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Sado, Niigata

Sado (佐渡市) is a city located on Sado Island (佐渡島) in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. Since 2004, the city has comprised the entire island, although not all of its total area is urbanized. Sado is the sixth largest island of Japan in area following the four main islands and Okinawa Island (excluding the Northern Territories). As of June 1, 2023, the city has an estimated population of 48,195 and a population density of 56.3 PD/km2. The total area is 855.69 km2.

Political formation of the island
The large number of pottery artifacts found near Ogi in the South of the island demonstrate that Sado was populated as early as the Jōmon period.

The Nihon Shoki mentions that Mishihase people visited the island in 544 (although it is unknown whether Tungusic people effectively came).

The island formed a distinct province, the Sado Province, separate from the Echigo province on Honshū, at the beginning of the 8th century. At first, the province was a single gun (district), but was later divided into three gun: Sawata, Hamochi and Kamo.

In 1185, the designated representative Shugo for Sado, Osaragi, appointed Honma Yoshihisa as his shugodai (delegate) for the province.

The rule of the Honma clan on Sado lasted until Uesugi Kagekatsu took control of the island in 1589. After the defeat of the Uesugi at Sekigahara, and the discovery of gold on the island, the shogunate took direct control of the island.

The island was for a short time an independent prefecture, called the Aikawa prefecture, between 1871 and 1876, during the Meiji era. It then became a part of Niigata Prefecture, which it is still as of today.

At the end of the 19th century, there were three districts (郡), seven towns (町), and 51 villages (村). During the 20th century, a series of mergers steadily reduced the number of political local authorities, following the recent trend in Japan to cut the costs of having separately run local administrations. The current city (市) covering the whole island was established on March 1, 2004 from a merger of all remaining municipalities on the island: the city of Ryōtsu: the towns of Aikawa, Kanai, Sawata, Hatano, Mano, Hamochi and Ogi; and the villages of Niibo, and Akadomari (all from Sado District).

Exile in Sado
When direct control from mainland Japan started around the 8th century, the island's remoteness meant that it soon became a place of banishment for difficult or inconvenient Japanese figures. Exile to remote locations such as Sado was a very serious punishment, second only to the death penalty, and people were not expected to return.

The earliest known dissident to be condemned to exile on Sadogashima was a poet, Hozumi no Asomi Oyu (穂積朝臣老). He was sent to the island in 722, reportedly for having criticized the emperor.

The former Emperor Juntoku was sent to Sado after his role in the Jōkyū War of 1221. The disgraced emperor survived twenty years on the island before his death; and because he was sent to Sado, this emperor is known posthumously as Sado-no-in (佐渡院). He is buried in the Mano Goryo mausoleum on the west coast.

The Buddhist monk Nichiren lived on Sado close to the present village Niibo in Kuninaka Plain from 1271 to 1274. In the 17th century, Konpon Ji Temple was built at the place where he lived. At the end of his exile, Nichiren lived at the place where Myosho Ji temple was built later. He used to meditate at the place where Jisso Ji Temple can be visited today. In addition, Nipponzan Myohoji, a modern Nichiren Buddhist order, established a Peace Pagoda in the city to help in inspiring people toward world peace.

The Noh dramatist Zeami Motokiyo was exiled on unspecified charges in 1434.

The last banishment in Sado took place in 1700, almost a millennium after the first.

Gold mine
Sado experienced a sudden economic boom during the Edo period when gold was found in 1601 at Aikawa (相川). A major source of revenue for the Tokugawa shogunate, the mines were worked in very severe conditions.

A manpower shortage led to a second wave of "exiles" coming to Sado, although this time it was not imposed as a sentence for a committed crime. By sending homeless people (the number of whom was growing in Japanese cities at the time) to Sado from the 18th century, the Shogunate hoped to kill two birds with one stone. The homeless were sent as water collectors and worked in extremely hard conditions, with a short life expectancy. The Sado mine at its peak in the Edo era produced around 400 kg of gold a year (as well as some silver). The small settlement of Aikawa quickly reached a population of around 100,000. The mine closed in 1989.

External influence on Sado culture
In feudal Japan, when the Nishimawari naval route was opened in 1672, Ogi (in the South of the Island) became a main stop on this major naval route in the Sea of Japan between the Kansai area and northern areas of the archipelago.

Exiles and shipping in old times both had a major influence on Sado's cultural background. The island is for instance dotted with Noh theaters, and the local Japanese dialect and accent are different from those of Niigata.

Emergency landing on Sado
A few months after World War II, on 18 January 1946, a Douglas Dakota (C-47) Sister Ann in British RAF service made an emergency landing on the island. The locals helped in the recovery and building a runway for it to depart, the story of which was made into a film named ''Tobe! Dakota (Fly, Dakota, Fly!'') with the film's Dakota made into an island exhibit. The story of the events leading up to the crash were also made into a film, The Night My Number Came Up.

Geography
The island consists of two parallel mountain ranges running roughly southwest–northeast, enclosing a central plain. The Ōsado (大佐渡) range, in the north, is slightly higher, with peaks of Mount Kinpoku (金北山), the highest point of the island at 1172 m, Mount Kongō, Mount Myōken, and Mount Donden. Kosado (小佐渡) range in the south faces the Honshu coast. The highest point in Kosado is Ōjiyama (大地山) at 645 m.

The plain in between is called Kuninaka (国中) and is the most populated area. The Kuninaka plain opens on its eastern side onto Ryōtsu Bay (両津湾), and on its western side onto Mano Bay (真野湾), where the longest river, Kokufugawa (国府川) reaches the sea.

The island has a symmetrical shape. Lake Kamo (加茂湖), on the eastern side of Kuninaka, is filled with salt water, and is a growing place for oysters.

Climate
Sado has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification Cfa) with potentially hot, humid summers and cold winters. Precipitation is quite heavy throughout the year.

Demographics
Per Japanese census data, the population of Sado peaked around 1950 and has declined by roughly 60 percent in the decades since.

Economy
As of May 1, 2017, the island has an estimated population of 55,474. The island of Sado has seen a steady decline in population since 1950 when the population was 125,597. Similar trends have been common in other remote locations of Japan since World War II as younger generations have moved to more urban areas. As of October 1, 2008, 36.3% of the island population is over 65 years old, which is a larger ratio than the national average. Over 65 is the only increasing age demographic. The island is now less populated than it was in the 18th and 19th century. There is no university, and the options for post high school studies, short of leaving and going to the mainland, are limited to a few specialty schools.

Agriculture and fishing are major sources of income for Sado. According to the 2000 national census, 22.3% of the workforce was employed in the primary sector and 25% in the secondary sector. Fishing is mainly based in Ryotsu and Aikawa.

Tourism boomed in the beginning of the 1990s and peaked at over 1.2 million yearly visitors, but visitor numbers decreased over the 1990s. In the mid-2000s, the number of visitors was closer to 650,000 per year.

Sado is known for a number of Japanese bamboo weaving artists and artisans who are renowned throughout the country.

Tourism
Its rich history and relaxed rural atmosphere make Sado one of the major tourist destinations in Niigata Prefecture. The island has several temples and historical ruins, and offers possibilities for various outdoor activities, as well as fresh local food.

Sado is famous as the major breeding area for the Japanese crested ibis. The last known Japan-born Japanese crested ibis died in captivity in 2003 on the island. Currently, birds from China are being bred in a captive program in a facility in Niibo area, and have been released since 2008. The first hatchings in the wild were observed in April 2012. The ibis is a major symbol of the Island and can be found on several tourist items. As of June 2022, approximately 480 crested ibis have been observed making a radical comeback for their species, thanks to conservation efforts.

There are many small local traditional festivals, and since 1988 a major yearly arts festival, called the Earth Celebration, has been run by the taiko group Kodo. The group lives on the island, touring eight months a year, and in August they invite international artists to collaborate with them at their festival on Sado. Tickets are limited for the three-day weekend event. In recent years, Kodo has made a solo performance on the Friday evening; the festival's invited act plays Saturday night; and Sunday concludes with a joint performance with Kodo and guests.

The Sado tourism industry suffered direct (though limited) as well as indirect damage from the 2004 Chūetsu earthquake, as access routes inside Niigata Prefecture were cut.

