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.
Washington, D.C.
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Washington, D. C. formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D. C. is the capital of the United States. The signing of the Residence Act on July 16,1790, Constitution provided for a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress and the District is therefore not a part of any state. The states of Maryland and Virginia each donated land to form the federal district, named in honor of President George Washington, the City of Washington was founded in 1791 to serve as the new national capital. In 1846, Congress returned the land ceded by Virginia, in 1871. Washington had an population of 681,170 as of July 2016. Commuters from the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the population to more than one million during the workweek. The Washington metropolitan area, of which the District is a part, has a population of over 6 million, the centers of all three branches of the federal government of the United States are in the District, including the Congress, President, and Supreme Court. Washington is home to national monuments and museums, which are primarily situated on or around the National Mall. The city hosts 176 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of international organizations, trade unions, non-profit organizations, lobbying groups. A locally elected mayor and a 13‑member council have governed the District since 1973, However, the Congress maintains supreme authority over the city and may overturn local laws. D. C. residents elect a non-voting, at-large congressional delegate to the House of Representatives, the District receives three electoral votes in presidential elections as permitted by the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1961. Various tribes of the Algonquian-speaking Piscataway people inhabited the lands around the Potomac River when Europeans first visited the area in the early 17th century, One group known as the Nacotchtank maintained settlements around the Anacostia River within the present-day District of Columbia. Conflicts with European colonists and neighboring tribes forced the relocation of the Piscataway people, some of whom established a new settlement in 1699 near Point of Rocks, Maryland. 43, published January 23,1788, James Madison argued that the new government would need authority over a national capital to provide for its own maintenance. Five years earlier, a band of unpaid soldiers besieged Congress while its members were meeting in Philadelphia, known as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, the event emphasized the need for the national government not to rely on any state for its own security. However, the Constitution does not specify a location for the capital, on July 9,1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which approved the creation of a national capital on the Potomac River. The exact location was to be selected by President George Washington, formed from land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia, the initial shape of the federal district was a square measuring 10 miles on each side, totaling 100 square miles. Two pre-existing settlements were included in the territory, the port of Georgetown, Maryland, founded in 1751, many of the stones are still standing
3.
Paul J. Pelz
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Paul Johannes Pelz was a German-American architect, best known as the main architect of the Library of Congress in Washington DC. Paul J. Pelz was born November 18,1841 in Seitendorf, Waldenburg, Silesia and his father, Eduard Pelz, was elected as a representative of Silesia to the Frankfurt Parliament in 1848. Subsequent political repression led him to emigrate to the U. S. in 1851 while the rest of the family stayed in Breslau. In 1858, Paul Pelz joined his father in New York City, in 1864, he was employed as chief draftsman by Jewish architect Henry Fernbach, best known for his later design of New Yorks Central Synagogue. In 1866, Pelz became a member of the American Institute of Architects, in 1867 he moved to Washington DC and was engaged as a civil engineer for the United States Lighthouse Board, where from 1872 to 1877 he served as chief draftsman. His work won a prize for the Lighthouse Board at the 1873 Universal Exhibition in Vienna, in 1873, Pelz and John L. Smithmeyer, another Washington-based architect, together won the competition for the architectural plans for the Library of Congress. Their winning design proposal was based on notes Pelz had taken on prominent public libraries when he traveled to Europe to collect the prize in Vienna. In the ensuing years Pelz also partnered with Smithmeyer on other projects, however, the difficulties experienced on the Library of Congress project, with many delays from congressional dithering, eventually strained their collaboration. In 1888 Pelz became the architect for the Library of Congress as Smithmeyer was dismissed, Pelz in turn was dismissed in 1892. Pelzs offices were in the Corcoran Building on 15th and F Street NW and he designed churches, public buildings, private houses and commercial buildings, and also participated in key debates of the time on Washingtons urban design. In 1898, at the request of socialite Mary Foote Henderson, pelzs first wife, Louise Dorothea Kipp, died in 1894. In 1895, he remarried with Mary Eastbourne Meem, on 30 March 1918, he died in Washington, D. C. He is buried together with his wife in Oak Hill Cemetery. Like other architects of his time, Pelz mastered a range of styles and was willing to switch across them depending on program. St. Augustine Lighthouse, St. Smithmeyer, Washington D. C,1873, 1886-92 Beautification of the Wisconsin Avenue Reservoir built in 1859 by Montgomery C. Meigs, Washington D. C.1875 Healy Hall and Riggs Memorial Library, Georgetown University, with John L. Smithmeyer, elkins,1626 K Street NW, Washington D. C. 1894–96 House on 3440 34th Place, Washington D. C. with Frederick W. C.1896 Mansion for Senator Joseph B. C, 1900–01 Townhouse on 2238 Q Street NW, Washington DC,1901 Grace Reformed Church, Washington DC, with A. A. 1907-08 Grace Reformed Church Sunday School, Washington D. C, 1911-1912 Works by or about Paul J. Pelz at Internet Archive Paul J. Pelz at Find a Grave
4.
