be determined
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Party
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A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, recreation, or as part of a festival or other commemoration of a special occasion. A party will typically feature food and beverages, and often music, in many Western countries, parties for teens and adults are associated with drinking alcohol such as beer, wine or distilled spirits. Some parties are held in honor of a person, day, or event, such as a birthday party. Parties of this kind are often called celebrations, a party is not necessarily a private occasion. Public parties are held in restaurants, pubs, beer gardens, nightclubs or bars. Large parties in public streets may celebrate events such as Mardi Gras or the signing of a treaty ending a long war. A birthday party is a celebration of the anniversary of the birth of the person who is being honored, the tradition started in the mid-nineteenth century but did not become popular until the mid-twentieth century. Birthday parties are now a feature of many cultures, in Western cultures, birthday parties include a number of common rituals. The guests may be asked to bring a gift for the honored person, party locations are often decorated with colorful decorations, such as balloons and streamers. A birthday cake is served with lit candles that are to be blown out after a birthday wish has been made. The person being honored will be given the first piece of cake, while the birthday cake is being brought to the table, the song Happy Birthday to You or some other birthday song is sung by the guests. At parties for children, time is taken for the gift opening wherein the individual whose birthday is celebrated opens each of the gifts brought. It is also common at childrens parties for the host to give parting gifts to the attendees in the form of goodie bags, children and even adults sometimes wear colorful cone-shaped party hats. Birthday parties are often larger and more extravagant if they celebrate someone who has reached what is regarded in the culture as a milestone age, examples of traditional coming of age celebrations include the North American sweet sixteen party and the Latin American quinceañera. A surprise party is a party that is not made known beforehand to the person in whose honor it is being held, Birthday surprise parties are the most common kind of surprise party. At most such parties, the guests arrive a hour or so before the honored person arrives. Often, a friend in on the surprise will lead the honored person to the location of the party without letting on anything, the guests might even conceal themselves from view, and when the honored person enters the room, they leap from hiding and all shout, Surprise. For some surprise birthday parties, it is considered to be a tactic to shock the honored person
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Feature film
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A feature film is a film with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole film to fill a program. The notion of how long this should be has varied according to time, the majority of feature films are between 70 and 210 minutes long. The Story of the Kelly Gang was the first dramatic film released. The first feature-length adaptation was Les Misérables, other early feature films include The Inferno, Quo Vadis. Oliver Twist, Richard III, From the Manger to the Cross, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute, and the British Film Institute all define a feature as a film with a running time of 2400 seconds or longer. The term feature film came into use to refer to the film presented in a cinema. The term was used to distinguish the film from the short films typically presented before the main film, such as newsreels, serials, animated cartoons, live-action comedies. Early features had been produced in the United States and France and this left exhibitors the option of playing them alone, to view an incomplete combination of some films, or to run them all together as a short film series. The American company S. Lubin released a Passion Play titled Lubins Passion Play in January 1903 in 31 parts, the French company Pathé Frères released a different Passion Play, The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, in May 1903 in 32 parts running about 44 minutes. There were also records of boxing matches, such as The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight, Reproduction Of The Corbett-Jeffries Fight. In 1900, the documentary film In the Army was made and it was over 1 hour in length and was about the training techniques of the British soldier. Defined by length, the first dramatic film was the Australian 70-minute film The Story of the Kelly Gang. The first Russian feature was Defence of Sevastopol in 1911, early Italian features were The Inferno, Quo Vadis. The Last Days of Pompeii, and Cabiria, the first UK features were the documentary With Our King and Queen Through India, filmed in Kinemacolor and Oliver Twist. The first American features were adaptations of Oliver Twist, From the Manger to the Cross, Cleopatra, the latter starring actor Frederick Warde starred in some of these movie adaptations. 1913 also saw Chinas first feature film, Zhang Shichuans Nan Fu Nan Qi, by 1915 over 600 feature films were produced annually in the United States. The most prolific year of U. S. feature production was 1921, with 682 releases, between 1922 and 1970, the U. S. and Japan alternated as leaders in the quantity of feature film production. Since 1971, the country with the highest feature output has been India, as time went on there were many technical advancements made in film
23.
Ball (dance)
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A ball is a formal dance party. Social dance forms a part of the evening, actual ballroom dancing may or may not occur. Catalan uses the word, ball, for the dance event. Cotillion ball Commemoration ball Hunt ball Masquerade ball May Ball Dance party Prom A well-documented ball occurred at Kingston Lacy, Dorset, England, on 19 December 1791. The occasion was to celebrate the completion of major alterations to the house, the event involved 140 guests, with dancing from 9pm to 7am, interrupted by dinner at 1am. Ball gown Ballroom Dance card Wallace, Carol McD. et al, new York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Media related to Balls at Wikimedia Commons
24.
Van Ness Avenue
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Van Ness Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare in San Francisco, California, running from Market St north to the Bay. Originally named Marlette Street, the street was renamed Van Ness Avenue in honor of the seventh mayor. Van Ness Avenue begins at Market Street near the Civic Center, of the more striking landmarks along the route are the San Francisco City Hall, the War Memorial Opera House, and Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. South Van Ness Avenue is the portion of Van Ness south of Market Street, continuing through the citys South of Market and it was formerly a continuation of Howard Street, having been renamed by resolution of the Board of Supervisors on August 22,1932. The route is designated US101 from the Central Freeway at the convergence of South Van Ness, Howard Street, and 13th Street, north to Lombard Street. Originally a quiet neighborhood of mansions, the street was used as a firebreak by the U. S. Army during the 1906 earthquake. Many of the buildings were dynamited along the street by soldiers in a successful attempt to prevent the firestorm from spreading west to the entire city. It still remains an upscale area with large and grand apartment buildings, restaurants. Streetcar service started on Van Ness in 1915 for the opening of the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, the rail lines were removed in the 1950s and replaced with a tree-lined median. The entire route is within the borders of the City and County of San Francisco
25.
