Monday, 13 December 2021

Vanderbilt Mansion and Anderson Cooper


Anderson Hays Cooper (born June 3, 1967) is an American broadcast journalist and political commentator. He is the primary anchor of the CNN news broadcast show Anderson Cooper 360°. In addition to his duties at CNN, Cooper serves as a correspondent for 60 Minutes on CBS News.

Born into the Vanderbilt family in Manhattan, Cooper graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1989. As a young journalist, he began travelling the world, shooting footage of war-torn regions for Channel One News. Cooper was hired by ABC News as a correspondent in 1995, but he soon took more jobs throughout the network, working for a short time as a co-anchor, reality game show host, and fill-in morning talk show host.

Cooper was born in Manhattan, New York City, the younger son of author, screenwriter, and actor Wyatt Emory Cooper and artist, fashion designer, writer, and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. His maternal grandparents were millionaire equestrian Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt of the Vanderbilt family and socialite Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, and Reginald's patri lineal great-grandfather was business magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who founded the prominent Vanderbilt shipping and railroad fortune. He is also a descendant, through his mother, of Civil War brevet Major General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick, who was with General William Tecumseh Sherman on his march through Georgia. Through his maternal line, he is a second cousin, once removed, of screenwriter James Vanderbilt. 

Biltmore Estate

 Biltmore Estate is a large (6950.4 acres or 10.86 square miles or 28.13 square kilometers) [also noted as 5,000 acres and 8,000 acres elsewhere on this page] private estate and tourist attraction in Asheville, North Carolina. Biltmore House, the main residence, is a Châteauesque-style mansion built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895 and is the largest privately owned house in the United States, at 178,926 square feet (16,622.8 m2) of floor space (135,280 square feet (12,568 m2) of living area). Still owned by George Vanderbilt's descendants, it remains one of the most prominent examples of the Gilded Age

Vanderbilt houses


From the late 1870s to the 1920s, the Vanderbilt family employed some of the United States's best Beaux-Arts architects and decorators to build an unequalled string of New York townhouses and East Coast palaces in the United States. Many of the Vanderbilt houses are now National Historic Landmarks. Some photographs of Vanderbilt's residences in New York are included in the Photographic series of American Architecture by Albert Levy (1870s).
The list of architects employed by the Vanderbilts is a "who's who" of the New York-based firms that embodied the syncretic (often dismissed as "eclectic") styles of the American Renaissance: Richard Morris Hunt; George B. Post; McKim, Mead, and White; Charles B. Atwood; Carrère and Hastings; Warren and Wetmore; Horace Trumbauer; John Russell Pope and Addison Mizner were all employed by the descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who built only very modestly himself.

LocationBuncombe County, North Carolina, United States
Coordinates35°32′22.74″N 82°33′3.42″WCoordinates: 35°32′22.74″N 82°33′3.42″W
Built1889–95
ArchitectRichard Morris Hunt (house)
Frederick Law Olmsted (landscape)
Architectural styleChâteauesque
Websitewww.biltmore.com

Construction of the house began in 1889 and continued well into 1896. In order to facilitate such a large project, a woodworking factory and brick kiln, which produced 32,000 bricks a day, were built onsite, and a three-mile railroad spur was constructed to bring materials to the building site. Construction on the main house required the labor of well over 1,000 workers and 60 stonemasons.[6] Vanderbilt went on extensive buying trips overseas as construction on the house was in progress. He returned to North Carolina with thousands of furnishings for his newly built home including tapestries, hundreds of carpets, prints, linens, and decorative objects, all dating between the 15th century and the late 19th century. Among the few American-made items were the more practical oak drop-front desk, rocking chairs, a walnut grand piano, bronze candlesticks and a wicker wastebasket.

Driven by the impact of the newly imposed income taxes, and the fact that the estate was getting harder to manage economically, Vanderbilt initiated the sale of 87,000 acres (352 km²) to the federal government. After Vanderbilt's unexpected death in 1914 of complications from an emergency appendectomy, his widow completed the sale to carry out her husband's wish that the land remain unaltered, and that property became the nucleus of the Pisgah National Forest. Overwhelmed with running such a large estate, Edith began consolidating her interests and sold Biltmore Estate Industries in 1917 and Biltmore Village in 1921. Edith intermittently occupied the house, living in an apartment carved out of the former Bachelors' Wing, until the marriage of her daughter to John Francis Amherst Cecil in April 1924. The Cecils went on to have two sons who were born in the same room as their mother.

