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2 Columbus Circle

2 Columbus Circle (formerly the Gallery of Modern Art and the New York Cultural Center) is a nine-story building on the south side of Columbus Circle in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The building fills a small city block bounded by 58th Street, Columbus Circle, Broadway, and Eighth Avenue. It was originally designed by Edward Durell Stone in the modernist style for A&P heir Huntington Hartford. In the 2000s, Brad Cloepfil redesigned 2 Columbus Circle for the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), which has occupied the building since 2008.

The exterior walls are made of reinforced concrete, which double as load-bearing walls that support the concrete floor slabs inside. The original facade largely consisted of white Vermont marble slabs, with small windows only at the corner of the building, as well as loggias at the base and top of the building. The current facade consists of terracotta panels separated by deep grooves, as well as large glass panels at the top. The lower stories of the building contain museum space, while the upper stories contain offices. There were originally several mezzanine levels, though these were removed in the 2000s. The original structure and the redesigned building have been the subject of extensive architectural commentary.

Hartford announced plans for the Gallery of Modern Art on the south side of Columbus Circle in June 1956, although construction did not start until 1960 due to various delays. The museum opened on March 21, 1964, and suffered financially for several years. Fairleigh Dickinson University took over the museum in 1969, renaming it the New York Cultural Center, which operated until 1975. Gulf and Western Industries bought 2 Columbus Circle in 1976 and donated it to the New York City government, but the building remained vacant for four years due to various issues. The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau occupied 2 Columbus Circle from 1980 to 1998, when the city government offered up the building for redevelopment. Following a controversy over the building's proposed renovation in the early 2000s, MAD renovated the building from 2005 to 2008.

Site
2 Columbus Circle is on the southern side of Columbus Circle in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The building's land lot is irregular and covers 4624 ft2. The lot occupies an entire city block bounded by Broadway to the east, 58th Street to the south, Eighth Avenue to the west, and Columbus Circle to the north. The site measures 74 ft on Columbus Circle, 76 ft on Broadway, 97 ft on 58th Street, and 41 ft on Eighth Avenue. The northern portion of the block is curved due to the curvature of Columbus Circle. The building occupies its entire lot.

The building is near Central Park to the northeast; 240 Central Park South, the Gainsborough Studios, and 220 Central Park South to the east; 5 Columbus Circle and Central Park Tower to the southeast; Central Park Place to the southwest; Deutsche Bank Center (formerly Time Warner Center) to the west; and Trump International Hotel and Tower to the north. Entrances to the New York City Subway's 59th Street–Columbus Circle station, served by the, are to the west, east, and south of the building.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Central Park South was developed as Manhattan's "Gold Coast", with many prestigious hotels and apartment buildings being erected on its route. The seven-story Grand Circle Hotel, designed by William H. Cauvet, stood at this address from 1874. Later called the Boulevard Hotel, it functioned as an office building by the late 1950s, with a Chevrolet advertisement on its roof.

Facade
The building was designed by Edward Durell Stone for businessman Huntington Hartford, an heir to the A&P supermarket chain. It was originally a nine-story modernist structure. Its exterior wall is made of reinforced concrete, which was used because it was more flexible to construct than a traditional steel structure. The building uses Mo-Sai slabs, which are made of exposed aggregate concrete. The exterior walls double as load-bearing walls, which support the concrete floor slabs inside.

Original design

The facade was largely made of slabs of white Vermont marble, with gray and gold veins; these slabs were originally attached to the concrete wall. Most of the marble panels had no window openings, but there were small circular windows at the corners and top story. The windowless sections of the facade measured 2 in thick, while the sections with windows were 3 in thick. To create the window openings, circular marble pieces were carved out of the slabs; these were reused in the lobby and on the sidewalk. There were over 1,000 windows in the original design, each arranged in groups of four. Stone designed the windows to be as small as possible, and the Times and Herald Tribune likened the windows to portholes. Each window had a bronze frame with a hinge that could swing inward. According to Stone, the windows were intended to suggest the rusticated blocks of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church in Paris. In Stone's original plans for the building, the facade would have been covered with vines or plantings.

The sidewalk around the building was originally made of reddish-brown terrazzo or concrete. Inset into the sidewalk were marble circles measuring 3 ft across and framed by brass strips; there were also planting pits along the curb. The base of the building contained a loggia of reinforced concrete columns, evocative of that at the Doge's Palace. There were 27 columns in the loggia, which measured 8 ft high. Above the ground-level loggia were alternating medallions made of red Italian marble and green Vermont marble. The lobby was recessed behind the loggia and had bronze-framed windows facing Columbus Circle; the other three elevations were faced with green marble at ground level. The seventh and eighth floors contained loggias on all elevations of the facade.