San Francisco City Hall
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San Francisco City Hall is the seat of government for the City and County of San Francisco, California. The structures dome is taller than that of the United States Capitol by 42 feet, the present building replaced an earlier City Hall that was destroyed during the 1906 earthquake, which was two blocks from the present one. It was bounded by Larkin Street, McAllister Street, and City Hall Avenue, largely where the current Public Library and U. N. Plaza stand today. The principal architect was Arthur Brown, Jr. of Bakewell & Brown, whose attention to the finishing details extended to the doorknobs, browns blueprints of the building are preserved at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Brown also designed the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, Veterans Building, Temple Emanuel, Coit Tower, the buildings vast open space is more than 500,000 square feet and occupying two full city blocks. It is 390 ft between Van Ness Avenue and Polk Street, and 273 ft between Grove and McAllister Streets and its dome, which owes much to Mansarts Baroque domes of the Val-de-Grâce and Les Invalides in Paris, rises 307.5 ft above the Civic Center Historic District. It is 19 ft higher than the United States Capitol, and has a diameter of 112 ft, resting upon 4 x 50 ton and 4 x 20 ton girders, each 9 ft deep and 60 ft. The building as a whole contains 7,900 tons of steel from the American Bridge Company of Ambridge. It is faced with Madera County granite on the exterior, and Indiana sandstone within, together with finish marbles from Alabama, Colorado, Vermont, much of the statuary is by Henri Crenier. The Rotunda is a space and the upper levels are public. Opposite the grand staircase, on the floor, is the office of the Mayor. A bust of former county supervisor Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in the building was unveiled on May 22,2008, MAYOR1931 The words were written by the previous Mayor Edward Robeson Taylor, and dedicated by Mayor James Rolph. The medallions in the vaults of the Rotunda are of Equality, Liberty, Strength, Learning and, as memorialized in the South Light Court display, Progress. The current City Hall building is a replacement for a building which was completed in 1899 after 27 years of planning. The original city hall was a larger building which also contained a smaller extension which contained the citys Hall of Records. The building was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, after Arthur Brown Juniors design was selected, construction started in 1913 and was completed by 1915, in time for the Exposition. The main rotunda had also served as the location of prominent state funerals. General Fredrick Funston, hero of the Spanish–American War, Philippine–American War, joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were married at City Hall in 1954
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First World War
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
27.
Arthur Brown Jr
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Arthur Brown Jr. was a prominent American architect, based in San Francisco and designer of many of its landmarks. Brown went to Paris and graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts in 1901, attending the atelier of Victor Laloux, Brown also designed the citys War Memorial Opera House and Veterans Building, the former in collaboration with G. Albert Lansburgh. Brown was meticulously trained in the rigorous Beaux-Arts tradition, and in the City Hall project his attention extended to the smallest details of fixtures, floor patterning. In addition to their well-known monumental works, Bakewell and Brown designed several homes in the Arts and Crafts style championed by Maybeck. Early among them were two redwood framed double houses for Stanford University in 1908, and the fraternity house they designed de novo. They later designed additions to Ernest Coxheads 1893 Beta Theta Pi house they had lived in as undergraduates, the firm went on to design a series of familiar San Francisco landmarks, and many buildings at Stanford University, before Brown dissolved the partnership in 1927. For contractual reasons many buildings at Stanford through the 1930s continued to be credited to both, Bakewell and Brown also designed the Byzantine-inspired Temple Emmanuel at Lake St. and Arguello Blvd. in San Francisco, and the Pasadena City Hall. Most of Browns later San Francisco works employed a stripped-down classicism, the poured-concrete Art Moderne Coit Tower, that crowns Telegraph Hill is an important Modernist landmark in the Bay Area. Coit Tower was the site of some of the first public works murals executed under the Public Works Administration, the primitive nature of Coit Tower would lend itself better to that sort of thing than other public buildings, was Arthur Browns first reaction to the project. Diego Rivera included Brown among the designers and craftsmen in his mural of The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City. In Washington, D. C. Brown designed the Interstate Commerce Commission Building, its near-twin the Customs Department building, all three form part of the Federal Triangle, the largest construction project undertaken by the US Federal government prior to The Pentagon. Preliminary designs were begun in 1927, with construction in the Depression years between 1932 and 1934, the new buildings were to be designed to reflect the dignity and power of the nation. Browns last works were primarily at UC Berkeley, where Brown served as campus planner and his principal buildings there include Sproul Hall, the Bancroft Library, and the Cyclotron Building, commissioned by Ernest Lawrence and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Brown was elected a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects in 1930, among the draftsmen in his office was Clarence W. W. Mayhew. In 1943, Brown was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, online guide to the Arthur Brown Jr. Papers, The Bancroft Library Diego Riveras mural at the SFAI Coit tower Arthur Brown Papers
28.
War Memorial Opera House
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The War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, California is located on the western side of Van Ness Avenue across from the rear facade of City Hall. It is part of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center and it has been the home of the San Francisco Opera since opening night in 1932. In 1927, $4 million in bonds were issued to finance the design. A colonnade of paired columns screens colossal arch-headed windows above a rusticated basement. The interior contains an entrance hall with a high barrel vaulted and coffered ceiling parallel to the street. The theater space is dominated by an aluminum and glass panel chandelier under a blue vault. The theater has 3,146 seats plus standing room for 200 behind the orchestra and this is smaller than the Metropolitan Opera and the Chicago Lyric Opera, but it follows the trend of larger capacity in American opera houses than the main European opera houses of the 19th century. The San Francisco Symphony performed most of its concerts in the house, RCA Victor recorded the orchestra here, under the direction of Pierre Monteux, from 1941 to 1952 and in a special stereophonic session in January 1960. The orchestra also made a few recordings for RCA with Enrique Jorda in 1957 and 1958, in later years, the orchestra used a special acoustical shell that was placed around the musicians, greatly enhancing acoustics for concerts. The orchestras final concert in the house was an all-Beethoven concert, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the house was regularly blacked out and performances were monitored by air raid wardens. In spring of 1945, the United Nations had its first conference there, the UN Charter was later drafted and signed in the Herbst Theatre next door. Six years later in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco was drafted and signed here, during the years of Kurt Herbert Adlers general directorship, the inadequacies of the house became apparent as the season was expanded. In particular, there was a lack of space and rehearsal space. In 1974, The Pointer Sisters were the first pop act to perform at the theatre, in 1979 the backstage area was extended, followed in 1981 by the opening of a new wing built onto the house on the Franklin Street side. This gave spaces for sets, coaches, and dancers as well as administrative space. At the same time, the nearby Zellerbach Rehearsal Hall, with a stage the size as that of the Opera House, was opened as part of the complex which included the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. In 1989, the powerful Loma Prieta earthquake that shook the Bay Area caused major damage to the Opera House, at this time additional private donations were raised for extensive technical improvements. The organ is not needed with the completion of the nearby Davies Symphony Hall, an underground extension below the neighboring plaza to accommodate additional dressing rooms and backstage facilities
29.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
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The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, the museum’s current collection includes over 33,000 works of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts. They are displayed in 170,000 square feet of space, making the museum one of the largest in the United States overall. SFMOMA reopened on May 14,2016, following a major expansion project. SFMOMA was founded in 1935 under director Grace L. McCann Morley as the San Francisco Museum of Art, for its first sixty years, the museum occupied the fourth floor of the War Memorial Veterans Building on Van Ness Avenue in the Civic Center. A gift of 36 artworks from Albert M. Bender, including The Flower Carrier by Diego Rivera, Bender donated more than 1,100 objects to SFMOMA during his lifetime and endowed the museums first purchase fund. The museum began its second year with an exhibition of works by Henri Matisse, in this same year the museum established its photography collection, becoming one of the first museums to recognize photography as a fine art. SFMOMA held its first architecture exhibition, entitled Telesis, Space for Living, SFMOMA was obliged to move to a temporary facility on Post Street in March 1945 to make way for the United Nations Conference on International Organization. The museum returned to its original Van Ness location in July, later that year SFMOMA hosted Jackson Pollocks first solo museum exhibition. Founding director Grace Morley held film screenings at the beginning in 1937. In 1946 Morley brought in filmmaker Frank Stauffacher to found SFMOMA’s influential Art in Cinema film series, SFMOMA continued its expansion into new media with the 1951 launch of a biweekly television program entitled Art in Your Life. The series, later renamed Discovery, ran for three years, Morley ended her 23-year tenure as museum director in 1958 and was succeeded by George D. Culler and Gerald Nordland. The museum rose to prominence under director Henry T. Hopkins. Since 1967, SFMOMA has honored San Francisco Bay Area artists with its biennial SECA Art Award, the positions of director of education and director of photography were elevated to full curatorial roles. At this time SFMOMA took on a special exhibitions program. Including major presentations of the work of Jeff Koons, Sigmar Polke, in January 1995 the museum opened its current location at 151 Third Street, adjacent to Yerba Buena Gardens in the SOMA district. Mario Botta, a Swiss architect from Canton Ticino, designed the new US$60 million facility, Art patron Phyllis Wattis helped the museum acquire key works by Magritte, Mondrian, Andy Warhol, Eva Hesse and Wayne Thiebaud. SFMOMA made a number of important acquisitions under the direction of David A and those and acquisitions of works by Jasper Johns, Mark Rothko, Francis Bacon, Alexander Calder, Chuck Close and Frank Stella put the institution in the top ranks of American museums of modern art