In an attempt to bolster the estate's financial situation during the Great Depression, Cornelia and her husband opened Biltmore to the public in March 1930 at the request of the City of Asheville, which hoped the attraction would revitalize the area with tourism.Biltmore closed during World War II and in 1942, 62 paintings and 17 sculptures were moved to the estate by train from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. to protect them in the event of an attack on the United States. The Music Room on the first floor was never finished, so it was used for storage until 1944, when the possibility of an attack became more remote. Among the works stored were the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington and works by Rembrandt, Raphael, and Anthony van Dyck. David Finley, the gallery director, was a friend of Edith Vanderbilt and had stayed at the estate.
After the divorce of the Cecils in 1934, Cornelia left the estate never to return; however, John Cecil maintained his residence in the Bachelors' Wing until his death in 1954. Their eldest son, George Henry Vanderbilt Cecil, occupied rooms in the wing until 1956. At that point Biltmore House ceased to be a family residence and has continued to be operated as a historic house museum.

Biltmore has four acres of floor space and a total of 250 rooms in the house including 35 bedrooms for family and guests, 43 bathrooms, 65 fireplaces, three kitchens and 19th-century novelties such as electric elevators, forced-air heating, centrally controlled clocks, fire alarms, and a call-bell system.[13] The principal rooms of the house are located on the ground floor. To the right of the marbled Entrance Hall, the octagonal, sunken Winter Garden is surrounded by stone archways with a ceiling of architecturally sculptured wood and multifaceted glass. The centerpiece is a marble and bronze fountain sculpture titled Boy Stealing Geese created by Karl Bitter. On the walls just outside the Winter Garden are copies of the Parthenon frieze.

The Banquet Hall is the largest room in the house, measuring 42 feet wide and 72 feet long, with a 70-foot-high barrel-vaulted ceiling. The table could seat 64 guests surrounded by rare Flemish tapestries and a triple fireplace that spans one end of the hall. On the opposite end of the hall is an organ gallery that houses a 1916 Skinner pipe organ. Left unfinished with bare brick walls, the Music Room was not completed and opened to the public until 1976. It showcases a mantle designed by Hunt, and a large engraving by Albrecht Dürer called the Triumphal Arch commissioned by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. The mantle had been stored in the stable for over 80 years. To the left of the entrance hall is the 90-foot-long Tapestry Gallery, which leads to the Library, featuring three 16th-century tapestries representing The Triumph of Virtue Over Vice. Elsewhere on the walls are family portraits by John Singer Sargent, Giovanni Boldini and James Whistler. The two-story Library contains over 10,000 volumes in eight languages, reflecting George Vanderbilt's broad interests in classic literature as well as works on art, history, architecture, and gardening. The second-floor balcony is accessed by an ornate walnut spiral staircase. The baroque detailing of the room is enhanced by the rich walnut paneling and the ceiling painting, The Chariot of Aurora, brought to Biltmore by Vanderbilt from the Palazzo Pisani Moretta in Venice, Italy. The painting by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini is the most important work by the artist still in existence.



Question
Are we talking about wireless electricity in this building
Could this be devices to collect atmospheric electricity in top of the building metallic devices that transfer the electricity to the fireplaces?
There are theories that state that: "All fireplaces have two metallic statues/ devices in front of them and used to have probably a metallic plaques heated from the wireless electricity"








There was no economy for electricity in this halls.

 There are other theories that the builders of these castles were other that those provided by the official narrative. They were of a civilization destroyed by European invaders. They had advanced technologies that are hard to replicate now with our resources and knowledge the civilization of the "survivors".

According to Wikipedia:
Cornelius Vanderbilt (May 27, 1794 – January 4, 1877) was an American business magnate and philanthropist who built his wealth in railroads and shipping. Born poor and having only a mediocre education, Vanderbilt worked his way into leadership positions in the inland water trade and invested in the rapidly growing railroad industry. Nicknamed "The Commodore", he is known for owning the New York Central Railroad. His biographer says, "He vastly improved and expanded the nation's transportation infrastructure, contributing to a transformation of the very geography of the United States. He embraced new technologies and new forms of business organization, and used them to compete....He helped to create the corporate economy that would define the United States into the 21st century."
As one of the richest Americans in history and wealthiest figures overall, Vanderbilt was the patriarch of a wealthy, influential family. He provided the initial gift to found Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. According to historian H. Roger Grant: "Contemporaries, too, often hated or feared Vanderbilt or at least considered him an unmannered brute. While Vanderbilt could be a rascal, combative and cunning, he was much more a builder than a wrecker [...] being honorable, shrewd, and hard-working.

 An indentured servant or indentured laborer is an employee (indenturee) within a system of unfree labor who is bound by a signed or forced contract (indenture) to work for a particular employer for a fixed time. The contract often lets the employer sell the labor of an indenturee to a third party. Indenturees usually enter into an indenture for a specific payment or other benefit, or to meet a legal obligation, such as debt bondage. On completion of the contract, indentured servants were given their freedom, and occasionally plots of land. In many countries, systems of indentured labor have now been outlawed, and are banned by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a form of slavery.

Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery or bonded labour, is the pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation, where the terms of the repayment are not clearly or reasonably stated, and the person who is holding the debt and thus has some control over the laborer, does not intend to ever admit that the debt has been repaid.The services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined, thus allowing the person supposedly owed the debt to demand services indefinitely. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation.
Currently, debt bondage is the most common method of enslavement with an estimated 8.1 million people bonded to labour illegally as cited by the International Labour Organization in 2005. Debt bondage has been described by the United Nations as a form of "modern day slavery" and the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery seeks to abolish the practice.

Ancestry

Cornelius Vanderbilt's great-great-grandfather, Jan Aertson or Aertszoon ("Aert's son"), was a Dutch farmer from the village of De Bilt in Utrecht, Netherlands, who emigrated to New Amsterdam (later New York) as an indentured servant in 1650. The Dutch van der ("of the") was eventually added to Aertson's village name to create "van der Bilt" ("of the Bilt"). This was eventually condensed to Vanderbilt.

Cornelius Vanderbilt was born in Staten Island, New York on May 27, 1794 to Cornelius van Derbilt and Phebe Hand. He began working on his father's ferry in New York Harbor as a boy, quitting school at the age of 11. At the age of 16, Vanderbilt decided to start his own ferry service. According to one version of events, he borrowed $100 from his mother to purchase a periauger (a shallow draft, two-masted sailing vessel), which he christened the Swiftsure.However, according to the first account of his life, published in 1853, the periauger belonged to his father and the younger Vanderbilt received half the profit. He began his business by ferrying freight and passengers on a ferry between Staten Island and Manhattan. Such was his energy and eagerness in his trade that other captains nearby took to calling him The Commodore in jest – a nickname that stuck with him all his life.

While many Vanderbilt family members had joined the Episcopal Church, Cornelius Vanderbilt remained a member of the Moravian Church to his death. Along with other members of the Vanderbilt family, he helped erect a local Moravian parish church in his city.

Moravian Church

The Moravian Church, formally named the Unitas Fratrum (Latin for "Unity of the Brethren"), in German known as [Herrnhuter] Brüdergemeine[ (meaning "Brethren's Congregation from Herrnhut", the place of the Church's renewal in the 18th century), is one of the oldest Protestant denominations in the world, with its heritage dating back to the Bohemian Reformation in the 15th century and the Unity of the Brethren (Czech: Jednota bratrská) established in the Kingdom of Bohemia.
The name by which the denomination is commonly known comes from the original exiles who fled to Saxony in 1722 from Moravia to escape religious persecution, but its heritage began in 1457 in Bohemia and its crown lands (Moravia and Silesia), then forming an autonomous kingdom within the Holy Roman Empire. The modern Unitas Fratrum, with about one million members worldwide.

"Moravians founded missions with Algonquian-speaking Mohican in the British colony of New York in British North America. For instance, they founded one in 1740 at the Mohican village of Shekomeko in present-day Dutchess County, New York. The converted Mohican people formed the first native Christian congregation in the present-day United States of America. Because of local hostility to the Mohican, the Moravian support of the Mohican led to rumors of their being secret Jesuits, trying to ally the Mohican with France in the ongoing French and Indian Wars.
Although supporters defended their work, at the end of 1744, the colonial government based at Poughkeepsie expelled the Moravians from New York."

This text of wikipedia might mean that it was a conflict between moravian and native people.

More from Wikipedia:
"n 1741, David Nitschmann and Count Zinzendorf led a small community to found a mission in the colony of Pennsylvania. The mission was established on Christmas Eve, and was named Bethlehem, after the Biblical town in Judea. There, they ministered to the Algonquian Lenape. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is today the seventh largest city in Pennsylvania. Later, colonies were also founded in North Carolina, where Moravians led by Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg purchased 98,985 acres (400.58 km2) from John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville. This large tract of land was named die Wachau, or Wachovia, after one of Zinzendorf's ancestral estates on the Danube River in Lower Austria. Other early settlements included Bethabara (1753), Bethania (1759) and Salem (now referred to as Old Salem in Winston-Salem North Carolina) (1766)."

Were these lands purchased or stolen?

"In 1801 the Moravians established Springplace mission to the Cherokee Nation in what is now Murray County, Georgia. Coinciding with the forced removal of the Cherokees to Oklahoma, this mission was replaced in 1842 by New Springplace in Oaks, Oklahoma. Due to Civil War-related violence, New Springplace closed in 1862, and resumed during the 1870s. Finally, in 1898, the Moravian Church discontinued their missionary engagement with the Cherokees, and New Springplace, now the Oaks Indian Mission, was transferred to the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church.
The start of far-flung missionary work necessitated the establishment of independently administered provinces. So, from about 1732, the history of the church becomes the history of its provinces."



