Latest Structures Page 127

Burnsville Natural Gas Pumping Station, Burnsville West Virginia

Burnsville Natural Gas Pumping Station, Burnsville West Virginia

This site was the last known example of a steam powered, natural gas pumping station in West Virginia. Built as an integral part of a natural gas transmission system designed to supply gas to the greater Pittsburgh area, the Burnsville station was an important example of steam powered technology used by the fossil fuel industry. Operation of the Burnsville station began in 1917 when two engine/compressor units (#1 and #2) were put on line. At that time, the boilers which produced the steam used to power the engine/compressor units were coal-fired. In 1935-36 the station converted to gas-fired boilers and increased its pumping capacity with the addition of another engine/compressor unit (#0) in 1943. Interestingly, this latter unit was identical to

McGavock House - Two Rivers Plantation Mansion, Donelson Tennessee

McGavock House - Two Rivers Plantation Mansion, Donelson Tennessee

Born on September 1, 1826, David H. McGavock was reared on his father's plantation adjoining Belle Meade and educated at the University of Nashville. After spending four years in Arkansas, he returned to Nashville in 1849. The following year, he married his cousin, Willie E. Harding, the only daughter of William Harding, original owner of the Two Rivers farm. This was the first of three generations of McGavocks to occupy the Two Rivers estate. Two published sources, neither providing any documentation, provide conflicting identities of the possible architect of the Two Rivers mansion. The first account, Caldwell's Historical and Beautiful Country Homes Near Nashville, Tennessee (Nashville, 1911), relates that Mr. McGavock was his own architect and builder, cutting with his own

Cragfont - General James Winchester House, Gallatin Tennessee

Cragfont - General James Winchester House, Gallatin Tennessee

The long hard drive up a dangerous and rocky lane from the highway to Cragfont is a fitting introduction to the atmosphere of what is to come at the end of the drive. Situated on the very top of a craggy and almost precipitous hill, Cragfont looks down on the approaching visitor with all the hauteur and dignity befitting the position of eminence so aristocratically occupied by its builder, Gen. James Winchester. It is a large limestone house presenting to the visitor a bold, sheer facade of gray stone laid evenly, closely and to a large scale, broken only by the necessary window and door openings. Very little detail is employed, but that which is, is in excellent taste and execution.

Hundred Oaks Mansion, Winchester Tennessee

Hundred Oaks Mansion, Winchester Tennessee

Hundred Oaks Castle Winchester TN

Hundred Oaks Castle was begun 1889-1892. It was built for Arthur Handly Marks, a local wealthy man, of local materials, by local craftsmen. Its architecture, though based on Scottish precedents, is a combination of Jacobean, Romanesque and Dutch styles. Samuel M. Patton, Chattanooga architect, is responsible for the original design and plan, but construction ceased with Marks's death in 1892. The residence's construction continued a few years later under the direction of John Marks Handly and according to the designs of Hathcart c. Thompson and Julian G. Zwicker, Nashville architects. Further work was done by the Catholic Paulist Fathers who owned and occupied the estate from 1901 to 1955. Here they established their third mission to serve American Protestants. In 1901

Merrill Silk Mill, Hornell New York

Merrill Silk Mill, Hornell New York

The Merrill Silk Mill Complex was built in 1900 by Fredrick P. Merrill, President of the Merrill Silk Company. During the early 1890's, F. P. Merrill made a trip to Europe to purchase looms. While in Europe, he developed a partnership agreement with Peter Huguet who returned with Fredrick Merrill to America. Together, they first built a textile mill on Thatcher Street, known as the Merrill-Field Company, which in 1901 began producing chiffon and other silk textile products. In 1900 Fredrick Merrill began construction of the Merrill Silk Mill Complex at 233 Canisteo Street, Hornell, New York, which covered the block between Canisteo, Pleasant, Spruce and Grand Streets. The Mill began operations on September 29, 1902. Operations at the plant included