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Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
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Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall is the concert hall component of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in San Francisco, California. The 2, 743-seat hall was completed in 1980 at a cost of US$28 million to give the San Francisco Symphony a permanent home, previously, the symphony shared the neighboring War Memorial Opera House with the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet. The construction of Davies Hall allowed the symphony to expand to a full-time, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Pietro Belluschi along with acoustical consultants Bolt, Beranek and Newman, its modern design is visually elegant both inside and out. Architects created acoustic isolation of the space by constructing a building within a building. The outer building uses one inch thick structural glass as a curtain wall, passing through a door leads to a hallway, bounded on one side by the lobby wall and on the other by the structural wall of the inner building. This continuous hallway acts as an acoustical isolator and is surfaced with sound absorbing material, however, the halls large volume and seating capacity initially resulted in less than ideal results. Kirkegaard Associates completed acoustical renovations in 1992 at a cost of $10 million which resulted in substantial improvement, in addition, risers were installed on stage to allow the musicians to both see and hear each other better. These and other improvements enhanced not only the acoustics but also the halls beauty, the Fratelli Ruffatti electro-pneumatic pipe organ with 147 ranks was added in 1984. It is designed to accommodate repertory from the pre-baroque to the present, the console can be electronically reprogrammed to correspond to the two major schools of organ keyboard organization - the German and the French. In addition to the hall itself, an adjoining building contains the Harold L. Zellerbach Rehearsal Hall. The largest of these was designed to be the size as the stage of the Opera House across the street to accommodate Opera. A proposed recital hall was never built, that portion of the site remains empty, a Henry Moore bronze sculpture, Large Four Piece Reclining Figure 1972–73, is displayed outside the hall at the corner of Grove Street and Van Ness Avenue. Davies Hall also occasionally hosts non-orchestral performances by contemporary musicians, list of concert halls Robert Commanday. Davies Hall Renovation Applauded - Symphony Opens With Glorious Sound, archived from the original on 2006-10-31. The Davies Symphony Acoustical Canopy Control System, archived from the original on 2007-03-11. Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall at the San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall Panoramic view Davies Symphony Hall
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United Nations Charter
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The Charter of the United Nations of 1945 is the foundational treaty of the United Nations, an intergovernmental organization. It was signed at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in San Francisco, United States, on 26 June 1945, as a charter, it is a constituent treaty, and all members are bound by its articles. Furthermore, Article 103 of the Charter states that obligations to the United Nations prevail over all other treaty obligations, most countries in the world have now ratified the Charter. The Charter consists of a preamble and a series of articles grouped into chapters, the preamble consists of two principal parts. The first part contains a call for the maintenance of peace and international security. Chapter I sets forth the purposes of the United Nations, including the important provisions of the maintenance of international peace, Chapter II defines the criteria for membership in the United Nations. Chapters III–XV, the bulk of the document, describe the organs and institutions of the UN, Chapters XVI and Chapter XVII describe arrangements for integrating the UN with established international law. Chapters XVIII and Chapter XIX provide for amendment and ratification of the Charter, all Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter. All Members shall settle their disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security. Such subsidiary organs as may be found necessary may be established in accordance with the present Charter, the Security Council shall consist of fifteen Members of the United Nations. The non-permanent members of the Security Council shall be elected for a term of two years, a retiring member shall not be eligible for immediate re-election. Each member of the Security Council shall have one representative, FUNCTIONS and POWERS Article 241. In discharging these duties the Security Council shall act in accordance with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations, the specific powers granted to the Security Council for the discharge of these duties are laid down in Chapters VI, VII, VIII, and XII. The Security Council shall submit annual and, when necessary, special reports to the General Assembly for its consideration, Article 25 The Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter. Each member of the Security Council shall have one vote, decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members. The Security Council shall be so organized as to be able to function continuously, each member of the Security Council shall for this purpose be represented at all times at the seat of the Organization. The Security Council may hold meetings at places other than the seat of the Organization as in its judgment will best facilitate its work. Article 29 The Security Council may establish such subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its functions, Article 30 The Security Council shall adopt its own rules of procedure, including the method of selecting its President
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United Nations
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The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization to promote international co-operation. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was established on 24 October 1945 after World War II in order to prevent another such conflict, at its founding, the UN had 51 member states, there are now 193. The headquarters of the UN is in Manhattan, New York City, further main offices are situated in Geneva, Nairobi, and Vienna. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states, the UNs mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its early decades by the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union and their respective allies. The organization participated in actions in Korea and the Congo. After the end of the Cold War, the UN took on major military, the UN has six principal organs, the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Secretariat, the International Court of Justice, and the UN Trusteeship Council. UN System agencies include the World Bank Group, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNESCO, the UNs most prominent officer is the Secretary-General, an office held by Portuguese António Guterres since 2017. Non-governmental organizations may be granted consultative status with ECOSOC and other agencies to participate in the UNs work, the organization won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, and a number of its officers and agencies have also been awarded the prize. Other evaluations of the UNs effectiveness have been mixed, some commentators believe the organization to be an important force for peace and human development, while others have called the organization ineffective, corrupt, or biased. Following the catastrophic loss of life in the First World War, the earliest concrete plan for a new world organization began under the aegis of the US State Department in 1939. It incorporated Soviet suggestions, but left no role for France, four Policemen was coined to refer to four major Allied countries, United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and China, which emerged in the Declaration by United Nations. Roosevelt first coined the term United Nations to describe the Allied countries, the term United Nations was first officially used when 26 governments signed this Declaration. One major change from the Atlantic Charter was the addition of a provision for religious freedom, by 1 March 1945,21 additional states had signed. Each Government pledges itself to cooperate with the Governments signatory hereto, the foregoing declaration may be adhered to by other nations which are, or which may be, rendering material assistance and contributions in the struggle for victory over Hitlerism. During the war, the United Nations became the term for the Allies. To join, countries had to sign the Declaration and declare war on the Axis, at the later meetings, Lord Halifax deputized for Mr. Eden, Wellington Koo for T. V. Soong, and Mr Gromyko for Mr. Molotov. The first meetings of the General Assembly, with 51 nations represented, the General Assembly selected New York City as the site for the headquarters of the UN, and the facility was completed in 1952. Its site—like UN headquarters buildings in Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi—is designated as international territory, the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Trygve Lie, was elected as the first UN Secretary-General
33.