Links
http://fulltime-rv.blogspot.com/2012/05/visit-to-biltmore-estates.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vt7bVV3b1Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Vanderbilt 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Vanderbilt 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravian_Church 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biltmore_Estate 
https://www.biltmore.com/events/christmas-at-biltmore-daytime-celebration-1

Tuesday, 21 September 2021

King City- Kingsbridge Centre



Built in 1989

by Murray Koffler – founder of the Shopper’s Drug Mart and co-founder of The Four Seasons Hotels – as Canada’s first world class spa facility.

In 1992 CIBC, under the leadership of Chairman Al Flood, converted the property into a private state-of-the-art training facility for their leaders.

Purchased in 2001 by John Abele – The Kingbridge Centre was founded in 2001 by John Abele, cofounder of Boston Scientific and a global leader in the field of less invasive medicine. The Kingbridge vision was inspired by Mr. Abele’s passion for technological inventions, concepts and ideas made to benefit communities and society as a whole. His involvement in these areas influenced him to envision a living learning place that supports innovation where groups of people could come together to collaboratively solve problems. In January 2021, Mr. Abele made the decision to retire, entrusting the ownership of the Kingbridge Centre to the Pathak Family Trust and its affiliated entity Ekagrata Inc.

Purchased in January 2021 by the Pathak Family Trust and its affiliated entity Ekagrate Inc – The Kingbridge Centre will continue to deliver world-class residential convening, leadership development, corporate training, conferencing and retreat services while being committed to engaging with local community. The Pathak Family Trust is committed to upholding the standard of innovation, discovery, and excellence long represented by the Kingbridge Centre, and to continue the strong partnerships with local community, government and academia. Kingbridge’s new Chairman, Prashant Pathak, has been involved in Mr. Abele’s vision and mission alongside the Kingbridge team for over 15 years and is excited to carry on the legacy of collective learning, problem solving, leadership development and innovation. Mr. Abele will continue to advise Mr. Pathak and the rest of the Kingbridge team as Chairman Emeritus.

Mr. Pathak has begun to expand The Kingbridge vision by engaging with key stakeholder partners to harness the infrastructure of the Kingbridge Centre to drive economic prosperity by accelerating groundbreaking innovations that drive community transformation, and scale up environmental initiatives which make a positive impact in the world. Food, Agriculture, Energy, Water are four of the key focus areas of the Kingbridge Centre aligned with economic priorities of King Township and York Region. Programming will be developed and offered to support these objectives, help foster leaders and convene people who are interested to explore new ideas and collaboratively solve problems from a higher level of thinking, creativity, skills and shared purpose.

Due to COVID-19, from May 2020 The Kingbridge Centre has been serving as a Temporary Transitional Shelter for York Residents in need, through a partnership with The Regional Municipality of York and Salvation Army. This partnership is due to continue until June 2021. Looking beyond the current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Kingbridge Centre team is looking forward to being a partner in supporting economic recovery efforts, and growing innovative businesses. Mr. Pathak’s extensive global network, experience with risk capital investing and building businesses will support those efforts. Plans will be announced later this spring.

Thursday, 4 March 2021

The Black Eagle Palace Oradea Romania

The Black Eagle Palace is the most spectacular secession style architectural achievement in Oradea, Romania.
The story of the Black Eagle Palace is linked to the new urban development vision of the city, given the reorganization of the Small Square (St. Ladislau Square), today Union Square. In 1714, on the site of the building located at the intersection of Independence street (strada Independenței) with the Square, there was a one-storey venue, called the Eagle Inn or the Town’s Beer House.

The old inn hosted most of the city’s major public events: balls, meetings, theatre shows or political events. Until 1761 it was only a small building with three rooms that accommodated the town hall. Then, in 1807 it was rebuilt, extended and it was added another floor, and after a second modification, in 1835, it became an important hotel in the city.

Sunday, 27 December 2020

Thomas Foster Memorial Uxbridge Ontario Canada


Thomas Foster was

born near Toronto, and raised in Scott Township north of Uxbridge where his father ran the Leaskdale Hotel. He became a butcher in Cabbagetown in Toronto, was elected M.P., and served as mayor of Toronto from 1925 to 1927. He also made a large fortune from real estate.

The Thomas Foster Memorial

[Photo]

Foster visited India in his late seventies. After seeing the famous Taj Mahal, Foster was inspired to build a memorial in his boyhood community, with a Christian adaptation. The Memorial was erected in 1935-36, and cost $250,000. It contains three crypts for Mr. Foster, his wife and daughter.