Big Four Train Depot, Lafayette Indiana

Big Four Train Depot, Lafayette Indiana

The town of Lafayette, in mid-northeastern Indiana, became a regional transportation hub during the early nineteenth century because of its location along the Wabash River, and because of the construction of the Wabash & Erie Canal. The Canal was built ca.1843, parallel and adjacent to the river, running in a North-South direction, adjacent to the downtown area. Thus, this small town of the Old Northwest became part of the longest canal system in the Midwest, which joined up with the Ohio & Erie on the northeast Indiana/Ohio border and with the Ohio River near Evansville, Indiana in the southwestern part of the state. Within a decade of its completion, it was made obsolete by the burgeoning railroad network. During the decade

Loch Aerie - Lockwood House, Glenloch Pennsylvania

Loch Aerie - Lockwood House, Glenloch Pennsylvania

Loch Aerie was designed by architect Addison Hutton in 1865 for William E. Lockwood, who made his fortune manufacturing paper collars and folding boxes, and lost much of it promoting local railroads. The house remains with few changes. The fine landscape was designed by landscape architect Charles P. Miller. This house is impressive in its architectural detail, scale, proportion and use of materials, on both the exterior and the interior, and has only minor alterations. It combines Italianate massing with Italianate and High Victorian Gothic details. Lockwood was interested in good lighting and ventilation systems and incorporated many of his ideas into the design of the house. The house, an irregular cross shape with an asymmetrical tower, measures approximately 77' by

Winchester Mystery House, San Jose California

Winchester Mystery House, San Jose California

Constructed over a period of 38 years because its owner, Winchester Rifle heiress Sarah L. Winchester believed she would live as long as construction continued, the house contains 160 rooms and covers six acres. The original portion purchased in 1884 contains 17 rooms. Some of the 40 stairways and 2,000 doors lead nowhere. The history begins at the height of the Civil War when Sarah L. Pardee met and married William Wirt Winchester, the son of the manufacturer of the famous Winchester Repeating Rifle. They were married on September 30, 1862. They had one child, Annie Pardee, who died about a month after birth. (June 15, 1866-July 24, 1866). Then, about 15 years later, on March 7, 1881, her husband died.

Shippingport Nuclear Power Station, Shippingport Pennsylvania

Shippingport Nuclear Power Station, Shippingport Pennsylvania

At 4:30 a.m. on December 2^nd, 1957, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station reached criticality, becoming the Nation's first large-scale central station nuclear power plant to attain a chain reaction. In Chicago, fifteen years earlier to the day, the Italian-born Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi had achieved the world's first self-sustained chain reaction, an event which is often accepted as the beginning of the nuclear age. Fermi and his associates had reached their goal by using a simple assembly of graphite, uranium metal, uranium oxide, and wood. The Chicago Pile was an experiment designed to prove the correctness of theoretical physics. Fermi and his team knew it would produce no useful power. In contrast, the Shippingport reactor was a complicated piece of machinery,

The Kennecott Copper Mines, McCarthy Alaska

The Kennecott Copper Mines, McCarthy Alaska

George Wilhelm Stellar, a naturalist who accompanied Vitus Bering's Russian expedition in 1741, reported the use of copper knives among the Natives on Kayak Island. Hostile Natives, however, deterred further Russian exploration. Only in 1847, when Rufus Sereberkinikoff and eleven Aleuts ascended the Copper River and wintered at the mouth of the Chitina, did the Russians investigate the river beyond its mouth. Unfortunately, Sereberinikoff antagonized the Copper River Indians who consequently turned on them and killed the whole party. Other traders, Russian and American, followed. But not until 1885 did a white man ascend the Chitina River, which was the source of copper used by the Natives. Lieutenant Henry T. Allen assisted by two men with only limited supplies explored and