Sights
Sado has a large variety of sights to offer.
 * Myōsen-ji is a temple with a five-storied pagoda a few kilometers east of Mano. The pagoda was built by two generations of carpenters and took 30 years to complete in 1825.
 * Konpon-ji Temple in the village of Niibo in the middle of the island was built in the 17th century at the very place where Nichiren lived at first during his exile on Sadogashima.
 * Rengebuji Temple near Ogi, housing several buildings classified as important cultural properties.
 * For two years, Nichiren lived at the place where Myōshō-ji Temple can be visited today. The temple which has a beautiful garden is northeast of the town of Sawata. Jisso-ji Temple which is visited by many pilgrims is close by. It was built at a place where Nichiren used to meditate. The pine tree where he used to hang his clothes can still be seen today. A tall Nichiren Memorial was erected close to the temple.
 * The Art and Natural History Museum of Sado is on the west coast between Sawata and Mano. Some reconstructed pile houses can be seen in its garden. Originally, the inhabitants of Sado lived in pile houses.
 * A traditional wooden Noh Theatre which was built in the 19th century can be visited near Daizen Shrine in the east of Mano.
 * Shukunegi is a historically preserved ward which has existed since the Edo Era as a Sado port town. The streets brimming over with atmosphere and built by shipwrights are splendid.

Ship
Sado Steam Ship operates two routes connecting to the mainland.
 * Niigata – Ryotsu (Ferry and jetfoil)
 * Joetsu – Ogi (Jetfoil, only from spring to autumn)

Bus
Transit bus network all over the island is operated by Niigata Kotsu Kanko Bus.

Air
Kyokushin Airways, operating the route to Niigata, ceased its operations in September 2008. New Japan Aviation operated three or four flights daily to Sado Airport, but service to the airport was suspended indefinitely in April 2014.

Notable people

 * Ikki Kita (北 一輝 Kita Ikki, 1883 – 1937); real name: Kita Terujirō (北 輝次郎)), Japanese author, intellectual and political philosopher active in early-Shōwa period.
 * Hachirō Arita (有田 八郎, 1884–1965), a Japanese politician and diplomat who served as the Minister for Foreign Affairs for three terms. He is believed to have originated the concept of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
 * Charles Robert Jenkins (1940–2017), former United States Army sergeant who deserted to North Korea in 1965 where he was detained until 2004. He lived on Sado with his Japanese wife Hitomi Soga, an abductee he met in North Korea.
 * Makoto Asashima (浅島 誠, born 1944), biologist
 * Hideyo Hanazumi (b. 1958), politician and Governor of Niigata Prefecture.
 * Hitomi Nabatame (b. 1976), actress and singer.
 * Aka Akasaka (b. 1988), manga artist and writer.

title: Sado, Niigata


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Gifu (disambiguation)

Gifu is the capital city of Gifu Prefecture, Japan.

Gifu (岐阜) may also refer to:
 * Gifu Prefecture, located in the Chūbu region of central Japan
 * Gifu (region), a region located in southcentral Gifu Prefecture
 * Gifu Castle atop Mt. Kinka in the city of Gifu
 * Gifu University, in Gifu, Japan
 * the Gifu meteorite of 1909, which fell in Mino, Gifu (see also Meteorite fall)
 * Battle of Gifu Castle in Japan in 1600
 * "The Gifu", a Japanese stronghold on Guadalcanal during World War II, captured during the Battle of the Gifu in December 1942

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Gifu (disambiguation)


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Terraced house

A terrace, terraced house (UK), or townhouse (US) is a kind of medium-density housing that first started in 16th century Europe with a row of joined houses sharing side walls. In the United States and Canada these are sometimes known as row houses or row homes.

Terrace housing can be found worldwide, though it is quite common in Europe and Latin America, and many examples can be found in the United Kingdom, Belgium, United States, Canada, and Australia. The Place des Vosges in Paris (1605–1612) is one of the early examples of the type.

Although in early larger forms it was and still is used for housing the wealthy, as cities and the demands for ever smaller close housing grew, it regularly became associated with the working class. Terraced housing has increasingly become associated with gentrification in certain inner-city areas, drawing the attention of city planning.

Origins and nomenclature

Though earlier Gothic examples, such as Vicars' Close, Wells, are known, the alignment of the house fronts with the property line really began in the 16th century following Dutch and Belgian models and became called "row" houses in English. For example, in "Yarmouth Rows", Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, the building fronts all were right on the property line.

The term terrace was borrowed from garden terraces by British architects of the late Georgian period to describe streets of houses whose uniform fronts and uniform height created a stylish ensemble rather than a mere "row" of similar homes. Townhouses (or townhomes) are generally two- to three-story structures that share a wall with a neighbouring unit. As opposed to apartment buildings, townhouses do not have neighbouring units above or below them. They are similar in concept to row houses or terraced houses, but share a common design and construction. The first and last of the houses is called an end terrace and is often a different layout from the houses in the middle, sometimes called mid-terrace.

Australia
In Australia, the term "terrace house" refers almost exclusively to Victorian and Edwardian era terraces or replicas almost always found in the older, inner city areas of the major cities. Terraced housing was introduced to Australia from Britain in the nineteenth century, basing their architecture on those in the UK, France and Italy.

Large numbers of terraced houses were built in the inner suburbs of large Australian cities, particularly Sydney and Melbourne, mainly between the 1850s and the 1890s (terraced housing is rare outside of these cities). Detached housing became the popular style of housing in Australia following Federation in 1901. The most common building material used was brick, often covered with cement render and then painted.

Many terraces were built in the "filigree" style, a style distinguished through heavy use of cast iron ornament; it has a level paved area in front, also known as terrace, particularly on the balconies and sometimes depicting native Australian flora. In the 1950s, many urban renewal programmes were aimed at eradicating them entirely in favour of modern development.

In recent decades these inner-city areas and their terraced houses have been gentrified. The suburbs in which terrace houses are often found are often sought after in Australia due to their proximity to the Central Business Districts of the major cities. They are therefore sometimes quite expensive even though they may not be the preferred accommodation style. The lack of windows on the side, the small gardens, and the relative darkness of the rooms is at odds with the design favoured for modern Australian homes.

Belgium
In Belgium, the row houses are the predominant type of housing around the country and closely associated with the Belgian culture and history. The Grand Place, the central historic place of the capital Brussels, is surrounded by private houses dating from the 17th century, reflecting the city as a mercantile power at that time in northern Europe. Later, in the 19th century, Belgium played an important role in the early history of industrial revolution like the United Kingdom, where an important amount of working class housing was built to accommodate the coal miners in small brick row houses usually called "Coron". These types of constructions are very common in the Walloon region, but also in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France. Within the same period (from 1850 to early 1900), major cities like Brussels or Antwerp faced important urban development with the construction of new neighborhoods as extensions of the cities often entirely around individually owned parcels where single family row houses were built and occupied by both the middle class and the bourgeois class. Some houses are internationally renowned for their architecture like the Art Nouveau style Hotel Tassel or the Hôtel van Eetvelde both designed by Victor Horta.

Finland
In Finland, an agrarian country where urbanism was a generally late phenomenon, the rivitalo (literally: row house) has not been seen as a particularly urban house type. What is regarded as the first terraced house to be built, Ribbingshof (1916), in the new Helsinki suburb of Kulosaari was designed by renowned architect Armas Lindgren, and was inspired by ideas from the English Garden City movement and Hampstead Garden Suburb, and was seen as a relatively low density residential area. A similarly leafy suburban street of terraced houses was that of Hollantilaisentie (1920) in the suburb of Munkkiniemi, Helsinki, designed by architect Eliel Saarinen. They were initially envisioned as workers' housing, as part of a grand new urban scheme for the entirety of north-west Helsinki, but from the outset became a fashionable middle-class residential area. Later terraced housing in Finland is similarly associated with suburban middle-class living, such as the Tapiola garden city, Espoo, from the 1950s.

France
Terraced housing has long been a popular form in Paris, France. The Place des Vosges (1605–1612) was one of the earliest examples of the arrangement. In Parisian squares, central blocks were given discreet prominence, to relieve the façade. Terraced building including housing was also used primarily during Haussmann's renovation of Paris between 1852 and 1870 creating whole streetscapes consisting of terraced rows.

United Kingdom and Ireland

The first streets of houses with uniform fronts were built by the Huguenot entrepreneur Nicholas Barbon in the rebuilding after the Great Fire of London. Fashionable terraces appeared in London's Grosvenor Square from 1727 onwards and in Bath's Queen Square from 1729 onwards. The Scottish architect Robert Adam is credited with the development of the house itself. Early terraces were also built by the two John Woods in Bath and under the direction of John Nash in Regent's Park, London. The term was picked up by speculative builders like Thomas Cubitt and soon became commonplace. It is far from being the case that terraced houses were only built for people of limited means. This is especially true in London, where some of the wealthiest people in the country owned them in locations such as Belgrave Square and Carlton House Terrace. These townhouses, in the British sense, were the London residences of noble and gentry families who spent most of the year in their country houses. These terraced houses, often surrounding a garden square, are hallmarks of Georgian architecture. The same was true of many British and Irish cities. In Dublin, Georgian squares such as Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square housed the city's upper classes. A type of terraced house known latterly as the "one-floor-over-basement" was a style of terraced house particular to the Irish capital. They were built in the Victorian era for the city's lower middle class and emulated upper class townhouses. By the early Victorian period, a terrace had come to designate any style of housing where individual houses repeating one design are joined into rows. The style was used for workers' housing in industrial districts during the rapid urbanisation following the industrial revolution, particularly in the houses built for workers of the expanding textile industry. The terrace style spread widely across the country, and was the usual form of high-density residential housing up to World War II. The 19th century need for expressive individuality inspired variation of façade details and floor-plans reversed with those of each neighbouring pair, to offer variety within the standardised format.