J.H. Craig, (1889 - 1954), was the principal architect of the temple. Together with artchitect H.H. Madill (1889 - 1988), they worked on an entirely new and original design based on Byzantine architecture.

An Unusual Contest

Thomas Foster held a contest to find the lady who could have the most children in 10 years.

[Photo]

An Unusual Will

to feed Toronto birds in winter.Included in Thomas Foster's will were funds:

for needy newsboys in Toronto.

to plant trees on roads leading into Toronto.

to apprehend poachers around Toronto.

for an annual inner-city school picnic.

for cancer research.

for the Leaskdale Sunday School.

to maintain the Memorial.

Thomas Foster (July 24, 1852 – December 10, 1945) was the Mayor of TorontoOntario, Canada from 1925 to 1927.

UXBRIDGE -- Just a few kilometres north of Uxbridge on Durham Road 1 sits the Thomas Foster Memorial

A picturesque structure, located on a hill on the east side of the road, the building was constructed by Thomas Foster in 1935-36 and contains crypts for Mr. Foster, a former mayor of Toronto, his wife Elizabeth McCauley and young daughter Ruby, who died at the age of 10.

 -

Not one piece of wood was used in the construction of the building, which features an octagon-shaped base which the building sits on, a stunning copper roof, carved stone and hand-painted eye-catching windows. The floors feature rich-coloured terrazzo and marble mosaics in symbolic designs.

Upon entrance, patrons cross the ‘River of Death’, in which floats water lilies and lily pads.

The list of other visually pleasing features of the property, which is designated under the Ontario Heritage Act, is simply too long to list.

It is certainly a place, though, where first impressions make an impact.

Count Corey Keeble among those who’ve experienced that. In the fall of 2013, Mr. Keeble was the Royal Ontario Museum’s curator and he visited the Foster for the first time. 

Some or all of the facility has been used countless times to film television shows and movies. Most recently, the popular CBC’s show Murdoch Mysteries took over the Foster for a season eight episode titled: Murdoch and the Temple of Death. The episode aired in January of 2015.

Others have written books to raise awareness about the Foster. In 2014, local author Conrad Boyce wrote ‘Jewel on the Hill: the story of Ontario’s Thomas Foster Memorial.’

“The diamond of Durham it was dubbed and it is definitely the diamond of Durham and beyond. It’s one of a kind,” says longtime Foster supporter and member of the Friends of the Foster committee, Bev Northeast.

The Foster Memorial is open to the public on the first and third Sunday of the month from June to September and is the site of a weekly concert series, Fridays at the Foster, starting in May each year.

Thomas Foster 

BornJuly 24, 1852
York TownshipCanada West
DiedDecember 10, 1945 (aged 93)
NationalityCanadian
OccupationButcher, Meat Cutter
40th Mayor of Toronto
In office
1925–1927
Preceded byWilliam W. Hiltz
Succeeded bySamuel McBride


Early lifeEdit

The son of John T. Foster and Frances Nicholson, Thomas Foster was born July 24, 1852, in Lambton Mills, Ontario. His family soon moved to Leaskdale, Ontario after his mother's death.

He started his working life as a butcher's boy in Toronto, until he saved enough money to purchase his own butcher shop for $50. The earnings from that business allowed him to purchase property which became the source of his eventual wealth.

Political career

He was first elected as an alderman for St. David Ward in 1891, then reelected in 1892 and 1894. In 1895 he lost the election, and did not return to council until 1900 as an alderman for Ward 2, a position which he held until 1909. He was elected to the Toronto Board of Control in 1910; however, he lost the 1911 election. In 1912 he was again elected Controller and kept his seat until 1917.

Foster served as a Member of House of Commons of Canada from 1917 to 1921. He was elected as a Union Government candidate in the 1917 federal election for East York. He lost in his party's nomination so he ran as an independent in Toronto East in the 1921 election but failed to keep his seat.

Foster returned to City Council for the next three years, then was elected as mayor in 1925. He was a great supporter of Hydro expenditures and loved flowers. As an alderman he fought for the rebuilding of the pavilion at Allan Gardens after it had been destroyed by fire. In his 25 years of civic service he earned the informal title of "Honest Tom". As mayor of Toronto he was reported to have saved the city two million dollars by rigid economics.