Edward Pearce Casey
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Edward Pearce Casey was an American designer and architect, noted for his work in Washington, D. C. and New York City. Edward Pearce Casey was born June 18,1864, in Portland, Maine, where his father, Brigadier-General Thomas Lincoln Casey, served during the Civil War. Edward was educated at the Emerson Institute of Washington, D. C. and graduated from the School of Mines of Columbia University, he received the degree of C. E. in 1886 and he studied also at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, France. Prior to completion of his schooling, Casey served in the 7th Regiment of the New York National Guard, in 1892, Casey replaced Paul J. Pelz as architect of the Library of Congress, whose construction his father directed until his death in 1896. In 1893, he was one of the six equal prize winners in the New York City Hall competition, in 1901, he won another design competition, for a design for the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D. C. Soon after completion of the Grant Memorial, Casey moved to New York City, in 1905 and 1906, Casey designed a new façade for a rebuild of the rectory at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation in Manhattan. Casey died on January 2,1940, and is buried in the plot at the Casey Farm in Rhode Island
5.
Library of Congress
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The Library of Congress is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the de facto national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States, the Library is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D. C. it also maintains the Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia, which houses the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center. The Library of Congress claims to be the largest library in the world and its collections are universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 450 languages. Two-thirds of the books it acquires each year are in other than English. The Library of Congress moved to Washington in 1800, after sitting for years in the temporary national capitals of New York. John J. Beckley, who became the first Librarian of Congress, was two dollars per day and was required to also serve as the Clerk of the House of Representatives. The small Congressional Library was housed in the United States Capitol for most of the 19th century until the early 1890s, most of the original collection had been destroyed by the British in 1814, during the War of 1812. To restore its collection in 1815, the bought from former president Thomas Jefferson his entire personal collection of 6,487 books. After a period of growth, another fire struck the Library in its Capitol chambers in 1851, again destroying a large amount of the collection. The Library received the right of transference of all copyrighted works to have two copies deposited of books, maps, illustrations and diagrams printed in the United States. It also began to build its collections of British and other European works and it included several stories built underground of steel and cast iron stacks. Although the Library is open to the public, only high-ranking government officials may check out books, the Library promotes literacy and American literature through projects such as the American Folklife Center, American Memory, Center for the Book, and Poet Laureate. James Madison is credited with the idea for creating a congressional library, part of the legislation appropriated $5,000 for the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress. And for fitting up an apartment for containing them. Books were ordered from London and the collection, consisting of 740 books and 3 maps, was housed in the new Capitol, as president, Thomas Jefferson played an important role in establishing the structure of the Library of Congress. The new law also extended to the president and vice president the ability to borrow books and these volumes had been left in the Senate wing of the Capitol. One of the only congressional volumes to have survived was a government account book of receipts and it was taken as a souvenir by a British Commander whose family later returned it to the United States government in 1940. Within a month, former president Jefferson offered to sell his library as a replacement
6.
