Latest Structures Page 34

Loew's Kings Theatre, Brooklyn New York

Loew's Kings Theatre, Brooklyn New York

Loew's Kings Theatre is located at 1027 Flatbush Avenue in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, and was constructed between 1928 and 1929. Movie studios constructed a great number of these palatial theaters to attract audiences through lavish or exotic surroundings that indicated wealth, romance, and adventure. The Loew's Kings Theatre, completed at the height of the movie palace boom, was one of the five Wonder Theaters built in New York City and northern New Jersey by Loew's Inc., one of the nation's largest theater chains. The Wonder Theaters were constructed to expand the grandeur of the movies to major residential centers outside of the Times Square/Midtown Manhattan Theater District. Loew's Kings Theatre's opulent French Renaissance-inspired decor, designed by leading

San Luis Obispo Light Station, Avila Beach California

San Luis Obispo Light Station, Avila Beach California

The San Luis Obispo Lighthouse and Fog-Signal was established to assist and promote coastal trading and navigation. It also served as an entrance to San Luis Obispo Harbor and to Port Harford (now known as Port San Luis). By the mid-1880's Port Harford had become one of the most active ports between San Francisco and San Diego. There were no lighthouses on the south-central coast between Point Arguello and Piedras Blancas, a distance of 94 miles. The sinking of the ocean steamer Queen of the Pacific on April 30, 1888, added to the justification for a light at Port Harford. In 1888 the federal government appropriated $50,000 for the 30 acre site, but the station was not completed until June 30^th,

Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Station, Stuart Iowa

Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Station, Stuart Iowa

This passenger station is the only structure remaining in Stuart to mark the community's 19th-century history as a division point on the Rock Island Railroad. In this role, with large shops, a roundhouse, and appurtenant structures, Stuart was a focal point of activity for one of Iowa's leading railroads, from the time the town was platted (1868-69) until the railroad moved its operations to Valley Junction (now West Des Moines) in 1897. The Rock Island line reached this area in 1868, which was planned to serve as a division point from the start. The town was laid out by, and named for, Charles A. Stuart, working closely with railroad officials (excerpt from Stuart history, 1870-1970, reprinted in Stuart Herald, 16^th December

Rock Island Lines Passenger Station, Rock Island Illinois

Rock Island Lines Passenger Station, Rock Island Illinois

The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Company Passenger Station represents remnants of the first terminal built west of Chicago, which made Rock Island the focal point for the movement of people, commodities and raw materials. The Depot is the oldest of the remaining Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Stations in the Quad-Cities. This facility served as the Regional Operations Headquarters while the Moline and Davenport stations were merely stopping points. In June 1845, local civic leaders met in the home of Colonel George Davenport to discuss the feasibility of rail service to Rock Island. Although Davenport was assassinated only four weeks later, other members of the group lobbied with the Illinois legislature to establish a railroad. On February 22^nd,

Point Fermin Lighthouse, San Pedro California

Point Fermin Lighthouse, San Pedro California

Point Fermin Lighthouse was the first substantial aid to navigation established at San Pedro and what has subsequently become Los Angeles Harbor. Of the several wooden lighthouses established in the 1870s between San Francisco and San Diego, this handsome structure remains as the sole example. By 1871 sea traffic had increased to the point where guidance was needed by vessels entering Los Angeles Harbor. This brought about the construction of the Light which was first operated on December 15^th, 1874. off the precipitous cliffs upon which the lighthouse stands, some 35 ships have been lost, mostly due to dense fog. One of these, the British ship Respigadera struck a rock and sank within 20 minutes when it cut too close to

Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Depot, Wilton Iowa

Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Depot, Wilton Iowa

Former Rock Island Train Station in IA

The Wilton Depot calls attention to the key part that the railroad has played in the town's history. More specifically, the depot marks a second phase in the relationship of Wilton to the Rock Island Railroad when the town served as a focal point for railroad passenger service. During the first phase, which encompassed the period from the town's beginnings to 1898, Wilton had grown and prospered as a repair/maintenance center for the Southwestern division of the Rock Island line where all mainline trains stopped. Thereafter (with the loss of the shops after the Rock Island built a separate line from Davenport to Muscatine) Wilton became a Junction point to which all passengers wishing to travel west on the main line

RKO Albee Theatre, Cincinnati Ohio

RKO Albee Theatre, Cincinnati Ohio

The Theater was opened on December 24^th, 1927. It was designed by Architect Thomas Lamb of New York and built by Albee-Harris-Livon-Heidingsfeld. Designed during the period of opulent cinema palaces, it was one of the few remaining in the country and the only remaining one in the city. From its opening, it was used for films, major vaudeville acts, and later the big bands of America. The location of the theater gives it additional significance. Fountain Square, Cincinnati's urban living room, has been described as the most successful urban space in the country by Edmund Bacon noted Philadelphia City Planner. The Albee Theater provides contrast to the high-rise office towers, retail stores and hotels, surrounding the square. With Fountain Square serving

