Rittenhouse Square
Rittenhouse Square is the name of both a public park and the surrounding neighborhood, referred to as Rittenhouse in Center City, Pennsylvania, United States. The park is one of the five original open-space parks planned by William Penn and his surveyor Thomas Holme during the late 17th century. Known as "the Square," the park is considered one of the finest urban public spaces in the United States; the square cuts off 19th Street at Walnut Street and at a half block above Manning Street. Its boundaries are 18th Street to the East, Walnut St. to the north, Rittenhouse Square West, Rittenhouse Square South, making the park two short blocks on each side. The neighborhood is among the highest-income urban neighborhoods in the country. Together with Fitler Square, the Rittenhouse neighborhood and the square, comprise the Rittenhouse Fitler Historic District. Rittenhouse Square Park is maintained by The Friends of Rittenhouse Square. Called Southwest Square, Rittenhouse Square was renamed in 1825 after David Rittenhouse, a descendant of the first paper-maker in Philadelphia, the German immigrant William Rittenhouse.
William Rittenhouse's original paper-mill site is known as Rittenhousetown, located in the rural setting of Fairmount Park along Paper Mill Run. David Rittenhouse was a clockmaker and friend of the American Revolution, as well as a noted astronomer. In the early nineteenth century, as the city grew from the Delaware River to the Schuylkill River, it became obvious that Rittenhouse Square would become a desirable address. James Harper, a merchant and brick manufacturer who had retired from the United States Congress, was the first person to build on the square, buying most of the north frontage, erecting a stately townhouse for himself at 1811 Walnut Street. Having thus set the patrician residential tone that would subsequently define the Square, he divided the rest of the land into generously proportioned building lots and sold them. Sold after the congressman's death, the Harper house became the home of the exclusive Rittenhouse Club, which added the present facade in c. 1901. From 1876 to 1929, Rittenhouse Square was home to several wealthy families including Philadelphia Railroad president, Alexander Cassatt.
Elegant architecture like churches and clubs were constructed by Frank Furness. 1913 brought more changes to the Square's layout when the French architect, Paul Philippe Cret redesigned parts of the Square to resemble Paris and the French gardens. These redesigns include classical entryways and stone additions to railings and fountains. After World War II, Rittenhouse added to its architecture with modern apartments, office buildings, condominiums due to the real estate boom. Residential Rittenhouse Square housed Victorian mansions but are now replaced with high-rise apartments to accommodate the residents that live there. Shopping has become a popular activity with store buildings taking place of the brownstones along the streets. Historic design remains in Rittenhouse Square today, with prominent buildings in Italianate and Art Deco styles. Journalist and author Jane Jacobs wrote about Paul Philippe Cret's additions to the park that remain there today. Rittenhouse Square has changed the least out of the Squares.
Vacant lots were converted to apartments and hotels, original mansions were replaced with apartments such as Claridge and Savoy. Jacobs focused on sharing two main ideas in Paul Cret's redesign and centering. Compared with the other four original squares in Philadelphia, Rittenhouse Square has survived proposed alterations that may have changed both its physical layout and character. In the mid 1900s, conflicts between homosexual and heterosexual communities were common within Center City neighborhoods. Gay and lesbians were found living around Rittenhouse Square and saw the park as a safety zone for camaraderie. For gay men, the park was used as a place to find other men. Hippies and pre-Stonewall gays were part of their own groups there. Today, the tree-filled park is surrounded by high rise residences, luxury apartments, an office tower, a few popular restaurants, a Barnes & Noble bookstore, a Barneys, a Starbucks, the center of controversy for racial discrimination, a five-star hotel, its green grasses and dozens of benches are popular lunch-time destinations for residents and workers in Philadelphia's Center City neighborhood, while its lion and goat statues are popular gathering spots for small children and their parents.