Treaty of San Francisco
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It came into force on April 28,1952. This treaty made extensive use of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to enunciate the Allies goals, disagreement over Chinese participation, neither North nor South Korea was invited. Italy was not invited either, notwithstanding the fact that the government had issued a declaration of war to Japan on July 14,1945. Pakistan as a state had not existed at the time of the war but was invited anyway since it was a state to British India. Portugal was also not invited—even though its territory of East Timor had been invaded by Japan, the Soviet Union took part in the San Francisco conference, and the Soviet delegation was led by the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. From the start of the conference the Soviet Union expressed vigorous and vocal opposition to the treaty text prepared by the United States. The Soviet delegation made several unsuccessful attempts to stall the proceedings. The Soviet Unions objections were detailed in a lengthy September 8,1951 statement by Gromyko. S and it was not until October 19,1956, that Japan and the Soviet Union signed a Joint Declaration ending the war and reestablishing diplomatic relations. The ongoing Chinese Civil War and thus the question of which Chinese government was presented a dilemma to conference organizers. As a compromise, neither government was invited, on August 15,1951 and September 18,1951 the PRC published statements denouncing the treaty, stating that it was illegal and should not be recognized. Besides their general exclusion from the process, the PRC claimed that Xisha, Nansha and Dongsha in the South China Sea were actually part of China. The treaty either did not address these islands, or in the case of the Pratas Islands turned them over to the United Nations, a major player in providing support for a post-war free Japan was the delegation from Ceylon. R. Jayawardene spoke in defence of a free Japan and informed the conference of Ceylons refusal to accept the payment of reparations that would harm Japans economy. We do not intend to do so for we believe in the words of the Great Teacher whose message has ennobled the lives of millions in Asia. He ended the speech by saying This treaty is as magnanimous as it is just to a defeated foe. Minister Jayewardenes speech was received with resounding applause, afterwards the New York Times stated, The voice of free Asia, eloquent, melancholy and still strong with the lilt of an Oxford accent, dominated the Japanese peace treaty conference today. Of the 51 participating countries,48 signed the treaty, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Philippines ratified the San Francisco Treaty on July 16,1956, after the signing of a reparations agreement between both countries in May of that year. Indonesia did not ratify the San Francisco Peace Treaty, instead, it signed with Japan a bilateral reparations agreement and peace treaty on January 20,1958
34.
U.S. presidents
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The President of the United States is the elected head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. The president is elected to a four-year term by the people through an Electoral College. Since the office was established in 1789,44 people have served as president, the first, George Washington, won a unanimous vote of the Electoral College. Grover Cleveland served two terms in office, and is counted as the nations 22nd and 24th president. Thus the incumbent, Donald Trump, is the nations 45th president, there are currently five living former presidents. The most recent death of a president was on December 26,2006 with the death of Gerald Ford. William Henry Harrison spent the shortest time in office, dying 31 days after taking office in 1841. Franklin D. Roosevelt served the longest, over years, before dying early in his fourth term in 1945. Of the individuals elected as president, four died in office of natural causes, four were assassinated, the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution put Tylers precedent into law in 1967. It also established a mechanism by which an intra-term vacancy in the presidency could be filled. Richard Nixon was the first president to fill a vacancy under this Provision when he appointed Gerald Ford to the office, later, Ford became the second to do so when he appointed Nelson Rockefeller to succeed him. Previously, a vacancy was left unfilled. Throughout most of its history, politics of the United States have been dominated by political parties, the Constitution is silent on the issue of political parties, and at the time it came into force in 1789, there were no parties. Soon after the 1st Congress convened, factions began rallying around dominant Washington Administration officials, such as Alexander Hamilton and he was, and remains, the only U. S. president never to be affiliated with a political party. Since Washington, every president has been affiliated with a party at the time they assumed office. Four presidents held other high U. S. federal offices after leaving the presidency, several presidents campaigned unsuccessfully for other U. S. state or federal elective offices after leaving the presidency. Additionally, one president, John Tyler, served in the government of the Confederate States during the American Civil War
35.
Goldman Environmental Prize
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The prize includes a no-strings-attached award of US$175,000 per recipient. Since the Goldman Environmental Prize was established in 1989, a total of $15.9 million has been awarded to 157 honorees from more than 79 countries, the prize is given by the Goldman Environmental Foundation headquartered in San Francisco, California. It is also called the Green Nobel, the Goldman Environmental Prize was created in 1990 by civic leaders and philanthropists Richard N. Goldman and his wife, Rhoda H. Goldman, Richard Goldman died at age 90 in 2010 and was predeceased by his wife. Richard Goldman founded Goldman Insurance Services in San Francisco, Rhoda Goldman was a great-grand-niece of Levi Strauss, founder of the worldwide clothing company. The Goldman Environmental Prize winners are selected by a jury who receive confidential nominations submitted by a worldwide network of environmental organizations. In 2013, David Gordon became executive director of the foundation, the 2016 Environmental Prize winners marking the 27th anniversary, were awarded on April 18,2016 during ceremonies held at the San Francisco Opera House. C. Visionary public interest lawyer Rudolf Amenga-Etego of Ghana has gained recognition for suspending a major water privatization project backed by the World Bank. The devastating plan would further impede access to drinking water. The privatization would also place an especially harsh burden on Ghanaian girls, rashida Bee,48, and Champa Devi Shukla,52, Bhopal, India. They organized the first global hunger strike to draw attention to Dows deadly legacy. Years of armed conflict, rapacious development and the industry have displaced Afro-Colombians. For the U. S. the pipeline is a way to tap oil reserves in former Soviet states while bypassing Iran and Russia. But the route would run through a park and pristine mountain gorge, home to Georgias commercially prized mineral water. Demetrio do Amaral de Carvalho,37, Dili, East Timor, demetrio do Amaral de Carvalho is a founding father and environmental hero of East Timor, the worlds newest nation. A former resistance leader during the Indonesian occupation, de Carvalho is largely credited for spearheading the progressive inclusion of environmental justice tenets in East Timors constitution. These principles will play a legal and symbolic role in guiding sustainable management of the islands rainforests, coral reefs and vast oil. Margie Richard,62, Norco, Louisiana, United States, four generations of Richards family have lived in the Old Diamond neighborhood of Norco, Louisiana, located within the area known as Cancer Alley
36.