New design
The current facade, designed by Brad Cloepfil for the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), reuses the original massing; the upper loggia, the portholes, and the marble panels on the facade were removed. The building's concave curve on Columbus Circle was preserved. The ground-story loggia was also preserved because it was one of the key portions of the superstructure; it was enclosed behind a 13 ft glass wall. Cloepfil had spoken negatively of Stone's original design, having regarded it as "frightening" ever since the 1970s when he was an architecture student.

The new facade consists of 4 in terracotta panels separated by deep grooves. The white terracotta panels are stippled, giving a sparkling appearance in sunlight. At different times of day, the panels give the impression that they are slightly changing in color. Behind the terracotta panels are horizontal openings, which measure 30 in wide and are carved into the outer bearing walls. To reduce deflection, the grooves are spanned by large metal pins. There are one-story-high vertical panels of fritted glass, which connect the grooves on each floor. The glass strips and grooves create continuous strips on each elevation of the facade and are designed in a manner resembling a switchback. There are also glass strips at the northwest and northeast corners of the lower stories, which illuminate the galleries inside.

The top stories use the most glass and are illuminated by transparent, translucent, and fritted glass panels. Cloepfil said he wanted the new design "'to emphasize its role as a marker on Columbus Circle in juxtaposition to all the noise around it". Against Cloepfil's wishes, MAD's board and its director Holly Hotchner ordered that a band of windows be added near the top of the facade. This horizontal element connected two vertical strips of windows on the Columbus Circle elevation, creating an "H" shape; another vertical strip on the Eighth Avenue elevation was designed in an "I" shape. The windows appeared to spell out the word "HI" from the northwest.

Interior
Originally, the building contained 60000 ft2 of floor area across nine stories. The elevators originally served alternate floors, which Hartford proposed "for variety's sake". There were also two emergency-exit stairs at the rear corners of the building. The elevators and emergency-exit stairs (which were required under local building codes) occupied a significant portion of the building. As a result, the landings of the staircases were widened to create intermediate mezzanine levels, with smaller display rooms surrounding the double-height main galleries. The mezzanines also had smoking lounges, as well as rooms with pipe-organ music. The Gallery of Modern Art had an Aeolian-Skinner organ, which measured 23 ft high and was placed on the mezzanine above the second floor. That space was subsequently converted to the Gallery 3D theater, and the organ had been removed by the 2000s.

MAD occupies 54000 ft2 across ten above-ground floors and two basement levels. The mezzanines were removed when the building was renovated. Each of the main floors was enlarged to 3650 ft2, more than double the size of the original main floors. To make way for the expanded floor slabs, the mechanical spaces were placed behind the elevators, while the restrooms were relocated to the basement and sixth floor. The old emergency staircases were removed and a new staircase was built around the elevator core. The interior spaces are illuminated by glass channels measuring 30 inches wide. There are also glass columns, which contain a square cross-section and measure 3 or across. To accommodate these columns, the engineers had to construct square openings within each of the floor slabs. Because the superstructure is made of concrete, the engineers could only place openings through about 30 percent of the floor area. The glass channels and columns allow natural light to illuminate the interior. In addition, a six-story-high staircase was built along the Broadway elevation, connecting the museum spaces.

Museum spaces
When the building was used as the Gallery of Modern Art, the galleries were on the second through fifth floors. The Gallery of Modern Art had 14 galleries in total. The second and third floors were devoted to temporary exhibits, while the fourth and fifth floors contained Huntington's collection. Each story contained a main gallery measuring 13 ft tall, as well as two smaller galleries. The main gallery on each floor faced Columbus Circle, while the smaller galleries faced Broadway and Eighth Avenue. The main halls on the second and third stories measured 60 by, while the secondary halls each measured 18 by. There were also walls with gray-blue fabric and walnut paneling, as well as floors with French parquetry. Abe Feder designed the lighting inside each gallery, which was designed over a two-year period. The original lighting system was composed of diagonal troffers in the ceiling, which faced the outer walls of each gallery; the troffers surrounded a dropped ceiling at the center of each gallery.