The park is a popular dog walking destination for area residents, as was shown in the fictional film In Her Shoes. The Square was discussed in a favorable light by Jane Jacobs in her seminal work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities; the beauty of the Park is due to the efforts of Friends of Rittenhouse Square, a public-private partnership with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation. Landscaping, restoration of fountains and fencing—even the installation and stocking of doggie-bag dispensers—are all projects of the Friends of Rittenhouse Square. During 2013, the 100th anniversary of architect Paul Cret's redesign of the Square, the Friends of Rittenhouse Square are working to raise record funds for a lighting and preservation initiative. New security cameras have cut down on vandalism, park rangers have helped calm behavior in the Square, damaged balustrades and stonework are undergoing extensive restoration; the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood is home to many cultural institutions, including the Curtis Ins
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle; the Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, New Jersey to the east. Pennsylvania is the 33rd-largest state by area, the 6th-most populous state according to the most recent official U. S. Census count in 2010, it is the 9th-most densely populated of the 50 states. Pennsylvania's two most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh; the state capital and its 10th largest city is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of waterfront along the Delaware Estuary; the state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden.
It was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12, 1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the state's largest city of Philadelphia. During the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washington's headquarters during the bitter winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west. Of a total 46,055 square miles, 44,817 square miles are land, 490 square miles are inland waters, 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie, it is the 33rd-largest state in the United States. Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Of the original Thirteen Colonies, Pennsylvania is the only state that does not border the Atlantic Ocean; the boundaries of the state are the Mason–Dixon line to the south, the Twelve-Mile Circle on the Pennsylvania-Delaware border, the Delaware River to the east, 80° 31' W to the west and the 42° N to the north, with the exception of a short segment on the western end, where a triangle extends north to Lake Erie.
Cities include Philadelphia, Reading and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown and Easton in the central east. The northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining cities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest. State College serves the central region while Williamsport serves the commonwealth's north-central region as does Chambersburg the south-central region, with York and the state capital Harrisburg on the Susquehanna River in the east-central region of the Commonwealth and Altoona and Johnstown in the west-central region; the state has five geographical regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain and the Erie Plain. New York Ontario Maryland Delaware West Virginia New Jersey Ohio Pennsylvania's diverse topography produces a variety of climates, though the entire state experiences cold winters and humid summers. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the southeastern corner, has a humid continental climate.
The southern portion of the state has a humid subtropical climate. The largest city, has some characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware and Maryland to the south. Summers are hot and humid. Moving toward the mountainous interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increases, snowfall amounts are greater. Western areas of the state locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the entire state receives plentiful precipitation throughout the year; the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, such as 30 recorded tornadoes in 2011; as of 1600, the tribes living in Pennsylvania were the Algonquian Lenape, the Iroquoian Susquehannock & Petun and the Siouan Monongahela Culture, who may have been the same as a little known tribe called the Calicua, or Cali. Other tribes who entered the region during the colonial era were the Trockwae, Saponi, Nanticoke, Conoy Piscataway, Iroquois Confederacy—possibly among others.
Other tribes, like the Erie, may have once held some land in Pennsylvania, but no longer did so by the year 1600. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their colonial lands in America; the Dutch were the first to take possession. By June 3, 1631, the Dutch had begun settling the Delmarva Peninsula by establishing the Zwaanendael Colony on the site of present-day Lewes, Delaware. In 1638, Sweden established the New Sweden Colony, in the region of Fort Christina, on the site of present-day Wilmington, Delaware. New Sweden claimed and, for the most part, controlled the lower Delaware River region (parts of present-day Delaware, New Jersey, Pe
Paper Discovery Center
The Paper Discovery Center is a museum and workshop center focused on papermaking in Appleton, United States, where paper is an important local industry. Programs in the past have included hands-on work experience and general information on papermaking. There is a Science Summer Series for children at the center; the Paper Discovery Center opened in February 2005. It was first conceived in 1999 as part of the Paper Industry International Hall of Inc.. The Kimberly-Clark Corporation donated its former Atlas Mill on the Fox River in Appleton to house the center. Paper Discovery Center website Paper Industry International Hall of Fame
Paper mill
A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp, old rags and other ingredients. Prior to the invention and adoption of the Fourdrinier machine and other types of paper machine that use an endless belt, all paper in a paper mill was made by hand, one sheet at a time, by specialized laborers. Historical investigations into the origin of the paper mill are complicated by differing definitions and loose terminology from modern authors: Many modern scholars use the term to refer indiscriminately to all kinds of mills, whether powered by humans, by animals or by water, their propensity to refer to any ancient paper manufacturing centre as a "mill", without further specifying its exact power drive, has increased the difficulty of identifying the efficient and important water-powered type. The use of human and animal powered mills was known to Muslim papermakers. However, evidence for water-powered paper mills is elusive among both prior to the 11th century.