Independence Avenue (Washington, D.C.)
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Independence Avenue is a major east-west street in the southwest and southeast quadrants of the city of Washington, D. C. in the United States, running just south of the United States Capitol. Originally named South B Street, Independence Avenue SW was constructed between 1791 and 1823, Independence Avenue SE was constructed in pieces as residential development occurred east of the United States Capitol and east of the Anacostia River. Independence Avenue SW received its current name after Congress renamed the street in legislation approved on April 13,1934, Independence Avenue SW originally had its western terminus at 14th Street SW, but was extended west to Ohio Drive SW in 1941 and 1942. The government of the District of Columbia renamed the portion of the road in the southeast quadrant of the city in 1950, in the District of Columbias Cartesian-coordinate-based street-naming system, Independence Avenue was originally known as South B Street. The street began construction sometime after 1791, by October 1803, it existed definitively between New Jersey Avenue and 1st Street East, and in 1809 it was opened between New Jersey Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue. By 1816, the length of the avenue appears to have been opened. At the time, South B Streets western terminus was on the shore of the Potomac River and this reclaimed land — which today includes West Potomac Park, East Potomac Park, the Tidal Basin — was largely complete by 1890, and designated Potomac Park by Congress in 1897. But South B Street was not extended through the reclaimed land. In 1925, Congress authorized the construction of Arlington Memorial Bridge, the legislation specified that North B Street be treated as a major approach to Arlington Memorial Bridge. The National Capital Park and Planning Commission approved the significant widening of North B Street into a ceremonial avenue, on February 25,1931, President Herbert Hoover signed legislation which renamed North B Street as Constitution Avenue. Planning for the creation of a ceremonial avenue to take the place of South B Street began in 1930. That year, the National Capital Park and Planning Commission advocated turning the roadway into a ceremonial avenue as a counterpart to North B Street. The following year, the NCPPC proposed widening South B Street to 60 feet between New Jersey Avenue SE and 12th Street SW, all along the route, the north curb would remain in place, while the south curb moved to accommodate the new widths. The NCPPC had already won the support of the Architect of the Capitol for the plan, the renaming of North B Street and the actions of the NCPPC encouraged local citizens to seek to rename South B Street as well. The idea was conceived by the federations past president, Fred A. Emery, but no action was taken in the 72nd United States Congress. Instead, Senate Joint Resolution 258 was introduced Arthur Capper in the United States Senate to change the name to Independence Avenue, the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia favorably reported the bill on February 28,1933. But Congress adjourned on March 3 without further action, the NCPPC had not given up on the idea, however. In November 1933, it approved changing the width of South B Street between 12th and 14th Streets SW to 80 feet, which helped cement in place its plan for a future Independence Avenue
7.
Facade
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A façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. It is a loan word from the French façade, which means frontage or face. In architecture, the façade of a building is often the most important aspect from a design standpoint, from the engineering perspective of a building, the façade is also of great importance due to its impact on energy efficiency. For historical façades, many local zoning regulations or other laws restrict or even forbid their alteration. The word comes from the French foreign loan word façade, which in turn comes from the Italian facciata, from faccia meaning face, the earliest usage recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is 1656. It was quite common in the Georgian period for existing houses in English towns to be given a fashionable new façade, in modern highrise building, the exterior walls are often suspended from the concrete floor slabs. Examples include curtain walls and precast concrete walls, the façade can at times be required to have a fire-resistance rating, for instance, if two buildings are very close together, to lower the likelihood of fire spreading from one building to another. In general, the systems that are suspended or attached to the precast concrete slabs will be made from aluminium or stainless steel. In recent years more lavish materials such as titanium have sometimes been used, whether rated or not, fire protection is always a design consideration. The melting point of aluminium,660 °C, is reached within minutes of the start of a fire. Firestops for such building joints can be qualified, too, putting fire sprinkler systems on each floor has a profoundly positive effect on the fire safety of buildings with curtain walls. Some building codes also limit the percentage of area in exterior walls. When the exterior wall is not rated, the slab edge becomes a junction where rated slabs are abutting an unrated wall. For rated walls, one may also choose rated windows and fire doors, on a film set and within most themed attractions, many of the buildings are only façades, which are far cheaper than actual buildings, and not subject to building codes. In film sets, they are held up with supports from behind. Within theme parks, they are usually decoration for the interior ride/attraction/restaurant, by Ulrich Knaack, Tillmann Klein, Marcel Bilow and Thomas Auer. ISBN 978-3-7643-7961-2 ISBN 978-3-7643-7962-9 Giving buildings an illusion of grandeur Poole, the article outlines the development of the façade in ecclesiastical architecture from the early Christian period to the Renaissance
8.