Following the 2000s renovation, MAD has four floors of exhibition galleries across 14000 ft2, about double the size of the exhibition space at MAD's previous building. The space is large enough to house the museum's permanent collection, which numbered 2,000 objects at the time of the renovation. The space also allowed MAD to host multiple temporary exhibits simultaneously; by contrast, the museum's previous building was so small that it had to be closed every time a temporary exhibition was installed. At the time of the building's reopening in 2008, two of the four exhibition floors were used for rotating exhibits.

Other spaces
In the basement was an auditorium with 154 seats. The auditorium measured 26 ft deep and contained golden draperies, as well as a red-carpeted floor that extended to the back wall. The golden draperies doubled as sound insulation. The auditorium, subsequently named the Mark Goodson Theater, was the only part of the original design to be preserved in the 2000s renovation. The renovation also preserved the bronze doors leading to the auditorium. When MAD moved into the building in 2008, it started renting out the auditorium for events.

The original lobby's floor contained marble circles that had been cut out of the facade's portholes. In the 2000s, the lobby was enlarged and a museum store for MAD was placed at ground level. The museum store covers 1400 ft2.

The Gallery of Modern Art's offices were on the sixth floor, while the storage and restoration spaces were on the seventh floor. There were 3500 ft2 of storage space, as well as two terraces. When the Museum of Art and Design moved into the building, the sixth and seventh stories were converted to art studios, event spaces, and classrooms. One story was dedicated solely to educational programs, and there were also three artists' studios.

On the Gallery of Modern Art's eighth floor was a cocktail lounge, which had 60 seats. The eighth floor was decorated with rare Macassar ebony, which had to be sourced from a merchant in London, as well as Danish-wool sofas and Oceanic art. The ninth floor contained the Gauguin Room, a 52-seat restaurant with custom tables and tableware; it featured a 75 ft terrace facing north. The Gauguin Room served Polynesian food. The ninth-floor restaurant space was renovated in the mid-2000s, with windows on three sides. The restaurant, which reopened as Robert in 2009, serves American cuisine. The space contains 138 seats and can be accessed without entering the museum. It is decorated in an orange, purple, and vermilion color scheme, which in turn is illuminated by orange LED lighting.

Planning and disputes
Huntington Hartford announced plans for the 10-story Gallery of Modern Art on the south side of Columbus Circle in June 1956. The building would contain a modern-art collection belonging to Hartford and his wife Marjorie Steele, as well as ground-story retail space and a rooftop garden. Hartford had paid nearly $1 million for the land; he estimated that the gallery would cost $1.5 million to construct and would be completed in 1958. The New York Times wrote of the plans: "If in that spot there can now rise something of architectural beauty, the whole face of the Circle, the approach to the Park, and the area near the Coliseum will have been definitely 'lifted'." The New York Herald Tribune said that the planned structure "can be a valuable contribution to New York's architectural scene". Hartford initially collaborated with Hanford Yang, a Chinese-born architecture student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on the design of the museum. Yang's initial proposal called for an 11-story structure with a pair of interlocked concrete cylinders, sheathed in a plastic facade.

Winslow Ames was hired as the museum's director in September 1957, and Hartford said two months later that the project would begin "within six months to a year". In May 1958, Hartford hired Stone as the architect, since Yang was not registered to practice architecture in New York state. By then, the museum was to cost $3 million and be completed in a year. Stone initially retained Yang as a project manager but soon revised the design drastically. Stone's first proposal filled the whole block and consisted largely of a blank facade, with windows arranged in a narrow vertical strip and along the top floor. His second proposal was published in 1959; it called for a mesh-like facade, with an exposed superstructure at the bottom and top, as well as a rooftop terrace. Both of Stone's proposals were intended to complement the neoclassical 5 Columbus Circle diagonally to the southeast. Stone and Hartford spent ten days just on refining various architectural models for the building.

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) requested an injunction in early 1959 to prevent Hartford from using the "Gallery of Modern Art" name. Hartford ultimately was allowed to keep the "Gallery" name. Stone filed plans for the gallery with the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) in April 1959, as the naming dispute was ongoing. Most tenants had left by July 1959, and demolition was supposed to have begun in August, with the gallery being completed in early 1961. The last remaining tenant was a shoe store, whose owner argued that he could only be evicted if an office building was built on the site. Though the New York Supreme Court ruled against the shoe store, the store's owner appealed the decision to the New York Court of Appeals, prompting Hartford to postpone the gallery's opening by one year. The Court of Appeals refused to hear the store's appeal in February 1960, and the shoe store finally vacated the site.