The general absence of the use of water-powered paper mills in Muslim papermaking prior to the 11th century is suggested by the habit of Muslim authors at the time to call a production center not a "mill", but a "paper manufactory". Scholars have identified paper mills in Abbasid-era Baghdad in 794–795; the evidence that waterpower was applied to papermaking at this time is a matter of scholarly debate. In the Moroccan city of Fez, Ibn Battuta speaks of "400 mill stones for paper". Since Ibn Battuta does not mention the use of water-power and such a number of water-mills would be grotesquely high, the passage is taken to refer to human or animal force. An exhaustive survey of milling in Al-Andalus did not uncover water-powered paper mills, nor do the Spanish books of property distribution after the Christian reconquest refer to any. Arabic texts never use the term mill in connection with papermaking and the most thorough account of Muslim papermaking at the time, the one by the Zirid Sultan Al-Muizz ibn Badis, describes the art purely in terms of a handcraft.
Donald Hill has identified a possible reference to a water-powered paper mill in Samarkand, in the 11th-century work of the Persian scholar Abu Rayhan Biruni, but concludes that the passage is "too brief to enable us to say with certainty" that it refers to a water-powered paper mill. This is seen by Leor Halevi as evidence of Samarkand first harnessing waterpower in the production of paper, but notes that it is not known if waterpower was applied to papermaking elsewhere across the Islamic world at the time. Robert I. Burns remains sceptical, given the isolated occurrence of the reference and the prevalence of manual labour in Islamic papermaking elsewhere prior to the 13th century. Hill notes that paper mills appear in early Christian Catalan documentation from the 1150s, which may imply Islamic origins, but that hard evidence is lacking. Burns, has dismissed the case for early Catalan water-powered paper mills, after re-examination of the evidence; the identification of early hydraulic stamping mills in medieval documents from Fabriano, Italy, is completely without substance.
Clear evidence of a water-powered paper mill dates to 1282 in the Spanish Kingdom of Aragon. A decree by the Christian king Peter III addresses the establishment of a royal "molendinum", a proper hydraulic mill, in the paper manufacturing centre of Xàtiva; this early hydraulic paper mill was operated by Muslim Mudéjar in the Moorish quarter of Xàtiva, though it appears to have been resented by sections of the local Muslim papermakering community. The first permanent paper mill north of the Alps was established in Nuremberg by Ulman Stromer in 1390. From the mid-14th century onwards, European paper milling underwent a rapid improvement of many work processes; the size of a paper mill prior to the use of industrial machines was described by counting the number of vats it had. Thus, a "one vat" paper mill had only one vatman, one coucher, other laborers. By the early 20th century, paper mills sprang up around New England and the rest of the world, due to the high demand for paper. At this time, there were many world leaders of the production of paper.