A major distinction is between through terraces, whose houses have both a front and a back door, and back-to-backs, which are bricked in on three sides. The 1875 Public Health Act imposed a duty on local authorities to regulate housing by the use of byelaws, and subsequently all byelaw terraced housing was required to have its own privy, with rear access to allow the night soil to be collected as per the Rochdale system. As recently as 2011, byelaw terraced houses made up over 15% of the United Kingdom's housing stock.

Since the Second World War, housing redevelopment has led to many outdated or dilapidated terraces being cleared to make room for tower blocks, which occupy a much smaller area of land. Because of this land use in the inner city areas could in theory have been used to create greater accessibility, employment or recreational or leisure centres. However, sub-optimal or flawed implementation has meant that in many areas (like Manchester or the London estates) the tower blocks offered no real improvement for rehoused residents over their prior terraced houses.

In 2005 the English Heritage report Low Demand Housing and the Historic Environment found that repairing a standard Victorian terraced house over 30 years is around 60% cheaper than building and maintaining a newly built house. In a 2003 survey for Heritage Counts a team of experts contrasted a Victorian terrace with a house built after 1980, and found that:"The research demonstrated that, contrary to earlier thinking, older housing actually costs less to maintain and occupy over the long-term life of the dwelling than more modern housing. Largely due to the quality and life-span of the materials used, the Victorian terraced house proved almost £1,000 per 100 m2 cheaper to maintain and inhabit on average each year."

Halifax
Halifax's use of rowhouses, townhouses and terraced housing has been consistent throughout its history, particularly on the Peninsula where the city first began settlement. In the older sections of the city are sections of terraced housing used historically for military families, as part of established families' real estate holdings in addition to a country house, and as dwellings for the working classes of the city and as public housing. The most well-known of the terraced housing areas is The Hydrostone, which was originally built as replacement housing stock for those made homeless after the Halifax Explosion; individual owners have, however, altered the exteriors of many of the rowhouses over time to accommodate changing family needs. More recently, there have been rowhouse developments appearing in diverse areas throughout the city.

Montreal
Montreal has the largest stock of terraced houses in Canada and they are typical in all areas of the city. As is common in other North American cities, in Montreal row houses are often referred to as townhouses.

The streetscape of the city's 19th century neighbourhoods, such as the Plateau, Centre-Sud, and Hochelaga, are dominated by row houses, duplexes and triplexes. Row houses continued to be built throughout the 20th century. In many neighbourhoods, such as Villeray, Parc Extension, and Ville-Émard, they became the dominant form of housing during the post-war period.

In the 21st century, Montreal has continued to build row houses at a high rate, with 62% of housing starts in the metropolitan area being apartment or row units. Apartment complexes, high-rises, and semi-detached homes are less popular in Montreal when compared to large Canadian cities like Toronto or Vancouver but similar to some US cities, in particular Philadelphia. Montreal's characteristic row houses and their iconic alleyways, balconies, and outdoor staircases have become cultural symbols of the city, featured in David Fennario's Balconville and Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.

Toronto
Terraced homes are abundant in Old Toronto. Many of them are constructed in the local bay-and-gable style, popular in the 1870s. Examples of Victorian bay-and-gable style can be found in Cabbagetown, Toronto, Parkdale, The Annex, Kensington Market, areas east of Chinatown, Toronto and Spadina Avenue including Baldwin Village.

The last surviving row of Georgian-style terraced houses in Toronto, known as Walnut Hall, was demolished in 2007 as a result of structural decay.

United States
According to the US Census Bureau, the highest concentration of terraced houses in the United States is in the Mid-Atlantic region, particularly the Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington metropolitan areas. The first terraced houses in the nation were Carstairs Row in Philadelphia, designed by builder and architect Thomas Carstairs c. 1799 through 1820, for developer William Sansom, as part of the first speculative housing developments in the United States. Carstairs Row was built on the southern part of the site occupied by "Morris's Folly" – Robert Morris's unfinished mansion designed by L'Enfant. Prior to this time houses had been built not in rows, but individually. It can be contrasted with Elfreth's Alley, the oldest continuously occupied road in the U.S., where all the houses are of varying heights and widths, with different street lines, doorways and brickwork.

Terraced housing in the United States is generally referred to as townhouses. In some cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., where they have been part of the landscape for over a century, they are often called row houses or row homes. Despite the narrow lots, many row houses are relatively large, some being over 2,000 square feet. They typically have two stories, but may have three or more (with the latter often being converted into apartments for separate tenants). The term "townhouse" in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic usually refers to modern terraced houses constructed in the late 20th century and beyond, especially those in suburban settings, which often have home owners associations and include garages. Multi-story attached homes that are grouped in twos or threes are typically called duplexes and triplexes respectively.

Baltimore

Most of Baltimore's housing consists of row houses. A few of Baltimore's row houses date back to colonial times. The style and materials used in their constructions vary throughout the city. A sizable quantity of Baltimore's row houses are clad with formstone, a distinct feature of Baltimore's row houses, typically found in working class areas of the city. Marble front steps also make Baltimore's row houses distinct from other cities' row houses. Much like Philadelphia, some areas of the city that contain row houses are neglected.

Boston
The row houses of Boston are found primarily in the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and the South End. Back Bay is famous for its rows of Victorian brick townhouse homes – considered one of the best-preserved examples of 19th-century urban design in the United States. Beacon Hill is a neighborhood in Boston consisting of Federal-style rowhouses. The South End is built mostly of mid-nineteenth century bowfronts – aesthetically uniform rows of five-story, predominantly red-brick structures, of mixed residential and commercial uses.

Chicago
In Chicago, row houses can be found in the downtown and surrounding areas developed in the late 1800s through 1930s. Many are two and three-flat buildings (consisting of one or sometimes two apartments on a three-floored building). A greystone in Chicago is similar to the brownstone found in New York and Boston, except the façade is clad in Indiana limestone. Most row houses are separated by a gangway that leads under the common wall between the houses leading to the rear of the property (where sometimes a rear house or coach house exists) and alleyway. The vast majority of two and three flats do not share a common wall and are stand alone structures. However, many row houses similar to those found in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. do exist, largely on the near south and west sides, though not as common.

Savannah

Gordon Row, in Savannah, was built in the 1850s. It (and its individual carriage houses to the rear) is a contributing property of the Savannah Historic District, itself on the National Register of Historic Places, and fills an entire city block. After falling into disrepair, the buildings were renovated in the mid-20th century by the Historic Savannah Foundation. Other similar-style row houses exist in Savannah's Scudder's Row, William Remshart Row House, the Quantock Rows on Taylor Street and Jones Street, McDonough Row and Marshall Row.

New Orleans
New Orleans has a distinctive style of terrace house in the French Quarter known as the Creole townhouse that is part of what makes the city famous. The façade of the building sits on the property line, with an asymmetrical arrangement of arched openings. Creole Townhouses have a steeply pitched roof, side-gabled, with several roof dormers. The exterior is made of brick or stucco.

New York

The row houses of New York City are built with a variety of material, including brownstone, limestone, and brick, and some are wood-frame homes. Row houses are especially prominent in neighborhoods like Middle Village, Woodhaven and Jackson Heights in Queens; Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn Heights, Bushwick, Canarsie, Marine Park, Park Slope, and Sunset Park in Brooklyn; and Williamsbridge, Wakefield, and Soundview in the Bronx.

Philadelphia

In historic Philadelphia, the rowhouse (almost always spelled as one word) has been the most common domestic building type in the city and some of its suburbs since colonial times. Some of the oldest rowhouses in the city are narrow three-story "Trinity" houses that accommodated a large population of indentured servants and immigrant workers, in addition to enclaves of free African-Americans in the 19th century. Society Hill is known to have the largest concentration of original 18th- and early 19th-century residential architecture of any place in the United States. The style and type of material used in constructing Philadelphia's rowhouses vary throughout the city. Even in neighborhoods where twin houses are found, their façades and internal layouts usually resemble those of rowhouses.

Most are primarily red brick in construction, often with white stone trim. Some are faced with stone, being brownstone on some blocks in Center City, South Philadelphia, and North Philadelphia and being Wissahickon schist in Mayfair in Northeast Philadelphia and Mt. Airy in Northwest Philadelphia. West Philadelphia has many colorful rowhouses in the Italianate and Queen Anne architectural styles. As rowhouses are very common, the Philadelphia City Planning Commission (PCPC) publishes a specific guide for rowhouse home owners in an effort to detail some of the ways to maintain their properties.