Construction
Hartford procured numerous works of art for the new museum, including a large mural by Salvador Dalí entitled The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. After his divorce from Steele in 1960, he bought five of his ex-wife's paintings for the museum. In total, the museum was to contain at least 30 sculptures and 75 paintings from Hartford's personal art collection. Hartford wanted his gallery to represent an alternative view of modernism; his art collection included works by Rembrandt, Monet, Manet, Turner, and Dalí. Ames announced in December 1960 that the museum would set aside two stories of galleries to photography exhibits. An advisory board would select the photography exhibits, which would be changed every 18 to 24 months. In 1961, Ames resigned from his position as the museum's director; the Herald Tribune reported that Ames and Hartford had disagreed over artistic taste. Hartford was also greatly involved in the design aspect of the building.

The museum's exterior was completed by January 1962, at which point construction costs had increased to $5 million. The building's small site had significantly slowed down construction due to the lack of a suitable staging area. The project engineer J. Gilbert Parker attributed the construction delays to the building's lack of right angles, saying: "It was like making a watch out of concrete". Originally, the eighth floor was supposed to have contained offices for Hartford and for the museum's curator, but these were scrapped in favor of a gallery. Hartford hired Carl J. Weinhardt Jr. as the museum's new director in 1963, two years after Ames's resignation. Margaret Potter was hired as the museum's curator. The museum's staff planned to use the rotating exhibitions to showcase "certain relatively neglected phases" of 19th-and 20th-century art. In late 1963, Weinhardt selected the museum's first temporary exhibition, a showcase of surrealist paintings by Pavel Tchelitchew. At the time, the museum's staff had already moved into the building. The construction cost had increased to $7.4 million, about five times the original budget, by the time the museum was completed.

Gallery of Modern Art
In advance of the museum's opening, in mid-March 1964, WABC-TV and WNBC-TV broadcast "No. 2 Columbus Circle", an hour-long video tour of the museum. Prior to the official opening, the museum had several preview events with guests such as Ivan Sergeyevich Obolensky and Prince Aschwin of Lippe-Biesterfeld. The Gallery of Modern Art opened to the public on March 21, 1964, with 3,358 visitors on its first day. At the time, the museum had 25 staff members and 45 guards; its operating costs were estimated at $600,000 per year. The museum had almost 40,000 guests in its first two weeks. The museum's early exhibits included retrospectives of the work of artists Jean Hélion, Reginald Marsh, and Salvador Dalí, as well as a set of paintings depicting New York City over a 50-year period. The museum also hosted short recitals by contemporary musicians. The Gallery of Modern Art began screening rare and classic films three times daily in April 1965, and the photography gallery opened the next month. Grace Glueck of The New York Times wrote that Hartford's art "did not exactly draw rave notices from the critics".

Not long after its opening, the Gallery of Modern Art was suffering financially. Though the museum charged an admission fee of $1 per person, it only had an average of 500 visitors on weekdays and 1,000 visitors on weekends, not enough to cover the annual operating expenses. This prompted Hartford to reorganize the museum as a nonprofit organization in mid-1965, appointing a board of trustees to manage the museum's programming and finances. Hartford also asked officials at Columbia University and New York University if they were willing to help fund the museum, though neither university was interested in doing so. Over the following year, 750 people signed up as patrons of the museum, each paying $15 to $500 a year. The museum opened a section "for the perpetuation and viewing of the best works of television" in late 1965. Weinhardt resigned as the museum's director that November, leaving the museum without a director for the next five years. The museum continued to host exhibits through 1966, including a series of animated shorts by Faith and John Hubley and a showcase of ancient Egyptian objects.

The museum continued to operate with a $580,000 annual deficit, and the museum had to spend $320,000 a year on paying off its mortgage. Hartford started selling off objects in his collection, raising $200,000 by April 1966. He planned to sell or lease 2 Columbus Circle, although a large art company had already declined an offer to lease the building because it was too large. In September 1966, Hartford offered to convey the building to Fordham University, though Fordham was hesitant to assume the building's $3.8 million mortgage. Fordham planned to move its communication-arts program in the building. The museum still hosted exhibitions and events over the next two years. Among its offerings in 1967 and 1968 were a painting collection loaned by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, a set of paintings by former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, a showcase of 19th-century Russian antiques, and a selection of sports films.

