<p>The West Congregational Church of Taunton, formerly the Westville Congregational Church, is a historic church located at 415 Winthrop Street in Taunton, Massachusetts. Built in 1792 and moved to its present location in 1824, it is the city&#39;s oldest church building, and a well-preserved example of Federal period architecture. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.</p><br>
<h2>Description and history</h2><br>
<p>The West Congregation Church is located in the center of Westville village on the west side of Taunton, at the northwest corner of Winthrop and North Walker Streets. It is a single-story rectangular wood frame structure, with a gable roof and clapboard siding. An entry vestibule projects from the east-facing front facade, topped by a gable roof and a square tower topped by an octagonal belfry and cupola. The main entry is framed by pilasters and topped by a cap-molded entablature.</p><br>
<p>The West Congregational Society was organized in 1792 by dissenters from the First Parish Church, and built this meeting house in Oakland village at the corner of Glebe and Oakland Streets. In 1824 the building was disassembled and moved to the present location, on land purchased from John West, owner of the local mill. It is the city&#39;s oldest surviving church building, and a fine example of a Federal period church.</p><br>
<p>Unitarian Memorial Church is a historic church on 102 Green Street in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, home to the Unitarian Universalist Society of Fairhaven.</p><br>
<p>The congregation was founded in 1819, moved into the Washington Street Christian Meetinghouse in 1832, and called its first minister in 1840. The Reverend María Uitti McCabe is its currently serving minister, and the Society President is Julie Sullivan. UUSF is a member congregation of the Boston-based Unitarian Universalist Association, and a designated GLBTQA Welcoming Congregation, a UUA Honor Congregation, and a part of the Green Sanctuary movement. Services are held in the neo-Gothic sanctuary at 10:00 a.m. from September through mid-June each year. The church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.</p><br>
<p>The Unitarian Memorial Church in Fairhaven was built, financed and donated to the Unitarians in 1904 by Henry H. Rogers in memory of his mother, Mary Eldredge Huttleston. The church was designed by Boston architect Charles Brigham in a Gothic Revival style. It is one hundred fourteen feet (34.75m) in height, one hundred feet (30.48m) long in body and fifty-three feet (16.15m) wide. The nave is thirty-two feet (9.75m) wide and seventy-one feet (21.64m) long. The main aisle is sixty-two feet (18.90m) long and six feet (1.83m) wide. The church, parish house and former parsonage (now Harrop Center) of the Unitarian Society are so placed as to form three sides of a quadrangle, set among well-kept lawns and shrubbery. Granite (locally quarried) with Indiana limestone decorative carvings dominate the exterior while marble and limestone carvings dominate the interior. All stonework artistry was created by forty-five Italian craftsmen brought to Fairhaven by Rogers.</p><br>
<h2>Sanctuary</h2><br>
<p>All the woodwork in the sanctuary is English bog oak carved by forty-five Bavarian craftsmen. No two carvings are alike on the thirty-two pews, the ornate pulpit, the organ pipe cases, the choir screen or the doors.</p><br>
<p>In the rafters above the pews are ten wooden angels covered in beaten gold. Each ten-foot-high angel holds articles and bear inscriptions symbolizing ten attributes of the intellectual life.</p><br>
<p>The south entrance has twelve bronze symbols of the zodiac inlaid in the marble floor.</p><br>
<h2>Tower</h2><br>
<p>The great tower, over one hundred and sixty-five feet (50.29m) high, of sparkling granite and carved limestone, is a landmark for many miles. There are one hundred eighty granite steps leading to the tower. In this tower is a finely adjusted D Chime of eleven bells. They weigh a total of 14,000 pounds (6350 kg) and are played (struck) by iron hammers. The bells were cast by Chester Meneelly of the Meneelly Bell Company of Troy, New York. The original ringer&#39;s gallery is still in the tower even though the bells are now played both by hand or electronically from a small room in the sanctuary.</p><br>
<h2>Bronze doors</h2><br>
<p>At the south entrance to the sanctuary are the great bronze doors, extremely rich in design, each leaf is solid bronze weighing 2 1/4 tons. Following the Gothic outline of each leaf is a series of niches. Those on the exterior are canopied, each containing a finely modeled figure nine inches (22.9 cm) high. The thirty-eight statues represent great characters in the history of Christianity, covering a period of nineteen centuries.</p><br>
<h2>Baptismal font</h2><br>
<p>From the cloister with its ornate bronze gates and marble mosaic floor we enter the foyer with the baptismal font. The font sits on elegant white Indian marble inlaid with bronze lettering. Over the font hangs a large oak canopy carved by Johannes Kirchmayer with ten angels each holding a scroll engraved with one of the Ten Commandments. Above them are ten standing figures of men who preached and spread Christianity throughout the world.</p><br>
<p>Below the majestic vaulted ceiling in four corners are stone carvings symbolizing the four stages of womanhood: Infant, Youth, Maturity and Old Age. The beautiful bronze medallions inlaid in the marble floor represent Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.</p><br>
<h2>Organ</h2><br>
<p>The organ was built by the Hutchings-Votey Organ Company of Boston, Massachusetts in 1904. With 2,300 pipes (24 ranks) distributed over 3 manuals and pedalboard, it was considered one of the finest organs in the country at the time. When the new hot-air heating system installed in 1968 ruined the Hutchings-Votey pneumatic mechanism, a new organ was built by the Roche Organ Co., of Taunton, Massachusetts, in 1971 as their Opus 10. The Roche Organ Company preserved the exterior casework and the twelve best ranks from the previous organ, increasing the number of ranks to 58, with 3,163 pipes and fifty speaking registers.</p><br>
<p>The organ occupies the transepts on either side of the chancel and is housed behind the richly carved twin cases of the original instrument, which differ from each other in detail of ornamentation. The console is centrally located in the choir loft behind the pulpit rostrum. The woodwork of the cases, like the rest of the church furnishings, is of English oak. The facade pipes are covered in gold leaf and embellished with elaborate diapering. The basic case design bears a strong resemblance to that of the 1896 organ case in Southwark Cathedral in England (which probably inspired the Fairhaven design), although the Southwark case is not nearly as attractive nor as elaborate.</p><br>
<p>A digital upgrade of the console was accomplished by Barry Turley in 2008. Today, the organ remains among the finest of its size. All of the ornamental pipes in the two organ cases, one on each side of the chancel, are covered in beaten gold, the color of clouded silver, and are decorated very ornately.</p><br>
<h2>Stained-glass windows</h2><br>
<p>The stained-glass windows are the work of American Impressionist artist, Robert Reid. They cover the theme of the birth of Jesus in the Memorial Window utilizing color and shading from cool blues to warm earth tones through the nine clerestory windows from East to West. Seven of these windows are titled with one of the Beatitudes (or Blessed Be&#39;s) which Jesus was teaching his Disciples as illuminated in the glorious twenty-four-foot-high Sermon-on-the-Mount window located on the west wall.</p><br>
<p>One notable effect of the windows is the natural flesh quality in the figures. Two years were spent in their design and execution. These stained-glass windows were Reid&#39;s most prized work, a masterpiece set and his only effort in stained glass.</p><br>
<p>Still River Baptist Church  is the home of the Harvard Historical Society. It is an historic Gothic Revival-style meeting house located at 213 Still River Road in Harvard, Massachusetts. The building houses the Harvard Historical Society&#39;s museum and archival collections.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>In 1832, the Still River Baptist Society built the current Still River Baptist Meeting House to use for weekly worship services. The Baptist Society was founded on 27 June 1776. The first building on this site was purchased from the town of Leominster, Massachusetts, where it had served as the Standing Order (Congregational) church. When the current meeting house was built, the Baptist Society moved their first building across the street (218 Still River Road) to serve as a parsonage. Although it burned down in 1910, a photograph showing the original building is in the possession of the Harvard Historical Society.</p><br>
<p>The Still River Baptist Church was an active congregation through the nineteenth century and its members founded numerous other churches in the region. In 1966, the Still River Baptist Society merged with Harvard&#39;s "Evangelical Congregational Church" and sold its meetinghouse to the Harvard Historical Society. Briefly, an Episcopalian congregation rented the building to use for worship services.</p><br>
<p>The present 1832 building houses a steeple bell believed to have been originally from the Congregational Church, a baptismal font built into the stage, and an 1870 Stevens & Company organ. The organ has been awarded an Organ Historical Society citation honoring its historic qualities. The Harvard Historical Society is restoring the organ.</p><br>
<h3>Church Society</h3><br>
<p>On June 27, 1776, fourteen individuals signed the covenant that established a Baptist church in Harvard. They were Jemima Blanchard, Huldah Edes, Elizabeth Gates, Stephen Gates, Ruth Kilburn, Sarah Kilburn, Doctor Isaiah Parker, Joseph Stone, Annis Willard, Josiah Willard, Rachel Willard, Sarah Willard, Tarbel Willard, and William Willard Jr. The church&#39;s first minister, the Reverend Isaiah Parker MD, was ordained on 10 June 1778 by the Reverend Samuel Stillman DD.</p><br>
<p>During its early years, this church represented a dissenting denomination in Harvard—in marked contrast to the town-supported Standing Order church. However, some Baptist members sat on town committees and were sent to the State House. Co-founder Deacon Joseph Stone represented Harvard as a state senator, and the Reverend Isaiah Parker was a one-time member of the House of Representatives.</p><br>
<p>Some early church records are held in the Harvard Historical Societys collections. The church was a member of the Warren (Baptist) Association, an intrastate organization that supported individual churches in their struggle to separate church and state. Yearly association letters written by the Reverend Parker and others are in the Isaac Backus Collection at the Andover Newton Theological School. Statistical information on the early churchs membership taken from these letters was published in the yearly Warren Association Minutes.</p><br>
<h3>Harvard Historical Society</h3><br>
<p>The Harvard Historical Society was founded in 1897 and currently operates a museum and archives in the building. The Harvard Historical Society sponsors educational events for local students and the public, and periodically publishes historical tracts. The meeting house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. The Society&#39;s office is normally open to the public Monday and Tuesday afternoons from 1 to 5 pm and by appointment.</p><br>
<h2>Historical Society Publications</h2><br>
<p>History of Harvard, 1894-1941 compiled by Ida Harris</p><br>
<p>Directions of a Town (1977) compiled by Robert Anderson</p><br>
<p>The Harvard Album (1997) in memory of Elvira Scorgie</p><br>
<p>Brookfield Cemetery is an historic cemetery on Main Street  on the west side of Brookfield, Massachusetts. Established in 1714, it is the towns only cemetery. It consequently holds the burials of many of Brookfields founders and leading citizens, from the 18th century to the present, including those of neighboring towns that were once a part of Brookfield. The 43 acre cemetery has about 10,000 marked graves. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.</p><br>
<p>The cemetery was developed in three distinct phases. Brookfield once encompassed most of what is now the towns of Warren, West Brookfield, and East Brookfield, with the West Brookfield area being the earliest area of settlement in the 1670s. First known as Quaboag Plantation, it was abandoned after a 1675 attack by Native Americans in King Philip&#39;s War, and resettlement only began early in the 18th century. Burial practices before 1714 are poorly documented. In that year local church members set aside the first plot of land for burials; this was confirmed by town officials after Brookfield was incorporated in 1720. The cemetery was at first owned as part of church lands, but 5 acre (the westernmost portion of the modern cemetery) were deeded to the town of Brookfield in 1760, probably as part of the division of the town into three parishes (which later became Brookfield, East Brookfield, and West Brookfield).</p><br>
<p>During the 19th century the town undertook a number of improvements to the cemetery. A stone wall was built around it in the 1850s, and a receiving tomb was added in 1861. The large granite entrance gate was built in 1873, the gift of local residents William Banister and Otis Hayden Banister, and its Civil War memorial was dedicated in 1890. These were added in the central section of the cemetery, which was laid out in the Victorian rural cemetery style that was then fashionable.</p><br>
<p>The easternmost part of the cemetery was developed beginning about 1920, and has been expanded several times, most recently in 1996. Its layout reflects the aesthetics of the 20th Century Modern Cemetery movement.</p><br>
<h2>Notable interments</h2><br>
<p>Brookfield Cemetery has the burials of many notable figures:</p><br>
<p>Dwight Foster, U. S. Senator and USA Representative</p><br>
<p>Albert R. Howe- Union Army officer and politician who served as a single term as USA Representative for Mississippi.</p><br>
<p>The Edsel and Eleanor Ford House is a mansion located at 1100 Lake Shore Drive in Grosse Pointe Shores, northeast of Detroit, Michigan; it stands on the site known as "Gaukler Point", on the shore of Lake St. Clair. The house became the new residence of the Edsel and Eleanor Ford family in 1928. Edsel Ford was the son of Henry Ford and an executive at Ford Motor Company. The estate&#39;s buildings were designed by architect Albert Kahn, its site plan and gardens by renowned landscape designer Jens Jensen. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>House</h3><br>
<p>The Fords traveled to England with Albert Kahn for the concepts ideas, where they were attracted to the vernacular architecture of the Cotswolds. They asked Kahn to design a house that would resemble the closely assembled village cottages typical of that rural region. Kahns design included sandstone exterior walls, a traditional slate roof with the stone shingles decreasing in size as they reach its peak, and moss with ivy grown across the house&#39;s exterior. Construction on the house began in 1926.</p><br>
<p>While construction of the house itself took only one year, two years were spent fitting it with antique wood paneling and fireplaces brought from English Manor houses; interior fittings were in the hands of Charles Roberson, an expert in adapting old European paneling and fittings to American interiors. The Gallery, the largest room in the house, is paneled with sixteenth-century oak linenfold relief carved wood paneling. Its hooded chimneypiece is from Wollaston Hall in Worcestershire, England; the timber-framed house had been demolished in 1925 and its dismantled elements and fittings were in the process of being dispersed. A staircase came from Lyveden Manor House, also known as Lyveden Old Bield, second home of Sir Thomas Tresham. Fourteenth century stained-glass window medallions were added to the house in the late 1930s. Robersons barrel-vaulted ceiling for the Gallery was modeled on one at Boughton Malherbe, Kent, England. Paneling and doors in the Dining Room, entirely devoid of electricity, came from New Place, a victim of early twentieth-century expansion in Upminster, a new suburb of London. The Librarys paneling and its stone chimneypiece came from the Brudenell seat, Deene Park, Northamptonshire, England. Harris suggests that this already once removed paneling had come from another Brudenell seat.</p><br>
<p>The Study has a wooden overmantel with the date 1585, from Heronden Hall, in Tenterden, Kent.</p><br>
<p>Other interesting design elements include kitchen counters made of sterling silver, a "secret" photographic darkroom behind a panel of Edsel Fords office, and Art Deco style rooms designed by Walter Dorwin Teague, a leading industrial designer of the 1930s. Teagues first floor "Modern Room" features the new indirect lighting method, taupe colored leather wall panels, and a curved niche with eighteen vertical mirrored sections. He also designed bedrooms and sitting rooms for all three of Edsel and Eleanors sons. Teagues design for son Henry Ford II’s bathroom includes grey glass walls made of the same structural glass as its shower stall.</p><br>
<h3>Furnishings</h3><br>
<p>The house featured an extensive art collection, reflecting Edsel and Eleanors status as serious museum benefactors. After Eleanor Fords death, many important paintings were donated to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). Reproductions were hung in their place. The classical French-style Drawing Room features two original Paul Cézanne paintings and reproductions of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas works. A reproduction of Vincent van Gogh&#39;s The Postman Roulin hangs in the Morning Room. An original Diego Rivera painting, Cactus on the Plains, hangs in the Modern Room.</p><br>
<h3>Gardens</h3><br>
<p>The estates gardens were designed by landscape architect Jens Jensen with his traditional long view,&#39; giving visitors a glimpse of the residence down the long meadow after the passing the entry gates, then brief partial views along the long drive, and only at the end revealing the entire house and another view back up the long meadow.</p><br>
<p>Mrs. Ford wanted to have a rose garden installed but Jensen originally disapproved of this claiming that it would ruin the landscape which was designed to look completely natural. Jensen had previously quit on Henry Ford and Clara Ford, when Clara wanted to install a rose garden directly in the center of the backyard meadow at the Henry Ford Estate. Eleanor and Jensen eventually came to a compromise and the rose garden was placed behind some native bushes which was out of sight of the meadow that is the focal piece of the front lawn. Jensen&#39;s son was contracted later on to install the new garden area which has a reflecting pool and does not have the natural stylizing of the rest of the grounds. Instead he opted for finely trimmed bushes and square grassy areas.</p><br>
<p>The grounds of the estate include a power house and a gate house along affluent Lake Shore Drive, often mistaken for the actual house. The gate house includes apartments formerly used by staff and an eight-car garage with a turntable to rotate cars so they dont need to back out. The Recreation House beyond the man-made lagoon and swimming pool contains changing rooms and a squash court with spectators gallery. Closer to the gate house is Josephine Ford&#39;s child-sized playhouse, built for her by her grandmother Clara, in 1930. It features working electricity and plumbing and an exterior decorated with characters from nursery rhymes.</p><br>
<p>For William on his 21st birthday the family enlisted a company which built a full size replica pirate ship on the lagoon as a party showpiece. The party was held outside just off the Apple Patio and featured live acts including Frank Sinatra.</p><br>
<h2>Museum</h2><br>