With space within the city's borders at a premium, there has been a push to add a third floor to an existing rowhouse's in recent times, often this third level would include a rooftop deck. While zoning codes do exist which can possibly prevent third stories from being added to homes, Philly Mag claims "The city’s 2012 zoning code overhaul, which increased the height limit for rowhouses from 35 to 38 feet, has made this option increasingly prevalent."

San Francisco
San Francisco is also famous for its terraced houses, especially in the older neighborhoods of North Beach, the Castro, the Haight-Ashbury, Russian Hill, the Mission District, Duboce Triangle and the Western Addition. The "Painted Ladies" on Steiner Street, in the Western Addition's Alamo Square district, although not strictly "terraced", are a symbol of the city. Other ornate, intricately-detailed Victorian-style homes labelled as "painted ladies" around the city are terraced, and others again are semi-detached.

Washington, D.C.
Several neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. feature rowhouses, often composing the majority or a large plurality of the local housing stock. As in other American cities, rowhouses in D.C. span a wide range of architectural styles and building materials. Neighborhoods known for high concentrations of rowhouses include Capitol Hill, Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Shaw, LeDroit Park, Columbia Heights, Petworth, and Bloomingdale. Many neighborhoods with rowhouses are located in the city's Northwest quadrant, in the densely populated area east of Rock Creek Park, except for Capitol Hill and its sub-neighborhoods, which occupy the areas of the Northeast and Southeast quadrants directly east of the United States Capitol Building. Because many D.C. rowhouses are historic structures, dating back as far as the early 1800s, they are especially common within the city's original boundaries, as laid out in the 1791 L'Enfant Plan. Outside of Washington DC many townhomes have been built in the last 50 years to encourage density especially around Metro stations and other areas of interest.

Other cities
In other cities throughout the United States, such as Albany, New York; Cincinnati; Cleveland; Covington, Kentucky; Detroit; Hoboken, New Jersey; Jersey City; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Norfolk; Pittsburgh; Reading, Pennsylvania; Richmond; Troy; and Wilmington, Delaware, row houses and terraced housing are also common, with row housing more focused on the center of the city, and later changing over to dense detached housing in outer neighborhoods. Scattered row homes and apartment rows can often be found in other eastern and Midwestern U.S. cities, specifically Minneapolis and St. Paul. The F. Scott Fitzgerald House in St. Paul is likely the most notable example of a row home in the Twin Cities. Columbus, Ohio has scattered row homes, along with smaller Midwest cities like Dubuque, Duluth, and Toledo. There are also scattered row homes and apartment rows in the oldest neighborhoods of Denver, Colorado.

Uruguay and Argentina
Montevideo and Buenos Aires during the last decades of the 19th century developed a type of terraced house called the Standard House or informally 'Chorizo' House.

Southeast Asia
Introduced around the beginning of the twentieth century, terraced houses (also known as shophouses or linear linkhouses) have been adopted in both Malaysia and Singapore since the countries' early British colonial rule.

Based on British terraced home designs, the Southeast Asian variations are similar to their British counterparts (in which the living quarters are located on the front and top floor and the kitchen at the back) and were adapted to accommodate the area's tropical weather, which is primarily warm throughout the year and receives heavy rainfall. Earlier versions were more open, designed to better circulate air and features inner courtyards, with a frontal yard, rear yard, or both. A typical Malaysian and Singaporean terraced house is usually one or two floors high, but a handful of three or four storey terraced homes exist, especially newer terraced houses. Earlier variations followed traditional Western, Malay, India and Chinese architecture, as well as Art Deco and International stylings between the 1930s and 1950s.

The manner in which the buildings were designed varies by their location in an urban area. Derivatives located within city centres may also utilize their space for both commercial on the ground floor and residential use on the first floor and above (accurately known as shophouses, also similar to Lingnan buildings). Inner city terrace house design tended to lack any frontal yard at all, with narrow street frontages, hence the building's structure directly erected in front of the road. One of the reasons behind this was the taxing according to street frontage rather than total area, thereby creating an economic motivation to build narrow and deeply. A five foot way porch was usually laid out at the ground floor for use by both the residents and pedestrians. Alternatively, the porch may be sealed from the rest of the walkway to serve as personal space. Such designs became less common after the 1960s.

Terrace houses located on the outskirts of city centres were less restrictive, although the design of the building itself was not unlike those in the city. Certain homes tend to feature longer front yards, enough to accommodate cars. Others strictly serve as a small garden. This design remained in demand throughout the twentieth century, and a construction boom of the house design occurred in Malaysia since the 1940s, with numerous housing estates consisting of terrace homes sprouting in and around cities and towns. In the process, the design of the building began to diversify, with various refinements and style changes. Generally, the building's floor space and yards become larger and more elaborate through time, as is the modernisation of exterior construction and façade.

Certain older terrace houses tend to be converted for various new roles; some are converted into shophouses or business premises (including clubs, hotels and boarding homes–especially pre-independence houses–and kindergartens). Others have remained in use as residential units, are abandoned, neglected, or razed. Significant expansions are also common on all terrace homes; roofs and additional rooms may be added within the floorspace of the house's lot. Concerns are also raised with the limited maintenance and monitoring of deserted terrace homes, which potentially become hiding places for rodents and snakes (in yards with overgrown grass), and drug addicts.

Earlier variations of the terrace house were constructed with wood, later replaced with a masonry shell holding wooden beams to form foundations for the upper floors and tiled roof. Contemporary variations are primarily held together with reinforced concrete beams, which are later completed with concrete slabs, brick walls and tiled roofs.

title: Terraced house


text:
Wikipedia talk:Templates for discussion/Template:PremierCollegesofIndia

Disputed
The list about premier colleges of India is disputed. It should be deleted.--Rrjanbiah 13:42, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Why delete it?? Instead, let's standardize it -- Kesava 03:53, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * All schools which figure in top ten b-school and tech school ratings of India Today have been included. IIITs which have have been never rated high on India Today and other popular ratings have been removed. - Kesava 04:06, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Even though I do not question IISc as a premier institution, let me ask if it is included in the India Today ratings. -- Sundar 12:42, May 13, 2004 (UTC)

 * Agreed. India Today ranks only graduate colleges, while IISc is a Post graduate University. And no body in India, ranks Post Graduate colleges - Kesava 14:22, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Even though, iiit-b is too young to be compared on par with IISc, I wish to say that it is a Post graduate school and hence was not ranked by India Today. I do not push the case to include it in this list, though. Sundar 12:18, May 14, 2004 (UTC)

- Removed University of Hyderabad, as it is probably not premier as it does not appear even in India Today's rankings !! -- Kesava 03:52, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * University of hyderabad offers only post-graduate studies, thats probably why it dosent figure in the India Today rankings. Moreover, they dont offer any technical courses. They offer pure sciences (Math, phy, chem, Comp sci, stat ...etc). Well if you have mentioned non-technical institutes such as TIFR, then I guess UoH can be included as well.

User:Akella

What exactly is the scope of this list? The title says Colleges but the heading says Technical Institutions. And IISc is not primarily either a college or a technical institution. If we include IISc we should also include TIFR and IMSc (Matscience). I feel we should make this into a table of "premier academic institutions of India" and include such things as IIMs, Pusa Inst., etc. Arvindn 04:29, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * Please move the page IIM to Indian Institutes of Management - Kesava 06:40, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This page was listed on VfD. The debate was inconclusive. It appears to be a content issue, not a deletion issue. Debate follows: --User:Pcb21

 * Now, everything is messed up. Few articles uses Template:FiveStarCollegesofIndia and few still uses Template:PremierCollegesofIndia. This can be avoided if people closely watch the debate.