Foster was known to collect the rents on his properties in person, even when he was mayor. If a tenant complained about a problem, or wanted a bit of work done, Foster would go out to his car, get his tools and fix the issue on the spot.[1] His penny pinching eventually led to his defeat due to his refusal to raise police salaries.[1]

Later years and legacy

He was a great traveler and on one of his trips he was inspired by the Taj Mahal. In 1935 and 1936 he had a memorial temple constructed on a hill between Leaskdale and Uxbridge, Ontario, for his family at a cost of $200,000. The temple was designed by Foster with architects H.H. Madill and James H. Craig[2] and inspired by Mughal architecture and Byzantine architecture.

He died at the age of 93 and is buried in the massive mausoleum on a hill north of town on Durham Regional Road 1 which includes the remains of Foster, his wife and daughter. Foster left $80,000 in funds to maintain the property in perpetuity but the trustees spent the principal and the funds had dried up by the 1990s, leaving the Town of Uxbridge to take over responsibility for the monument. In 2013, it was estimated that $1 million was needed to repair and restore the building, a controversial task given that the entire budget for the municipality was only $14 million.

Among other things, Foster left $500,000 for cancer research, $100,000 for an annual picnic to be held at Exhibition Park for school children, and funds to feed wild birds in Toronto. Inspired by the Great Stork Derby, Mayor Foster also sponsored a contest to reward mothers for their skills at procreation. The prizes were $1,250 for first, $800 for second, and $450 for third. Four ten-years periods began and ended on his death date, and ran from 1945–55, 1948–58, 1951–61, and 1954-64.[3]

A bronze portrait medallion of Thomas Foster by Christian Corbet was publicly unveiled in 2009 and is permanently housed in the memorial.[citation needed]

He was also a member of the Orange Order in Canada.

Electoral record

Municipal

Federal

1917 Canadian federal election: York East
PartyCandidateVotes
Government (Unionist)Thomas Foster9,736
LiberalRoss Collier Cockburn5,758
LabourJames Hamilton Ballantyne3,338
1921 Canadian federal election: Toronto East
PartyCandidateVotes
ConservativeEdmond Baird Ryckman5,392
ProgressiveWalter Leigh Rayfield3,984
IndependentThomas Foster3,680
LabourJohn William Bruce1,822
LiberalElizabeth Bethune Kiely52





Thursday, 11 June 2020

Seneca Village a Story of Removing Balck People from the Land to Build a Park- Central Park of Manhatan

An important part of New York City’s African-American heritage lies hidden in Central Park’s murky pre-history. Although it’s difficult to imagine a time when the 843 acres between 59th and 110th was not beautiful parkland, Central Park was once private property, occupied by a variety of businesses and residences, including an African-American neighborhood called Seneca Village. Located between 82nd and 89th Streets and Seventh and Eighth Avenues, Seneca Village was New York City’s first prominent African-American community, and its destruction displaced over 250 land-owning African Americans. Seneca Village was never re-established in another location, and its demolition is considered one of the great casualties of Central Park’s creation. 

Seneca Village was a 19th-century settlement of mostly African American landowners in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, within present-day Central Park. The settlement was located on about 5 acres (2.0 ha) near the Upper West Side neighborhood, approximately bounded by 82nd and 89th Streets and Seventh and Eighth Avenues, had they been constructed. 

Seneca Village was founded in 1825 by free blacks, the first such community in the city. At its peak, the community had 264 residents, three churches, a school, and two cemeteries. The settlement was later inhabited by several other minorities, including Irish and German immigrants. Seneca Village existed until 1857, when, through eminent domain, the villagers and other settlers in the area were ordered to leave and their houses were torn down for the construction of Central Park. The entirety of the village was dispersed except for one congregation that relocated.
Several vestiges of Seneca Village's existence have been found over the years, including two graves and a burial plot. The settlement was largely forgotten until the publication of Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar's book The Park and the People: A History of Central Park in 1992. The Seneca Village Project was formed in 1998 to raise awareness of the village, and several archeological digs have been conducted. In 2001, a historical plaque was unveiled, commemorating the site where Seneca Village once stood. 


Map showing the former location of Seneca Village (Egbert Viele, ca. 1857)