Roosevelt Junior High School, Decatur Illinois

Roosevelt Junior High School, Decatur Illinois

Decatur was named for Stephen Decatur, one of the country's first naval officers and Commissioner of the Navy in the early nineteenth century. It was founded on the Sangamon River on the Illinois prairie in 1829, an area that was formed from the Pleistocene North American ice sheet which extended into the Midwest nearly to the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, leaving behind the fertile soil of central Illinois. Local settlers, who had populated the area since 1821, had sought the formation of the county, named after Nathaniel Macon, a hero of the Revolutionary War, and Decatur was designated as the county seat. It is located just a few miles from the geographical center of Macon County which is

Point No Point Light Station, Dameron Maryland

Point No Point Light Station, Dameron Maryland

A Maryland Act on April 6^th, 1874, authorized acquisition of approximately five acres of submarine land for the establishment of a lighthouse or other such aid to navigation. The Lighthouse Board stated in 1891 that: There is a stretch of about 30 miles between the Cove Point and Smith Point lights which should be better lighted. For a part of the distance navigators are without a guide, where a deviation from their sailing course might carry vessels of heavy draught on to dangerous shoals. There are many of this class of craft now trading to Baltimore, and their number is increasing. A light-house on the shoal of Point No Point would be useful warning … The Board recommended a screw pile

Ragdale Estate, Lake Forest Illinois

Ragdale Estate, Lake Forest Illinois

Built in 1896-1897 as the summer residence of the Howard Van Doren Shaw family, Ragdale provides a still largely intact example of the kind of country estate favored by Chicago's affluent class at the end of the nineteenth century. Of the Lake Forest estates built at that time, Ragdale stands out because it was designed by an architect of distinction and because the entire estate is so well preserved. Shaw's house is a remarkable early design of modern English taste transplanted to America. It's all stucco exterior and arts & crafts interior which reflects the English work of Baillie Scott and Voysey, must have been startling yet inspiring for Frank Lloyd Wright and other avant-garde midwestern architects. Perhaps it was Ragdale

Tezcuco Plantation House, Burnside Louisiana

Tezcuco Plantation House, Burnside Louisiana

Tezcuco is a superior example of a Greek Revival plantation house. This can be seen in its plan, its size, and its elaborate and sophisticated detailing. Obviously it was the plantation house of a style-conscious prosperous planter. The average surviving Greek Revival plantation house of this period in Louisiana is considerably smaller than Tezcuco and features front and rear galleries with simple, wooden columns and an entrance with a transom and side lights. If the interior features are intact, they probably include simple molded woodwork and wooden mantels. Tezcuco is exceptional for the following reasons: (1) Its floor plan is more elaborate and developed than that of the typical plantation house of the period. (2) The fifteen-foot ceilings give the rooms

Sharps Island Light, Tilghman Island Maryland

Sharps Island Light, Tilghman Island Maryland

The Sharps Island Light was required to guide mariners away from the shoals off Poplar Island and Black Walnut Point. The Lighthouse Service decided on the location even though it was known from earlier maps and charts that the island was suffering severe erosion having diminished from 700 acres in 1675 to 480 acres in 1838 when the first light was built. An act by the Maryland General Assembly on April 6^th, 1874 provided for the relinquishment to the United States, title and jurisdiction over land for sites of lighthouses, beacons and other aids. Ten acres of land was acquired by deed in fee simple and in consideration of the sum of $600.00 from Joseph A. Reynolds and his wife Ann,

Mouton House, Opelousas Louisiana

Mouton House, Opelousas Louisiana

The Mouton House was built for Charles Homere Mouton and his wife Celimene Dupre Mouton. Mouton served as Lieutenant Governor in 1856. When Baton Rouge was occupied by Union forces in 1862, the state government was moved temporarily to Opelousas. During this time Governor Thomas Overton Moore stayed as a guest at the Mouton heme. Because of this association, Opelousas residents call the Mouton home the Old Governor's Mansion. The Mouton House stands as a notable landmark. It has highly decorated temple-like porticoes on both its front and rear elevations. It also has Corinthian capitals, pilasters, pediment-shaped lintels, and elaborate shoulder moldings which are not evident on the parish's other Greek Revival buildings. Although one other St. Landry house does display

Petit Manan Light Station, Milbridge Maine

Petit Manan Light Station, Milbridge Maine

The original light station on Petit Manan Island was completed in 1817. The importance of this location is demonstrated by that fact that this was the 8^th light built in Maine, of 66 eventually constructed, and the 37^th in the U.S., out of 1600. This first light was visible at 14 miles, used metal reflectors, and appears to have been typical of many early American lights in its construction and equipment. Investigations by the newly created Lighthouse Board in the early 1850's revealed the inadequacy of American lighthouses, both in number and design. The Petit Manan Light was found to be both too weak and too low in focal plane (53 feet) considering the ever-increasing use of the Northern shipping lanes