National Historic Landmark
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A National Historic Landmark is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Of over 85,000 places listed on the countrys National Register of Historic Places, a National Historic Landmark District may include contributing properties that are buildings, structures, sites or objects, and it may include non-contributing properties. Contributing properties may or may not also be separately listed, prior to 1935, efforts to preserve cultural heritage of national importance were made by piecemeal efforts of the United States Congress. The first National Historic Site designation was made for the Salem Maritime National Historic Site on March 17,1938. In 1960, the National Park Service took on the administration of the data gathered under this legislation. Because listings often triggered local preservation laws, legislation in 1980 amended the procedures to require owner agreement to the designations. On October 9,1960,92 properties were announced as designated NHLs by Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton, more than 2,500 NHLs have been designated. Most, but not all, are in the United States, there are NHLs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Three states account for nearly 25 percent of the nations NHLs, three cities within these states all separately have more NHLs than 40 of the 50 states. In fact, New York City alone has more NHLs than all but five states, Virginia, California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, there are 74 NHLs in the District of Columbia. Some NHLs are in U. S. commonwealths and territories, associated states, and foreign states. There are 15 in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and other U. S. commonwealths and territories,5 in U. S. -associated states such as Micronesia, over 100 ships or shipwrecks have been designated as NHLs. About half of the National Historic Landmarks are privately owned, the National Historic Landmarks Program relies on suggestions for new designations from the National Park Service, which also assists in maintaining the landmarks. A friends group of owners and managers, the National Historic Landmark Stewards Association, works to preserve, protect, if not already listed on the National Register of Historic Places, an NHL is automatically added to the Register upon designation. About three percent of Register listings are NHLs, american Water Landmark List of U. S
9.
Thomas Lincoln Casey Sr.
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Thomas Lincoln Casey Sr. was a soldier and engineer. Thomas Lincoln Casey was a military and civil engineer of the late 19th Century. He served as Chief of Engineers for the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Casey was born in Sackets Harbor, New York. He graduated first in his class from West Point in 1852 and was assigned to the Corps of Engineers and he taught engineering at West Point from 1854 to 1859. Casey headed the division the Office of the Chief of Engineers responsible for military engineers, equipment, from 1877 to 1881, Casey headed the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds, District of Columbia. He had design responsibility for the State, War, and Navy Building and he re-designed and completed the Washington Monument after problems arose with the original design. He was promoted to general as assigned as Chief of Engineers on July 6,1888. He retired from the Army on May 10,1895 having reached the retirement age of 64. He worked on the design of the Thomas Jefferson Building, which houses the Library of Congress, upon his death, responsibility for the project passed to his son, architect Edward Pearce Casey. Another son, Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey Jr. had a 33-year career in the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers and was a noted entomologist, Casey was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and an officer of the Legion of Honor of France. In 1882 he succeeded his father as a member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati and he was also a First Class Companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. Thomas Lincoln Casey was buried with his father and other members at the Casey Farm in Saunderstown. Portraits and Profiles of Chief Engineers, archived from the original on March 6,2005. National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
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