<p>Edsel Ford died in this house in 1943 and his wife Eleanor Ford lived there until her death in 1976. It was her wish that the property be used for "the benefit of the public". The Edsel & Eleanor Ford House is open to the public for guided tours. Located on 87 acre at 1100 Lake Shore Road in Grosse Pointe Shores, the 30,000 ft&sup2; house has a fine collection of original antiques and art, and beautiful lakefront grounds. The grounds include the frontage on Ford&#39;s Cove, the total Lake St. Clair waterfront of the property is 3,100 feet (985 m). The house currently hosts special events, classes and lectures. The estate is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.</p><br>
<h2>Restoration</h2><br>
<p>Several restoration projects have been started in recent years, most of which were to fix the deteriorating masonry on the main house, the play house, and the various walks. The Edsel Ford house relies on donations as well as an original trust set up by Mrs. Ford to continue restoration work. Mrs. Ford left a total of $15 million when she handed the house over in trust in the 1970s. In 2007 the fund reached a value of $98 million.</p><br>
<p>The house has undergone multiple large scale restoration projects, including new roofing which was conducted by a firm from England using five professional masons. The roof was torn down to the base wood all of which was replaced where needed. The stone was selected to match the existing stone from the same quarry as the original.</p><br>
<p>The restoration projects are done by skilled craftsmen who have had proven previous experience in their fields. The foundation selects bidders for projects based on their previous experience, portfolio and firms that can provide near original/original material over pricing to ensure that the estate is restored to the original construction specifications.</p><br>
<p>The most recent restoration project was to replace the sandstone pillars on the outside of the lakefront patio, which had started to crack around the upper edges. To ensure complete historical accuracy the foundation contracted a firm from the same region from where the original stone was purchased.</p><br>
<p>There are still many rooms where visitors are not permitted, including the basement. While the estate houses 60-plus rooms as well as other buildings, the public tours usually only showcase 20 of them. Occasionally the other rooms, such as staff living quarters, are showcased in specific tours. Though a number of rooms in the north upstairs wing of the house hold administrative offices, these are not shown to the public. Some of the rooms are still in less than desirable condition, and restoration projects hope to have the entire estate in show-worthy condition within the next few years.</p><br>
<p>The Octagon House, also known as Zelotes Holmes House, is a historic octagonal house located in Laurens, South Carolina, United States. Designed and built in 1859 to 1862 by the Rev. Zelotes Lee Holmes, a Presbyterian minister and teacher, it is thought to be the first concrete house erected in South Carolina. It was called the Zelotes Holmes House by the Historic American Buildings Survey.</p><br>
<p>Also known as the Old Holmes House, the Old Watson House and the Holmes-Watson House, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 20, 1973.</p><br>
<p>El Greco Apartments is a historic twelve-unit, Spanish Revival style apartment building located in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles, California. The building was built in 1929 as one of the original buildings in the Westwood Village section of Los Angeles. Located in the heart of Westwood, the building was the home of film celebrities, including Erich von Stroheim, Michael Curtiz, and Joel McCrea. In the 1980s, the owner planned to demolish the building to erect a new condominium building. Met by tenant protests, the owner agreed to pay to have the building moved to another location. The building was ultimately moved to the Fairfax district where it was converted to low-income housing for senior citizens.</p><br>
<h2>Construction and architecture</h2><br>
<p>The Spanish-Mediterranean style El Greco was built from 1929 to 1930 and was one of the original buildings in Westwood Village. The two-story, 12-unit structure was designed by architect Clara Bertram Humphrey, and modeled after the home of artist El Greco in Toledo, Spain. The red tile roof and brick courtyard of the El Greco became a trend that was followed in many other structures in Westwood Village.</p><br>
<p>Once located in the heart of Westwood Village, the El Greco was the first hotel in Westwood Village and was reportedly the home to international film personalities, including Erich von Stroheim (Austrian director of the silent film classic Greed, among other works), Michael Curtiz (director of films such as The Adventures of Robin Hood, Angels with Dirty Faces, Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy and White Christmas), and Joel McCrea (star of films including Alfred Hitchcocks Foreign Correspondent and Preston Sturges, Sullivan&#39;s Travels and The Palm Beach Story).</p><br>
<p>In April 1939, the El Greco was purchased by A.J. Dolan for $37,500.</p><br>
<h2>Preservation efforts and relocation to Fairfax district</h2><br>
<p>By the end of the 1970s, many of the old Spanish-Mediterranean style buildings in Westwood Village had been replaced with high-rises. Accordingly, controversy arose when the owner of the El Greco announced plans in 1979 to demolish the structure and replace it with condominiums. Tenants of the old building, who were served with 60-day notices to vacate, led the preservation effort. Tenants including Leonard Nimoys son Adam Nimoy and James Davidson, with assistances from City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, led an effort to have the building declared a historic monument by the citys Cultural Heritage Board. In February 1980, the building was declared a Historic-Cultural Monument (#231), putting demolition plans on hold. Members of the Cultural Heritage Board referred to El Greco as "a stunning building... that ought to be saved." And in October 1980, the Los Angeles City Council voted 10-0 to prevent demolition of the building.</p><br>
<p>With demolition halted, plans circulated to donate the building to the city for low-income housing, to relocate the structure to vacant land, or to sell the property to UCLA for use as affordable housing for young faculty members and their families. None of those plans was accepted, and in 1984, the owner again moved forward with efforts to demolish the building. On this occasion, a group known as Alternative Living for the Aging came forward with a plan to move the building to vacant land in the Beverly-Fairfax district, where it would be converted to low-income housing for senior citizens. The City Council voted to withhold permission for demolition to allow time for the group to raise funds for the relocation and refurbishment. The owner ultimately agreed to pay $55,000 for the cost of moving the building, and a combination of private and public funds totaling $600,000 was raised to pay for the cost of the land and refurbishment of the building. Among other efforts, Leonard Nimoy (Spock in the 1960s television series Star Trek) staged a fund-raiser for the effort to preserve the El Greco.</p><br>
<p>In September 1985, the El Greco was carefully carved into four pieces and hauled from its original site in Westwood to its new location in the Beverly-Fairfax district. Architect Peter de Bretteville, who was in charge of the move and refurbishment, noted: "The difficult relocation was accomplished by dividing the apartment into four separate sections, preserving all of the structure&#39;s Spanish roof tiles and other elements of the charming brick and tile courtyard, including its central fish pond, which was recreated to its original appearance on the new site. The haul from Westwood required a great deal of preparation on the site, careful planning and finally settling of the structure on the new site. We worked within certain budget constraints and we tried to intrude as little as possible on the structure itself. I believe we came up with a good compromise." When the old structure was removed, construction began on a new $7.5 million, 112-unit apartment complex on the original site.</p><br>
<h2>Current operation as alternative living for seniors</h2><br>
<p>The relocated El Greco opened in December 1986 as housing for senior citizens. The building provides "alternative living" for seniors who do not need institutionalized care, but who choose not to live alone. Each resident is paired with another resident as "buddies" who check up on each other on a daily basis. Columnist Jack Smith profiled the novel facility in 1989, noting: "ALA screens every applicant for his or her compatibility degree. They must be clear-headed and without debilitating health problems.... It doesn&#39;t hurt to be good at Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit."</p><br>
<p>In 1988, the original building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.</p><br>
<p>The Feusier Octagon House is an historic octagonal house built in c. 1857, and located in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California.</p><br>
<p>It was listed as a San Francisco Designated Landmark on October 1, 1970, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 24, 1974. The house is also part of the Russian Hill-Paris Block Architectural District.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The Feusier Octagon House is located at 1067 Green Street in San Francisco. It was built between 1857 and 1858 by George Kenny, who sold it in 1870 to Louis Feusier. The house was later expanded with a third story, mansard roof, and cupola.</p><br>
<p>it was a rental house, before being put up for sale in 2021 for US$8.6 million.</p><br>
<p>The Feusier Octagon House, McElroy Octagon House, and the Marine Exchange Lookout Station at Land&#39;s End are the only three remaining octagon houses in the city.</p><br>
<p>The McElroy Octagon House, also known as the Colonial Dames Octagon House, is a historic octagonal house now located at 2645 Gough Street at Union Street in the Cow Hollow neighborhood of San Francisco, California, United States.</p><br>
<p>It was listed as a San Francisco Designated Landmark on February 3, 1969,</p><br>
<p>The house is open to the public for tours.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>William C. McElroy (?–1869) and his spouse Harriet Shober (1816–1899) bought the lot across the street from the house&#39;s current location on Gough Street in 1859. McElroy was a wood miller by trade and he built the house between 1860 and 1861. The McElroy family lived in the house until around the 1880s when the house became a rental property. Daniel O’Connell, a co-founder of the Bohemian Club, was one of the rental tenants. In April 1906 the house was badly damaged during the 1906 Earthquake. By 1909 the house was no longer owned by the McElroy family and it changed ownership many times.</p><br>
<p>The house was vacant and neglected in 1951 when the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in California bought it, moved it across the street and began its restoration. The house was restored by the University of California, Berkeley&#39;s former Dean of Architecture, Warren C. Perry. During the restoration, the original layout of the house was changed so it would be more functional as an event space. By 1953 the building opened as a museum.</p><br>
<p>The original location of the house (across the street) contains condominiums that were built on the property in 1955.</p><br>
<p>McElroy Octagon House, Feusier Octagon House, and the Marine Exchange Lookout Station at Land&#39;s End are the only three remaining octagon houses in the city.</p><br>
<p>The Octagon House  is a historic octagon house in Reading, Massachusetts. Built in 1860 by Doctor Horace Wakefield, it is a distinctive variant of the type, executed as a series of small octagonal shapes around a central cupola. The building is fashioned from large, heavy timbers in the manner of a log cabin, with long first-floor windows. The porches and eaves have heavy zigzag trim and brackets, some of which have carvings resembling gargoyles.</p><br>
<p>The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.</p><br>
<p>The Octagon House is an historic octagonal house located at 28 King Street in Westfield, Massachusetts. It was built sometime between 1858 and 1864 by Joseph Watson, and is the only one of three 19th-century octagon houses built in the city to survive. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982,</p><br>
<h2>Description and history</h2><br>
<p>The Octagon House is located behind Westfield&#39;s City Hall, on the south side of King Street between King Avenue and Hampden Street. It is a two-story eight-sided structure with a hip roof and a central eight-sided cupola. A two-story rectangular ell with a gabled roof extends to the rear, and a single-story porch extends across portions of the front, ending with an octagonal pavilion on the left. The porch decoration is Queen Anne in style, with delicate turned posts and a spindled valance. The main roof line is adorned by carved brackets at the corners. Most faces of the octagonal section have a single window on each floor. The interior follows a plan typical for these buildings, with a central spiral staircase leading all the way up to the cupola, with chambers on the outside walls.</p><br>
<p>The house was built by Joseph Watson, and was one of three octagon houses built in the community during the period when the published works of Orson Squire Fowler led to a fad in their construction. The ell was added in the 1870s and the porch in the 1890s. A prominent resident of the house was Albert Steiger, who founded Steiger&#39;s, a regionally prominent department store chain.</p><br>
<p>The William Bryant Octagon House is an historic octagon house located at 2 Spring Street in Stoneham, Massachusetts. Built in 1850, it is the best-preserved of three such houses built in the town in the 1850s. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.</p><br>
<h2>Description and history</h2><br>
<p>The William Bryant Octagon House stands east of Stoneham&#39;s Central Square, at the northwest corner of Spring and Washington Streets. The setting is residential, but Washington Street is a busy artery, and the house stands just northeast of its junction with Pleasant Street, another artery. It is a two-story eight-sided structure, covered by a low-pitch hip roof with a central octagonal cupola. The walls are finished in wooden clapboards, and the house rests on a granite foundation. The roof has extended eaves studded with decorative brackets. The entry, set in the south-facing front facade, is sheltered by an open porch with decorative square posts and brackets, and there is a two-story addition projecting from the rear side of the house. The other faces of the build have sash windows set in simple molded frames on each floor.</p><br>
<p>The house was built in 1850 by the Worcester Bros. firm for William Bryant, Jr., a shoecutter, and Lucinda A. (Hook) Bryant, his wife. It is one of three octagon houses built in Stoneham during the 1850s, and is the best preserved. Octagon houses were promoted by Orson Squire Fowler, and were an architectural fad during the 1850s.</p><br>
<p>The Richard Barker Octagon House is a historic octagon house located in Worcester, Massachusetts. Built sometime between 1855 and 1865, during a brief period in their popularity, it is one of two octagon houses in the city, and a relatively rare instance of one built using Orson Squire Fowler&#39;s recommended gravel wall technique. On March 5, 1980, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.</p><br>
<h2>Description and history</h2><br>
<p>The Barker Octagon House is set on Worcester&#39;s east side, on the east side of Plantation Street a short way south of Massachusetts Route 9. The house is two stories in height, with a low-pitch octagonal hip roof with a deep eave supported by paired decorative brackets. The walls are finished in stucco, and it has simple pilasters at the corners, giving the wall faces a paneled appearance. A Colonial Revival porch shelters the front entry, its four Tuscan columns supporting a shed roof. The building at one time had an octagonal cupola at the top, but this has been removed.</p><br>
<p>The house was built during the brief period between about 1848 and 1865, when octagon houses were popularized by the works of Orson Squire Fowler. This house is particularly unusual, in that its wall construction may follow one of Fowler&#39;s recommendations, using gravel stone chips; most octagon houses were built using then-standard wood-frame construction methods. The first documented owner was Richard Barker, a carpenter, who purchased the house in 1866, when the craze was already dying out.</p><br>
<p>The Woodward Avenue Baptist Church was a Church located at 2464 Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, but was destroyed by fire in 1986 and delisted in 1988.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The Woodward Avenue Baptist Church congregation was organized as Lafayette Street Baptist Church in 1860. In 1886, the congregation purchased the present church site and changed its name. They hired architect Mortimer Smith to design this church. Construction began immediately, and the church building was completed in 1887. In 1934 the original facade was demolished to make way for the widening of Woodward Avenue. In 1980, the congregation sold the building to the United House of Jeremiah. The church was destroyed by fire in 1986.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The original Woodward Avenue Baptist Church was a Late Victorian Gothic church constructed of gray limestone and rockfaced ashlar. As originally built, it had a gabled facade with a tall corner tower. However, due to the 1935 widening of Woodward Avenue, 46 feet were cut off the front, The remaining section measured 120 feet in length and 90 feet in width, with two simple Gothic arched doors on either side of a slightly projecting pavilion. A two-story addition in the rear, measured 165 feet long by 95 feet wide.</p><br>
<p>Moores Building is a historic building located in the downtown area of the Hamlet of Oyster Bay and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. First built in 1901, the building gained significance when Theodore Roosevelt had his staff take offices here while he served as USA President. The Moores Building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a Town of Oyster Bay Landmark, and a featured site on the Oyster Bay History Walk audio walking tour.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>This landmark building with its Queen Anne style tower and cornices is called the Moore Building, but when James Moore originally built it in 1891 to house his corner grocery store, it had a much more humble appearance. It began as a one-story structure, made mostly of wood with a section of brick on the front wrapping around each side for about 10 ft. Mr. Moore also built a row of attached wood buildings extending up East Main Street, which housed various shops such as Oyster Bay&#39;s first ice cream parlor, a furniture store, and an undertaker. Only five years after they had been built, several of these buildings were destroyed by a fire which broke out in the middle of the night.</p><br>
<p>Fortunately, the newly formed Atlantic Steamer Fire Company had invested in the Silsby Steamer, which extinguished the fire in time to save Moores Grocery. In 1901, Moore built the statuesque building you see today, incorporating the original brick facade. It included a large ground floor for his growing grocery business and high-ceiling upper floors, in which public meetings could be held just as they had been across the street in Old Fleets Hall. But these upper floors were to rise to ever greater fame - when President Theodore Roosevelt outgrew his suite of offices at the Oyster Bay Bank Building on Audrey Avenue. While Sagamore Hill served as the Summer White House, Moores Building now housed the Summer Executive Offices where Secretary William Loeb Jr. and his staff conducted any business of the President which did not require his personal attention.</p><br>
<p>Secretary Loeb installed telegraph and telephone "hotlines" which connected directly to Sagamore Hill and the White House in Washington, D.C., and in 1903, the first "round the world" cable was transmitted from this building.</p><br>