During the year 1907, the Brown Company cut between 30 and 40 million acres of woodlands on their property, which extended from La Tuque, Canada to West Palm, Florida. In the 1920s Nancy Baker Tompkins represented large paper manufacturing companies, like Hammermill Paper Company, Honolulu Paper Company and Appleton Coated Paper Company to promote sales to the distributors of paper products, it was the only business of its kind in the world and was started in 1931 by Tompkins and prospered in spite of the business depression. “Log drives” were conducted on local rivers to send the logs to the mills. By the late 20th and early 21st-century, paper mills began to close and the log drives became a dying craft. Due to the addition of new machinery, many millworkers were laid off and many of the historic paper mills closed. Paper mills can be integrated mills or nonintegrated mills. Integrated mills consist of a paper mill on the same site; such mills produce paper. The modern paper mill uses large amounts of energy and wood pulp in an efficient and complex series of processes, control technology to produce a sheet of paper that can be used in diverse ways.
Modern paper machines can be 500 feet in length, produce a sheet 400 inc
Mennonites
The Mennonites are members of certain Christian groups belonging to the church communities of Anabaptist denominations named after Menno Simons of Friesland. Through his writings, Simons formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss founders; the early teachings of the Mennonites were founded on the belief in both the mission and ministry of Jesus, which the original Anabaptist followers held to with great conviction despite persecution by the various Roman Catholic and Protestant states. An early set of Mennonite beliefs was codified in the Dordrecht Confession of Faith in 1632, but the various groups do not hold to a common confession or creed. Rather than fight, the majority of these followers survived by fleeing to neighboring states where ruling families were tolerant of their belief in believer's baptism. Over the years, Mennonites have become known as one of the historic peace churches because of their commitment to pacifism. In contemporary 21st-century society, Mennonites either are described only as a religious denomination with members of different ethnic origins or as both an ethnic group and a religious denomination.
There is controversy among Mennonites about this issue, with some insisting that they are a religious group while others argue that they form a distinct ethnic group. Historians and sociologists have started to treat Mennonites as an ethno-religious group, while others have begun to challenge that perception. There is a discussion about the term "ethnic Mennonite". Conservative Mennonite groups, who speak Pennsylvania German, Plautdietsch, or Bernese German fit well into the definition of an ethnic group, while more liberal groups and converts in developing countries do not. There are about 2.1 million Anabaptists worldwide as of 2015. Mennonite congregations worldwide embody the full scope of Mennonite practice from "plain people" to those who are indistinguishable in dress and appearance from the general population. Mennonites can be found in communities in at least 87 countries on six continents; the largest populations of Mennonites are to be found in Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia and the United States.
There are Mennonite colonies in Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico and Paraguay Plautdietsch-speaking, who originated in the Netherlands, formed as a distinct ethnic group in Prussia and Ukraine, are called, somewhat inaccurately, Russian Mennonites. Today, fewer than 500 Mennonites remain in Ukraine. A small Mennonite presence, known as the Algemene Doopsgezinde Societeit, still continues in the Netherlands, where Simons was born; the early history of the Mennonites starts with the Anabaptists in the German and Dutch-speaking parts of central Europe. The German term is "Täufer" or "Wiedertäufer"; these forerunners of modern Mennonites were part of the Protestant Reformation, a broad reaction against the practices and theology of the Roman Catholic Church. Its most distinguishing feature is the rejection of infant baptism, an act that had both religious and political meaning since every infant born in western Europe was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. Other significant theological views of the Mennonites developed in opposition to Roman Catholic views or to the views of other Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli.
Some of the followers of Zwingli's Reformed church thought that requiring church membership beginning at birth was inconsistent with the New Testament example. They believed that the church should be removed from government, that individuals should join only when willing to publicly acknowledge belief in Jesus and the desire to live in accordance with his teachings. At a small meeting in Zurich on January 21, 1525, Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, along with twelve others, baptized each other; this meeting marks the beginning of the Anabaptist movement. In the spirit of the times, other groups came to be, preaching about reducing hierarchy, relations with the state and sexual license, running from utter abandon to extreme chastity; these movements are together referred to as the "Radical Reformation". Many government and religious leaders, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, considered voluntary church membership to be dangerous—the concern of some deepened by reports of the Münster Rebellion, led by a violent sect of Anabaptists.