Development

The land was originally purchased by a white farmer named John Whitehead in 1824. One year later, Whitehead began selling off smaller lots from his property. At the time, the area was far from the core of New York City, which was centered south of 23rd Street in what is now Lower Manhattan. On September 27, 1825, a young African American man named Andrew Williams purchased three lots from the Whiteheads for $125. On the same day, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AME Zion Church) trustee Epiphany Davis bought twelve lots for $578. The AME Zion Church bought six additional lots the same week, and by 1832, at least 24 lots had been sold to African Americans. Additional nearby development was centered around "York Hill", a plot bounded by where Sixth and Seventh Avenues would have been built, between 79th and 86th Streets. York Hill was mostly owned by the city, but 5 acres (2.0 ha) were purchased by William Matthews, a young African American, in the late 1830s. Matthews's African Union Church also bought land in Seneca Village around that time.
More African Americans began moving to Seneca Village after slavery in New York state was outlawed in 1827. In the 1830s, people from York Hill were forced to move so that a basin for the Croton Distributing Reservoir could be built, so many of York Hill's residents migrated to Seneca Village. Later, during the potato famine in Ireland, many Irish immigrants came to live in Seneca Village, swelling the village's population by 30 percent during this time. Both African Americans and Irish immigrants were marginalized and faced discrimination throughout the city. Despite their social and racial conflicts elsewhere, the African Americans and Irish in Seneca Village managed to live in close proximity. By 1855, one-third of the village's population was Irish. George Washington Plunkitt, who later became a Tammany Hall politician, was born in 1842 to two of the first Irish settlers in the village, Pat and Sara Plunkitt. Richard Croker, who later became the leader of Tammany, was born in Ireland, but he came with his family to Seneca Village in 1846, and lived there until his father got a job that enabled them to move.
 
The one-story frame-and-board houses in Seneca Village were referred to as "shanties", which reflected their roughshod outward appearance, though some of the houses resembled log cabins. While the houses were not professionally constructed, their interiors were an improvement on the cramped tenements of Lower Manhattan. Land ownership among black residents was much higher than that in the city as a whole: more than half of blacks owned property in 1850, five times as much as the property ownership rate of all New York City residents. One-fifth of Seneca Village's inhabitants owned their residences. Many of Seneca Village's black residents were landowners and relatively economically secure compared to their downtown counterparts. At least one property owner, the Lyons family, lived in Lower Manhattan but owned property in Seneca Village.
 
Nevertheless, many of the residents were still poor, since they worked in service industries such as construction, day labor, or food service, and only three residents (two grocers and an innkeeper) could be considered middle-class. Many black women worked as domestic servants. Many residents "squatted", boarding in homes they did not own, demonstrating that there was significant class stratification even with Seneca Village's high land ownership rate.
The residents relied on the abundant natural resources nearby, such as fish from the nearby East River and Hudson River, and the firewood from nearby forests. Some residents also had gardens and barns, and fed their livestock scraps of garbage. Two bone disposal plants were located nearby, at 66th and 75th Streets.

Inhabitants

In 1855, a New York state census found that Seneca Village had 264 residents. On average, the residents had lived there for 22 years. Three-quarters of the 264 residents recorded in 1855 had lived in Seneca Village since 1840 or before, and nearly all had lived there since 1850. At this time in New York City's history, most of the city's population lived below 14th Street; the region above 59th Street was only sporadically developed and was semi-rural or rural in character.
 
After slavery in New York was outlawed, African American men in the state could vote as long as they had $250 worth of property and had lived in the state for at least three years. 

Of the 13,000 black New Yorkers, 91 were qualified to vote, and of the voting-eligible black population, 10 lived in Seneca Village. The purchase of land by blacks had a significant effect on their political engagement. Blacks in Seneca Village were extremely politically engaged in proportion to the rest of New York.

Community institutions

The economic and cultural stability of Seneca Village enabled the growth of several community institutions. The village had three churches, two schools, and two cemeteries by 1855, two-thirds of the inhabitants (180 of 264 total) were regular churchgoers. Two of the churches, First African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church of Yorkville and African Union Church, were all-black churches, while All Angels' Church was racially mixed
The AME Zion Church, a denomination officially established in lower Manhattan in 1821, owned property for burials in Seneca Village beginning in 1827. In 1853, the Church established a congregation and built a church building in Seneca Village. 

According to the New York Post, the cornerstone included a capsule with "a Bible, a hymn book, the church's rules, a letter with the names of its five trustees and copies of the newspapers, The Tribune and The Sun". The church building was destroyed as part of the razing of Seneca Village.
 
The African Union Church purchased lots in Seneca Village in 1837, about 100 feet (30 m) from AME Zion Church. It had 50 congregants. The church building contained one of the city's few black schools at the time, Colored School 3, founded in the mid-1840s.One of the teachers in the school was 17-year-old Catherine Thompson.
 
All Angels' Church was founded in 1846 as an affiliate of St. Michael's Episcopal Church, the main campus of which was located at Amsterdam Avenue and 99th Street.

 All Angels' was intended to be a mission to the residents of Seneca Village and nearby areas. At first, the church was hosted in a white policeman's home, but a wooden church at 84th Street was built in 1849. The congregation was racially diverse, with black parishioners from Seneca Village and Irish and German parishioners from other nearby areas. It had only 30 parishioners from Seneca Village. When the community was razed, the church relocated a few blocks west and was officially incorporated at the corner of 81st Street and West End Avenue.