<p>After a restoration in 1995, several restaurants have occupied the building.</p><br>
<p>The Oyster Bay Post Office in Oyster Bay, New York was completed in 1936. New York architect William Bottomley designed this colonial revival structure to mirror the Oyster Bay Town Hall across the street. Inside are murals by the prominent American artist, illustrator and author Ernest Peixotto, depicting scenes in Oyster Bay from 1653 to 1936 when the Post Office was built. This building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and featured on the Oyster Bay History Walk.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The first Oyster Bay Post Office was located in Ezra Minor’s house on East Main Street around the year 1800. In subsequent years there were at least three other Post Office buildings in the village of Oyster Bay. This building was completed in 1936 with a focus on art and architecture. New York architect William Bottomley designed this colonial revival structure to be a mirror image of the Town Hall building it opposes, and he hired two prominent artists to adorn it with historical murals and sculptures. The work was created under the Treasury Relief Art Project.</p><br>
<p>The prominent American artist illustrator and author Ernest Peixotto was commissioned to paint five murals which are in themselves, a tour of historic Oyster Bay, depicting scenes from 1653 to 1936. The vaulted ceiling was painted by Peixotto assistant, Arthur Sturges and depicts beautiful women representing different countries sending mail to North America on ships and planes. Mercury, the winged messenger, sits atop the dome to receive the mail with speed.</p><br>
<p>Leo Lentelli, a noted Italian sculptor, whose work can be seen throughout America on public buildings created the terracotta panels above the interior doorways, depicting the continents symbolized by animals. On the Africa/Oceania panel the dates 1858 and 1919 refer to the years of Theodore Roosevelt&#39;s life. On the Asia/America panel the date 1902 refers to the year Roosevelt returned to Oyster Bay as President and the year 1936, the year the Post Office was built.</p><br>
<p>Lentelli also sculpted the bust of Theodore Roosevelt as well as a stunning stone flagpole base on the grounds outside the Post Office. After the block of stone was put in place, Lentelli had a wood shack built around it and spent the winter of 1936 carving the beautiful seahorses, dolphins, and shells you see today.</p><br>
<p>Raynham Hall is in Oyster Bay, New York. Home of the Townsend family, one of the founding families of Oyster Bay, on Long Island, New York, and a member of George Washingtons Culper Ring of spies, the house was renamed Raynham Hall  after the Townsend seat in Norfolk, England, in 1850 by a grandson of the original owner. The house is now owned by the Town of Oyster Bay and operated as a public museum by the Friends of Raynham Hall Museum, Inc. Raynham Hall is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a Town of Oyster Bay Landmark, and is a featured site on the Oyster Bay History Walk audio walking tour. It is located at 20 West Main Street, in the heart of Oyster Bay. The new Visitors Center, located next to the historic house at 30 West Main Street, is where guests can purchase tour tickets and see the museum shop.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>Raynham Hall was built in 1738 as a "two by two," or two rooms on the first floor with two rooms above it, with a central chimney. After Samuel Townsend bought the house and moved in, he added onto the home four more rooms, giving the newly dubbed "Homestead" a lean-to addition in the saltbox-style structure. The home remained this way until 1851, when Solomon Townsend remade the house in the Victorian style, adding carpeting, highly decorated wallpaper, ornate furnishings, a central tower onto the house&#39;s exterior with a skylight, as well as an entire new wing to the home. Renaming the house "Raynham Hall," Solomon projected his wealth and affluence where his colonial Quaker counterparts lived a much more conservative style.</p><br>
<p>In 1941, the family no longer had the wealth to retain the house and handed the deed over to the Daughters of the American REVOLUTION&#39;S (DAR) local chapter in Oyster Bay. The maintenance of the house by the DAR was too much, and finally the home was granted to the Town of Oyster Bay. After deliberation, it was decided that Raynham Hall would continue as a part of Oyster Bay as a historic home and museum to represent the Colonial and Victorian lifestyles of the Townsend family.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Before the Revolution</h3><br>
<p>On May 6, 1738, Samuel Townsend (1717–1790) purchased the property now known as Raynham Hall from Thomas Weedon for 70 pounds. At that time, the house consisted of four rooms with a large central chimney. It is possible that Weedon, whose trade is listed as a carpenter, may have constructed the original building.</p><br>
<p>Between 1738 and 1740, Townsend enlarged the property to expand it to eight rooms, making it a story-and-a-half salt box. Although the rooms may seem small to us today, the house was fairly large by 18th century standards. Townsend was a merchant, as well as Justice of the Peace and Town Clerk, and at least one of the front rooms of the house may have been used both as an office and a store.</p><br>
<h3>During the War</h3><br>
<p>The outbreak of the Revolutionary War found Samuel Townsends sympathies on the side of the Patriots despite the fact that half of Oyster Bays inhabitants were Loyalists. Townsend went on to become a member of the New York Provincial Congress, which voted to ratify the United States Declaration of Independence on July 9, 1776.</p><br>
<p>Following the British victory at the Battle of Long Island in the autumn of 1776, the Townsend home became the headquarters for officers of the Queens Rangers, a Loyalist military unit led by Lieutenant-Colonel John Graves Simcoe. Townsend and his family were forced to make room for Simcoe and his fellow officers. At this time, those members of the Townsend family living at Raynham Hall probably numbered seven, including five children (two boys - William and David, and three girls - Audrey, Sally, and Phebe) as well as Samuel and his wife Sarah Stoddard. In addition, a census taken in 1781 shows that Samuel owned eight slaves, one man, three women and four children. Samuels older sons, Solomon, Samuel, and Robert were all engaged in trade and living away from home. The Townsend family seemed to get along quite well with the officers of the Queens Rangers on a certain level. In fact, on Valentines Day 1778, Simcoe gave Sally a Valentine, and a number of compliments were etched on panes of glass from the officers to two of the sisters. Even Robert Townsend, who worked as a spy for Washington during the Revolutionary War, remarked when British Major John André was executed by the Americans that he had "never felt more sensibly for the death of a person".</p><br>
<p>Raynham Hall finds its place in national history through the activities of Robert Townsend. Prior to the outbreak of war, Robert had served as a purchasing agent for his father. However by the late 1770s he was living and working in Manhattan as a merchant and a freelance journalist. Since his business contacts brought him into close contact with many of the British officers then stationed in the city, Abraham Woodhull, known within the New York spy ring as "Culper, Sr.," asked Robert if he would act as a spy in the city. With a certain amount of reluctance Robert accepted the position and became known as "Culper, Jr.," thus completing the circle of communication that went from Manhattan to Setauket across the sound to Connecticut and on the General George Washingtons headquarters. From August 1779 until May of the following year, Robert provided George Washington with as much useful information as he could gather regarding British plans and troop movements. In May 1780, Culper, Jr. abruptly stopped work only to resume again in July. One of Roberts Oyster Bay cousins, Samuel Townsend (1744–1792) also served the colonial cause as a captain and Paymaster in the New York 5th Regiment of the Continental Line.</p><br>
<h4>The Valentine</h4><br>
<p>In the winter of 1779, Lieutenant Colonel John Simcoe gave a Valentines Day letter to Sarah Sally Townsend, the daughter of Samuel Townsend and Sarah Stoddard Townsend. The museum claims that this letter is the first recorded Valentines Day letter in America.</p><br>
<p>Fairest Maid, where all is fair</p><br>
<p>Beautys pride and Natures care</p><br>
<p>To you my heart I must resign</p><br>
<p>O choose me for your Valentine!</p><br>
<p>Love, Mighty God! Thou know&#39;st full well</p><br>
<p>Where all thy Mother&#39;s graces dwell,</p><br>
<p>Where they inhabit and combine</p><br>
<p>To fix thy power with spells divine</p><br>
<p>Thou know&#39;st what powerful magick lies</p><br>
<p>Within the round of Sarah&#39;s eyes,</p><br>
<p>Or darted thence like lightning fires</p><br>
<p>And Heaven&#39;s own joys around inspires</p><br>
<p>Thou know&#39;st my heart will always prove</p><br>
<p>The shrine of pure unchanging love!</p><br>
<p>Say; awful God! Since to thy throne</p><br>
<p>Two ways that lead are only known-</p><br>
<p>Here gay Variety presides,</p><br>
<p>And many a youthful circle guides</p><br>
<p>Through paths where lilies, roses sweet,</p><br>
<p>Bloom and decay beneath their feet</p><br>
<p>Here constancy with sober mein</p><br>
<p>Regardless of the flowery Scene</p><br>
<p>With Myrtle crowned that never fades,</p><br>
<p>In silence seeks the Cypress Shades,</p><br>
<p>Or fixed near Contemplation&#39;s cell,</p><br>
<p>Chief with the Muses loves to dwell,</p><br>
<p>Leads those who inward feel and burn</p><br>
<p>And often clasp the abandon&#39;d urn,--</p><br>
<p>Say, awful God! Did&#39;st thou not prove</p><br>
<p>My heart was formed for Constant love?</p><br>
<p>Thou saw&#39;st me once on every plain</p><br>
<p>To Delia pour the artless strain -</p><br>
<p>Thou weptsd her death and badst me change</p><br>
<p>My happier days no more to range</p><br>
<p>Oer hill, ore dale, in sweet Employ,</p><br>
<p>Of singing Delia, Nature&#39;s joy</p><br>
<p>Thou bad&#39;st me change the pastoral scene</p><br>
<p>Forget my Crook; with haughty mien</p><br>
<p>To raise the iron Spear of War,</p><br>
<p>Victim of Grief and deep Despair:</p><br>
<p>Say, must I all my joys forego</p><br>
<p>And still maintain this outward show?</p><br>
<p>Say, shall this breast that&#39;s pained to fell</p><br>
<p>Be ever clad in horrid steel?</p><br>
<p>Now swell with other joys than those</p><br>
<p>Of conquest o&#39;er unworthy foes?</p><br>
<p>Shall no fair maid with equal fire</p><br>
<p>Awake the flames of soft desire:</p><br>
<p>My bosom born, for transport, burn</p><br>
<p>And raise my thoughts from Delia&#39;s urn?</p><br>
<p>"Fond Youth," the God of Love replies,</p><br>
<p>"Your answer take from Sarah&#39;s eyes."</p><br>
<h3>From the homestead to the hall: the Victorian Era</h3><br>
<p>Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Raynham Hall was occupied by various members of the Townsend Family. Phebe married Dr. Ebenezer Seely of Norwalk, Connecticut on December 25, 1808, when Phebe was 45 years of age Dr. Seely became the owner of the house in 1812 through a transfer from Sally Townsend. Robert and his sister, Sally, along with the Seelys, spent their adult lives at the "Old Homestead" (Raynham Hall). Robert died in 1838 at the age of 85 and Sally in 1842 at the age of 82.</p><br>
<p>In 1851, Solomon Townsend, grandson of Samuel, purchased the Townsend home and land from Dr. Seely for $1,300 (~$ in ). Solomon transformed the house by adding a rear wing, a water tower and a number of other Victorian architectural features. He then renamed the house Raynham Hall after the baronial great house, begun in 1619, of the famous Townshends in Norfolk, England. Despite some "wishful thinking," the families are not related to one another (Townsendsociety.org). It appears that Solomon had spent summers in Oyster Bay until 1861, when he moved there permanently from New York City at the outbreak of the Civil War. Like his father and grandfather before him, Solomon II was also a merchant and importer. By his early twenties he had begun his own business which would eventually be known as Townsend, Clinch and Dike. In 1849, at the age of 44, he married his first cousin Helene DeKay. The couple had six children, five boys and a girl, all of whom were brought up in Raynham Hall. By 1860, he was one of the wealthiest men in Oyster Bay with a personal worth of $97,000 (~$ in ).</p><br>
<p>In keeping with the tradition of public service established by his father and grandfather, Solomon II represented New York Count in the State Legislature and served as a delegate to two State Constitutional Conventions. He also completed two terms as Commissionaire of Education in New York City and after his return to Oyster Bay served as president to the Oyster Bay Board of Education.</p><br>
<h3>Raynham Hall becomes a museum</h3><br>
<p>Solomon died on April 2, 1880. His wife, Helene, died on February 3, 1895, leaving daughter Maria holding the land and house. In one of her obituaries, Helene Townsend was described as "preeminently domestic in her habits," a phrase which helps conjure up the busy Victorian household which must have existed at Raynham Hall.</p><br>
<p>Maria died on March 7, 1908, without a will. Her brothers Maurice and Solomon Samuel were left residing at the house. As a result of family dispute, the courts ordered that the house and various lots be sold to pay Maria&#39;s debts. Edward Nicholl Townsend Jr. (grandson of Solomon II) purchased the house for $4,800 (~$ in ) on October 14, 1912.</p><br>
<p>The last Townsend to live in Raynham Hall was Maurice, who died at the Amityville Sanitarium on November 26, 1927. In 1914 Julia Weeks Cole (niece of Helene DeKay), with the help of her sister Sallie Townsend Coles Halstead, purchased Raynham Hall for $100 (~$ in ) to preserve it from change. During their tenure, it was used as both a tea room and meeting place for the Oyster Bay Historical and Genealogical Society. In 1933 Miss Coles deeded the house to the Oyster Bay Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), with a mortgage of $20,000 (~$ in ). The DAR maintained the house through the depression, and in 1941 Miss Cole gave the house to DAR. The DAR continued to keep the house open to the public, as well as maintaining the Raynham Hall Tea Room. Six years later, maintenance on Raynham Hall became too burdensome for the DAR and the decision was made to offer the building to the Town of Oyster Bay. The Town accepted the offer and in 1947 took possession of the building and with an advisory committee made the decision to restore the front of the building to its original 18th century proportions in the 1950s.</p><br>
<p>The New York firm of Goodwin and Jaeger were responsible for the initial restoration which involved removing many of Solomon&#39;s Victorian additions. The focus of the house and the interpretation were turned back to the historical events of the Revolutionary period. In 1953, with the help of the Friends of Raynham Hall, Inc., the building officially opened as a museum. The last restoration was completed in 1958 by Watland and Hopping when the front windows were realigned and the exterior siding of the Colonial saltbox refinished.</p><br>
<p>Raynham Hall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.</p><br>
<p>The written record of Raynham Hall&#39;s ghosts goes back only to the early 20th century. Julia Weeks Cole, who owned the house from 1914 to 1933, wrote an article on the ghosts for the Glen Cove Record in 1938. In her article, Miss Coles recorded the story of an overnight guest to Raynham Hall who awoke to the sounds of a ghostly white horse and a rider outside her bedroom window. Miss Coles theorized that this might have been the spectre of Major John Andre, who visited the house shortly before his capture and execution during the American Revolution. Other accounts have connected this particular ghost with the original Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England, where it is supposed to appear as a harbinger of an impending death in the family.</p><br>
<p>A second incident from Miss Coles&#39; files concerned her sister, Susan Coles Halstead, who signed a ghost descending the front stairs. She saw the spectre of an elderly man come down the stairs, turn back toward the dining room, and vanish. Mrs. Halstead stated that she was sure that the ghost was Robert Townsend, the Revolutionary War spy also known as "Culper, Jr.". What she did not explain was why Robert would be haunting a portion of the house which was not built until 13 years after his death in 1838.</p><br>
<p>Whoever the ghost on the stairs is, he may not be alone. The only recent incidents of a possibly supernatural origin have all taken place on or near the stairs. A visitor to the museum claimed to hear the swish of petticoats behind her as she walked past the base of the staircase. Turning, she was able to see just a portion of a figure, dressed in Victorian finery, go past her down the hallway toward the back of the house.</p><br>
<p>Also unexplained noises have been heard throughout the house, staff members have heard distinct footsteps following them throughout the front hallway of the Victorian section of the house. Noises have been heard up in the slaves quarters which are currently used only for storage. Several unexplained smells have also been noticed in the house. From the first floor of the Colonial section staff and visitors have noticed smells of pipe tobacco and wood fire in an area where Samuel Townsend used to relax with his family in front of the fireplace with his pipe. From the kitchen the scent of apple pies baking or cinnamon have been known as a welcoming smell from the spirits to visitors of the house. And smells of roses have been noticed coming from the slave quarters.</p><br>
<p>Another spectral resident made himself known back in 1999. He was first sighted looking into the garden from the servant&#39;s entrance at the rear of the house. A man, between the ages of 20 and 30 with dark curly hair. Beard and moustache, and wearing a dark coat with brass buttons. It is believed that this man is one of the Irish servants employed by the Townsend home during the Victorian period by the name of Michael Conlin. The records have been unable to confirm the name of Michael Conlin in connection with the house as the records of servants during that period were not kept very well.</p><br>
<p>The main ghost story at the home revolves around the relationship of Sally Townsend with John Simcoe. She is believed to have fallen in love with Colonel Simcoe during his stay at the home during the Revolutionary War. But, at the wars end Simcoe returned to England, where he married. Sally, on the other hand, never married and died in the house, a spinster at the age of 82. After her death the Valentines latter that Simcoe had given her during his stay at the house was found with well-worn creases from countless rereadings. The room belonging to Sally is in the Colonial portion of the house known as the West Room. Many have said they noticed a change in temperature inside the room, usually about 5–10 degrees colder than the rest of the house. Some psychics and ghost hunters have come to the house and found Sally&#39;s aura to be one of sadness.</p><br>
<p>Raynham Hall in Oyster Bay also shares a haunted connection with its namesake in Norfolk, England. The ancestral estate hosts The Brown Lady, first photographed in 1938 as a wispy figure descending the staircase. The Brown Lady has been spotted repeatedly since then along with other spirits of that home.</p><br>
<h2>Hours of operation</h2><br>
<p>Tuesday-Sunday, 1pm – 5pm.</p><br>
<p>Fee: $12 adults, $8 seniors & students, youngsters under age 5 free.</p><br>
<p>First Presbyterian Church built in 1873 is classified as an historic Stick/Eastlake style Presbyterian Church building located at 60 East Main Street in Oyster Bay, in the USA state of New York. Its architect was J. Cleaveland Cady, who was just beginning his career and would go on to design the original Metropolitan Opera House, the American Museum of Natural History, buildings at Yale University, Trinity College, and 23 other churches including the Plantsville Congregational Church, Southington, CT in the similar Gothic Revival style.</p><br>