 * POV... unclear basis --Hemanshu 18:59, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
 * POV. Ranking colleges and stamping premier are somehow prone to other countries. In India, Education *still* a _service_ than business. Some colleges and their alumni are promoting the business value of the education through some media. The ranking by many news papers and media are highly padded (and corrupted) and no way it reflects the truth. It is a strong POV. Moreover the ranking reflects the elite mindset--which is less than 1% of total population. --Rrjanbiah 04:24, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Services too can be categorized as premium and non-premium. If the adjective "premier" is the problem, let's change it "Best" or something else. (Now, one cannot argue that all the colleges in India are of the same standard and there are no better ones among equals.) Number of startups from a college, number of companies visting the college during placements, number of research initiatives at a college, ratio of students making into good universities abroad, number of times of occurence in Google news, Google's page rank of the college's website are a few parameters other than media coverage determining the quality of a college. Alumni might be playing an important role in improving the performance of all these parameters, but alumni haven't sprouted from nowhere. Ranking reflects elitist mindset ? More clarifications on that please. - Kesava 05:23, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Services too can be categorized - Ok. Tell me what is your measure or "scale"? Don't quote me some magazines as you know the value of corruption in media.
 * The point is not "my" and "your" measures, buddy. The average salaries paid is probably a good measure ? Why does Murali Manohar Joshi talk about IITs and IIMs and not about XYZ college of Mumbai ? Why do best professors/students generally go to teach in IITs and not in ABC college of Calcutta ? (I am afraid u'll say that there are no "best" students and professors!!) - Kesava 08:17, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * If you think salary is an important factor, I suggest you to read the biographies of many scientists like Newton. (Don't tell me that the above colleges make scientists. They may indeed make exhibitionists, but that is off-topic). --Rrjanbiah 10:32, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Two things to talk about: 1. Newton was from Oxford, the so called one of the tow best Universities of Britain. 2. 'Making scientists' is not the only end of university education. (although IISc and IITs produce lot of scientists & Anna University housed guys like Abdul Kalam). IITs and ilk have created lot of startups across the globe.
 * "premier"->"Best" - Funny. Mean "best" is "show-off" or "corrupted/padded advertising/survey"?
 * premier (adjective)best or most important is what Cambridge English Dictionary defines.
 * You're the one who suggested changing to that word. Anyway, my English is poor--so no comments on that. Perhaps "Much advertised/exhibited/promoted institutions" will fit better?? --Rrjanbiah 10:32, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * You are too apologetic about your language. Be more concerned about the content. There are whole bunch of worker ants to take care about wording. - Kesava 14:55, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Number of placements as measure - Sorry so blind and naive. Do you know, how placements are done? 1. Alumni pushing their old/present students inside (eg. Microsoft, IBM, Google, Yahoo!, and any other companies esp. the one which asks referrals) 2. The college board calls for the HR team--for which they even spend lakhs (aka corruption)
 * So companies come to IITs to recruit only because of the alumni. and NOT becuase of the quality of education they deliver ?? - Kesava 08:17, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * "Quality"?? Quality of the *education* means *educating* the most stupid (as stupid as me) person on the earth without *discriminating* him on his social/financial/physical grounds. --Rrjanbiah 10:32, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * So IITs should teach for free ?? At Graduate/Post Graduate level, only Soviet Union did that !! - Kesava 14:55, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Number of research as measure - You may not be aware that how caste is playing major role in research activities.
 * Caste politics in IITs ? What bullshit ? - Kesava 08:17, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * I could see that you're trying to hide the truth. --Rrjanbiah 10:32, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * What truth ? What am I hiding ? Get User:Ambarish, User:Arvindn or any other IITian and ask them to approve our your caste politics story. I'll start believeing. - Kesava 14:55, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Sending guys to abroad universities as measure - They may be sending. But, is it the measure for "premier" or "best"? or is it the values that such institutions provide?
 * If Stanford is world's best and Stanford mostly accepts guys from IITs, How else are IITs to be interpreted other than best ? - Kesava 08:17, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * By any means, are you kidding? It may be true that Stanford is ready to educate these guys. But, is it the "measure" for "premier"? And is it the "values" that these institutions provide? Think for a while and you'll get the answer. Irrationalism is blind. --Rrjanbiah 10:32, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * I was trying to use transitive property. - Kesava 14:55, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Google as measure - Funny. My simple site has somehow equal rank as of the popular websites like rediff.com and ndtv.com; does it mean my site is _really_ popular (or "premier") as rediff or ndtv?
 * Wikipedia equates its growing popularity with increasing page rank. - Kesava 08:17, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Funny. No comments. --Rrjanbiah 10:32, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * You could check with Statistics - Kesava 14:55, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Alumni improving performace - Out of reality. Alumni can't "improve"--they can only "push" and pad the survey aka advertising
 * Ranking==elite mindset - As I said earlier, ranking is somehow prone to other countries like America where Education is much of business. The recent trend suggests that even in such countries people prefer public schools In India, Education is not that much corrupted or commercialized; there might be some exceptions like IIM, but it is no way reflects the whole society.
 * The increasing number of applications IIT-JEE recieve only show that they are the best and people want to get into best. IITs for that matter have acceptance rates stricter than Harvard and Stanford. (XYZ college of Coimbatore or Aligarh do not recieve so many applications). Government of India itslef believes that IITs are best and hence wants to extend the IIT model to RECs by making them NITs. I am totally upset over the fact that I am fighting to establish a well-known fact that IITs and its ilk are the best in India. - Kesava 08:17, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * If product X is selling more, it doesn't mean that it is the best; it may mean that it is much exhibitted. Equating the numbers is like claiming the adult materials are the best 'coz they are selling more.
 * Well, I'm much afraid of the fact that you're trying to advertise the above colleges in Wiki and trying to promote ignorancy to the international audience. EOD. --Rrjanbiah 10:32, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * And in anyway, quoting some padded surveys or corrupted media's source is strong POV. It shouldn't be put up inside a MediaWiki box (or advertised in Wiki). --Rrjanbiah 07:02, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * I guess you have some mental hurdles to cross, because you dont accept numbers, ratings and facts. - Kesava 14:55, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. POV in dispute is fine, just list as such. Burgundavia 06:21, May 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. POV in dispute is fine, just list as such. Rajasekaran Deepak 18:08, 2004 May 13 (UTC)
 * Delete. As it is, it sounds very cliquey. Let's instead improve List_of_universities_in_India, by adding rankings or ordering by rankings. The term "premier" is ill-defined. By the way, the India-Today rankings are fundamentally flawed in methodology. I opine that although they can be cited in an article (such as List_of_universities_in_India), they don't have the kind of standing to merit an article solely based on their rankings. Ambarish|Talk 02:18, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
 * But, I guess there are around 15-20 colleges that really stand apart in the whole List of universities in India. The sole purpose of this mediawiki item is to make a navigational model which helps audience to traverse across those 15-20 ones. So i urge to keep this. The reasons have to be better than the ones cited by user:rrjanbiah. - Kesava 05:30, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't think I mentioned any of User:Rrjanbiah's reasons, simply because I don't agree with too many of them. You guess there are around 15 to 20 colleges that stand out? See, there's my problem. Where do you draw the line? Let me elucidate. I have two complaints. First, it's one thing to order colleges by a specific rank, while mentioning all the colleges. It's a very different thing to categorise an arbitrary percentage of institutions as "premier" according to the same ranking - do you stop at 1% or 10%, or 50%? My real fear is that folks keep adding to this list until it becomes another List of universities in India. My second complaint is about the ranking per se - I don't know of any other ranking than the India Today one, and IMHO, the India Today one is flawed beyond redemption. I dislike both the means (the methodology used) and the end result (the rankings themselves). I'm still agreeable to using this ranking to order the list of institutions - after all, any ranking is a POV, and no ranking is free of detractors. What I don't like is an article (in either the article namespace or the MediaWiki namespace) *based* on the rankings. I'm agreeable to such a list if the ranking were official - for instance, there's this National Accreditation and Assessment Council; I'm OK with Template:FiveStarCollegesofIndia based on those. Such an article, for instance, would solve both the issues I've raised above - the ranking is official, and there's a concrete definition. Hope that clears things up. Ambarish|Talk 06:43, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
 * FiveStarCollegesofIndia seems to be great idea. Will work towards that - Kesava 09:17, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Does that mean you'll be changing your mind about deleting this article? If so, you could change your vote above. Ambarish | Talk 19:16, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Hey Ambarish, but the number of colleges in the 5 star category seem to be to big for a mediawiki. Some other filtering needs to be applied, for the mediawiki to work. - Kesava 04:49, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
 * The size of this box also goes against the proposed policy at Wikipedia talk:Article series boxes policy (proposed). Ambarish | Talk 21:37, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. But please check Template:FiveStarCollegesofIndia - Kesava 07:07, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

This was listed on WP:TFD, the decision was to delete. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:45, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)


text:
Robert Ridgway

Robert Ridgway (July 2, 1850 – March 25, 1929) was an American ornithologist specializing in systematics. He was appointed in 1880 by Spencer Fullerton Baird, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, to be the first full-time curator of birds at the United States National Museum, a title he held until his death. In 1883, he helped found the American Ornithologists' Union, where he served as officer and journal editor. Ridgway was an outstanding descriptive taxonomist, capping his life work with The Birds of North and Middle America (eight volumes, 1901–1919). In his lifetime, he was unmatched in the number of North American bird species that he described for science. As technical illustrator, Ridgway used his own paintings and outline drawings to complement his writing. He also published two books that systematized color names for describing birds, A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists (1886) and Color Standards and Color Nomenclature (1912). Ornithologists all over the world continue to cite Ridgway's color studies and books.

Early life and family
Ridgway was born in Mount Carmel, Illinois to David and Henrietta (née Reed) Ridgway. He was the oldest of ten children. He was educated at common schools in his native town, where he showed a special fondness for natural history. This interest to explore nature, both shooting with a gun given to him by his father, as well as drawing from life, was encouraged by his parents, his uncle William, and his aunt Fannie Gunn.