New York Cultural Center
Peter Sammartino, the chancellor of Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, expressed interest in the Gallery of Modern Art's exhibits in the late 1960s. Hartford transferred ownership of 2 Columbus Circle to the university in July 1969, and the Gallery of Modern Art was renamed the New York Cultural Center. As part of the agreement, Hartford would give at least $5 million to the university if it operated the New York Cultural Center for five years. Hartford also donated $1 million to the museum's operations, and Fairleigh S. Dickinson gave $2.5 million to help pay off the mortgage. In addition, both men agreed to cover a portion of the museum's deficit. The Cultural Center was operated by a seven-member board of trustees; the university had five seats and Hartford and his financial advisor had two seats. The university hired Raymond Rohauer as the cultural center's film curator and director, though Rohauer resigned after less than a year.

The center appointed its first director, Donald H. Karshan, in January 1970. That month, John Canaday wrote for The New York Times: "Since the change of name, the center has seemed to be willing to exhibit just about anything in order to keep the walls covered..." The Cultural Center hosted 150 shows in its five years of operation. The auditorium also hosted musical performances and film retrospectives. Mario Amaya was hired as the Cultural Center's director in early 1972. Under Amaya's leadership, daily attendance tripled from December 1971 to December 1972, with 130,000 annual visitors in that period. The basement auditorium hosted its first legitimate theatrical shows in mid-1972. Amaya planned to exhibit objects from obscure New York City museums, and he wished to expand the Cultural Center's film and musical offerings. The Wall Street Journal wrote that the auditorium hosted film screenings, organ recitals, and experimental theater performances.

In October 1974, Fairleigh Dickinson University indicated it would no longer operate the Cultural Center, citing increasing expenses, waning public support, and the expiration of its agreement with Hartford. The New York Cultural Center's trustees began seeking a buyer for the property, considering bids only from organizations that could take "full responsibility, including purchase", of 2 Columbus Circle. The trustees first put the building for sale in March 1975 for $6 million but subsequently lowered that price. The museum closed on September 14, 1975, and a cocktail party commemorating the museum was hosted the following week. Art critic Hilton Kramer wrote that the museum's closure, "while very far from being in any way central or catastrophic to New York art life, is nonetheless saddening". Following the Cultural Center's closure, St. Vincent's Hospital considered acquiring 2 Columbus Circle for $1 million and converting it into a nursing school, but the hospital dismissed the idea. Several other organizations also declined to occupy the building.

New York City government use
In December 1976, Gulf and Western Industries announced that it would purchase 2 Columbus Circle and donate the building to the government of New York City, as part of an agreement with outgoing mayor Abraham Beame. The structure would be converted into offices for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) and the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau. As part of the acquisition, the property title would first be transferred to Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance, which held a $1 million first mortgage on the building. Gulf and Western would then pay off the first mortgage, acquire the building, and deed it to the city government. Gulf and Western would spend $700,000 in total, paying $300,000 for renovations and $400,000 in maintenance costs. Gulf and Western chairman Charles Bluhdorn explained his decision to buy 2 Columbus Circle: "More than ever, this is the time for confidence and credibility in our country and our city." At the time, Gulf and Western was housed at 15 Columbus Circle, immediately to the north.

The city government would have paid no property taxes, prompting complaints from two private developers who had separately wanted to buy 2 Columbus Circle, paying $100,000 a year in property taxes. The plan was delayed for two years after Ed Koch took over as city's mayor in 1977; the building stood empty during this time. The delay was in part because Gulf and Western had to negotiate with both mayoral administrations over maintenance costs. Additionally, though the building was being renovated at the time, the Koch administration would not commit to the project in the wake of the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis. Other organizations expressed interest in 2 Columbus Circle, including the Parsons School of Design. Gulf and Western ultimately agreed to spend $900,000 on maintenance over four years. Cultural Affairs commissioner Henry Geldzahler and his partner Christopher Scott oversaw the renovation, which left the building's materials and open spaces largely intact.

The city government announced in May 1979 that the DCLA and the Convention and Visitors Bureau would move into the building later that year. The New York City Board of Estimate voted to accept Gulf and Western's donation of 2 Columbus Circle to the city in February 1980. Under the terms of the gift, the New York City government was obliged to use the building solely for "cultural purposes". This stipulation was part of a "reversionary interest" clause that ran for thirty years; if the city government did not use the building for cultural purposes during that period, Gulf and Western could take back ownership. Koch dedicated the DCLA's offices at 2 Columbus Circle in November 1980. The DCLA occupied four stories and rented out the restaurant and auditorium, and the Visitors Bureau had an information booth in the lobby and offices on three other floors.