San Francisco Opera
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San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola, in fact, Merolas initial visits to the city were as conductor of some of these troupes—the first in 1909 with the International Opera Company of Montreal. Continued visits for the next decade convinced him that a San Francisco company was viable, while it was a popular and critical triumph, the five-day season was not a financial success. It was clear to Merola that a solid financial base was needed. Appealing to more than the elite, Merola raised 2441 contributions of $50 each from many founding members. After the opening of La bohème, the first 1923/24 season included productions of Andrea Chénier, Mefistofele, Tosca (with Giuseppe de Luca and Martinelli, during the nine years following the opening season, the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House was conceived. The building was designed by Arthur Brown, Jr. the architect who also created San Franciscos Coit Tower, the company inaugurated the new opera house with a performance of Tosca on 15 October 1932 with Claudia Muzio in the title role. However, until well after Merolas death, the main San Francisco season rarely extended beyond late October and he died while conducting an open-air concert at Stern Grove on 30 August 1953. Edwin MacArthur led the San Francisco Opera Orchestra in several 78-rpm recordings for RCA Victor in the late 1930s, some of these were later reissued by RCA on LP and CD. Short versions of all the works in the season were broadcast on about 30 California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and British Columbia radio stations, starting about 1941. Kurt Herbert Adler came to the United States in 1938 after early experience and training in aspects of music and theatre in Austria, Germany. For five years, he worked to build the chorus of the Chicago Opera Company, Merola heard of him and, over the telephone, invited him to San Francisco opera in 1943 as chorus director. Adler was often regarded as a difficult, sometimes tyrannical person to work for, however, as Chatfield-Taylor notes, singers, conductors, directors, and designers came back season after season…. Among those who were offered new and exciting challenges were Geraint Evans, the Welsh baritone, Leontyne Price, and Luciano Pavarotti. He took on more and more details as Merolas health and energy diminished. After three months of acting as Artistic Director, and with the assistance of its president, Robert Watt Miller, Adler was confirmed as General Director, Adlers aims Adlers aims in taking over the company were several. Eventually, as seen in the 1961 SFO season, eleven operas were given five or six performances each on average while the season ran to late November. He heard Leontyne Price on the radio, and offered her a role in Dialogues of the Carmelites in 1957, thus providing her with her the first performance on a major operatic stage
37.
San Francisco Ballet
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San Francisco Ballet is a ballet company, founded in 1933 as the San Francisco Opera Ballet under the leadership of ballet master Adolph Bolm. The company is based in the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco. San Francisco Ballet was the first professional company in the United States. It is among the leading dance companies, presenting more than 100 performances annually. Willam Christensen, Harold Christensen, and Lew Christensen made up the trio of brothers considered by many to have done more than anyone else to establish ballet in the United States. As vaudeville faded from American popular culture, Harold and Lew joined George Balanchines new company, American Ballet, in 1932, Willam formed a ballet school in Portland, Oregon, in 1937, he was engaged as principal male soloist by San Francisco Opera Ballet. He became the ballet master and choreographer in 1938. With his brother Harold, he purchased the company from the Opera in 1942, in 1951, Willam retired as director of SF Ballet and moved to Utah, where he started teaching ballet in the country’s first university ballet department at the University of Utah. With a group of his students, he founded the Utah Civic Ballet in 1963, under Balanchines tutelage at American Ballet, Lew Christensen became the first American-born danseur noble. The United States Army drafted Christensen to fight in World War II, after the war ended, he joined Balanchines and Lincoln Kirsteins Ballet Society, eventually becoming ballet master, he served in the role from 1946 until 1950. In 1951, he joined his brother Willam as co-director of San Francisco Ballet, when Willam moved to Salt Lake City later that year, Lew took over as full director of SF Ballet, he held the position until 1976, when Michael Smuin joined him as co-director. Lew Christensen remained SF Ballet co-director until 1984, the year of his death, in 1940, his brother Willam invited him to become director of the San Francisco Ballet School, and in 1942 he and Willam purchased the SF Ballet. Harold continued to serve as the director until his retirement in 1975. In 1938, the companys first major production was Coppélia, choreographed by Willam Christensen, in 1940, it staged Swan Lake, the first time that the ballet was produced in its entirety by an American company. On Christmas Eve 1944, the company staged Nutcracker—the first complete production of Tchaikovskys most popular piece ever danced in the United States, in 1942, San Francisco Opera Ballet split into two independent companies, ballet and opera. The ballet half was sold to Willam and Harold Christensen, Willam became artistic director, while Harold took on the job of director of the San Francisco Ballet School. The San Francisco Ballet Guild was also formed as an organization for San Francisco Ballet. The year 1951 marked a significant shift in administration of San Francisco Ballet, Lew Christensen—premier danseur at the time—partnered with his brother Willam Christensen as co-directors
38.