Planning of Central Park

By the 1840s, members of the city's elite were publicly calling for the construction of a new large park in Manhattan. Two of the primary proponents were William Cullen Bryant, the editor of the New York Evening Post, and Andrew Jackson Downing, one of the first American landscape designers. The Special Committee on Parks was formed to survey possible sites for the proposed large park. One of the first sites considered was Jones's Wood, a 160-acre (65 ha) tract of land between 66th and 75th Streets on the Upper East Side. The area was occupied by multiple wealthy families who objected to the taking of their land, particularly the Jones and Schermerhorn families. Downing stated that he would prefer a park of at least 500 acres (200 ha) at any location from 39th Street to the Harlem River. Following the passage of an 1851 bill to acquire Jones's Wood, the Schermerhorns and Joneses successfully obtained an injunction to block the acquisition, and the transaction was invalidated as unconstitutional.
 
The second site proposed for a large public park was a 750-acre (300 ha) area labeled "Central Park", bounded by 59th and 106th Streets between Fifth and Eighth Avenues.The Central Park plan gradually gained support from a variety of groups. After a second bill to acquire Jones's Wood was nullified, the New York State Legislature passed the Central Park Act in July 1853; the act authorized a board of five commissioners to start purchasing land for a park, and it created a Central Park Fund to raise money.
In the years prior to the acquisition of Central Park, the Seneca Village community was referred to in pejorative terms, including racial slurs. Park advocates and the media began to describe Seneca Village and other communities in this area as "shantytowns" and the residents there as "squatters" and "vagabonds and scoundrels"; the Irish and black residents were often described as "wretched" and "debased". The residents of Seneca Village were also accused of stealing food and operating illegal bars. 

The village's detractors included Egbert Ludovicus Viele, the park's first engineer, who wrote a report about the "refuge of five thousand squatters" living on the future site of Central Park, criticizing the residents as people with "very little knowledge of the English language, and with very little respect for the law".  While a minority of Seneca Village's residents were landowners, most residents had formal or informal agreements with landlords; only a few residents were squatters with no permission from any landlord.

Razing

In 1853, the Central Park commissioners started conducting property assessments on more than 34,000 lots in and near Central Park. The Central Park commissioners had completed their assessments by July 1855, and the New York State Supreme Court confirmed this work the following February. As part of the tax assessment, residents were offered an average of $700 for their property.

The minority of Seneca Village residents who owned land were well compensated. For instance, Andrew Williams was paid $2,335 for his house and three lots, and even though he had originally asked for $3,500, the final compensation still represented a significant increase over the $125 that he had paid for the property in 1825.
 
Clearing occurred as soon as the Central Park commission's report was released in October 1855. The city began enforcing little-known regulations and forcing Seneca Village residents to pay rent. Members of the community fought to retain their land. 

For two years, residents protested and filed lawsuits to halt the sale of their land. However, in mid-1856, Mayor Fernando Wood prevailed, and residents of Seneca Village were given final notices. 

In 1857, the city government acquired all private property within Seneca Village through eminent domain, and on October 1, city officials in New York reported that the last holdouts living on land that was to become Central Park had been removed.

A newspaper account at the time suggested that Seneca Village would "not be forgotten ... [as] many a brilliant and stirring fight was had during the campaign. But the supremacy of the law was upheld by the policeman's bludgeons."
 
All of the inhabitants of the village were evicted by 1857, and all of the properties within Central Park were razed. The only institution from Seneca Village to survive was All Angels' Church, which relocated a couple of blocks away, albeit with an entirely new congregation. There are few records of where residents went after their eviction, as the community was entirely destroyed.

An Australian newspaper in 1920 had described "a famous old woman [...] still living at 90 years of age" in Hawaii, who was said to have been born in Seneca Village. By 1997, The New York Times reported that no one had been identified as a descendant of a Seneca Village resident.
 
Elsewhere in Central Park, the impact of eviction was less intense. Some residents, such as foundry owner Edward Snowden, simply relocated elsewhere. Squatters and hog farmers were the most affected by Central Park's construction, as they were never compensated for their evictions.
 
Some traces of Seneca Village persisted in later years. As workers were uprooting trees at the corner of 85th Street and Central Park West in 1871, they came upon two coffins, both containing black people from Seneca Village. A half-century later, a gardener named Gilhooley inadvertently found a graveyard from Seneca Village while turning soil at the same site. The site was named "Gilhooley's Burial Plot" in honor of his discovery.

Rediscovery

The settlement was largely forgotten for more than a century after its demolition. Public interest in Seneca Village was invigorated after the publication of Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar's 1992 book The Park and the People: A History of Central Park, which described the community extensively. 
 https://www.nycgovparks.org/news/daily-plant?id=18599

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