They joined forces to fight the movement, using methods such as banishment, burning, drowning or beheading. Despite strong repressive efforts of the state churches, the movement spread around western Europe along the Rhine. Officials killed many of the earliest Anabaptist leaders in an attempt to purge Europe of the new sect. By 1530, most of the founding leaders had been killed for refusing to renounce their beliefs. Many believed that God did not condone killing or the use of force for any reason and were, unwilling to fight for their lives; the non-resistant branches survived by seeking refuge in neutral cities or nations, such as Strasbourg. Their safety was tenuous, as a shift in alliances or an invasion could mean resumed persecution. Other groups of Anabaptists, such as the Batenburgers, were destroyed by their willingness to fight; this played a large part in the evolution of Anabaptist theology. They believed that Jesus taught that any use of force to get back at anyone was wrong, taught to forgive.
In the early days of the Anabapt
Historic RittenhouseTown
Historic RittenhouseTown, sometimes referred to as Rittenhouse Historic District, encompasses the remains of an early industrial community, the site of the first paper mill in British North America. The mill was built in 1690 by William Rittenhouse and his son Nicholas on the north bank of Paper Mill Run near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the district, off Lincoln Drive near Wissahickon Avenue in Fairmount Park, includes six of up to forty-five original buildings. RittenhouseTown was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a National Historic Landmark District on April 27, 1992. Flax was woven into linen in nearby Germantown; when the linen fabrics wore out, the rags were brought to RittenhouseTown to be made into paper. Paper produced at the Rittenhouse mill was sold to printers in Germantown and New York City; the Rittenhouse paper mill operated until about the 1850s, by which time the family was leasing its facilities out to other types of manufacturing. Between the years 1890 and 1917, the site was acquired through donations and purchases by the City of Philadelphia's Fairmount Park Commission.
A nonprofit organization called Historic RittenhouseTown, Inc. was founded in 1984 to preserve and interpret RittenhouseTown. The organization maintains offices within RittenhouseTown and offers historic tours, paper making workshops and special events. RittenhouseTown includes six historic buildings maintained by Historic RittenhouseTown: Abraham Rittenhouse Home; the Rittenhouse Bake House is used for cooking demonstrations. A 20th century barn built for the Fairmount Park Commission is now used for paper-making workshops and demonstrations. Most of RittenhouseTown's buildings are built of stone and finished in stucco, exhibit colonial building methods, they are all that are left of a much larger industrial complex and worker village, of which more than thirty-five buildings have been demolished. The area includes archaeological industrial remains of some of the mill buildings. Awbury Historic District Chestnut Hill Historic District Colonial Germantown Historic District Tulpehocken Station Historic District List of National Historic Landmarks in Philadelphia National Register of Historic Places listings in Northwest Philadelphia Green, James.
The Rittenhouse Mill and the Beginnings of Papermaking in America. Philadelphia: Library Company of Philadelphia and Friends of Historic RittenhouseTown, 1990. Photos and interior, from 1989 and 1990 32 KB Historic RittenhouseTown website First Paper Mill in British North America Listing and drawings of the Claus Rittenhouse house at the Historic American Buildings Survey Listing and drawings of the Claus Rittenhouse home outbuilding at the Historic American Buildings Survey
Papermaking
The art and technology of papermaking addresses the methods and materials used to make paper and cardboard, these being used for printing and packaging, among many other purposes and useful products. Today all paper is manufactured using industrial machinery, while handmade paper survives as a specialized craft and a medium for artistic expression. In papermaking, a dilute suspension consisting of separate cellulose fibres in water is drained through a sieve-like screen, so that a mat of randomly interwoven fibres is laid down. Water is further removed from this sheet by pressing, sometimes aided by suction or vacuum, or heating. Once dry, a flat and strong sheet of paper is achieved. Before the invention and current widespread adoption of automated machinery, all paper was made by hand, formed or laid one sheet at a time by specialized laborers. Today those who make paper by hand use tools and technologies quite similar to those existing hundreds of years ago, as developed in China and Asia, or those further modified in Europe.