The city government opened the City Gallery on the second story in April 1981. Among the City Gallery's exhibits were artwork by New Yorkers, paintings by elderly citizens, and a showcase of works from the city's Percent for Art program. The Visitors Bureau had 250,000 annual visitors. The building's small size continued to pose a hindrance for its occupants, at least from the public's point of view. In 1991, Paul Goldberger wrote in the Times that the city government offices fit "no better into its awkward, cramped galleries than Mr. Hartford's pictures did." Viacom, which had acquired Gulf and Western in the 1990s, inherited the building's reversionary interest. As part of a $15 million tax-incentive agreement with Viacom in 1994, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) acquired the reversionary interest in 2 Columbus Circle. Consequently, the city government was no longer obligated to use the building solely for cultural purposes.

Early efforts
By October 1995, under mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the New York City government was planning to sell or lease the building back to the private sector. The government had yet to find new space for the DCLA and the Visitors Bureau. In July 1996, faced with the increasing difficulty of selling off the neighboring New York Coliseum for development, the city government also offered 2 Columbus Circle for redevelopment. That year, Robert A. M. Stern cited 2 Columbus Circle as one of 35 modern-style buildings that he thought should be designated as city landmarks. Since it was more than thirty years old, the building was technically old enough to be designated as a city landmark. A four-member committee of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) had declined to consider designating the building as a landmark in June 1996. Although architecture critic Herbert Muschamp believed there was little chance of 2 Columbus Circle's survival, the building received a high amount of attention from preservationists.

In February 1997, the EDC announced that it had received seven proposals for the site, most of which called for the building's renovation. Among those interested in the building were the Dahesh Museum of Art, as well as developer Donald Trump, who was renovating the nearby Gulf and Western Building. The Dahesh Museum proposed converting 2 Columbus Circle back into a museum, expanding its own space considerably in the process. Trump, who had spoken negatively of 2 Columbus Circle, planned to demolish the building to make way for the hotel; he was the only bidder who proposed destroying the building. That April, the New York City Council's Land Use Committee voted to prevent the DCLA, the building's only tenant, from leasing office space elsewhere. The committee expressed concern that the Giuliani administration did not even disclose general details about the site's future. The Giuliani administration claimed that, because the EDC owned 2 Columbus Circle's reversionary interest, the building did not have to undergo public review, which typically was required as part of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.

The visitor center in the building closed in September 1997, and the DCLA vacated 2 Columbus Circle in April 1998. Filmmakers occasionally used the empty building for film shoots, painting over portions of the wood paneling inside. EDC officials had not yet picked a developer for 2 Columbus Circle because they wanted the site to be redeveloped along with the Coliseum; the city selected a developer for the Coliseum project, which became Time Warner Center, in July 1998. That October, the Alexander Calder Foundation proposed renovating 2 Columbus Circle's facade. At the time, the most expensive offer for the site was Dahesh Museum's $10 million proposal, which had received considerable support from the public. Among the supporters of Dahesh's bid were Huntington Hartford's daughter Juliet Hartford; New York state senator Thomas K. Duane; sculptor Richard Lippold; historian Robert Rosenblum; and local community group Committee for Environmentally Sound Development. Conversely, the Giuliani administration preferred Trump's proposal to demolish the building. The project remained stalled through the end of the 1990s.

Selection of developer
In March 2000, the Giuliani administration again started soliciting bids for 2 Columbus Circle. The previous redevelopment effort had been abandoned because it had been planned in conjunction with Time Warner Center, which was already underway. This time, the city government sought to replace the building entirely, with the EDC describing 2 Columbus Circle as a "prime location for residential apartments". The city received thirteen bids by the deadline of May 2, 2000, including two bids from Joseph Moinian and the Dahesh Museum, who both proposed preserving the exterior as-is. Several major developers, such as hotelier Ian Schrager, had declined to submit bids for 2 Columbus Circle. Preservationists continued advocating for the building to be designated as a city landmark. Even though the LPC had indicated that it would not hold landmark hearings for the building, many supporters of 2 Columbus Circle's preservation had coalesced behind Dahesh's bid.

Though city officials had initially promised that the building would be sold quickly, the EDC had still not selected a winning bid after over a year. In March 2001, the Giuliani administration directed the Columbus Circle advisory board to review the proposals for 2 Columbus Circle. At the end of Giuliani's tenure as mayor in December 2001, there were rumors that Giuliani had selected Trump as the site's developer, but the EDC denied the allegations. Trump claimed in 2002 that Giuliani had promised to designate him as the site's developer. By early 2002, a decision was still pending, and members of the public expressed concerns about the lack of transparency surrounding the project.