<p>Note: This includes</p><br>
<p>The congregation which dates back to 1842, is noted for its association with Theodore Roosevelt Sr., his wife, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, and their children including their son, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the future President of the United States. The funeral of Theodore Roosevelt Sr. was held in this building in 1878.</p><br>
<p>On December 12, 1976, the church building was added to the National Register of Historic Places.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>First Presbyterian Church&#39;s ministry began in Oyster Bay, New York, in 1842. In its early days the congregation had no permanent church building. A traveling pastor from Hempstead, the Rev. Mr. Woodbridge, preached at the Oyster Bay Academy or at the Baptist Church on West Main Street.</p><br>
<p>The first church building was located on East Main Street at the rear half of the present Nobman&#39;s Hardware. In the 1850s the congregation faced financial difficulties and was unable to function. Growth and reorganization occurred in the 1860s so that by 1872 led by pastor Benjamin L. Swan, it began building this church on the hill. The architect selected was J. Cleaveland Cady.</p><br>
<p>Dramatic arched entryways inside the church are inscribed with Biblical verses. A Hillborn Roosevelt pipe organ was placed at the front of church. William L. Swan donated and played the organ for next 52 years. The future President, Theodore Roosevelt, attended his father&#39;s funeral service held here and later wrote in his diary how he saw his father sitting beside him in the pew, "as distinctly as if he were alive."</p><br>
<p>The H. L. Mencken House was the home of Baltimore Sun journalist and author Henry Louis Mencken, who lived here from 1883 until his death in 1956. The Italianate brick row house at 1524 Hollins Street in Baltimore was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985. Mencken wrote of his home: "I have lived in one house in Baltimore for nearly 45 years. It has changed in that time, as I have—but somehow it still remains the same.... It is as much a part of me as my two hands. If I had to leave it I&#39;d be as certainly crippled as if I lost a leg."</p><br>
<p>After his death on January 26, 1956, his home was bequeathed to the University of Maryland. In 1983 the City of Baltimore acquired the H. L. Mencken House from the university, in exchange for the Old Pine Street Station. With period furniture, his restored second-floor office, and backyard gazebo, the H. L. Mencken House opened as part of the City Life Museums and a center for theatrical, literary and musical events. Although the City Life Museums closed in 1997, the landmark still displays a special commemorative plaque about its famous occupant. The organization "Friends of the H. L. Mencken House" led efforts of several groups to redirect and expand the use of it. A $3 million donation from retired naval commander Max Hency in 2018 allowed the organization to begin renovating the house, and it opened to the public in 2019, though only by prior reservation.</p><br>
<p>It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1983.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The Mencken House is a three-story brick row house in Baltimore&#39;s Union Square neighborhood. The property extends between Hollins Street at the front to Booth Street to the rear. The house fronts on Union Square. It is one of several nearly identical houses on the north side of the park, sharing Italianate detailing with its neighbors. The house and its interiors have remained faithful to its period of historical significance, from 1883 to 1956. The three-story section stands at the front, while an extension to the rear telescopes to two stories, then one story. In standard Baltimore rowhouse style, the house has a marble foundation and entrance steps.</p><br>
<p>The entry features double doors leading to a vestibule with marble flooring and tiled walls. A further set of glazed double doors leads to the stair hall on the side of the house. A front parlor is located to one side of the hall, followed by the back parlor, connected by pocket doors. A further room was a dining room in the Mencken years, but was probably originally the kitchen. It is followed by the existing kitchen, built in 1923. On the second floor, the front room was Mencken&#39;s study.</p><br>
<p>The Millersburg Ferry, also known as the Crow&#39;s Ferry, is the last operating ferry on the Susquehanna River. It is owned by the Millersburg Chamber of Commerce and operated by the Millersburg Ferryboat Association from May until October when water levels permit.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Ferries have been crossing the Susquehanna River at Millersburg since at least the early 19th century. The one mile (1.6 km) crossing was first served by a pole ferry that was much like a bateau. The ferry predates the establishment of Millersburg in 1807. The borough&#39;s founder Daniel Miller reserved the ferry and shad fishery rights along the Susquehanna for himself.</p><br>
<p>Records from 1817 and 1820 show that the ferry was operated by George Carson or Michael Crow. Crow was to have built a road from the ferry landing on the west shore in Perry County to the "Great Road", modern USA Routes 11 and 15, and Carson would operate the ferry.</p><br>
<p>Ownership and rights to the ferry were hotly contested between the 1820s and 1866. These conflicts were not settled until 1866 when the Millersburg Ferry was licensed by the Pennsylvania State Legislature. Note: This includes</p><br>
<p>Joseph Kramer, son of David Kramer, was granted by the Act of March 21, 1866 P.L. 358, the right to operate the ferry at his own expense. Part of the act stipulated that Kramer build and maintain landings on both shores of the river.</p><br>
<p>Steam powered ferry boats replaced the old pole boats in 1873. These boats were much heavier and required deeper water to cross the Susquehanna River. This was accomplished by building a ferry wall or dam from shore to shore. These walls are still used today and are an important part of the ferry&#39;s designation as a Registered Historic Place.</p><br>
<p>The Millersburg Ferry grew in importance over the years and ownership was transferred from David Kramer to his sons George and Joseph. The ferry was sold at least ten times between the 1870s and 1907. Joseph Matthias Johnson owned, and operated in his own individual right, Kramer&#39;s Ferry from 1873 until 1877. Thomas Radel and his family and Warren "Pop" Hunter and his family operated the ferry from 1907 until 1968 when it was sold to Robert and Bud Wallis and Jim Zeiders. Robert Wallis became the sole owner in 1972. Wallis sold the ferry operation to Community Banks, N.A. of Millersburg in 1990. The bank then donated the historic ferry boat operation to the Millersburg Chamber of Commerce in 1990, which formed the Millersburg Ferryboat Association.</p><br>
<p>The construction of bridges over the Susquehanna River led to the closing of all the ferries on the river. The Millersburg Ferry remains for its historic significance and for practical reasons as well. It is the only crossing of the river for forty miles between Duncannon and Sunbury.</p><br>
<h2>Transportation</h2><br>
<p>The Millersburg Ferry was a crucial part of transportation in the central Susquehanna River Valley from 1866 until 1956. The construction of the railroad through Millersburg and establishment of a station there increased the importance of the ferry. Citizens from the western shore used the ferry on a regular basis to transport their goods from Perry and Juniata Counties to the commercial centers of Harrisburg, Lancaster and Philadelphia. People on the eastern shore used the ferry to reach recreational destinations on the western shore.</p><br>
<p>The Millersburg Ferry used as many as four boats to shuttle produce, livestock, building supplies and people and their horses, wagons, and eventually motor vehicles. This boom period for the ferry lasted from 1905 until 1936. The Great Depression resulted in the ferry service being cut to three boats. The ferry company now has a fleet of two boats.</p><br>
<h2>Fleet and operation</h2><br>
<p>The Millersburg Ferry consists of two boats. The Roaring Bull V is a red paddle wheeler that was built in 1998. The "flat" of the ferry is 83 ft long and the power unit is 50 ft. It is powered by a 57 hp Deutz diesel engine with a hydraulic drive system. The Falcon III was built in 1974. It is gray and is 8.3 ft longer than the Roaring Bull V. It also has a Deutz diesel air-cooled engine and a hydraulic drive system.</p><br>
<p>According to Captain Donald Lebo, the trip is 4,785 ft shore to shore, about nine-tenths of a mile, and takes about 20 minutes. Passenger traffic in 2009 was above normal because the water level was high and operations did not have to shut for low water. About 20,000 passengers, who were mostly tourists, were served, paying either by the person or by the car. As of the 2013 season, the rates are $3 for a one-way walk on passenger, $5 for a round trip walk on passenger, $7 for a motorcycle and rider, $8 for a car and driver, and $9 for an extended length vehicle and driver. All other passengers in a vehicle are charged the $3 fare. There are also fares for specialty vehicles such as horse and buggy and golf carts.</p><br>
<p>The Millersburg Ferry is reached from Pennsylvania Route 147 on the eastern shore in Millersburg and from USA Route 11/15 on the western shore just south of Liverpool. It is open on weekends only beginning May 1 from 9:00 a.m. until dusk. The ferry operates daily June through Labor Day 11:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. and it returns to the weekend schedule through the end of September. The Millersburg Ferry does not operate during the months of October through April.</p><br>
<p>St. Marys Seminary Chapel, located at 600 North Paca Street  in the Seton Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, is the oldest Neo-Gothic style church in the United States. It was built from 1806 through 1808 by French architect J. Maximilian M. Godefroy for the French Sulpician priests of St. Marys Seminary. Godefroy claimed that his design was the first Gothic building in America.</p><br>
<p>St. Marys Seminary (now St. Marys Seminary and University), founded in 1791, is the oldest Roman Catholic seminary in the United States and the site also included a secular St. Marys College, from 1805-1852. Godefroy also designed in Baltimore, the First Unitarian Church at West Franklin and North Charles Streets during 1817 and the Battle Monument, constructed 1815-1822 in the old Courthouse Square at North Calvert Street, between East Lexington and East Fayette Streets, commemorating the citys dead during the British attack in the War of 1812s Battle of Baltimore with the bombardment of Fort McHenry and the Battle of North Point in September 1814. The chapel is located adjacent to the Mother Seton House. Originally the chapel was surrounded by a quadrangle of four-story buildings of brick Georgian/Federal design with peaked roofs and dormer windows. On one side was a long seminary building and on the other was an L-shaped larger, but similar architectured structure built for the secular College, after it was established in 1805. These were later replaced on the same site by buildings in 1876-78 of Victorian/Second Empire style with mansard roofs although the central chapel of Godefroy endured. In the 1970s, the Victorian buildings were unfortunately also razed leaving St. Marys Park with a historic bandstand to now surround the old Chapel and Mother Seton House. To the east in the 1980s was constructed a four-lane landscaped parkway with median strip of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, edged by short brick retaining walls which curved around the west side of downtown Baltimore like an inner "beltway".</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The small, brick chapel, measuring approximately 90 ft long by 70 ft wide, is one and a half stories high, set on a high basement. The round arched windows are set in rectangular openings. The bricks were originally made for architect Benjamin Henry Latrobes Baltimore Cathedral/Basilica of the Assumption of Mary (constructed 1806-1821), but it was eventually built of stone blocks. This was the first Roman Catholic cathedral constructed in America to serve the new Archdiocese of Baltimore. The bricks were then purchased for this project for $3,000.00, contributed by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, (1737-1832), last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence and at one time the richest man in America. A stucco cornice lines the sides of the chapel. The interior comprises a wide nave flanked by narrow side aisles. Nine aisle column bays frame three sets of stained glass windows on each side. A sanctuary is set 18 in higher than the nave, flanked by transepts on either side and ending in a small semicircular apse. A balcony extends three bays inward from the entry over the nave. The naves ceiling is plaster, simulating a shallow rib-vault. A crypt underlies the chapel.</p><br>
<p>In 1839, the chapel gained a tower with a spire and interior decoration by noted local architect Robert Cary Long, jr. (1810-1849) However, Longs steeple later became unstable and was removed in 1916. Some of Godefroys wood and plaster work was removed at this time. A 1967 renovation sought to restore the chapel to Godefroy&#39;s original architectural and artistic intentions.</p><br>
<p>The chapel&#39;s basement was used for services by Black Catholic refugees from Santo Domingo (modern Haiti), a former French colony on the western end of the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies, where the Black slaves rose up in rebellion during the early 1790s and established the first Black republic, but unleashed decades of turmoil. Lessons for African-American children were also provided there by the Oblate Sisters of Providence. Later these lessons and masses developed into the first black Roman Catholic congregations at St. Francis Xavier Parish on East Oliver Street to commemorate St. Francis Xavier and St. Peter Claver Parish in West Baltimore which remembers St. Peter Claver. The Josephite Fathers religious order has a special ministry among the African American community within the Roman Catholic Church.</p><br>
<p>The chapel was designated a National Historic Landmark on November 11, 1971.</p><br>
<p>The Ebell of Los Angeles is a women-led and women-centered nonprofit housed in a historic campus in the Mid-Wilshire section of Los Angeles, California. It includes numerous performance spaces, meeting rooms, classrooms, and the 1,238-seat Wilshire Ebell Theatre. The Ebell works to uplift the Los Angeles community through arts, learning, and service.</p><br>
<p>The campus has been owned and operated since 1927 by the Ebell of Los Angeles womens organization, which was formed in Los Angeles in 1894. Since 1927, the Wilshire Ebell Theatre has hosted musical performances and lectures by world leaders and top artists. Among other events, the Ebell was the site of aviator Amelia Earharts last public appearance before attempting the 1937 around-the-world flight during which she disappeared. It is also the place where Judy Garland was discovered while performing as Baby Frances Gumm in the 1930s.</p><br>
<h2>Formation and early years</h2><br>
<p>Ebell of Los Angeles was formed as a womens club in 1894, based on the principles and teachings of Adrian Ebell, a pioneer in womens education and organizing women&#39;s societies in the late 19th century. Harriet Williams Russell Strong was a founder of the club, serving as its president for three consecutive terms. The minutes of the first meeting of Ebell of Los Angeles identified its purpose "to interest women in the study of all branches of literature, art and science and the advancement of women in every branch of culture." The club adopted as its motto, "I will find a way or make one -- I serve."</p><br>
<p>Over the years, the group has conducted classes, and hosted lectures and seminars, on topics including psychology, parliamentary law, travel, literature, music, gardening, and science.</p><br>
<h2>New building on Wilshire Boulevard</h2><br>
<p>In 1923, the group announced plans to build a new clubhouse and theater west of downtown on Wilshire Boulevard. Before construction began, the lot at Wilshire Boulevard and Shatto Place had appreciated and was sold for a profit; a new lot at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Lucerne was purchased in 1925.</p><br>
<p>The group commissioned architect Sumner P. Hunt of Hunt & Burns to design the new facility, which was designed in an Italian style with plaster facing and Italian clay tile roofing. The new facilities consisted of multiple structures covering a site 160 ×, surrounding a 65 × patio area. The new facilities included a new 1,300-seat auditorium at the rear of the property facing 8th Street. The two-story structure facing Wilshire Boulevard houses the group&#39;s clubhouse, including a large lounge, art salon, and dining room. The dining room opens to a tile-roofed colonnade walkway and fountain.</p><br>
<p>The clubhouse opened with a musicale tea in October 1927, and the Wilshire Ebell Theater, originally known as the Windsor Square Playhouse, opened to the public in December 1927 with the west coast premiere of Sigmund Rombergs musical The Desert Song. When the buildings opened, the groups president wrote in the clubs newsletter:The result of their tireless and unceasing labor may be seen at 4400 Wilshire Boulevard where a stately group of buildings now adorns a sightly eminence. The separated units have been so carefully designed as to form a magnificent mass, a colossal edifice, severely simple, classically correct, pleasing in its very ruggedness, elegant in its ornate adornment, suited to the purpose for which it was built. The total cost was $200,000 for the site, $650,000 for the entire structure, and $120,000 for the furnishings. Another writer observed: "Nowhere in America is there a more magnificent womens club house than the new home of Ebell.... Every modern convenience and appliance, together with furnishings of the finest quality, are within its walls. It is lavish, but not flamboyantly so. It is practical and it has beauty and inspiring charm."</p><br>
<p>The 1,300-seat theater is known for its acoustics and its Barton pipe organ.</p><br>
<h2>Notable performances</h2><br>
<p>In more than eighty years of productions, the Wilshire Ebell has witnessed performances by many stars and celebrities, but some stand out from the rest.</p><br>
<p>Young Judy Garland, then known as Baby Frances Gumm, first auditioned on the Wilshire Ebell Theater stage, and was discovered while performing there. MGM producer George Sidney later described Garlands first audition this way: "I had made Judys first screen test. There was a theater here in Los Angeles called the Wilshire-Ebell.... hey used to put on vaudeville acts on certain nights of the week. This little girl came out with her two sisters and her mother playing the piano. She did a little number with a baseball bat. We took her out to the studio and made a test on a soundstage..." And in his biography of Garland, Gerold Frank described an early performance on the Wilshire Ebell stage, witnessed by another MGM producer, Joseph L. Mankiewicz: "Judy sang. And in his seat, Joe Mankiewicz, who was to win half a dozen Oscars as a screenwriter and director, underwent a memorable experience. He sat transfixed. Not only the power, but something electric..." Mankewicz met the 13-year-old Garland backstage at the Ebell and determined to bring her name to the studio&#39;s attention.</p><br>
<p>In 1937, Amelia Earhart made her last public appearance and speech at the Ebell before leaving for her ill-fated around-the-world flight.</p><br>
<p>On February 2, 1938, Korean dancer Choi Seung-hee performed a costumed "recital of peasant, court and war dances" on the Ebell stage as part of a United States tour which included the Guild Theatre in New York City.</p><br>