Schnull & Company Building, Indianapolis Indiana

Schnull & Company Building, Indianapolis Indiana

Henry Schnull, one of the greatest leaders of Indianapolis commerce in the last half of the nineteenth century erected the headquarters for his wholesale grocery firm after the fire of December 3^rd, 1895 destroyed the commercial block that he had previously erected on the site. Schnull & Co. dominated the Indianapolis wholesale grocery trade until the 1930s. Dating back to 1855, Schnull & Co. was one of many businesses started by Henry Schnull in his long, successful business career in Indianapolis. Schnull (1833-1905) emigrated from the German province of Westphalia in 1852 with some business experience. He started a retail grocery business here with Fredrick P. Rusch in 1855, that later became A. and H. Schull & Company with Schnull's brother,

Croghan House - Picnic Place, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania

Croghan House - Picnic Place, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania

The recorded history of this structure deals mainly with the romance surrounding the elopement of Croghan's daughter with Captain Schenley, and it has been very difficult to get any authoritative data dealing directly with the building. Although Schenley had nothing to do with the building of the house and only lived in it a year or so, it has always been known as the Schenley House, or, as Croghan named it Picnic Place. The property was originally owned by General O'Hara who came to Fort Pitt in 1773. He held many offices of importance under Washington among which was Quartermaster General of the United States Army. His daughter, Mary, married William Croghan, Jr., Who was born in Kentucky, son of Major

Veraestau - Holman-Hamilton House, Aurora Indiana

Veraestau - Holman-Hamilton House, Aurora Indiana

Jesse Lynch Holman, original owner of Veraestau, studied law in the office of Henry Clay who remained a life-long friend. Holman was admitted to the Kentucky Bar in 1805. He is regarded as Kentucky's first native novelist, and after moving to Indiana in 1810, he became Indiana's first resident novelist. More importantly, he served for fourteen years as Judge of the Indiana Supreme Court and for eight years as Federal District Judge in Indiana. Holman was a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention at Corydon in l8l6 when the state's first constitution was drafted. He was defeated in a United States Senatorial election by one vote in the legislature. Jesse Holman laid out the town of Aurora in 1819 and remained

John T. Beasley Building - Citizens Gas & Fuel Company, Terre Haute Indiana

John T. Beasley Building - Citizens Gas & Fuel Company, Terre Haute Indiana

The Citizens Gas & Fuel Company Building is directly associated with the development of utilities in the midwest, and with the use of gas for lighting, heat and cooking. Gas light illumination moved slowly westward across the Appalachians, from its first installation in Baltimore in 1817. By 1848, when Washington DC saw its first gas light company organized, demonstrations of the new marvel had been held in the midwest, in such metropolises as St. Louis, Dayton and Cincinnati. Only five years later, in 1853, the Terre Haute Gas Light Company received its city charter, although it would be three years more before the community could claim to be an illuminated city. Terre Haute in the nineteenth century was a small town

Andalusia Mansion - Nicholas Biddle Estate, Andalusia Pennsylvania

Andalusia Mansion - Nicholas Biddle Estate, Andalusia Pennsylvania

The house is the work of Thomas U. Walter, architect of the Capitol Dome in Washington, D.C. He enlarged a smaller and earlier house to create this Greek Revival masterpiece. The house is one of the finest examples of the temple form in the country, and is one of the few country seats left which still has its out buildings. The architect's client and the owner of the house was Nicholas Biddle, the president of the Second Bank of the United States. In 1795, John Craig, a Philadelphia merchant with business connections in the Old World, purchased land that had been used as a farm. In l8ll Nicholas Biddle married the Craigs' daughter, Jane, and acquired Andalusia. Nicholas Biddle (1786-1844) was

Indiana Hotel, Hammond Indiana

Indiana Hotel, Hammond Indiana

The original incorporated (1883) town of Hammond evolved to the north and south of the Grand Calumet River, expanding outward from settler Hohman's cabin (1851). The western boundary has always been the Illinois state line. Hohman was one of the earliest settlers in this area. In the 1880s there had been pressure from the Post Office to establish a name for the town. According to Harold Hammond, (the grandson of Thomas Hammond, brother to George Hammond who had started the first meat-packing plants in Hammond) there was a coin toss between Marcus M. Towle (Towle founded a residential-industrial area that would become part of Hammond) and Thomas Hammond at Four Corners (State and Hohman) to decide the name of the town.