Under the administration of newly elected mayor Michael Bloomberg, the EDC announced in June 2002 that it would sell 2 Columbus Circle to the American Craft Museum (later the Museum of Arts and Design, or MAD). The museum had not been one of the original bidders. Its bid of $15–20 million was slightly lower than Trump's bid, but EDC president Andrew Alper said Trump's proposal had been rejected because there were already two hotels next to Columbus Circle. The city government planned to sell 2 Columbus Circle for $17 million and allocate another $4.5 million in funding to the project. The American Craft Museum planned to spend at least $30 million on renovations, including replacement of the deteriorating facade. The museum invited small architectural firms to submit proposals for redesigning 2 Columbus Circle, and eleven firms expressed interest. In mid-2002, the American Craft Museum selected four finalists to participate in an architectural design competition for the building. The museum rebranded itself as the Museum of Arts and Design that October.

Preservation controversy
MAD hired Brad Cloepfil of the firm Allied Works Architecture to redesign 2 Columbus Circle in November 2002. Cloepfil's design for the headquarters of Wieden+Kennedy and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, as well as that for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, had influenced museum officials to hire him. Cloepfil, who was based in Portland, Oregon, opened an office in New York City specifically to oversee the building's renovation. Meanwhile, preservationist groups continued to advocate for retaining Stone's design. These included Landmark West and the American Institute of Architects, which sponsored a panel discussion about 2 Columbus Circle in early 2003. By then, the facade was in such bad shape that a sidewalk shed had been erected around the building to protect pedestrians from falling debris. Architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable, who criticized the preservation efforts, said the metal pieces behind the facade's marble slabs had rusted so severely that the entire facade would have to be replaced anyway.

Cloepfil presented designs for the building's renovation to the New York City Planning Commission in March 2003. The announcement was controversial, and several opponents wrote editorials about the design. Preservationists requested that the LPC hold public hearings for 2 Columbus Circle, but the commissioners were reluctant to do so, as they did not believe the building had cultural, architectural, or historical merit. In November 2003, several groups and individuals filed a lawsuit in the New York Supreme Court to prevent the building's sale from being finalized. The plaintiffs requested a environmental impact assessment for 2 Columbus Circle. The same month, the Preservation League of New York State placed 2 Columbus Circle on its "Seven to Save", its annual list of the state's most endangered historic sites. The National Trust for Historic Preservation also described 2 Columbus Circle as being one of the United States' "most endangered historic places" in 2004.

Cloepfil revised his design in January 2004. A state judge ruled against the preservationists that April, allowing the sale to proceed. The museum had difficulties fundraising for its new quarters; the museum's budget had risen to $50 million by mid-2004, but MAD had only raised half that amount. Meanwhile, the vacant interior spaces had deteriorated considerably, and some areas had been damaged by burst water pipes. Other parts of the building had buckled or warped wooden floors and moisture-damaged walls. Fences had been erected around the ground-floor loggia to deter homeless people from sleeping there.

Manhattan borough officials approved the sale of the building to MAD for $17 million in August 2004. Landmark West and the National Trust for Historic Preservation sued in an attempt to nullify the approval, but a state judge upheld the previous ruling in early 2005. Preservationists, joined by residents of the nearby Parc Vendome development, then filed a lawsuit to force the LPC to hold a public hearing for 2 Columbus Circle. The LPC refused to host another hearing on the matter, and MAD signed a contract in May 2005 to finalize its purchase. Preservationists next accused LPC chairman Robert Tierney of colluding with MAD, filing a lawsuit in an attempt to remove him from his position. That June, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) cited Stone's design as being among the world's 100 most endangered sites for 2006.

Renovation
On June 29, 2005, a week after the WMF list was published, the DOB approved an alteration permit for renovations to 2 Columbus Circle. Members of the LPC continued to disagree publicly over the merits of designating the building as a city landmark. Sarah Bradford Landau, one of the four LPC commissioners who had voted not to hold a full hearing for the building in 1996, was among those in favor of hosting a public hearing. A state court ruled in favor of MAD in September 2005. The museum finalized its purchase of 2 Columbus Circle the next month. At this point, MAD had raised $48 million of its $65 million capital fund. Seven legal challenges, which included five lawsuits and two appeals, had increased the project's budget to $40 million. MAD director Holly Hotchner saw a benefit to the legal disputes, saying: "The controversy has given us $5 million of free advertising."