<p>In late 1948, Polish-born local artist Stan Poray was headlining an exhibition of paintings at the Ebell when he died during a layover in a New York City airport, returning from a lecturing and exhibiting tour in Caracas, Venezuela.</p><br>
<p>On April 10, 1964, Glenn Gould gave his final public performance at the Ebell. Among the pieces he performed that night were Beethovens Piano Sonata No. 30, selections from Bachs The Art of Fugue, and the Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 92 No. 4 by Ernst Krenek. A recording exists in which Gould says the event took place in Chicago.</p><br>
<p>Two years before his assassination, Filipino opposition leader and Ferdinand Marcos critic Benigno S. Aquino Jr. held a freedom rally speech at the theater on February 15, 1981; sharing his life and struggle under the martial law dictatorship for the jam-packed crowd of Filipino and American audience.</p><br>
<h2>Renovation and historic designation</h2><br>
<p>A major restoration of the Ebell complex commenced in 1989. The theater&#39;s seats were re-covered, the stage refitted, and new sound and lighting systems installed. Renovation work also extended to the main dining room (also known as the Concert Hall), the Grand Salon and Lounge, the Galleria, and the Art Salon.</p><br>
<p>In recent years, the events held at the Wilshire Ebell Theater have reflected the ethnic diversity of the neighborhood, with shows staged in Persian, Korean, and Russian. It has also been the site of annual "Divas Simply Singing" benefits for AIDS, featuring singers Nancy Wilson, Roberta Flack, Rita Moreno, and Toni Tennille.</p><br>
<p>The building has been designated as a historic structure at the local, state and national levels, including the following recognition:</p><br>
<p>The Ebell was declared a Los Angeles Cultural Historic Monument in 1982.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.</p><br>
<p>It has also been designated an Official American Treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.</p><br>
<h2>Notable Members</h2><br>
<p>Lillie Stella Acer Ballagh</p><br>
<p>Ida I. Bellows, president from 1910 to 1912</p><br>
<p>Pearlretta DuPuy, charter member</p><br>
<p>Mabel Barnett Gates, first vice-president</p><br>
<p>Betty Gilmore</p><br>
<p>Shirlee Taylor Haizlip, appointed president in 2000 and 2010</p><br>
<p>Mabel D. Mullin</p><br>
<p>Dora A. Stearns</p><br>
<p>The Marine Mill, established in 1839, was the first commercial sawmill in what became the USA state of Minnesota. Now in ruins, it is currently a historic site managed by the city of Marine on St. Croix in partnership with the Minnesota Historical Society. The site is also a contributing property to the Marine on St. Croix Historic District.</p><br>
<h2>Operational history</h2><br>
<p>Lewis Judd and David Hone identified the site, with a swift-flowing stream for power and a bank suitable for steamboats, as ideal for a sawmill during an 1838 scouting expedition. They were members of a group of New Englanders who had come west in search of new lumbering opportunities. They returned to their home base in Marine, Illinois, and chartered the Marine Lumber Company with six other business partners. In May 1839 the eight partners, plus one member&#39;s wife and two children, arrived by steamboat with a load of milling machinery.</p><br>
<p>The original mill cut less than 5,000 ft of lumber per day, so it was replaced in 1852 with a larger mill powered by a 40 ft water wheel. However the whole building burned down in a fire in September 1863, idling workers for three years until a replacement was constructed in 1866. To keep pace with its competitors, that mill was almost completely remodeled in 1873, at which point it could cut up to 30,000 ft per day.</p><br>
<p>The mill, then known as the Walker, Judd, and Veazie Mill, was at its most profitable in the early 1870s. However a widespread economic depression triggered by the Panic of 1873, delays caused by a series of log jams on the river, and the valley&#39;s dwindling lumber supply soon changed that, and the mill went bankrupt in 1885. Various attempts to reopen the mill failed, and the business was dismantled in 1895. Over its 56 years of operation the mill had produced some 197,000,000 ft of lumber.</p><br>
<h2>Later history</h2><br>
<p>The Marine Mill site lay abandoned for nearly 70 years. It wasn&#39;t until 1964 that a resource commission recommended acquiring the land as a historic site. No action was taken until a local committee formed in 1970 to advocate for preservation, and the following year the Minnesota Legislature appropriated funds to buy the site. The local committee also cleared decades of revegetation, uncovering the foundations of support structures. The land acquisition was completed in 1972 and the property transferred to the Minnesota Historical Society.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>At its peak the mill complex occupied about 6 acre. In addition to the sawmill there was a planing mill, storage sheds, the steamboat levee, and piles of cut lumber, shingles, and laths. Between 1888 and 1895 all the wooden buildings were dismantled and the machinery sold off. All that remained were the stone walls of the 1873 sawmill and its water wheel. Today a historical marker stands by the entrance to the property, and an open lawn leads to an overlook of the sawmill ruins. A short interpretive trail leads past the faint foundations of two other mill complex buildings. The stream that powered the mill still runs through the site.</p><br>
<p>The Henry August  Rowland House is a historic row house at 915 Cathedral Street in Baltimore, Maryland. Built in the 1880s, this nondescript row house is historically important as the home of physicist Henry Augustus Rowland  from 1889-90 until his death in 1901. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1975.</p><br>
<h2>Description and history</h2><br>
<p>The Henry August Rowland House is located on the north side of Baltimore&#39;s Mount Vernon neighborhood, at the northeast corner of Cathedral and Brexton Streets. It is the southern of two adjacent row houses, which are typical of brick rowhouses built in the fashionable residential area in the 1880s. It is three stories in height, built out of red brick, and topped by a flat roof with a projecting carved wooden cornice. It is three bays wide, with the entrance in the rightmost bay, sheltered by an elaborate surround toppedy a shallow projecting bracketed hood. The building interior was reported in 1975 to be in good condition, with original features including a working dumbwaiter.</p><br>
<p>Rowland purchased the house in 1889 or 1890 and lived there until his death in 1901. His wife and daughter continued to live there after his death. He was educated as a physicist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and in Germany, and was hired in 1876 by Daniel Coit Gilman to help build the physics department of Johns Hopkins University. His achievements include advancements in tools and understanding of magnetism, and the development of a formula for translating heat into mechanical work. His best known work is in the development of a high-precision diffraction grating for doing spectral analysis. Isaac Asimov characterized Rowland as "one of the few important 19th century American physicists."</p><br>
<p>Riversdale, is a five-part, large-scale late Georgian mansion with superior Federal interior, built between 1801 and 1807. Also known as Baltimore House, Calvert Mansion or Riversdale Mansion, it is located at 4811 Riverdale Road in Riverdale Park, Maryland, and is open to the public as a museum.</p><br>
<p>Once the manor house and centerpiece of a 739 acre slave plantation, Riversdale was built for Belgian émigré Henri Joseph Stier, Baron de Stier, who lived in the William Paca House in Annapolis, Maryland immediately prior to building Riversdale. Stier planned the house in 1801 to resemble his Belgian residence, the Chateau du Mick. Four years later, Stier returned to Belgium, leaving the unfinished Riversdale to be completed by his daughter, Rosalie Stier Calvert and her husband, George Calvert, the son of Benedict Swingate Calvert, who was a natural son of The 5th Baron Baltimore. Rosalie and George Calvert&#39;s son, Charles Benedict Calvert, established the Maryland Agricultural College, now the University of Maryland, College Park, on part of the Riversdale property.</p><br>
<p>While its design has been attributed to William Thornton, this is not supported by available evidence on Thornton&#39;s career. The house is architecturally significant as a well-preserved five-part Federal mansion, and historically important for its association with the Calverts, an important Maryland family. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The house was begun in 1801 by Henri Josef Stier and his wife Marie Louise Peeters on almost 800 acre of land north of Bladensburg. Stier first commissioned Benjamin Henry Latrobe to do design work, but could not wait for Latrobes late response. The local builder-architect William Lovering carried out the design work to Stiers direction, while Latrobe&#39;s rejected design was eventually used at Clifton, in Richmond, Virginia. The east wing was completed first, and the Stiers occupied it in August 1802. The elder Stiers returned to Belgium in June 1803, however, and Rosalie and George Calvert took up residence at Riversdale, bringing with them a large number of enslaved people. Plans for the grounds were developed by landscape architect William Russell Birch in 1805, although much of his plan was unrealized. The west wing was completed in 1806, completing the full five-part ensemble, one of the last of its kind.</p><br>
<p>For thirteen years Riversdale housed the Peeters/Stier collection of European paintings, which was unique in the United States at that time. That collection included more than 63 paintings by such artists as Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Jan Brueghel the Elder and Titian. Most of the larger pieces were kept in storage, and in 1816 they were returned. Before they were packed, Rembrandt Peale persuaded Rosalie Calvert to display them for two weeks at Riversdale in April 1816. Rosalie became the owner of Riversdale in the same year, but died in 1821. George Calvert continued to live there until his death in 1838. The estate was divided between his sons George Henry and Charles Benedict Calvert. Charles Benedict lived his whole life at Riversdale, pursuing agricultural studies. His unique octagonal "cow-house" was particularly notable, but it burned in 1910. Charles Benedict died in 1864. The property was then divided between his widow Charlotte and five children, with Charlotte in the mansion. The 300 acre core of the property was eventually sold to John Fox and Alexander Lutz of New York in 1887.</p><br>
<p>Fox and Lutz acquired an adjacent 174 acre property that belonged to George Henry Calvert and began to develop it as the town of Riverdale Park. The new town offered convenient transportation into Washington on the B&O railroad line that ran through the property. The mansion was preserved in a park, but was eventually used as a boarding house. Thomas H. Pickford bought the house in 1912 and undertook renovations, making significant alterations to the wings and moving some of the original mantels to his house in New York. From 1917 to 1929 the house was occupied by California USA Senator Hiram Johnson. The sale of Riversdale in 1926 to Senator Thaddeus Caraway of Arkansas, was a consternation to Johnson, whose lease ran until 1929. Johnson moved out in the spring of 1929, the Caraways moved in. The Caraways undertook other renovations but Thaddeus died in November 1931. His widow, Hattie Wyatt Caraway, took over his seat and was twice elected but was unable to meet the mortgage. A foreclosure sale ensued, and in 1932, Thomas H. Pickford purchased the property, selling the following year to former Oregon congressman Abraham Walter Lafferty. Lafferty lived at Riversdale from 1933 to 1949, attempting to buy the parcel to the south of the mansion from Hattie Caraway. Mrs. Caraway, however, sold the parcel to a developer in 1947, who drained the small lake and built houses. Lafferty sold Riversdale in 1949 to the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission for its Prince George&#39;s County regional office. The offices remained there until 1982, when structural concerns caused the offices to be moved to other quarters. Restoration ensued, and the house opened to the public in 1993.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>Riversdale is a Federal style five-part mansion with a 2-story main block and -story end pavilions linked by -story hyphens. The seven-bay stucco-covered brick central block features a hip roof. An entry porch with Tuscan columns and a small pediment shelters double entry doors on the front The porch sits in a three-bay indentation, which is symmetrical to both the north and south sides of the house. The front doors are topped by a fanlight The north porch has a dairy storage area beneath. A low brick basement story is lighted by fixed four-light windows. The south, or garden porch has a hipped roof supported by four Tuscan columns. Triple-sash windows open onto the porch, permitting passage from the porch to the center parlor. Both porches have floors of black, white and pink marble. Apart from the windows on the south porch, windows are typically nine-over-nine sashes on the first floor and six-over-nine on the second. The roof is clad in wood singles, painted red, with four stucco-covered chimneys, one of which is a dummy for the sake of symmetry. Similarly, one second-floor window on the north side is false.</p><br>
<p>The three-by-one-bay end pavilions are turned so that their narrow ends face north and south, with pedimented windows in the center of the main bay. The east pavilion served as the kitchen and has a central entrance on the east side. The west wing contained the stable and carriage house, but was altered in the 1930s as a music room. The 1993 renovation has returned the west elevation to its original form with two doors and three windows. The connecting hyphens each have entrances centered in the north elevations.</p><br>
<p>The interior of the first floor contains three parlors across the south side of the house. On the north side is a central entry hall, with a stair hall on the right and a service hall on the left. All spaces have elaborate original woodwork. The central parlor, or salon de milieu, is the most elaborate space, with wood Ionic pilasters, plaster ceiling decoration and a plaster cornice. The east parlor served as the dining room. The west parlor was the salle de compagnie. The second floor is arranged similarly to the first, with the chief chambers above the east and west parlors. Each chamber has an adjoining dressing chamber. A smaller bedchamber with curved walls on the east and west occupies the center. The north side has several smaller chambers. One window is partially obstructed at the stair hall, blanked on the northeast bedchamber. An unusual mezzanine level with a ceiling height of just over six feet lies between the first and second floors on the northeast side, connected with areas on the same level in the east hyphen and pavilion. The main level of the east hyphen housed a breakfast room, which was altered in 1912 by the removal of the rooms above into a banquet room. The upper levels have since been restored to provide a caretakers apartment. The west hyphen was the slave plantation proprietors study. The former carriage house and stables, damaged by fire in the late 1920s, was converted into a two-story music room.</p><br>
<p>The basement contains a number of spaces, used principally for storage, including a wine cellar and an interior connection to the dairy under the front stairs. There are crawl spaces under the wings, with impressive brick arches.</p><br>
<p>A three-by-one-bay secondary structure, or dependency, stands to the east of the east wing. The 2-story stucco-covered brick building was used as a kitchen, with single spaces on each level. Archeological studies have revealed the foundations of other structures, including a water tower, wash house and hothouse.</p><br>
<p>The Whitcomb Inn and Farm  is an historic farm at 43 Old Sugar Road in Bolton, Massachusetts, United States. The oldest portion of the farmhouse, which is believed to be the oldest surviving building in Bolton, is estimated to have been built c. 1708, when David Whitcomb acquired the land from his father. The rear leanto section with a "Beverly jog"  was built about 10 years later, and an extension ell was added to the east of the house later in the 18th century. The building underwent stylistic changes in the 19th century, most of which were removed during a major restoration in 1937–38 by Philip Phillips.</p><br>
<p>The farm was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.</p><br>
<p>Barlin Acres  was an historic house located on what is now East Temple Street in Boylston, Massachusetts. Built in 1734 and eventually transformed into a summer estate house, it was home to a founder of Boylston, and a good example of colonial and Federal period architecture. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 26, 1982. It was subsequently demolished to make way for the clubhouse of the Cyprian Keyes Golf Club, which now stands on its site. The clubhouse contains architectural elements recovered from the house, including some flooring and the 19th century Music Room.</p><br>
<h2>Description and history</h2><br>
<p>Barlin Acres was located in central southern Boylston, on the north side of East Temple Street. It was a -story wood-frame structure, covered by a truncated hip roof with a balustraded center, and sheathed in wooden clapboards, except for its original side walls, which are brick. The main facade was five bays wide, with sash windows arranged symmetrically around a projecting center entrance. The entrance was framed by a Federal style surround, with pilasters rising to an entablature and fully pedimented gable. The rear of this block was sheltered by a two-story columned portico. Ells, most added in the 20th century, extended to both sides.</p><br>
<p>The area was first settled in 1718, while it was part of Shrewsbury, by Thomas Keyes, whose son Cyprian built a house on the property in 1734. Cyprian Keyes was a deacon the Shrewsbury North Precinct (later Boylston) Congregational Church, and a town selectman when Boylston was incorporated in 1743. The property was acquired in 1973 by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester, which established a retreat on the grounds. The property was later sold for conversion to the golf course. As part of that conversion, the house was largely demolished, with some portions retained for use in the clubhouse.</p><br>
<p>The Brookfield Common Historic District encompasses a historically significant portion of the town center of Brookfield, Massachusetts. It is focused on the town common, which extends south from Main Street  to Lincoln Street, and includes a dense cluster of houses on roads to its east, as well as properties on Main Street and the Post Road. The district includes more than 100 properties, including the Colonial Revival Town Hall , Banister Memorial Hall , and Romanesque Revival Congregation Church . The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.</p><br>
<p>The town of Brookfield was one of the first English settlements in what is now southern Worcester County, dating to 1665. What is now Brookfield is the result of the division of the community in the 1750s, separating North Brookfield and West Brookfield. The original town center was located in what is now West Brookfield; the present town center is organized around a common established in 1735 as a militia training ground, and where the town&#39;s Third Parish Congregational Church was established. The oldest surviving buildings in the village are houses built in the 1790s in the Federal style. The Brookfield Inn was originally established in one of these early houses, but was replaced in the 1860s after the original house was destroyed by fire.</p><br>
<p>Elm Hill Farm Historic District is a historic district on East Main Street east of the junction with Brookfield Road in Brookfield, Massachusetts. The major contributing element to the district is the Elm Hill Farm complex, one of the largest and most significant farms in the town for more than 100 years. The complex includes two Federal period residences, two with Queen Anne styling, and four Italianate styled outbuildings.</p><br>