Fisher-Fallgatter Flour Mill - Crescent Roller Mills, Waupaca Wisconsin

Fisher-Fallgatter Flour Mill - Crescent Roller Mills, Waupaca Wisconsin

In 1884, Robert N. Roberts and Samuel T. Oborn built the Crescent Mills in Waupaca, a community established on the banks of the Waupaca River in the Southwest corner of Waupaca County, Wisconsin. With the assistance of a millwright from Neenah, the two men erected a three-story frame flour mill and they cut a channel across the neck of a small loop in the Waupaca River enabling water to flow beneath their mill to drive turbine-powered machines. Roberts and Oborn built their mill during a period of revolutionary change in the technology of the flour milling industry and they were able to install the latest in flour milling equipment. Today, the Crescent Mill stands intact, although with expansion, renovation and several

Summers Plantation, Opelika Alabama

Summers Plantation, Opelika Alabama

The land on which the house is located was deeded to a Creek Indian named Sphiyike by the United States Government around 1832. Sphiyike sold it to Nat Macon Thornton on April 3, 1834, who in turn sold it to William Long on April 16, 1837. Shortly after purchasing the property, Long constructed the core section of the house. Before the Civil War he lost his wife and some children, who are buried near the house. On September 28, 1869, he sold the property to John Summers (1844-1896) and his wife, Rebecca Lenora McClendon of West Point, Georgia. Summers added three bedrooms, a large central hall, and a kitchen connected to the breezeway. John and Rebecca Summers and their eight children

Hampton Mansion, Towson Maryland

Hampton Mansion, Towson Maryland

The tract of land on which Hampton Mansion was built had been acquired in 1735 by Colonel Charles Ridgely (1702-1772) from Clement and Ann Hill. The 1500 acre tract, Northampton, had been inherited by Ann Hill from her father, Henry Darnall, who had patented it in 1695. The land, in the Gunpowder River valley of Baltimore County, formed the nucleus of the Ridgely holdings which at one time totaled more than 24,000 acres. Captain Charles Ridgely (1729-1790), Colonel Ridgely's son and for whom Hampton Mansion was built, inherited the property in 1772 after his father's death. The Captain died July 28, 1790, six months after Hampton Mansion traditionally was completed. His wife, Rebecca Dorsey Ridgely (1739-1812), according to his will had

Owen Plantation House, Bessemer Alabama

Owen Plantation House, Bessemer Alabama

Like the nearby Saddler House, the Owen House is a fine example of an important folk house type in 19^th Century Alabama. The two story frame structure with an unenclosed central hall or dogtrot is a common variation of what is generally called an I house, and represented a high economic and social status. Constructed during the late 1830's by Thomas H. Owen, the house reflects a taste for elegance in the wainscotting which is painted to resemble marble, the shiplapped wall treatment and paneled box columns of the front porch, and the finely executed mantels. In 1833, the same year that he married Mellissa Saddler, Thomas Owen purchased several acres of land along the Eastern Valley Road and built a

Book Title Abandoned Places: A Photographic Exploration of More Than 100 Worlds We Have Left Behind

Abandoned Places: A Photographic Exploration of More Than 100 Worlds We Have Left Behind

Book Title Abandoned Malls of America: Crumbling Commerce Left Behind

Abandoned Malls of America: Crumbling Commerce Left Behind

Book Title Abandoned America: Dismantling The Dream

Abandoned America: Dismantling The Dream

Book Title Abandoned America: Then & Now: A Fun & Fascinating Look Revisiting America's Abandoned Places of the Past

Abandoned America: Then & Now: A Fun & Fascinating Look Revisiting America's Abandoned Places of the Past

Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.