In 1871 he met Julia Evelyn Perkins, the daughter of one of the engravers for The History of North American Birds. Ridgway's courtship of the girl who became known as "Evvie" lasted until she reached the age of eighteen, and they were married on October 12, 1875.

Ornithological training and the King expedition
In 1864, at the age of thirteen, the young Ridgway wrote to the Commissioner of Patents, seeking advice on the identification of a bird he had seen. He enclosed a full-sized color drawing of what turned out to be a pair of purple finches. His letter eventually was referred to Spencer Fullerton Baird of the Smithsonian Institution. Baird replied, identifying the bird and praising the boy's artistic abilities, yet cautioning him to learn and use the scientific names of birds in further correspondence.

The mentor and protégé continued their exchange of letters, which led to Ridgway's appointment, in the spring of 1867, as the naturalist on Clarence King's Survey of the 40th Parallel. After a brief, intensive stint of training in Washington, where he learned to prepare study skins, Ridgway joined the expedition in May. Starting from Sacramento, California, the team explored parts of Nevada, Utah Territory, and Idaho Territory. A highlight of the trip was a stop at Nevada's Pyramid Lake. In the fall of 1868, the members of the team were reduced for funding reasons, but Ridgway returned in 1869 for more work in Utah. In an undertaking that lasted nearly two years, Ridgway collected 1,522 bird-related specimens (753 nests and eggs and 769 skins) and served as a key member on one of the four great surveys of the American West. He observed 262 species, most of these on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. He had written most of his portion of King's report by 1872, but the "Ornithology" section was not published until 1877.

The Washington years
Upon his return to Washington, Ridgway illustrated and wrote for Baird and Thomas M. Brewer's History of North American Birds project. He formally joined the Smithsonian in 1874, under the supervision of curator George Brown Goode. In 1880 he received the job title of curator (variously, of ornithology or of the department of birds); he was titled Curator of Birds from 1886 until his death. Working with the institution's collection of approximately fifty thousand bird skins, Ridgway devoted himself to unraveling the taxonomic relationships among North American bird species. As well, he continued his field work to collect new specimens, making several trips to his home state of Illinois, Florida, other states of the U.S., and Costa Rica. The Smithsonian exchanged study skins with other museums, either by donation or loan, and provided material and publications to collectors such as José Castulo Zeledón of the Costa Rican National Museum in exchange for specimens.

Ridgway was articulate and literate, and served as the Smithsonian's mouthpiece and representative for many years in the study of birds. He welcomed visits to the museum from colleagues and the general public alike, and would give tours. One of his responsibilities involved assembling public exhibits. In the interest of accessibility, he made books available for browsing and displayed examples of birds described in popular natural histories. As well, he showed birds from well-known poetry, species like the nightingale that are not found in North America. Returning the favor that Baird had paid him, he responded to letters from the public to identify birds and provided artist's materials to a painter in California. Nevertheless, friends and colleagues described him as almost painfully shy, and he generally shirked publicity and the limelight.

Among Ridgway's colleagues at the Smithsonian was Pierre Louis Jouy, who provided an important collection of Asian birds in 1883. Charles Wallace Richmond joined the institution in 1893 (at first, as a night watchman) and was soon tasked by Ridgway with writing reviews and other short pieces. During Samuel Pierpont Langley's tenure as Secretary, Ridgway assisted Langley's aviation research. He provided calculations of the wing loading and other aerodynamic characteristics of species like the wandering albatross, turkey vulture, and other soaring birds.

In 1883, Robert Ridgway was a founding member of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and he became an associate editor of the organization's journal The Auk. He was prevailed upon to serve as an officer of the organization, but on the condition that he not be required to preside at public meetings. He served as a vice president of the AOU (September 1883 – November 1891) and as its president (November 1898 – November 1900).

As scientific knowledge expanded quickly in the second half of the nineteenth century, the need for reorganizing the system of names used to describe North American birds grew commensurately. For example, certain names assigned by William Bartram in his catalog of 1791 were now deemed unusable. Robert Ridgway addressed this need with two publications in 1880 and 1881, while Elliott Coues published a competing checklist in 1882. Ridgway and Coues, along with Joel Asaph Allen, William Brewster, and Henry W. Henshaw, came together as a committee on nomenclature and classification, serving the newly founded AOU, to reconcile the various systems and catalogs. In 1886, the committee released The Code of Nomenclature and Check-List of North American Birds, both a consistent checklist and a set of rules for the naming of birds to be described in the future. The Code settled the disagreement about capitalization of species names and established today's order of presentation, with waterbirds first and passerines last. Several of the handbook's innovations were adopted by other branches of zoology, and were incorporated into the 1905 version of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.

The committee's work served to standardize the way that birds are described, identifying them at the subspecies level and using a three-part trinomial name. While American ornithologists embraced the descriptive detail, European researchers of the time were reluctant to adopt it. Ridgway was an enthusiastic supporter of trinomial nomenclature, although his thinking in later life became more moderate.

Other affiliations
Robert Ridgway was corresponding member of the Zoological Society of London; was associated with the Davenport (Iowa) Academy of Natural Sciences, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Brookville, Indiana, Society of Natural History, and the Chicago Academy of Sciences; and was a foreign member of the British Ornithologists' Union. He was a member of the permanent ornithological committee of the first international congress at Vienna in 1884. Ridgway was also honorary member of the Nuttall Ornithological Club of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for which he contributed illustrations and 48 articles to its Bulletin.

The short-lived Ridgway Ornithological Club of Chicago, Illinois (active from 1883 to about 1890) was named in Ridgway's honor, and he was an honorary member.

Although he lacked formal post-secondary education, Ridgway received an honorary master's degree in science from Indiana University in 1884, as a sign of gratitude for his supplying them with bird specimens after their museum burned down. He was listed with the title of Professor in Smithsonian annual reports and staff directories, despite his lack of a teaching appointment. He is sometimes referred to as "Dr. Ridgway," particularly by writers from his home state of Illinois. Ella Dean's profile is an example.

The Harriman expedition
In 1899, Robert Ridgway joined E. H. Harriman on his famous Harriman Alaska Expedition. John Muir, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, John Burroughs, Edward S. Curtis, and a number of other scientists and artists made a four-month expedition to study the flora and fauna of Alaska's coastline. However, the trip did not yield significant publications by Ridgway.

Other family members
Robert and Julia Ridgway had one son, Audubon Whelock Ridgway (May 15, 1877 – February 22, 1901). "Audie" had begun a promising career in ornithology at the Field Museum of Natural History when his life was cut short by a fatal bout of pneumonia.

Robert Ridgway's second-born brother, John Livzey Ridgway (February 28, 1859 – December 27, 1947), was a nationally prominent bird illustrator who worked for many years at the United States Geological Survey, as well as the Smithsonian, the California Institute of Technology, and the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science, and Art. The two brothers often collaborated on illustrations, sometimes with Robert doing the drawing and John the coloring.

Later life and death
In early June 1913, Robert Ridgway and his wife Julia ("Evvie") moved to Olney, Illinois, to reduce physical and mental stress so that he might complete The Birds of North and Middle America, of which five of eight parts had already appeared. They built a new house on 8 acre that they had purchased in 1906, and named the place Larchmound for two large larch trees growing on the property. Ridgway also acquired a tract of 18 acre located in the country, to be called Bird Haven, which he developed as a private nature reserve for birds and as a nursery for cultivation of non-native plants. His skill in landscaping and tending to the grounds was such that his expertise in that area was in some demand. Bird Haven, in part, is now an Olney city park.

Evvie's death on May 24, 1927, was a severe blow to Robert. Robert continued to live at Larchmound, tending to his beloved trees and shrubs, until his death on March 25, 1929, at the age of 78. Robert was buried at Bird Haven where Julia's ashes had been scattered.

Works

Robert Ridgway's first publication, at the age of 18, was an article about the belted kingfisher. In the course of the next 60 years, he would go on to publish more than 500 titles and 13,000 printed pages, most of it concerning North American birds.

Ridgway collaborated with Brewer and Baird on the five-volume History of North American Birds (three volumes on the land birds published in 1874, and two volumes published as The Water Birds of North America in 1884). In its time, the work was considered the standard work on North American ornithology. While Ridgway primarily contributed illustrations to the land bird volumes, he wrote the bulk of the water bird volumes.

Ridgway provided full-color illustrations for his own books and those of others. He was at the peak of his artistic proficiency in the late 1870s. Even though certain of his contemporaries (for instance, Daniel Giraud Elliot) may have produced more artistically pleasing renderings, Ridgway's were the most accurate. In the words of his biographer Daniel Lewis, Ridgway "may have had the best grasp of bird coloration in the country."