Fashion show
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A fashion show is an event put on by a fashion designer to showcase their upcoming line of clothing during Fashion Week. Fashion shows debut season, particularly the Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter seasons. This is where the latest fashion trends are made, the two most influential fashion weeks are Paris Fashion Week and New York Fashion Week, which are both semiannual events. Also, the Milan, London, Sibiu and Berlin are of global importance, in a typical fashion show, models walk the catwalk dressed in the clothing created by the designer. The clothing is illuminated on the runway by the lighting, the order in which each model walks out wearing a specific outfit is usually planned in accordance to the statement that the designer wants to make about their collection. Occasionally, fashion shows take the form of installations, where the models are static, because the topic of fashion shows remains to find its historian, the earliest history of fashion shows remains obscure. In the 1800s, fashion parades periodically took place in Paris couture salons, American retailers imported the concept of the fashion show in the early 1900s. The first American fashion show took place in 1903 in the New York City store of the Ehrlich Brothers. By 1910, large department stores such as Wanamakers in New York City and these events showed couture gowns from Paris or the stores copies of them, they aimed to demonstrate the owners good taste and capture the attention of female shoppers. By the 1920s, retailers across the United States held fashion shows, often, these shows were theatrical, presented with narratives, and organized around a theme. These shows enjoyed huge popularity through mid-century, sometimes attracting thousands of customers and gawkers, in the 1970s and 1980s, American designers began to hold their own fashion shows in private spaces apart from such retailers. In the early 1990s, however, many in the world began to rethink this strategy. In response to these shows, the New York shows were centralized in Bryant Park during fashion week in late 1993, lately from the 2000s to today, fashion shows are usually also filmed and appear on specially assigned television channels or even in documentaries. In recent years, fashion shows have become increasingly elaborate for many of the top labels, during New York Fashion Week in 2014, designer Ralph Lauren presented his new Polo line for Spring 2015 in a water-screen projection in Manhattan’s Central Park. Technological progress has allowed a broader portion of the fashion industrys followers to experience shows. In 2010, London Fashion Week was the first fashion week to allow viewing of its shows through live streaming, live streaming of runway shows and mediated shows has now become commonplace. Tom Ford created a video with Lady Gaga for his Spring/Summer 2016 womens collection. Fashion Fashion week List of fashion events Fashion show lighting
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San Francisco Arts Commission
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The San Francisco Arts Commission is the official San Francisco County, USA arts council. The San Francisco Arts Commission was established in 1932 and it is a city agency and the commission is appointed by the mayor. The Board of Supervisors must approve its budget, the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery is the contemporary art exhibitions program of the Commission. The other locations are a storefront art gallery at 155 Grove Street, across from City Hall, founded in 1970, the Gallery commissions new works, collaborates with arts and community organizations and supports artist’s projects. Admission to the gallery is free, the art commission has many functions and sponsors many programs. One of its functions is to approve the design of any built by the city. It oversees the selection of art enrichment in the forms of graphics, murals and sculpture for civic buildings, the commission oversees the city-owned cultural centers - among them the historic Bayview Opera House, the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts and the African American Art and Culture Complex. The Community Arts and Education Program supports programs that enrich the fabric of the communities of life, giving opportunities for creative. This egalitarian spirit carries on the values of the people who started the program in 1967 of nurturing the arts for and by the people where they live, other Arts Commission programs are an annual city art festival and a pops concert series. The commissions Writers Corps brings writers into public schools and it was a national trailblazer in nurturing art in places outside the circles of high culture. The program expanded under the direction of Stephen Goldstine and it was during his tenure, from 1970 to 78, that the program tapped into federal money to help fund local artists. San Francisco, Arts for the City, Civic Art and Urban Change, official San Francisco Arts Commission website Arts Education Cultural Equity Grants Street Artists Program
40.
San Francisco Symphony
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The San Francisco Symphony, founded in 1911, is an orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980, the orchestra has performed at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the Citys Hayes Valley neighborhood, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus are part of the organization. Its current music director is Michael Tilson Thomas, who has held the position since September 1995, among various awards and honors for the orchestra are an Emmy Award and 15 Grammy Awards in the past 25 years. The orchestras first concerts were led by conductor composer Henry Hadley, there were sixty musicians in the Orchestra at the beginning of their first season. The first concert included music by Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, there were thirteen concerts in the 1911–1912 season, five of which were popular music. Hertz helped to refine the orchestra and arranged for the Victor Talking Machine Company to record it at their new studio in Oakland in early 1925. Hertz also led the orchestra during a number of broadcasts, including on the The Standard Hour. The series began in 1926 when the orchestra faced bankruptcy, Standard Oil of California paid the orchestras debts, the first broadcast aired on the NBC Pacific Network, on October 24,1926. and the broadcasts continued for more than 30 years. After Hertzs retirement in 1930, the orchestra was led by two conductors, Basil Cameron and Issay Dobrowen, the French maestro Pierre Monteux, who had conducted the world premiere of Igor Stravinskys The Rite of Spring, was hired to restore the orchestra. Monteux succeeded to the point where NBC began broadcasting some of its concerts, in 1949, Monteux invited Arthur Fiedler to lead summer pops concerts in the Civic Auditorium. Fiedler also conducted the orchestra at concerts in Sigmund Stern Grove in San Francisco. Fiedlers relationship with the orchestra continued until the mid-1970s, stokowski made a series of RCA Victor recordings with the orchestra in 1952 and 1953. In 1954 the board hired the young Spanish maestro Enrique Jordá as music director, surviving eyewitness and newspaper accounts describe him as having youthful enthusiasm, energy, and charm. Jordá sometimes conducted so vigorously that his baton flew from his hand, szells comments, along with growing dissatisfaction among musicians and the public, led the symphony board to dismiss Jordá. In the fall of 1963, the Austrian conductor Josef Krips became music director and he quickly became known as a benevolent autocrat, and would not tolerate sloppy playing. He soon began to refine the performance of the musicians, particularly of the standard German-Austrian repertoire. One of his innovations was a tradition on New Years Eve, A Night in Old Vienna. Similar concerts continued into the 2000s, though the format has changed in recent years, Krips would not make recordings with the orchestra, insisting they werent ready
41.
49-Mile Scenic Drive
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The 49-Mile Scenic Drive is a designated scenic road tour highlighting much of San Francisco, California. It was created in 1938 by the San Francisco Down Town Association to showcase the citys major attractions, originally beginning at San Francisco City Hall and ending on Treasure Island, the route has been modified several times since. Today the route forms a loop proceeding counterclockwise from Civic Center Plaza, owing variously to its length, its labyrinthine route, and the difficulty of driving through a bustling city, the drive remains relatively unpopular with tourists and locals alike. The drive begins on Polk St opposite San Francisco City Hall, after entering Japantown, the drive turns north onto Webster Street before immediately returning east along Post Street, where it continues past Japan Center, Lower Nob Hill, and Union Square. At Grant Avenue, the route turns north and enters Chinatown through its Dragon Gate. Drivers are soon directed onto California Street and up Nob Hill, at Portsmouth Square, the route proceeds north along Kearny Street for two blocks and turns northwest onto Columbus Avenue, entering North Beach. After passing City Lights Bookstore and turning onto Grant Avenue once more, passing the Joe DiMaggio Playground, the route turns north toward Fishermans Wharf on Mason Street. Over the next few miles, the route passes nearly all of San Franciscos Golden Gate National Recreation Area locations, continuing for a few blocks each on Baker, Bay, Broderick, Chestnut, and Lyon Streets, the route enters the Presidio at Lombard Street. At 8.6 miles, the passes the Letterman Digital Arts Center, proceeds onto Presidio Boulevard. The route detours through the Presidios Main Post before returning to Lincoln Boulevard near San Francisco National Cemetery. Passing above Crissy Field and Fort Point, under the U. S. Highway 101 approach to the Golden Gate Bridge, and above Baker Beach, the route exits the Presidio into Sea Cliff. Continuing along El Camino del Mar into Lincoln Park, the passes the Legion of Honor. Turing westward onto Geary Boulevard, drivers proceed several blocks and continue onto Point Lobos Avenue, soon reaching the Sutro Baths, briefly skirting the Haight-Ashbury and Cole Valley neighborhoods, the route ascends Parnassus Street and passes the University of California, San Franciscos main campus. Turning south onto 7th Avenue in the Inner Sunset, the route curves around Mount Sutro, from Twin Peaks Boulevard, drivers are directed into the north peaks parking area and offered unobstructed views of the city below. The route then descends into Corona Heights—built to take advantage of the views at this height. Winding its way down the hill, the route takes drivers past the Randall Museum before descending east along 14th Street into San Franciscos prominent gay neighborhood, at Cesar Chavez Street, the route continues east through Potrero Hill before abruptly directing drivers onto northbound I-280. After about 40 miles of streets, the route travels along I-280 for the final 1.5 miles of that freeway, exiting near Mission Bay. It winds along The Embarcadero and underneath the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge—once the final leg of the route before its Treasure Island terminus, at Market Street, the route crosses in front of the Ferry Building and shortly thereafter turns westward along Washington Street to enter the Financial District
42.