<p>Elsie the Cow was originally housed on Elm Hill Farm. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.</p><br>
<p>Charlton Center Historic District is an historic district roughly on Main Street from Mugget Hill Road to Masonic Home Road and adjacent roads in Charlton, Massachusetts. The district, which encompasses the historic center of the town, includes the first architect-designed building in the center, the Shingle style Overlook Hotel designed by Worcester architect George H. Clemence, as well as the 1905 Colonial Revival Town Hall designed by Frost, Briggs & Chamberlain. The town hall site is also home to a number of memorials to the town&#39;s military.</p><br>
<p>The district also features various Federal and Gothic Revival houses, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.</p><br>
<p>Sion Hill is a National Historic Landmark in Havre de Grace, Maryland, notable as an example of high-style Federal architecture and as the home of a family of prominent officers of the United States Navy.</p><br>
<p>Work began at Sion Hill around 1785 for the Rev. John Ireland, but progressed slowly, as the unfinished house was sold in 1795 to Gordon Denison. In 1799 the still-unfinished house passed to Denison&#39;s daughter Minerva, who was to marry Commodore John Rodgers in 1806. Together, they finished the house. Descendants of John and Minerva Rodgers still own the house today, and have included son John Rodgers II, who commanded ironclads in the US Civil War, Rear Admiral John Augustus Rodgers (1848-1933) and his son, naval aviator John Rodgers (1881-1926).</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>John Ireland bought the unimproved property above Havre de Grace in 1787 and began construction on the Sion Hill Seminary, intended as a boys school. Ireland sold the property with the unfinished house in 1795 to Connecticut merchant Gideon Denison. Denison was apparently a real estate speculator, believing that Havre de Grace would expand significantly, and accumulated 1,820 acre around the house. Denison died in 1799, and his daughter Minerva inherited. After her marriage to John Rodgers at Sion Hill, the couple added the houses details. After Rodgers&#39; retirement from active naval service in 1815 he returned to Sion Hill, continuing to advise on naval policy. Rodgers died in 1838. Minerva survived until 1877, but gave Sion Hill and 1,800 acre of surrounding land to her oldest son, Robert Smith Rodgers (1809-1891).</p><br>
<p>Robert Smith Rodgers, a civil engineer, enlisted in the Union Army as a private, rose to the rank of colonel during the American Civil War and commanded the 2nd Maryland Eastern Shore Infantry Regiment. In 1841 he married Sarah Perry, daughter of Commander Matthew C. Perry. The son of Robert S. and Sarah Perry Rodgers, Rear Admiral John Augustus Rodgers inherited the house and lived there until his death in 1933.</p><br>
<p>Sion Hill was the site of an early aviation record. On September 16, 1911, ENS John Rodgers became the first man in America to visit his parents by airplane. He landed in a field about 200 yards from the house where his father, Rear Admiral John Rodgers, his mother Elizabeth, and brother Robert greeted him. His intention was to leave the next day for New York where his cousin Calbraith Perry Rodgers was to depart Sheepshead Bay for San Francisco at 3 pm that afternoon to compete for the $50,000 Hearst Prize.</p><br>
<p>The house then passed to Rodgers widow, Elizabeth Chambers Rodgers, who in 1944 left the property to a descendant of the first John Rodgers, John Meigs, John Rodgers great-grandson and grandson of Montgomery C. Meigs, who had married Louisa Rodgers. John Meigs in turn left the property to Montgomery Meigs Green in 1946. His wife, Ann, gave it to their son Jonathan Green in 2004.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>Sion Hill is a brick three-part house with a five-bay -story central block flanked by one-bay shed-roofed wings. The main facade faces south toward Chesapeake Bay. This side features a pedimented porch at the entrance door, a three-part second floor window above, and a lunette in the attic gable. Typical windows are nine-over-nine sashes under flared stone lintels with projecting keystones. The rear elevation is similar, but somewhat simplified. The main roof is a cross-gable with smaller gables front and back. Large chimneys flank the roof, and are traditionally stated to have been built especially tall to be visible from the upper Chesapeake.</p><br>
<p>The interior features a center hall plan. The summer and winter dining rooms, of equal size, lie to the east, with two parlors and the main stairs to the west. The plan plays with proportions; it is a three-part composition with one third a single unit, one third divided in half, and one third divided in three. The hall features a pilastered segmental arch, with a similar arch at the stair alcove. Woodwork is almost all original and of high quality throughout. The west wing was a schoolroom with dormitory space above, and retains its layout. The east wing was the kitchen wing, and has been rearranged to suit modern requirements.</p><br>
<p>The 315 acre property also contains a brick tenant house, circa 1790, with two rooms on each of two levels. The house originally featured formal gardens, now largely lost. The property preserves expansive views of Chesapeake Bay and the town of Havre de Grace.</p><br>
<h2>Most recent sale</h2><br>
<p>The house was listed for sale on September 11, 2018, for $1.299 million and sold for $900,000 on July 14, 2020.</p><br>
<p>The Gold Coast Historic District is a historic district in Chicago, Illinois. Part of Chicago&#39;s Near North Side community area, it is roughly bounded by North Avenue, Lake Shore Drive, Oak Street, and Clark Street.</p><br>
<p>The Gold Coast neighborhood grew in the wake of the Great Chicago Fire. In 1882, millionaire Potter Palmer moved to the area from the Prairie Avenue neighborhood on the city&#39;s south side. He filled in a swampy area which later became Lake Shore Drive, and built the Palmer Mansion, a forty-two room castle-like structure designed by Henry Ives Cobb and Charles Sumner Frost. Other wealthy Chicagoans followed Potter into the neighborhood, which became one of the richest in Chicago.</p><br>
<p>In the late 1980s, the Gold Coast and neighboring Streeterville comprised the second most-affluent neighborhood in the United States, behind Manhattan&#39;s Upper East Side. Today, the neighborhood is a mixture of mansions, row houses, and high-rise apartments. Highlights include the Astor Street District and the James Charnley House.</p><br>
<p>The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.</p><br>
<p>The nearby East Lake Shore Drive District and parts of northern Streeterville and the Magnificent Mile near the lake also may be considered part of the Gold Coast (such as the area around the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments), even if not technically in the historic designation. The mayors office map extends the Gold Coast south to the area of Northwestern Universitys Chicago campus.</p><br>
<p>As of 2011, Gold Coast ranks as the seventh-richest urban neighborhood in the United States with a median household income of $153,358.</p><br>
<h2>Photos</h2><br>
<p>Historical images of Chicago&#39;s Gold Coast can be found in, a digital repository made available by Chicago Collections archives, libraries and other cultural institutions in the city.</p><br>
<h2>Education</h2><br>
<p>Chicago Public Schools (CPS) operates public schools serving the community. Ogden International School of Chicago has its East Campus, which houses elementary school, in the Gold Coast.</p><br>
<p>Residents of the Gold Coast are zoned to Ogden School for grades K-8, while for high school they are zoned to Lincoln Park High School. Any graduate from Ogdens 8th grade program may automatically move on to the 9th grade at Ogden, but students who did not graduate from Ogdens middle school must apply to the high school.</p><br>
<p>The Latin School of Chicago is also located in the Gold Coast and is one of the nation&#39;s most prestigious K-12 private schools.</p><br>
<h2>Notable residents</h2><br>
<p>Gold Coast has a long tradition of being home to some of the nation&#39;s wealthiest and influential residents. These include:</p><br>
<p>J. B. Pritzker – businessman, venture capitalist, politician and current Governor of Illinois</p><br>
<p>Lori Greiner – inventor, entrepreneur, and television personality</p><br>
<p>Vince Vaughn – actor</p><br>
<p>Lee Miglin – real estate developer</p><br>
<p>Ernest Hemingway – author and journalist</p><br>
<p>Meredith Marks – television personality</p><br>
<p>The Mabel Dodge Luhan House, also known as the Big House, is a historic house at 240 Morada Lane in Taos, New Mexico, United States. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991. It is now used as a hotel and conference center.</p><br>
<p>It was a home of arts supporter and writer Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879–1962), where she orchestrated one of the most successful artistic salon environments in the early 20th century United States, hosting well-known writers, painters, photographers, and musicians, and nurturing the young Taos art colony.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The Mabel Dodge Luhan House is located near the eastern edge of the town center of Taos, at the end of Morada Lane. The house, originally part of a larger compound, is a 20+ room adobe construction up to three stories in height. Stylistically it is an early example of what is now recognized as the Pueblo Revival style, blending elements of traditional Native American Pueblo elements with those of the Spanish Colonial period.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The house was built between 1917 and 1922, using largely traditional Puebloan construction methods, and incorporates into its structure two older buildings. The work was overseen by Tony Luhan, a Native American whom Mabel Dodge later married. The public spaces of the interior include the large "Big Room", a two-section chamber that doubles as entrance vestibule, and the "Rainbow Room", so named for the colors painted on the latillas (the crossing members of the ceiling above the vigas). The house was the largest of several small houses Luhan had built on her property; the others served as additional guest quarters, and have not been well preserved.</p><br>
<p>Mabel Dodge Luhan was born into a wealthy family and was well-educated in the arts. In the 1910s, she became well known for the salon-style gatherings at her New York City apartment. Her short marriage to painter Maurice Sterne brought her to New Mexico in 1917, where she soon bought the property near Taos, and sought to recreate the salon atmosphere in the budding art colony.</p><br>
<p>Her endeavour was highly influential, furthering the careers of writers Willa Cather and D.H. Lawrence, artists and photographers including Ansel Adams, Georgia O&#39;Keeffe, and Edward Weston. Musical guests included composer and conductor Leopold Stokowski and composer Dane Rudhyar. While resident here, Luhan also wrote seven books on cultural and intellectual aspects of American society.</p><br>
<p>The house was later owned for a time by actor Dennis Hopper. It presently is used as a hotel and conference center, with a focus on education.</p><br>
<p>Lincoln Historic District is a historic district encompassing the community of Lincoln, New Mexico. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. The historic district contains 48 structures, some privately held, 12 mi east of Capitan and 57 mi west of Roswell along USA Route 380.</p><br>
<p>It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960. The National Park Service reviewer of the site, who visited in 1974, believed that it was the best preserved frontier "cow town" in the United States.</p><br>
<p>Seventeen of the buildings are owned by the state of New Mexico and operated as Lincoln Historic Site under the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. Four of the buildings are open as museums year round, and two are open seasonally. It includes a number of buildings, including Wright House, Dr. Wood&#39;s Office, the Watson House, Curry Saloon, Wortley Hotel, Penfield Shop and Home, Tunstall Store, Old Mill, Ellis Store, Old Courthouse, and Montano Store.</p><br>
<p>The town is notable for its famous residents who participated in the Lincoln County War, and as the site of Billy the Kid&#39;s most famous escape in April 1881.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Lincoln looks much as it did during the Lincoln County War (1878–1881) when its single street was peopled with characters like Billy the Kid, John Chisum and Lawrence Murphy. Nestled in a valley between the Capitan and Sacramento Mountains of southcentral New Mexico, Lincoln was the scene of Billy the Kid&#39;s most famous escape in April 1881. Billy had been sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead and was being held prisoner in the Old Lincoln County Courthouse. Somehow he got hold of a six-shooter, killed the two deputies who were guarding him (Bell and Olinger), then stole a horse and rode out of town—only to be tracked down in Fort Sumner and shot dead two months later by Sheriff Pat Garrett.</p><br>
<p>Although Billy the Kid was the most famous character in Lincoln during its violent heyday, he had only a supporting role in the larger story of the Lincoln County War. The "war" was a vicious struggle between two competing economic factions for control of lucrative government contracts and local resources. The two factions, Murphy-Dolan and Tunstall-McSween, fought a series of escalating battles with such murderous ferocity that the repercussions were felt as far away as the state capital Santa Fe and even in Washington, D.C.</p><br>
<h2>Museums</h2><br>
<p>Four of the museum buildings are open year-round and two are opened seasonally.</p><br>
<p>Old Lincoln County Courthouse - Billy the Kid was held here. Exhibits show the building&#39;s use as a store, residence, Masonic Lodge and eventually courthouse and jail.</p><br>
<p>Tunstall Store - The store&#39;s original 19th century merchandise is on display.</p><br>
<p>Torreon - a 20 ft-high round stone tower originally built near the center of town in the 1860s, served as a refuge during attacks by Mescalero Apaches.</p><br>
<p>Montano Store - Features exhibits on adobe construction and the Hispanic culture that was prevalent during the Lincoln County War.</p><br>
<p>San Juan Mission Church (La Iglesia de San Juan Bautista) - Built in 1887, the Roman Catholic Church is open to the public and is still used for services today.</p><br>
<p>Anderson-Freeman Visitors Center - A non-historical building with exhibits about the town&#39;s history starting with American Indian pre-history up to the Lincoln County War. A video details the history of the war.</p><br>
<p>The Spacecraft Magnetic Test Facility, also known historically as the Attitude Control Test Facility, is an experimental spacecraft test facility at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. It was built in 1966 to allow the evaluation of magnetic movement in crewed and uncrewed spacecraft, and for the precision calibration of magnetometers used in space flight. The building is constructed of non-magnetic materials and contains a magnetic coil system that allows the cancellation of the Earth&#39;s magnetic field. This unique building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985.</p><br>
<p>The facility is currently managed by the Goddard Mechanical Systems Division.</p><br>
<h2>Description and history</h2><br>
<p>The Spacecraft Magnetic Test Facility is located about 2 mi east of the main campus of the Goddard Space Flight Center, in Building 310-20 on the north side of Good Luck Road. The building is a single-story structure, 60 ft square, and is built entirely out of nonmagnetic materials. The building contains a 42 ft diameter 3-axis Braunbek coil with four loops on each axis. The coil cancels the Earth&#39;s magnetic field within a central 6 ft spherical volume. Fluctuations in the ambient field are removed by a servo control, producing stability to half a nanotesla. An artificial magnetic vector can be produced and rotated at a variable rate. 9.42 ft Helmholtz coils are used for perm/deperm operations. A 6,000 lb monorail hoist is provided to move equipment in and out of the test area. HEPA filtration and air conditioning are provided. A turntable 8 ft in diameter within the chamber is used for precision placement of the test object.</p><br>
<p>The facility was built in 1966, and has been used to determine and minimize the magnetic movement of uncrewed spacecraft and to calibrate flight magnetometers since the early years of the United States space program. It is able to (within certain limits) emulate the magnetic conditions found in orbital and interstellar space. It saw significant use until the 1990s. Its instruments are also capable of profiling the magnetic characteristics of the test objects. The facility&#39;s main difficulties have been with deteriorating current amplifiers, with replacements made in the 1970s and 1980s altering its performance characteristics.</p><br>
<p>Oaklawn Cemetery is the first public burial ground in Tampa, Florida, United States. The location was deeded in the mid-19th century and was described as the final resting place for "White and Slave, Rich and Poor." Oaklawn Cemetery is located at the intersection of Morgan Street and Harrison Street in downtown Tampa, about two blocks South of I-275. It has approximately 1,700 graves.</p><br>
<p>Oaklawn Cemetery includes a section for Catholic burials called St. Louis Catholic Cemetery. The two graveyards were added as a Historic District to the USA National Register of Historic Places on September 19, 2017. The Sexton House was used for equipment storage and maintenance activities. The cemetery was of the "Rural Cemetery" style. The First Mayor of the City of Tampa, Judge Joseph B. Lancaster, is buried at Oaklawn, as is the 6th mayor, James McKay Sr. Others include pirates, slaves, yellow fever epidemic victims and confederate soldiers. Notable areas and gravesites in the cemetery include the gravesites of Henry Laurens Mitchell, John T. Lesley Family, Samuel Friebele, Charlie Wall, the Hooker Family, James McKay Jr., James C. Field, Joseph B. Lancaster, the Krause Family, the Wall Family, mass graves, gravesite of James T. Magbee, the gravesites of William and Nancy Ashley, gravesites of John P. Wall, James Gettis, grave art, and the "Cradle Graves."</p><br>
<h2>Saint Louis Catholic Cemetery</h2><br>
<p>The northwest section is actually a separate cemetery known as Saint Louis Catholic Cemetery. Established in 1874, it had its own entry gates and was for many years completely separated from Oaklawn by an iron fence. Among those buried in the St. Louis section are the founder of Ybor City, Vicente Martinez Ybor, five pioneer priests (three of whom died in a 15-day period during the 1887 yellow fever epidemic) and Cecilia Morse, the foundress of Catholic parochial education in the Tampa Bay area. A few remnants of the fence are still visible including several brick fence posts with marble finials, the original driveways and the gates that serviced only the St. Louis section. In 2010 and 2011, the Diocese of Saint Petersburg added Catholic Heritage Markers to the cemetery recognizing the contributions of both Mrs. Morse and the pioneer priests, as well as a site map which delineates the "Saint Louis section" of the graveyard.</p><br>
<h2>Sexton House</h2><br>
<p>The Sexton House, formerly known as the Pavilion or Gazebo, was constructed in 1910 for caretaker tools and equipment. The word "sexton" is from the Latin "sacristanus" which means "someone who looks after the sacred objects."</p><br>
<h2>Darwin Branch Givens</h2><br>
<p>A gravesite for Darwin Branch Givens (born 1858 - died 1942) includes a marble marker at the gravesite inscribed:</p><br>
<h2>Image gallery</h2><br>