With the publication of A Manual of North American Birds in 1887, Robert Ridgway condensed what was known about the continent's birds into a relatively compact 642 pages and 464 outline drawings. A prototype of today's field guides, it was quite successful, going into a second edition in 1896, and was described by Montague Chamberlain as "far away the best thing we have for the working naturalist." Nevertheless, its bulk was unwieldy for use in the field, and its identification keys depended on characteristics of the bird in the hand, not field marks. Harry Oberholser characterized the quality of the illustrations as "rarely equaled, never excelled" in beauty and accuracy.

With Stephen Alfred Forbes, he wrote a two-volume work, The Ornithology of Illinois. Ridgway's contributions were published in two parts, in 1889 and 1895. Ridgway also published a number of papers dealing with the woody plants of his region. He contributed twenty short pieces to Forest and Stream, a magazine edited by George Bird Grinnell.

The color books
Robert Ridgway published two books whose goal was to standardize the names of colors used by ornithologists to describe birds. The first, A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, appeared in 1886, and was relatively small in scope, illustrating 186 colors. It proposed a simple classification system, doing away with many subjective and evocative names that were currently popular.

Ridgway sought to improve and expand upon this work. By 1898, he was in discussions with Secretary Langley about a new, expanded dictionary of color, to be published by (or at least supported by) the Smithsonian. An advisory committee was formed, with scientific illustrator William Henry Holmes as chairman and Richard Rathbun (newly appointed assistant secretary) as one of its five members. Children's game inventor Milton Bradley, who had devised a color wheel for instructional use, was consulted by the project. Langley thought it important that the work include spectral information about the colors to be cataloged, and he proposed physicist and color theorist Ogden Rood as a co-editor of the work. In 1901, however, the tension between the committee's broad vision of commercial applications for the project and Ridgway's narrow objective of a naturalist's reference book ended the Ridgway-Smithsonian collaboration in the endeavor.

Ridgway published Color Standards and Color Nomenclature himself in 1912, financed in part by a loan from his friend and colleague Zeledón. The work became a standard reference used by ornithologists for decades after Ridgway's death, as well as specialists in such wide-ranging fields as mycology, philately, and food coloring. The book named 1,115 colors, illustrated with painted samples reproduced on 53 plates. Special care was taken to ensure consistency of color reproduction across the edition, as well as the prevention of fading. The color samples were printed as large sheets by A. Hoen & Co., cut into swatches one inch by one-and-one-half inches, and pasted into each bound book.

In the book's foreword, Ridgway acknowledged the assistance of many, among them his brother John, Zeledón, and ornithologist John Thayer. With more than a thousand colors to be named, Ridgway devised some of his own imaginative identifiers (such as Dragons-blood Red and Pleroma Blue). He also paid tribute to colleagues, including Rood (with colors like Rood's Lavender), Bradley (Bradley's Blue), field guide pioneer Frank Chapman, watercolorist Samuel Prout, and others.

Descriptions of new forms
A significant proportion of Ridgway's output consisted of formal scientific descriptions of new forms of birds (new genera, species, and subspecies), many of them native to Central and South America. Many of these papers were short reports dealing with a single taxon, but he also would describe tens of new forms in a single publication, as in a paper describing 22 species from the Galápagos Islands or his Manual of North American Birds (four new genera, 39 new species and subspecies). As subsequent research has revised the taxonomy of birds, not all of the forms that Ridgway described remain recognized as distinct, but his contributions are still substantial. During his lifetime, no other ornithologist described more new taxa of American birds than Ridgway.

While most of the forms described and named by Ridgway came from outside the United States, in one instance he identified a new taxon first collected no earlier than 1881, in the Catskill Mountains of New York, an area already well-explored by ornithologists. From two specimens collected by Eugene Bicknell, Ridgway wrote the description of Bicknell's thrush as a subspecies of gray-cheeked thrush, naming it for Bicknell. The bird, a breeder of New England and southern Canada, has since been recognized as a distinct species.

From specimens collected in 1888, Ridgway was the first to describe hood mockingbird, Española cactus finch, Geospiza conirostris, and medium tree finch, all endemic to the Galápagos. The latter two are members of the so-called Darwin's finch group of tanagers, significant for their impact on Charles Darwin's reasoning about evolution and the emergence of new species.

The Birds of North and Middle America
Robert Ridgway's career-crowning work, on bird systematics, was the monumental 6,000-page The Birds of North and Middle America, published by the Smithsonian in eleven volumes between 1901 and 1950. He began the work in 1894 at the direction of Goode. A major objective of the work was to resolve problems of naming and classification in the scientific literature of the time and to identify synonyms. Dry, rigorous, and technically detailed in its language, the book was not considered to be accessible by the general reading public. Continuing the pattern of the Manual (and Baird's earlier Review of American Birds), each volume featured an appendix of engraved outline drawings of generic characteristics.

Ridgway published the eighth installment of the work, commonly known as Bulletin 50, in 1919. Although he continued to work on the project, outlining a projected two more volumes, it was incomplete at the time of his death in 1929. Following Ridgway's plan but doing his own writing, Herbert Friedmann of the Smithsonian completed the final three volumes.

The Birds of North and Middle America and Color Standards and Color Nomenclature are complementary works, and indeed Ridgway divided his time between the two projects in the first decade of the century. He used his own color terms extensively throughout Bulletin 50.

Legacy and recognition
Spencer Fullerton Baird and his followers emphasized precision of description, traceability through the literature, the accumulation of empirical evidence (that is, numerous specimens), and deductions drawn from facts — in opposition to the so-called "European school" of the time, which depended on personal authority. Harris calls Robert Ridgway and his Birds of North and Middle America the culmination of the "Bairdian school" of bird study. However, as ornithology around the turn of the twentieth century began to focus on bird behavior, reproduction strategies, and other aspects of the living organism, Ridgway fell behind the advances made by his colleagues of the succeeding generations. Paradoxically, because the overwhelming Bulletin 50 was so authoritative, no new publication could replace it for many years. Accordingly, systematics declined in importance as a means to study birds.

Birds named for Ridgway include the buff-collared nightjar, Caprimulgus ridgwayi (once known as Ridgway's whip-poor-will); the turquoise cotinga, Cotinga ridgwayi; the Caribbean subspecies of the osprey, Pandion haliaetus ridgwayi; a Big Island subspecies of the elepaio, Chasiempis sandwichensis ridgwayi; Ridgway's hawk, Buteo ridgwayi; Ridgway's rail, Rallus obsoletus; Juniper Titmouse, Baeolophus ridgwayi; and many other species and subspecies. The monotypic genus Ridgwayia is named for him; it consists of Aztec thrush, R. pinicola.

In 1919, Ridgway was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences for his Birds of North and Middle America. The academy elected him to membership in 1926. In 1921, he was the first to receive the AOU's William Brewster Memorial Award, which recognizes "an exceptional body of work on birds of the Western Hemisphere."

The American Birding Association has established the Robert Ridgway Award for Publications in Field Ornithology, which recognizes professional achievements in field ornithology literature.