Alcatraz Island
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Alcatraz Island is located in San Francisco Bay,1.25 miles offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. The small island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse, a fortification, a military prison. In 1972, Alcatraz became part of a recreation area. Today, the facilities are managed by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Visitors can reach the island by ferry ride from Pier 33, near Fishermans Wharf, hornblower Cruises and Events, operating under the name Alcatraz Cruises, is the official ferry provider to and from the island. According to a 1971 documentary on the history of Alcatraz, the island measures 1,675 feet by 590 feet and is 135 feet at highest point during mean tide, however, the total area of the island is reported to be 22 acres. Over the years, the Spanish version Alcatraz became popular and is now widely used, in August 1827, French Captain Auguste Bernard Duhaut-Cilly wrote. Covered with a number of these birds. A gun fired over the feathered legions caused them to fly up in a great cloud, the California brown pelican is not known to nest on the island today. The Spanish built several buildings on the island and other minor structures. Julian Workman is the name of William Workman, co-owner of Rancho La Puente. Later in 1846, acting in his capacity as Military Governor of California, frémont, champion of Manifest Destiny and leader of the Bear Flag Republic, bought the island for $5,000 in the name of the United States government from Francis Temple. Frémont and his heirs sued for compensation during protracted but unsuccessful legal battles that extended into the 1890s. S, Army began studying the suitability of Alcatraz Island for the positioning of coastal batteries to protect the approaches to San Francisco Bay. In 1853, under the direction of Zealous B, tower, the United States Army Corps of Engineers began fortifying the island, work which continued until 1858, eventuating in Fortress Alcatraz. The islands first garrison at Camp Alcatraz, numbering about 200 soldiers and 11 cannons, at this time it also served as the San Francisco Arsenal for storage of firearms to prevent them falling into the hands of Confederate sympathizers. Alcatraz, built as a fortified military site on the West Coast, formed a triangle of defense along with Fort Point and Lime Point. The island was also the site of the first operational lighthouse on the West Coast of the United States, Alcatraz never fired its guns offensively, though during the war it was used to imprison Confederate sympathizers and privateers on the west coast. Because of its isolation from the outside by the cold, strong, hazardous currents of the waters of San Francisco Bay, following the war in 1866, the army determined that the fortifications and guns were being rapidly rendered obsolete by advances in military technology
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San Francisco cable car system
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The San Francisco cable car system is the worlds last manually operated cable car system. An icon of San Francisco, the car system forms part of the intermodal urban transport network operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway. Of the 23 lines established between 1873 and 1890, only three remain, two routes from downtown near Union Square to Fishermans Wharf, and a route along California Street. While the cable cars are used to an extent by commuters. They are among the most significant tourist attractions in the city, along with Alcatraz Island, the Golden Gate Bridge, the cable cars are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The cable cars are not to be confused with San Franciscos heritage streetcars, which operate on Market Street, the first successful cable-operated street railway was the Clay Street Hill Railroad, which opened on August 2,1873. The promoter of the line was Hallidie, and the engineer was William Eppelsheimer, the line involved the use of grip cars, which carried the grip that engaged with the cable, towing trailer cars, the design was the first to use grips. The term grip became synonymous with the operator, the line started regular service on September 1,1873, and its success led it to become the template for other cable car transit systems. It was a success, and Hallidies patents were enforced on other cable car promoters. Accounts differ as to exactly how involved Hallidie was in the inception of the line, the next cable car line to open was the Sutter Street Railway, which converted from horse operation in 1877. This line introduced the side grip, and lever operation, both designed by Henry Casebolt and his assistant Asa Hovey, and patented by Henry Casebolt. This idea was brought about because Casebolt did not want to pay Hallidie royalties of $50,000 a year for use of his patent, the side grip allowed cable cars to cross at intersections. In 1878, Leland Stanford opened his California Street Cable Railroad and this companys first line was on California Street and is the oldest cable car line still in operation. In 1880, the Geary Street, Park & Ocean Railway began operation, the Presidio and Ferries Railway followed two years later, and was the first cable company to include curves on its routes. The curves were let-go curves, where the car drops the cable, in 1883, the Market Street Cable Railway opened its first line. This company was controlled by the Southern Pacific Railroad and was to grow to become San Franciscos largest cable car operator. At its peak, it operated five lines all of which converged into Market Street to a terminus at the Ferry Building, during rush hours, cars left that terminus every 15 seconds. In 1888, the Ferries and Cliff House Railway opened its initial two-line system, the Powell-Mason line is still operated on the same route today, their other route was the Powell-Washington-Jackson line, stretches of which are used by todays Powell-Hyde line
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The Castro, San Francisco
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The Castro District, commonly referenced as The Castro, is a neighborhood in Eureka Valley in San Francisco. The Castro was one of the first gay neighborhoods in the United States, San Franciscos gay village is mostly concentrated in the business district that is located on Castro Street from Market Street to 19th Street. It extends down Market Street toward Church Street and on sides of the Castro neighborhood from Church Street to Eureka Street. Some consider it to include Duboce Triangle and Dolores Heights, which both have a strong LGBT presence and it reappears in several discontinuous sections before ultimately terminating at Chenery Street, in the heart of Glen Park. Castro Street was named for José Castro, a Californian leader of Mexican opposition to U. S. rule in California in the 19th century, and alcalde of Alta California from 1835 to 1836. The neighborhood now known as the Castro was created in 1887 when the Market Street Railway Company built a line linking Eureka Valley to downtown. In 1891, Alfred E. Clarke built his mansion at the corner of Douglass and it survived the 1906 earthquake and fire which destroyed a large portion of San Francisco. Up to the 19th century, the possession of the Russian Empire in North America included the modern-day U. S. State of Alaska and settlements in the modern-day U. S. states of California. These Russian possessions were collectively and officially referred to by the name Russian America from 1733 to 1867, formal incorporation of the possessions by Russia did not take place until the establishment of the Russian-American Company in 1799. At the time, Russia was a young naval power. From the start, in 1840–1865, three consecutive Finnish pastors served this pastorate, Uno Cygnaeus, Gabriel