Handmade paper is still appreciated for its distinctive uniqueness and the skilled craft involved in making each sheet, in contrast with the higher degree of uniformity and perfection at lower prices achieved among industrial products. While monitoring and action by concerned citizens, as well as improvements within the industry itself are limiting the worst abuses, papermaking continues to be of concern from an environmental perspective, due to its use of harsh chemicals, its need for large amounts of water, the resulting contamination risks, as well as trees being used as the primary source of wood pulp. Paper made from other fibers, cotton being the most common, tends to be valued higher than wood-based paper. Hemp paper had been used in China for wrapping and padding since the eighth century BCE.. Paper with legible Chinese writings on it has been dated to 8 BCE; the traditional inventor attribution is of Cai Lun, an official attached to the Imperial court during the Han Dynasty, said to have invented paper about 105 CE using mulberry and other bast fibres along with fishnets, old rags, hemp waste.
Paper used as a writing medium had become widespread by the 3rd century and, by the 6th century, toilet paper was starting to be used in China as well. During the Tang Dynasty paper was folded and sewn into square bags to preserve the flavour of tea, while the Song Dynasty was the first government to issue paper-printed money. In the 8th century, papermaking spread to the Islamic world, where the process was refined, machinery was designed for bulk manufacturing. Production began in Samarkand, Damascus, Cairo and Muslim Spain. In Baghdad, papermaking was under the supervision of the Grand Vizier Ja'far ibn Yahya. Muslims invented a method to make a thicker sheet of paper; this innovation helped transform papermaking from an art into a major industry. The earliest use of water-powered mills in paper production the use of pulp mills for preparing the pulp for papermaking, dates back to Samarkand in the 8th century; the earliest references to paper mills come from the medieval Islamic world, where they were first noted in the 9th century by Arabic geographers in Damascus.
Traditional papermaking in Asia uses the inner bark fibers of plants. This fiber is soaked, cooked and traditionally hand-beaten to form the paper pulp; the long fibers are layered to form translucent sheets of paper. In Eastern Asia, three traditional fibers are abaca and gampi. In the Himalayas, paper is made from the lokta plant. Today, this paper is used for calligraphy, book arts, three-dimensional work, including origami. In Europe, papermaking moulds using metallic wire were developed, features like the watermark were well established by 1300 CE, while hemp and linen rags were the main source of pulp, cotton taking over after Southern plantations made that product in large quantities. Papermaking was not popular in Europe due to not having many advantages over papyrus and parchment, it wasn't until the 15th century with the invention of the movable type printing and its demand for paper that many paper mills entered production, papermaking became an industry. Modern papermaking began in the early 19th century in Europe with the development of the Fourdrinier machine.
This machine produces a continuous roll of paper rather than individual sheets. These machines are large; some produce paper 150 meters in length and 10 meters wide. They can produce paper at a rate of 100 km/h. In 1844, Canadian Charles Fenerty and German F. G. Keller had associated process to make use of wood pulp in papermaking; this innovation ended the nearly 2,000-year use of pulped rags and start a new era for the production of newsprint and almost all paper was made out of pulped wood. Papermaking, regardless of the scale on which it is done, involves making a dilute suspension of fibres in water, called "furnish", forcing this suspension to drain through a screen, to produce a mat of interwoven fibres. Water is removed from this mat of fibres using a press; the method of manual papermaking changed little over time, despite advances in technologies. The process of manufacturing handmade paper can be generalized into five steps: Separating the useful fibre from the rest of raw materials. Beating down the fibre into pulp Adjusting the colour, chemical and other properties of the paper by adding special chemical premixes Screening the resulting solution Pressing and drying to get the actual paperScreening the fibre involves using a mesh made from
William Rittenhouse, Paper Industry International Hall of Fame, 1996, 2:23