Selected publications

 * Ridgway, Robert. 1869 (March).  "The Belted Kingfisher Again," American Naturalist 3(1):53–54.  Retrieved 28 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1870.  "A New Classification of the North American Falconidae, with Descriptions of Three New Species."  Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 22: 138–150.  Retrieved 15 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1872 (December).  "On the Relation between Color and Geographical Distribution in Birds, as Exhibited in Melanism and Hyperchromism." (part 1 of 2) American Journal of Science, 3rd ser., 4(24): 454–460.  Retrieved 21 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1873 (September).  "On the Relation between Color and Geographical Distribution in Birds, as Exhibited in Melanism and Hyperchromism."  (part 2 of 2)  American Journal of Science, 3rd ser., 5(25): 39–43.  Retrieved 21 January 2013.
 * Baird, S.F., T.M. Brewer, and R. Ridgway. 1874.  A History of North American Birds: Land Birds.  Little, Brown, Boston.  Volume I, 596 pp.; Volume II, 590 pp.; Volume III, 560 pp.  Retrieved 14 January 2013.  A special edition, published in the same year, of 50 copies contained 36 plates hand-colored by Ridgway.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1877.  "Ornithology." Volume IV, part III, pp. 303–669, of King, Clarence, Report of the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel.  U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.  Retrieved 3 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1880 (September).  "A Catalogue of the Birds of North America," Proceedings of the United States National Museum. 3: 163–246.  Retrieved 19 November 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1881.  "Nomenclature of North American Birds Chiefly Contained in the United States National Museum,"  Bulletin of the U.S. National Museum 21:1–94.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1882. "Description of Two New Thrushes from the United States." Proceedings of the United States National Museum 4: 374–379.  Retrieved 15 January 2013.  Description of Bicknell's thrush, as Hylocichla aliciæ bicknelli.
 * Baird, S.F., T.M. Brewer, and R. Ridgway. 1884. The Water Birds of North America.  Little, Brown, Boston.  Volume I, 537 pp.; Volume II, 552 pp.  Retrieved 14 January 2013.
 * American Ornithologists' Union. 1886.  The Code of Nomenclature and Check-List of North American Birds.  New York.  Retrieved 28 January 2013.  Members of the committee: Elliott Coues, J.A. Allen, Robert Ridgway, William Brewster, and H.W. Henshaw.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1886.  A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, and Compendium of Useful Knowledge for Ornithologists. Little, Brown, Boston.  129 pp. 10 colored plates and 7 plates of outline illustrations.  Retrieved 4 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1887.  A Manual of North American Birds, Illustrated by 464 Outline Drawings of the Generic Characters.  J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia.  631 pp.  Retrieved 14 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1889.  "A Descriptive Catalog of the Birds of Illinois," part I of Ridgway, Robert, and Forbes, S.A., The Ornithology of Illinois.  State Laboratory of Natural History, Springfield, Ill.  Volume I of part I.  Retrieved 22 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1890 (February). "Scientific Results of Explorations by the U. S. Fish Commission Steamer Albatross, No. I: Birds Collected on the Galapagos Islands in 1888." Proceedings of the United States National Museum 12(767): 101–128.  Retrieved 11 March 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1891.  "Directions for Collecting Birds."  Bulletin of the United States National Museum 39A: 1–27.  Retrieved 19 March 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1892.  "The Humming Birds."  Report of the National Museum for 1890: 253–383.  Retrieved 21 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1894 (November). "Descriptions of Twenty-Two New Species from the Galapagos Islands." Proceedings of the United States National Museum 17(1007): 357–370.  Retrieved 22 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1895.  "A Descriptive Catalog of the Birds of Illinois," part I of Ridgway, Robert, and Forbes, S.A., The Ornithology of Illinois.  State Laboratory of Natural History, Springfield, Ill. Volume II of part I.  Retrieved 22 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1897 (March). "Birds of the Galapagos Archipelago." Proceedings of the United States National Museum 19(1119): 459–670.  Retrieved 21 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1901 (October).  The Birds of North and Middle America.  A Descriptive Catalogue of the Higher Groups, Genera, Species, and Subspecies of Birds Known to Occur in North America, from the Arctic Islands to the Isthmus of Panama, the West Indies and Other Islands of the Caribbean Sea, and the Galapagos Archipelago.  No. 50, Part I.  U.S. National Museum, Washington, D.C.  745 pp.  Retrieved 12 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1902 (October).  The Birds of North and Middle America.  No. 50, Part II.  U.S. National Museum, Washington, D.C.  854 pp.  Retrieved 12 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1904 (December).  The Birds of North and Middle America.  No. 50, Part III.  U.S. National Museum, Washington, D.C.  840 pp.  Retrieved 12 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1907 (July).  The Birds of North and Middle America.  No. 50, Part IV.  U.S. National Museum, Washington, D.C.  1029 pp.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1911 (November).  The Birds of North and Middle America.  No. 50, Part V.  U.S. National Museum, Washington, D.C.  892 pp.  Retrieved 12 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1912.  Color Standards and Color Nomenclature. Washington, D.C.  44 pp. 53 colored plates. Retrieved 4 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1914 (April).  The Birds of North and Middle America.  No. 50, Part VI.  U.S. National Museum, Washington, D.C.  902 pp.  Retrieved 12 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1916 (May).  The Birds of North and Middle America.  No. 50, Part VII.  U.S. National Museum, Washington, D.C.  556 pp.  Retrieved 12 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1919 (June).  The Birds of North and Middle America.  No. 50, Part VIII.  U.S. National Museum, Washington, D.C.  868 pp.  Retrieved 12 January 2013.
 * Ridgway, Robert. 1923 (April).  "A Plea for Caution in the Use of Trinomials." The Auk 40(2): 375–376.  Retrieved 28 January 2013.

title: Robert Ridgway


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Silent Service (video game)

Silent Service is a submarine simulator video game designed by Sid Meier and published by MicroProse for various 8-bit home computers in 1985 and for 16-bit systems like the Amiga in 1987. A Nintendo Entertainment System version developed by Rare was published in 1989 by Konami in Europe and by Konami's Ultra Games subsidiary in North America. Silent Service II was released in 1990. Tommo purchased the rights to this game and published it online through its Retroism brand in 2015.

Gameplay
Silent Service is set in the Pacific Ocean during World War II, with the player assuming control of a U.S. Gato-class submarine for various war patrols against Japanese shipping. "Silent Service" was a nickname for the US Navy's submarine force in the Pacific during World War II. The player can choose when to attack from a range of realistic tactics, including the End Around and near invisibility at night (if the sub's profile is kept to a minimum). It allows four projectiles concurrently, a challenge when battling multiple destroyers. Real-time is accelerated when not in combat.

Sid Meier described several key factors that influenced the design of the game: The size of the theater, the variety of tactical situations, and evolving technology, such as the use of surface radar and torpedoes that did or did not leave trails of bubbles on the surface—only simulations set after their real-life introduction had access to these. Tasks such as navigation, damage repair, and firing were compartmentalized into different screens to allow players access to a great deal of information, but also to focus on the immediate task.

Development
The game was designed by Sid Meier, the art which was made by Michael O. Haire. Silent Service was in development for 8 months and its creation was inspired by a fractal technological trick.

Reception
Silent Service was MicroProse's second best-selling Commodore game as of late 1987. The company sold 250,000 copies by March 1987, and roughly 400,000 overall.

Info in 1985 rated Silent Service for the Commodore 64 four stars out of five, stating that its quality and graphics "are all unmistakably MicroProse" and "ensure a satisfying level of play for any wargamer". Antic wrote in 1986 that "Sid Meier and his team of simulation experts at MicroProse have outdone themselves". The magazine approved of how the game offered both beginner modes and "complex, historically accurate, and challenging war patrol scenarios" for experts, and noted the Atari 8-bit version's "superb" graphics and "well done" manual". Antic in 1987 also liked the Atari ST version's graphics, sound, adjustable difficulty levels, and documentation, concluding: "It's a traditional MicroProse product and it's nice to see that they've remained dedicated to detail". Compute! wrote in 1986 that "like F-15 Strike Eagle, Silent Service is both intriguing and addictive... a superior product".

Computer Gaming World in 1986 called Silent Service "easily the best [submarine simulator] for its simplicity of use and execution". It praised the game's realism and only criticized the lack of a save game feature. Gregg Williams reviewed the Atari 8-bit home computer version for Computer Gaming World, complimenting the graphics and sound and saying that they support the illusion of realism. A 1987 overview of World War II simulations in the magazine rated the game five out of five stars, praising its "superb graphics coupled with detailed rules, historical accuracy and layers of complexity". In 1993 a survey of wargames in the magazine gave the game two stars out of five, stating that "it has been rendered obsolete by time and superseded by Silent Service II". In 1996 Computer Gaming World ranked it as the 86th best game of all time, for having "introduced the control-room interface for submarine games on variety of platforms".

Silent Service was awarded the Charles S. Roberts Award for "Best Adventure Game for Home Computer of 1985".

Reviews

 * Jeux & Stratégie #43

Sequel
A sequel to the game was published by MicroProse in 1990 for MS-DOS and other versions in following years.

title: Silent Service (video game)


text:
Baron Kinross

Baron Kinross, of Glasclune in the County of Haddington, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 15 July 1902 for Scottish lawyer John Balfour, Liberal politician and Lord President of the Court of Session. His grandson, the third baron, was an author and journalist. the title is held by the latter's nephew, the fifth baron, who succeeded his father in 1985.

All four deceased barons are buried at the south end of Lords Row in Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh.

Barons Kinross (1902)

 * John Balfour, 1st Baron Kinross (1837–1905)
 * Patrick Balfour, 2nd Baron Kinross (1870–1939)
 * (John) Patrick Douglas Balfour, 3rd Baron Kinross (1904–1976)
 * David Andrew Balfour, 4th Baron Kinross (1906–1985)
 * Christopher Patrick Balfour, 5th Baron Kinross (b. 1949)

The heir apparent is the present holder's son, Alan Ian Balfour (b. 1978).

title: Baron Kinross


text:
Talk:HMS M33

Comment
An interesting naming conundrum - "M33", "M.33", "M 33" all have authorities, and there seems not be consensus on the ship prefix. Just to make things super-confusing, there is a Miles M.33 Monitor aircraft too! Stan 13:54, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * A different question for style control. As she is not now a commissioned RN vessel, yet her name is "HMS M33", should the current name be rendered HMS M33 rather than HMS M33?  That does not affect the article name as she is most notable for her WW1 action. Davidships (talk) 07:20, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

title: Talk:HMS M33