<p>Hazelfield, located near Shenandoah Junction, West Virginia is a historic farm, whose principal residence was built in 1815 for Ann Stephen Dandridge Hunter.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The Federal style limestone house is covered with brown stucco, with wood weatherboard gables. The main block is stories, with a prominent attic lit by a large lunette. A less formal -story side wing is attached to the north side of the main block. The pedimented entrance porch is centered on the east facade. The interior is arranged with a transverse hall plan, the well-lighted hall extending across the width of the front elevation on both main levels, with two rooms to the rear. The U-shaped stairway is at the southeast corner of the hall. Hazelfield is one of the earliest examples of this plan, which was often employed in later houses that were built by the Washington family elsewhere in Jefferson County.</p><br>
<p>The house rests on a stone basement. The roof is painted metal. The ground floor includes a parlor and dining room in the main section, with a kitchen and pantry in the wing, all but the pantry with fireplaces.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The 600 acre Hazelfield estate was given to Ann Stephen by her father, Adam Stephen, on her 1780 marriage to Alexander Spotswood Dandridge, grandson of Virginia colonial lieutenant governor Alexander Spotswood and brother-in-law of Patrick Henry. After Dandridges death, Ann married Colonel Moses Hunter in 1787. They had three children. After the death of her son David during the War of 1812, Ann moved from Martinsburg to the Hazelfield property and built the Hazelfield house in 1815. On Anns death in 1834, the property passed to her grandson, David Hunter Tucker, and was used by his brother Nathaniel Beverly Tucker and his wife in the 1840s.</p><br>
<p>Hazelfield was the first transverse-hall house in Jefferson County, setting a style that became popular in the area. The gable entry arrangement was unusual for a house, since the form was typically reserved for public buildings.</p><br>
<p>The house had been abandoned by in the early 1970s, when it was purchased by historian William Howard Adams and his wife Janet, and repaired for summer use. Adams believes the house was adapted from the William Adam-designed plan of Milton House in Edinburgh, Scotland</p><br>
<p>Hazelfield was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 12, 1976.</p><br>
<p>The Peter Burr House was built between 1751 and 1755 near present-day Shenandoah Junction, West Virginia, making it one of the oldest houses in West Virginia. Burr, whose first cousin was Aaron Burr, was one of the first settlers in the area. It is the oldest surviving post-and-beam-construction house in West Virginia. The 9.5 acre property was acquired from Burr family descendants in the 1990s and has been under restoration by Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The taller section of the house is the oldest, with brick filling in between log framing, covered with hand-riven clapboards. The steeply-pitched roof overhangs the larger section on both the north and south elevations. An addition, lower in height, dates to 1804, and features a large limestone chimney. A two-story springhouse lies to the west of the main house.</p><br>
<p>The oldest portion of the Burr house has a hall-and-parlor arrangement, with the hall and parlor reversed from their usual precedence, so that the parlor is at the front door. A log kitchen was built in the 18th century, which was attached to the core of the house in 1813 with an intervening room.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Peter Burr II was born in Connecticut, cousin of Aaron Burr, and was granted more than 800 acre in 1751 after arriving in Virginia in the late 1740s. Burr lived on the property until his death in 1795. As a cousin of Burr, and an associate of nearby landowners and soldiers Charles Lee and Horatio Gates, Burr was an opponent of the Washington family, who also owned land in the area.</p><br>
<p>The Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission has built a replica barn on the property.</p><br>
<p>The Rellim Farm near Kearneysville, West Virginia is a 50 acre farm and orchard complex which was once part of the nearby Traveller&#39;s Rest property. The upper Shenandoah Valley region supports a significant fruit industry, and Rellim Farm is a representative example of this form of agriculture, the oldest family-owned operation in Jefferson County. Beginning in the 1930s, Paul Miller Sr. began to work with the nearby West Virginia University Experimental Farm in the development of spray technology, which was applied throughout the industry.</p><br>
<p>"Rellim" is derived from "Miller" spelled backwards.</p><br>
<p>May&#39;s Island  is a small island on the Cedar River, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Functioning as a civic center much like the Île de la Cité, it is the site of the Memorial Building , the Linn County Courthouse, and the county jail. The island plus an adjacent block was listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.</p><br>
<p>The island and all of its buildings were devastated by the 2008 flood of the Cedar River, with water reaching above the first floors.</p><br>
<p>Until the 2008 flood, the concentration of local and county government on the island served to unify the city on both sides. The Memorial Building was designed by Hunter & Hatton, architects of Cedar Rapids. The Beaux Arts-style Linn County Courthouse was designed by Joseph Royer, of Urbana, as was the county jail. The building masses are long and narrow, like the island itself. The buildings face each other, creating an "insular quality".</p><br>
<p>The concentration of government services extends to the east bank, where the Federal government is located, to the east of the Memorial Building, in the Beaux Arts-style Federal Building, whose design is credited to the Office of the Supervising Architect under James A. Wetmore. Its block, from 1st Avenue north to 2nd Avenue, from 1st Street west to the river, is also included in the historic district. This makes a total of four contributing buildings in the district.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Before Cedar Rapids was incorporated, May&#39;s Island was a low, marshy piece of land in the Cedar River (then called the Red Cedar), prone to flooding and covered with scrubby brush and trees. Because of the undergrowth and its inaccessibility, it was reputedly used by local horse thieves as a spot to temporarily hide their loot. In the 1850s, an entrepreneur/dreamer by the name of "Major" John May managed to acquire the island. (May had been granted the title for some service to the governor of New York and he always used it thereafter; interestingly, though, when called up to actually fight during the Civil War, he paid another man to serve in his stead). May was also into real estate speculation, and when he learned that the island had not been included in official government surveys of the city, he managed to get the government to recognize its existence and then sell it to him.</p><br>
<p>His original dream was to start a town called May Island (about the same time he started another town, called Mayfield, south of Cedar Rapids), but that plan quickly proved unworkable due to the islands tendency to flood and due to its inaccessibility—there were still no bridges across the Cedar. Undaunted, May came up with a new vision for his island: it would become the heart of an enlarged Cedar Rapids that straddled the river (at that time Cedar Rapids was confined to the east bank of the Cedar; there was a separate town called Kingston on the west). To this end, he persuaded the Iowa State Legislature to rename Kingston "West Cedar Rapids," thereby planting the idea that the two towns were really just two halves of a greater whole. May then left Cedar Rapids to pursue ventures elsewhere, but returned to check on his investment periodically. He returned to Cedar Rapids for good in 1871 to find fortune had smiled on his island: Cedar Rapids had annexed West Cedar Rapids/Kingston and had constructed an iron bridge to unite the two halves of the newly enlarged city—this bridge, along the line of the current third avenue bridge, cut directly through the middle of Mays Island, and remained the only operable bridge for the next 14 years. May&#39;s vision had been realized, and businesses began popping up along the new thoroughfare.</p><br>
<p>In 1889, a Russian immigrant named Henry Smulekoff purchased one of these buildings and opened a furniture store (Smulekoffs Furniture would operate in Cedar Rapids until 2014), then gradually bought up more and more of the island as Major Mays fortunes fell into decline. John May died in 1904, but by that time there was already a movement afoot to have the city acquire the island as the site for City Hall. Then, as now, there were ill feelings between the east- and west-siders in Cedar Rapids, and the citys leaders hoped that placing the seat of government in the "neutral territory" of Mays Island would help ease the tensions. It was Smulekoff who sold most of the island to the City in 1909, including his store, which became the temporary new home of City Hall. The city began remaking the island, building concrete sea walls and raising its elevation to end the perpetual problem of flooding (or so they thought: Mays Island was again under water during the 2008 flood). They also extended the island to the north, increasing its size by about a third. Originally, the island only extended to what is now Second Avenue; the portion where Veterans Memorial Building is situated is entirely man-made. In 1919, the residents of Linn County, Iowa voted to move the county seat from Marion, Iowa to Cedar Rapids, in part because Cedar Rapids had offered to donate the southern third of the island for use as a county courthouse and jail. The city officially renamed the island "Municipal Island" but, though there are no signs identifying it as such, residents of Cedar Rapids still know it as "Mays Island."</p><br>
<p>The Washington Irving Memorial is located at Broadway  and West Sunnyside Lane in Irvington, New York. It features a bust of Irving and sculptures of two of his better-known characters by Daniel Chester French, set in a small stone plaza at the street corner designed by Charles A. Platt. It is near Irving&#39;s Sunnyside estate.</p><br>
<p>A local woman, Jennie Prince Black, pushed for the memorial&#39;s creation and construction in 1909, since Sunnyside was then still an Irving family residence closed to the public and his admirers had few places to pay their respects to him. Her dream took almost 20 years to realize. The memorial went through a difficult construction process, passing through several proposed locations and many financial difficulties before it could finally be dedicated in 1927, a year later than originally planned. The opening of Sunnyside since then has led the Irving admirers there instead, but after a major restoration in the late 20th century it remains true to its original design. In 2000, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The memorial sits on a small triangle of land at the southwest corner of the junction, which marks the northern end of Irvington. Sunnyside Creek, a small tributary of the nearby Hudson River, flows through a culvert underneath and lends a sloping, wooded character to the land behind the memorial.</p><br>
<p>It consists of three parts: a tall central panel 10 ft high and 8 ft wide, bronze sculptures of two of Irvings characters, Rip Van Winkle and King Boabdil, flanking a bust of the author on a 6 ft pedestal. Curved wing walls 4 ft high and 12 ft long come out on either side, further extended by 10 ft of wrought iron fencing. All the stone is pink Vermont granite with dark veins. An inscription carved in the center memorializes Irvings multiple careers, and identifies the two characters depicted at his sides.</p><br>
<p>In front of the panel are several square stone piers intended to support benches that were never built. Two were added later at the sides. The surface of the memorial area was once flagstone; today most of it has been replaced in concrete. Piers at the north end were built for a gate and path to the brook that was never built.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The construction of the memorial was beset by financial problems, complicated site issues and delays. Its location was not ideal for such a project, and was not finally settled until a year before it was finished. Its original budget grew despite intensive fundraising efforts, and even so French was never fully paid for his work. Issues persisted even after it was formally dedicated.</p><br>
<h3>Concept</h3><br>
<p>During his lifetime, Irving &ndash; revered as America&#39;s first great writer &ndash; regularly received visitors and admirers at Sunnyside. His family closed the house after his death, and those who still wished to pay homage had to settle for his grave at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery near the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow and pew at Christ Episcopal Church, both located 2 mi up the road in Tarrytown.</p><br>
<p>At Irvingtons ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of his death in 1909, resident Jennie Prince Black, a composer and the wife of printing magnate Harry Van Deventer Black, realized the village needed a permanent memorial to the man it had renamed itself after. Plans for a tower in Tarrytown in the late 19th century had never come to fruition. She credited "an inner voice" and continued to advocate for the memorial for years without success. In 1924, Cyrus West Field, another Irvington resident, put her in touch with sculptor Daniel Chester French. The involvement of Americas top sculptor made Black&#39;s dream a reality. He was commissioned to design the memorial that summer, while the newly formed Washington Irving Memorial Association began looking for a site and raising money to buy the land.</p><br>
<h3>Siting difficulties</h3><br>
<p>Frenchs design came together quickly; buying the land was the hard part. Black wanted the memorial to be on Broadway, in full view of traffic on the busy Albany Post Road. She had hoped at first to locate the memorial at what became its ultimate site, but was rebuffed both by the difficult topography of the site and the Irving familys unwillingness to sell the land out of fears a memorial would attract visitors. She turned next to the churches, and despite Frenchs concern that it would be too close to the street was making some progress when she learned that an unnamed vestryman of one of the churches had been objecting to the idea of a memorial on the grounds of either church. A property facing Irvingtons Main Street was considered next but the owners would not consent. Finally, the Irvings were moved by these difficulties to reconsider their original reservations. A neighbor of theirs, Henry Graves, donated the triangular parcel, and the memorial association began a subscription drive.</p><br>
<p>Meanwhile, French had decided to represent Irving in his prime, at the age of 35, before he had come to live in the area. He collected drawings of the author to ensure as accurate a representation as possible. Similarly, he asked Frank Jefferson, the son of Joseph Jefferson, who had become famous playing Van Winkle on stage, for photographs of his late father in the part.</p><br>
<p>His decision to use Boabdil as the other character, to show the range of Irvings work, met with some controversy when he sent the memorial association a plaster cast of his work, after he had sent site architect Charles A. Platt a plan. Another of Blacks wealthy local acquaintances, the publisher George H. Putnam, himself a biographer of Irving, complained that French should have chosen another local character from Irvings work, like Peter Stuyvesant and that Boabdil was not even a major character in Irvings The Alhambra. Black brought this up with him, but the sculptor reminded her that he was the artist and it was his privilege to decide how to memorialize Irving in bronze. He consulted with his friend Bashford Dean, curator of arms and armor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as to what the Moorish king would have worn. While Dean did not feel what French ultimately chose was historically accurate, he, too, agreed it was ultimately a matter of artistic license.</p><br>
<h3>Financial problems</h3><br>
<p>By the spring of 1925, the association had raised $8,000, but the total cost of the memorial was now projected to reach $30,000, half of which was French&#39;s fee. In July he told Black the bust of Irving was nearing completion and that he would have all the work ready in time to open and dedicate the memorial in 1926. Black continued raising money, securing at one point a $5,000 contribution from another wealthy area resident, John D. Rockefeller, on the condition that a matching $25,000 be raised. Soon afterwards it was reported that $16,000 had been raised, from yet other local citizens of means such as Adolph Ochs and Chauncey Depew. A scroll with the names of 400 who donated was placed in a locked box and buried at the monument site.</p><br>
<p>French presented a mockup of his final work to Black in January 1926. "You have outdone us all a thousandfold", she said to him. Costs for the memorial continued to rise as it became more elaborate, and French became involved in fundraising, putting his plaster model of the Irving bust on display in his New York studio to draw attention to the project and entering it in exhibitions. It was sent to the Gorham Company&#39;s bronze works in Providence to be cast in April.</p><br>
<p>Back in Irvington, Black and the memorial association, equally concerned about costs, which were now reaching $50,000, again contacted the churches in Tarrytown, where the site was flatter. French, who preferred the churches over Sunnyside Lane, and Platt both produced modified plans, but legal complications blocked the move in June. The sculptor told Black it would be impossible to get the memorial done by fall and suggested its completion be postponed to spring 1927, which would also allow more time for fundraising.</p><br>
<p>In August, the statues were finished and placed in storage. Black organized two fundraising events in the fall, one of them an elaborate pantomime pageant of Irving&#39;s works at Sunnyside starring many locals, but was devastated when they raised only $1,000, far short of what was necessary. French again decided to help out by creating, at his expense, an 18 in version of his Rip Van Winkle statue that the association could duplicate and sell for $500. The funding shortfalls resulted in the memorial being scaled back as construction approached: the landscaping and front benches were canceled and the fencing made less elaborate.</p><br>
<h3>Construction and dedication</h3><br>
<p>In the late fall, Ernest Behrens was paid $5,000 for site work, clearing a telephone booth and telephone pole from the site and pouring concrete. In the spring, Piccirilli Brothers, a New York stonecarving firm, was paid $14,360 to install the memorial. On June 24, they reported that, despite faulty foundation work and other issues they said should have been addressed prior to construction, the memorial was ready except for the bronze lettering, which didn&#39;t fit in the grooves cut in the rock.</p><br>
<p>Three days later, on June 26, 1927, the memorial was finally opened and dedicated despite these unresolved issues. Irvings great-great-nephew pulled aside the flag that draped it, and a local schoolchildrens choir sang and trumpeters performed. French&#39;s work was well received. One local newspaper columnist called it "chaste, dignified and altogether lovely", noting how it drew the viewer from characters to author rather than the other way around.</p><br>
<h3>Later history</h3><br>
<p>Gorham denied any responsibility for the lettering problem, claiming it had only followed French&#39;s blueprints. New letters were cast and installed in October. French was still owed $5,000; by the time of the last entry related to the Irving memorial in his account book, two years later, he had been paid $14,500, $500 short of his original fee.</p><br>
<p>After the completion of the memorial, no further work was done. The Rockefeller family bought Sunnyside from the Irving family in 1945, restored it and opened it to the public as a historic house museum in 1947, eliminating the original need for the memorial.</p><br>