Plathán and Georg Gustaf Winter, the Finns Aaron Sjöstrom and Otto Reinhold Rehn served as the parish organists/sextons during the same period. In 1841, under the governorship of Russian America by Finnish Arvid Adolf Etholén, during the final three decades of the existence of Russian America, Finnish Chief Managers of Russian America included Arvid Adolf Etholén in 1840–1845 and Johan Hampus Furuhjelm in 1859–1864. A third Finn, Johan Joachim von Bartram, declined the offer for the term between 1850 and 1855. All three were high ranking Imperial naval officers, in reference to San Francisco, researcher Maria J. Enckell states the following about the Finns in the Russian-American Company, Russia relied heavily on Finnish seamen. These seamen manned Russian naval ships as well as its deep-sea-going vessels, Company records show that in the early 1800s these ships were crewed predominantly by merchant seamen from Finland. From 1840 onward the Companys around-the-world ships were manned entirely by Finnish merchant skippers, Most Company ships stationed in Sitka and the Northern Pacific were likewise manned by Finnish skippers and Finnish crews. During the California Gold Rush and in its aftermath, a substantial Finnish population had settled in San Francisco, accordingly, Kalevalas visit in the city received a very warm welcome and created much attention. In addition to the Finnish-built corvette Kalevala now returning to the U. S, Finnish officers serving in the squadron included Theodor Kristian Avellan, who later became the Minister of Naval Affairs of the Russian Empire
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Chinatown, San Francisco
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The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, is the oldest Chinatown in North America and the largest Chinese community outside Asia. It is the oldest of the four notable Chinatowns in the city, since its establishment in 1848, it has been highly important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that continues to retain its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, there are two hospitals, numerous parks and squares, a post office, and other infrastructure. Chinatown has been defined by the neighborhoods of North Beach, and Telegraph Hill areas as bound by Bush Street, Taylor Street, Bay Street. Officially, Chinatown is located in downtown San Francisco, covers 24 square blocks, within Chinatown there are two major thoroughfares. It is dominated by buildings that are three to four stories high, with shops on the ground floor and residential apartments upstairs. A major focal point in Chinatown is Portsmouth Square, since it is one of the few open spaces in Chinatown and sits above a large underground parking lot, Portsmouth Square bustles with activity such as Tai Chi and old men playing Chinese chess. A replica of the Goddess of Democracy used in the Tiananmen Square protest was built in 1999 by Thomas Marsh and it is made of bronze and weighs approximately 600 lb. According to the San Francisco Planning Department, Chinatown is the most densely populated area west of Manhattan. In the 1970s, the density in Chinatown was seven times the San Francisco average. The estimated total population in the 2000 Census was at 100,574 residents, during the time from 2009 to 2013, the median household income was $20,000 - compared to $76,000 citywide - with 29% of residents below the national poverty threshold. The median age was 50 years, the oldest of any neighborhood, as of 2015, two thirds of the residents lived in one of Chinatowns 105 single room occupancy hotels,96 of which had private owners and nine were owned by nonprofits. Most residents are speakers of Mandarin or Cantonese, in 2015. Many of those Chinese immigrants who gain some wealth while living in Chinatown leave it for the Richmond District, working-class Hong Kong Chinese immigrants began arriving in large numbers in the 1960s. Despite their status and professional qualifications in Hong Kong, many took low-paying employment in restaurants, an increase in Cantonese-speaking immigrants from Hong Kong and Mainland China has gradually led to the replacement in Chinatown of the Hoisanese/Taishanese dialect by the standard Cantonese dialect. These outer neighborhoods have been settled largely by Chinese from Southeast Asia, there are also many suburban Chinese communities in the San Francisco Bay Area, especially in Silicon Valley, such as Cupertino, Fremont, and Milpitas, where Taiwanese Americans are dominant. Despite these developments, many continue to commute in from these neighborhoods and cities to shop in Chinatown, causing gridlock on roads and delays in public transit. To address this problem, the public transit agency, Muni, is planning to extend the citys subway network to the neighborhood via the new Central Subway
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Cliff House, San Francisco
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The Cliff House is a restaurant perched on the headland above the cliffs just north of Ocean Beach, on the western side of San Francisco, California. It overlooks the site of the former Sutro Baths and is now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, on the terrace of the Cliff House is a room-sized camera obscura. Cliff House has had five major incarnations since its beginnings in 1858 and that year, Samuel Brannan, a prosperous ex-Mormon elder from Maine, bought for $1,500 the lumber salvaged from a ship that foundered on the basalt cliffs below. With this material he built the first Cliff House, the second Cliff House was built in 1863, and leased to Captain Junius G. Foster. It was a trek from the city and hosted mostly horseback riders. With the opening of the Point Lobos toll road a year later, later the builders of the toll road constructed a two-mile speedway beside it where well-to-do San Franciscans raced their horses along the way. On weekends, there was room at the Cliff House hitching racks for tethering the horses for the thousands of rigs. Soon, omnibus, railways and streetcar lines made it to near Lone Mountain where passengers transferred to stagecoach lines to the beach. The growth of Golden Gate Park attracted beach travellers, in search of meals, in 1877, the toll road, now Geary Street, was purchased by the city for around $25,000. After a few years of management by J. M. Wilkens. The blast was heard a hundred miles away and demolished the north wing of the tavern. The building was repaired, but was completely destroyed by fire on Christmas night 1894 due to a defective flue. Wilkens was unable to save the guest register, which included the signatures of three Presidents and dozens of illustrious world-famous visitors and this incarnation of the Cliff House, with its various extensions, had lasted for 31 years. In 1896, Adolph Sutro built a new Cliff House, a seven story Victorian Chateau, called by some the Gingerbread Palace and this was the same year work began on the famous Sutro Baths in a small cove immediately north of the Restaurant. The baths included six of the largest indoor swimming pools, a museum, great throngs of San Franciscans arrived on steam trains, bicycles, carts and horse wagons on Sunday excursions. Sutro purchased some of the collection of stuffed animals, artwork, the 1896 Cliff House survived the 1906 earthquake with little damage, but burned to the ground on the evening of September 7,1907, after existing for only 11 years. Dr. Emma Merritt, Sutros daughter, commissioned a rebuilding of the restaurant in a style that was completed within two years and is the basis of the structure seen today. In 1914, the guidebook Bohemian San Francsco described it as one of the great Bohemian restaurants of San Francisco, while you have thought you had good breakfasts before this, you know that now you are having the best of them all