Stockton Plantation House, Woodville North Carolina

Stockton Plantation House, Woodville North Carolina

Stockton is the only known example in North Carolina of the tripartite house type executed in the Greek Revival style. Particularly interesting are the unusual proportions and the full prostyle tetrastyle portico (apparently unique among the state's tripartite houses). Built by the locally prominent Josiah Granbery, probably in the 1840s, it was in the early twentieth century the home of Robert Welch of the John Birch Society. Beginning in 1833, Josiah Thomas Granbery (1806-1862) assembled several tracts of land west of Little River to form a large plantation. It is said to have been named Stockton for Commodore Robert F. Stockton of Mexican War fame. The house was probably erected in the late 1840s. Granbery was a prominent planter with interests

Jonathan Hill Jacocks House, New Hope Township North Carolina

Jonathan Hill Jacocks House, New Hope Township North Carolina

The Jonathan Hill Jacocks House is an impressive example of plantation houses erected by prosperous planters in Perquimans County, North Carolina during the antebellum period. Like many eastern North Carolina plantation seats built during this period, the house was raised in at least two distinct building phases and thus reflects not only the changing architectural fashions of the period, but also an expression of the expanding plantation economy and social development during the early and mid-nineteenth century. While the property contained a dwelling of unknown description in 1814 when it was acquired by Joshua S. Whedbee (ca. 1790-1834), the core of the present house was raised for him ca. 1815 as a substantial two-story side-passage-plan residence finished in a fashionable but

Alligator Reef Light, Islamorada Florida

Alligator Reef Light, Islamorada Florida

Alligator Reef Light is one of the six Florida Reef Lights, a group of offshore tall skeletal tower lighthouses constructed along the Florida Keys during the middle to late nineteenth century. It was the fourth of these lighthouses to be built. Alligator Reef is located approximately midway between the Sombrero Key Light (34 miles to the west) and the Carysfort Reef Light (37 miles to the east), and is near deep waters navigated by shipping. These circumstances led to an 1857 recommendation by the U.S. Lighthouse Board that a lighthouse be constructed there. Its setting was deemed appropriate for another tall skeletal tower structure. After the Civil War ended, the Lighthouse Board requested funding from Congress in 1868 for a lighthouse

Trudeau House, Tunica Louisiana

Trudeau House, Tunica Louisiana

Carlos Trudeau owned the property before the present house was built, it nonetheless has been known traditionally as the Trudeau House. West Feliciana Parish is one of the state's early areas of settlement, although practically nothing survives from the colonial period (pre-1803). When Louisiana became a state in 1812, the area in question was part of what was known as Feliciana County, which in 1824 was divided into the current West and East Feliciana. In the prosperous decades prior to the Civil War, West Feliciana, with its fertile lands, was a plantation landscape, with some of the state's wealthiest planters residing there. St. Francisville, the parish seat, was a bustling town. Given the history and settlement patterns of the region and

Weyanoke Plantation House, Weyanoke Louisiana

Weyanoke Plantation House, Weyanoke Louisiana

John Turnbull Towles, a relative of the family that built Rosedown, acquired the property upon which Weyanoke now stands in 1838. A successful planter with over 80 slaves in 1860, Towles served in the Louisiana legislature and as a major in the Confederate Army. Frances Peyton Eskridge Towles, wife of John, is said to have named the house for a plantation in her native Virginia. The Weyanoke property has remained in the hands of Towles' descendants since its 1838 purchase. Despite their proximity to the French Creole region of Louisiana, the Felicianas were settled primarily by Anglo-Americans from the eastern United States. These settlers brought with them the architectural styles popular in their former homes. During the early period of settlement,

Peter's Point Plantation, Edisto Island South Carolina

Peter's Point Plantation, Edisto Island South Carolina

The Mikell family arrived on Edisto Island before the close of the seventeenth century and were well-established planters before I. Jenkins Mikell built Peter's Point plantation house in 1840. Situated overlooking St. Helena Sound at the junction of St. Pierre's Creek and Fishing Creek, the house possesses a picturesque view and a commanding setting. The site also marks the point of Lafayette's departure from the island in 1826. The architectural design of the structure combines the style of the early Edisto Island plantation home and the Greek Revival style of the Charleston area in this period. Mikell, a Princeton graduate, became one of the wealthiest planters in South Carolina, however, he shunned political life, serving only as a magistrate and commissioner

Book Title Abandoned America: The Age of Consequences (Jonglez photo books)

Abandoned America: The Age of Consequences (Jonglez photo books)

Book Title Abandoned Industrial Places: Factories, laboratories, mills and mines that the world left behind (Abandoned Places)

Abandoned Industrial Places: Factories, laboratories, mills and mines that the world left behind (Abandoned Places)

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

Book Title Abandoned America: Dismantling The Dream

Abandoned America: Dismantling The Dream

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