<p>In 1985, a cleaning project restored the original appearance of much of the stonework and bronze, and in the late 1990s the original flagstone flooring was replaced with concrete, since the memorial and its benches had come to be used as a waiting area for local bus service. New York&#39;s Department of Transportation installed a standard at the corner to support a traffic light, essentially recreating the obstruction to the view of the memorial by southbound traffic that the original designers had hoped was gone with the removal of the telephone pole.</p><br>
<p>Mesilla Plaza is the central plaza in the small town of Mesilla in far southern New Mexico. The plaza and a number of its surrounding buildings are a National Historic Landmark District, significant for its role in the transfers of power that brought first the original New Mexico Territory and later the Gadsden Purchase into United States control. The most notable building facing the plaza is the Basilica of San Albino, which has been on the plaza since its establishment in 1851. The plaza was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961.</p><br>
<h2>Description and History</h2><br>
<p>The town of Mesilla was created by a Mexican government decree in 1848, as a place to receive Mexican citizens who sought to remain on Mexican soil after the cession of the northern parts of present-day New Mexico were ceded to the United States in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican–American War. Just five years later, the Gadsden Purchase agreement result in the United States purchase of the southern strips of present-day New Mexico and Arizona, an area that includes Mesilla. The Mesilla Plaza was the site of an official flag-raising ceremony on November 18, 1854, confirming United States sovereignty over the area. The town continued to hold a prominent economic role in territorial affairs, serving as a stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail route, and other stagecoach routes. It served as a military center during the American Civil War, at different times for both Union and Confederate forces in the Arizona Territory.</p><br>
<p>Mesilla Plaza was the site of one of the bloodiest political riots in New Mexico history. On August 27, 1871, Democrats held a large political rally in the plaza for their candidate for territorial delegate to the United States Congress. Republicans were also holding a rally at a nearby home for their candidate. The Republicans moved from the house to the plaza to disrupt the Democrats&#39; rally. The two groups confronted each other yelling and shoving. One man was struck with an axe handle and then shooting started. Soldiers from nearby Fort Selden stationed in the town to stop any violence had left earlier when it appeared the rallies were peaceful. A messenger caught up with the soldiers and they returned to Mesilla. By then, most of the violence was over. Nine people were killed, and an estimated fifty people were injured.</p><br>
<p>The plaza today is still ringed by many buildings harkening back to its early days. The plaza itself, originally an open dirt area, is now lined by brick sidewalks and is grassy, and sports a bandstand built in the 1970s. The most prominent structure is the Basilica of San Albino, built in 1906 on the site of the original 1852 church. Buildings on the east and west sides include Territorial style buildings from the 1850s, among them the original Butterfield State ticket office and waiting room. Some buildings were originally built as residences, but have since been readapted for commercial use, while some were originally built for commercial use.</p><br>
<p>The Colonial Annapolis Historic District is a historic district in the City of Annapolis, the state capital of Maryland, that was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1965 and was geographically further expanded in 1984.</p><br>
<h2>History and description</h2><br>
<p>Annapolis has served as the capital of both the Colony/Province and the State, along with being the county seat of Maryland&#39;s third county, Anne Arundel County, and is one of the first planned cities in colonial America. Many elements of the original town plan, developed in 1695 by Francis Nicholson, and about 120 of the 18th century buildings still remain. Along with its neighboring capital city to the south of Williamsburg of the Province/Colony of Virginia and the first years of the independent Commonwealth of Virginia, both towns serve as a "living microcosm" of the 1700s and early 1800s in the United States.</p><br>
<p>In terms of individually listed National Historic Landmarks and other sites on the National Register of Historic Places, the original historic colonial-era area includes the Maryland State House on State Circle, St. Anns Church (Anglican/Episcopal) on neighboring adjacent Church Circle, and the historic residences, townhouses and some larger mansions of the towns wealthiest and most influential citizens of the Hammond-Harwood House and the Paca House and Gardens, the increase also includes the Artisan&#39;s House, Brice House, John Callahan House, and the Chase-Lloyd House.</p><br>
<p>Most of the downtown and harbor waterfront areas were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.</p><br>
<p>The location of acclaimed national educational schools such as the St. Johns College, (elevated to collegiate status in 1784, founded as "King Williams School" in 1696) with its historic red-brick Colonial/Georgian and Federal-styled buildings (including the former colonial Governors Mansion, begun in 1742, later used as McDowell Hall, the primary college structure) and the 1845 establishment of the United States Naval School, the nations second-oldest military college, (later renamed the USA Naval Academy) with its late 19th Century French-styled architecture of Second Empire waterfront campus on the site of old Fort Severn from the War of 1812-era facing the Severn River, provide a sophisticated air to the downtown streets adding the casually attired college students and white-uniformed naval midshipmen walking about amidst the rows of brick townhouses and wood-frame homes.</p><br>
<p>With the establishment of the Historic Annapolis Foundation, as well as Annapolis Historic District Design Guidelines for New Construction, written by Robert Lamb Hart of Hart Howerton, the future of the city&#39;s historical heritage of the Colonial and Federal eras with its Georgian and Federal period with its unique architecture was assured of a constant "watchdog" over any future abuses and neglect as occasionally occurred during the quiet years of the 19th and early 20th Centuries.</p><br>
<p>The Colonial Annapolis Maritime Trail System is a part of the East Coast Greenway.</p><br>
<p>John Callahan House, known previously as Pinkney-Callahan House when it was located on St. John Street, is a historic home in Annapolis, Maryland, United States. The brick home was constructed by John Callahan , a prominent and wealthy Annapolitan who served as the Register of the Western Shore Land Office between 1778 and 1803, around 1785–90. It has been moved twice in efforts to prevent its demolition. In 1900–01, the house was relocated to St. Johns Street and then to its present site on Conduit Street in 1972. The home features an unusual gable-end principal façade and a largely intact Georgian/Federal interior finishes. It once served as St. Johns College Infirmary.</p><br>
<p>It was first listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 12, 1971 (NRHP Reference Number 71000365); after its relocation in 1972, it was listed again in 1973. It is a contributing property in the Colonial Annapolis Historic District.</p><br>
<p>Artisan&#39;s House is a historic home located at Annapolis, Maryland, United States. It is a -story frame house on a brick foundation representative of modest middle class dwellings of the 18th century. It was likely used as a barracks during the Revolutionary War. Because of this, it is also known as "Hogshead."</p><br>
<p>It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and it is a contributing property in the Colonial Annapolis Historic District.</p><br>
<p>Hogshead is owned by the Historic Annapolis Foundation and operated as an 18th-century period historic house museum with Colonial-era re-enactors.</p><br>
<p>Gambrill House, also known as Boscobel House and Edgewood, is a house near Frederick, Maryland in the Monocacy National Battlefield. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.</p><br>
<p>The house is associated with James Gambrill, owner of nearby Araby Mill and the Frederick City Mill. Gambrill&#39;s house boasted advanced features such as hot and cold running water, imported Italian marble fireplaces, gas lamps and a coal furnace. Gambrill was forced by financial circumstances to give up the house and mills in 1893. The house was acquired by the National Park Service in 1983 and serves as the home of the NPS Historic Preservation Training Center.</p><br>
<p>Widehall is a historic and architecturally significant house in Chestertown, Kent County, Maryland. Built by Thomas Smyth III, 1769–1770, it is a contributing property in the Chestertown Historic District.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>Widehall is a large, brick, -story, middle-Georgian period, city house fronting on Water Street, with the Chester River waterfront behind it. It is wide and deep, and is approached by two short flights of sandstone steps, separated by a terrace. The house&#39;s high basement is screened by a claire-voie of four brick piers topped by sandstone ball-finials, and a pair of boxwood hedges. Its five-bay street facade features a pedimented frontispiece with engaged columns, nine windows with oversided-quoin stone lintels, a double-hipped roof, three dormers with Welsh-arched windows, and a balustraded roof deck.</p><br>
<p>A -wide central passage runs from the front to the back of the house, and a lateral brick chimney wall on either side of the passage divides the first floor into four rooms. The front and rear rooms on the west side are parlors, the rear room on the east side is the dining room, and the front room on the east side is the stair hall.</p><br>
<p>Original features of the house include the 3-arch arcade separating the passage and stair hall, the mahogany 3-flight "hanging stairway" connecting the stair hall to the upper hall, and the broken-pedimented tabernacle-framed chimneybreast and cupboards of the dining room. "Also of importance is the front terrace, with the original retaining wall and piers between the street and house. Very few houses in Maryland boast a claire-voie."</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<h3>Thomas Smyth III</h3><br>
<p>Thomas Smyth III (1730–1819) was a plantation owner, merchant, lawyer and Kent County judge.</p><br>
<p>By 1769, Smyth had an agreement of sale for "Water Lot #16" in Chestertown with his stepmother, Mary Frisbie Smyth Granger (1713-1776).</p><br>
<p>Because William Granger, Jr. (ca. 1749–1791) held an interest in his late father&#39;s Chestertown property, and was not yet 21, Smyth petitioned the Maryland General Assembly to allow the 20-year-old to act as an adult in the real estate transaction. was granted clear title, and work on his new house resumed. He already owned the lot adjacent to the west, "Water Lot #17," having bought it from his father-in-law, Thomas Bedingfield Hands, in 1765.</p><br>
<h4>Construction</h4><br>
<p>The designer of Widehall is unknown. Michael Owen Bourne, recorder of the NRHP nomination for Widehall (1972), and later author of the masterful Historic Houses of Kent County (1998), conjectures that it was built "possibly employing designs, if not craftsmen themselves from Annapolis or Philadelphia." King of Prussia marble was imported from outside Philadelphia to surround the house&#39;s fireplaces.</p><br>
<h3>Later owners</h3><br>
<p>In February 1790, Smyth sold his Chestertown house and the adjacent river wharves to Robert Anderson for GB£3250.5. At Robert Anderson&#39;s death, the properties passed to his brother, Thomas. In the mid-1790s, Thomas Anderson purchased "Water Lots #14 and #15" and part of "Water Lot #13," all to the east of the house. About 1795, he built his own house on "Water Lot #14," now known as the Anderson-Aldridge House.</p><br>
<p>Thomas Anderson sold the former Smyth house to USA Senator Robert Wright in 1801. Wright served as Governor of Maryland from 1806 to 1809, and as a USA Congressman from 1810 to 1817, and 1821 to 1823.</p><br>
<p>Benjamin and Elizabeth Chambers purchased the house from Wright in 1822, and it passed to their son, Ezekiel F. Chambers, who lived there until his death in 1867. He served as a state legislator from 1822 to 1826, as a USA Senator from 1826 to 1834, and as a judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals from 1834 to 1851. Ezekiel F. Chambers had the house insured in 1842, and the insurance survey described the house in detail, including the kitchen ell attached to the east side of the river facade:</p><br>
<p>The back building is brick two Story, 20 by 35, two rooms & a pantry in first Story & 4 rooms in 2nd plastered Ceilings two windows both sides both Stories, paneled shutters, Studs & brick partitions, a ledge door each side & to each room inside brick floor to 1st & pine plank to 2nd A fireplace in South end & Stairs to 2nd Story, loft over Not plastered Cedar Shingle ridge roof Oak Joist & Rafters.</p><br>
<p>Robert Clay Crawford purchased the house from the Ezekiel F. Chambers estate in 1867. Two years later, George Burgin Westcott purchased the altered house from Crawford, and leased it out as Brown&#39;s Hotel. The hotel is shown on the 1891 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Chestertown, Kent County, Maryland, shaded in pink (brick building), and with the notations "D" "3 " "Shingled Fr Rf all around" and "2 1/2 " kitchen ell. The map also shows a 3-story wooden lumber warehouse west of the house on the adjacent "Water Lot #17," along with a 2-story wooden fertilizer warehouse and a 2-story wooden grain warehouse (both southwest of the house).</p><br>
<p>The hotel had become a boarding-house operated by Mrs. M. E. Watts by August 1893, when the Chester River had a historic flood, and her boarders were evacuated by rowboat.</p><br>
<h3>Hubbards</h3><br>
<p>Fertilizer manufacturer Wilbur Watson Hubbard (1860–1938) and his wife Etta Belle Ross (1865–1965) purchased the property in 1909. He owned the fertilizer warehouse on the adjacent "Water Lot #17," purchased the other two warehouses, and demolished all three buildings. The lot was transformed into part of the house&#39;s garden.</p><br>
<p>Baltimore architect Howard Sill began the renovation of Widehall in June 1910. Upon this lot was built a brick, Federal Revival, 2-story kitchen wing, designed to look as if it had been expanded in stages over time. Sills kitchen wing solved a host of circulation problems. It featured a butlers pantry leading to the dining room, a large modern kitchen, a service stair to the wings second floor servant bedrooms, another service stair to the houses cellar (descending beneath the first flight in the stair hall), and a hallway, cloak room and powder room accessible from the stair hall. The old kitchen ell was demolished, and Sill designed a grand, Federal Revival, two-story porch that was the full width of the river facade.</p><br>
<p>Sill also made alterations to the houses interior. The key document for the renovation was the 1842 insurance survey, which listed the architectural details of each room and included a plan of the first floor. The chimneybreast of the rear parlor had been removed and lost, so Sill installed a copy of the front parlors chimneybreast. Sill removed the side-closets on either side of the front and rear parlor chimneybreasts, and replaced them with a pair of square archways between the rooms. The window under the hanging stairway became a door to the new kitchen wings hallway, cloak room and powder room. The dining room was returned to its original size by the removal of a pre-1842 service stair. One of the dining rooms two east windows became a door to the new butler&#39;s pantry, and two windows were installed in the south wall, giving the room a third window and a river view.</p><br>
<p>The renovated house was initially called "Chester Place," followed by "Hubbard Place." Mrs. Hubbard finally settled on the name "Widehall," after the 3-bay upper hall of the second story.</p><br>
<p>The couple&#39;s son, Wilbur Ross Hubbard (1896–1993), was a major collector of antique furniture, silver and china,</p><br>
<h3>Recent history</h3><br>
<p>Widehall was sold in February 1996 for US$875,000, In August 2021, Widehall was listed for sale for US$4,400,000.</p><br>
<h2>Significance</h2><br>
<p>Widehall was photographed by the Historic American Buildings Survey in October 1936. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.</p><br>
<h3>HABS photographs (1936)</h3><br>
<h3>NRHP listing (1972)</h3><br>
<p>Chestertown. WIDEHALL, 101 Water St. 1769.Brick, stories over high basement, rectangular, hip-on-hipped roof, interior chimneys, gabled dormers, modillion cornice, front center entrance with pediment supported by engaged fluted columns, Welsh arched windows, rear full-width 2-story Ionic portico;oof, dormers, 2-story NE kitchen, and rear porch added during 1910 restoration. Georgian.Built by Thomas Smyth, wealthy county merchant and shipbuilder; later home of Robert Wright, USA senator and MD governor (1806–1809), and of Ezekial Chambers, state and USA senator and court of appeals judge.Private: HABS.</p><br>
<p>The Denton House, also known as the Denton-Weeks House, the River House, and the Smyth-Letherbury House, is a historic residence at 107 Water Street in Chestertown, Maryland. It is a three-story brick building, with a five-bay front facade framed by corner pilasters with stone capitals. The building has a raised basement, with a stone stringcourse between it and the first floor. The front entrance is centered, with an elaborate surround consisting of pilasters, entablature and dentillated gable. The house was built about 1784 by Richard Smyth, the son of one of the area&#39;s wealthiest merchants. In 1791 it was bought by Peregrine Letherbury, the first law professor at Washington College.</p><br>
<p>The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, and it is a contributing property in the Chestertown Historic District.</p><br>
<p>Ellicott City Historic District is a national historic district in Ellicott City, Howard County, Maryland. The Ellicott City Station is a National Historic Landmark located within the district. The district encompasses a predominantly 19th century mill town whose origins date to 1772, including more than 200 18th- and 19th-century buildings. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The 2016 Maryland flood severely impacted the historic district on July 30, 2016, as did another flood on May 27, 2018.</p><br>
<p>It includes the Saint Paul Catholic Church, a church where Babe Ruth got married.</p><br>
<p>The Federal Aviation Administration Records Center in Martinsburg, West Virginia is the former United States Courthouse and Post Office for the city. It is a Richardson Romanesque style building, principally designed by Willoughby J. Edbrooke, of the Office of the Supervising Architect. It was used as a federal courthouse and post office from 1895 to 1961, when both functions moved across the street to a new facility. The building to some extent resembles Henry Hobson Richardson&#39;s now-destroyed Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce Building.</p><br>
<p>The Federal Aviation Administration occupied the building in 1970, primarily as an emergency relocation center for Washington-based operations, then vacated the building in the 1990s. The blast-resistant construction and communications facilities are still visible in the basement. During the Cold War, the Justice Department and essential operations staff of the Federal Bureau of Investigation planned to use the building&#39;s top floors as an emergency relocation center.</p><br>
<p>The building was partly renovated as an arts center. It is part of the Downtown Martinsburg Historic District and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.</p><br>