Landmark West filed its eighth legal challenge against the project in October 2005, as construction was starting. The group failed to halt the project and, in November 2005, installed a "shame cam" that livestreamed the work on the facade. Work on the building was temporarily halted in early 2006 after workers were caught using a small bulldozer to demolish portions of the structure that were supposed to have been deconstructed manually. Most of 2 Columbus Circle's marble facade had been removed by April 2006. To raise additional money for the museum, a billboard for the film The Da Vinci Code had been erected on the scaffolding around the building. The billboard's presence prompted controversy soon after it was erected, especially among preservationists who had opposed the renovation, and MAD disassembled the sign within two weeks. By mid-2007, the exterior marble cladding and portholes had been removed, and workers had made incisions in the concrete floors and walls.

Reopening and occupancy
MAD's capital fund had increased to $95 million by mid-2008, of which $85 million had been raised. The museum also renamed 2 Columbus Circle the Jerome and Simona Chazen Building, after the capital campaign's chairman Jerome Chazen and his wife Simona. MAD opened its new location at 2 Columbus Circle on September 27, 2008. At the time, the restaurant atop the building was projected to open early the next year. The renovation of 2 Columbus Circle was one of several projects to be completed around Columbus Circle in the 2000s, including the Time Warner Center and a reconstruction of the circle itself.

The ninth-floor restaurant was named Robert, after event planner Robert Isabell, who had been involved in its development before his death in mid-2009. Robert ultimately opened in December 2009. In part because of the Columbus Circle location, MAD had 500,000 visitors in 2009 alone, far surpassing its projections of 300,000 annual visitors. , MAD continued to occupy 2 Columbus Circle; one former director, Glenn Adamson, described the building as being "expensive to operate". The Robert restaurant and the gift shop generated $1.8 million in annual income, more than the amount raised through museum subscriptions in 2019.

Original structure
When 2 Columbus Circle was built, there was much criticism of its design. The Times reported in 1963 that the building had been likened to a seraglio and a traffic island. Ada Louise Huxtable derided 2 Columbus Circle as a "die-cut Venetian palazzo on lolly", leading the building to be nicknamed "The Lollipop Building". The critic Alfred Frankfurter took issue with the wood paneling in the museum and the "spurious South Sea atmosphere" of the restaurants. Even the building's architectural style was disputed. The critic Stuart Preston compared the building to a Venetian palazzo, but Frankfurter wrote: "To attribute a 'Venetian' style to the design is to libel on the grandeur of the Queen of the Adriatic." Architectural critic Herbert Muschamp said much of the controversy arose from the fact that "this cultural campanile violated the modernist taboo against historically derived decoration".

Conversely, when 2 Columbus Circle opened, Thomas V. Ennis of the Times wrote that the building was a "bright spot" on the midtown section of Eighth Avenue. Olga Gueft, writing for Interiors magazine, said the colonnades and portholes "are too winsome for heavyweight criticism", contrasting with the "glittering ice-cage architecture" that was prevalent across New York City at the time. Newsday wrote that the building "represents a vivid departure from the steel-and-glass towers that have dominated many of New York's avenues in recent years." Ellen Perry of Progressive Architecture wrote: "This gallery is Stone-work, from what might be called the Middle Stone Age".

In 1974, Manuela Hoelterhoff wrote for The Wall Street Journal: "Slowly, that architectural oddity [...] is recovering from its peculiar birth in the middle of a traffic island 10 years ago", largely because of the Cultural Center's diverse offerings. The next year, John Canaday wrote in The New York Times that the building was a "white elephant", constricted largely by its small lot area and designed "in a weak moment" for Stone. According to novelist Tom Wolfe, the building was so widely disliked that Stone had to resort "to saying such things as, 'Every taxi driver in New York will tell you it's his favorite building.'" By the late 1990s, Huxtable said she got "a little lift, a sense of pleasure" when she walked past 2 Columbus Circle, as it was the circle's "only identifiable object". Muschamp called the building "a latter-day tribute to John Ruskin and the road not taken by modern architects after the collapse of the Gothic Revival in the late 19th century". In 2003, Laurie Kerr of The Wall Street Journal compared 2 Columbus Circle to the original World Trade Center, saying that neither project "ever fit into any of the architectural narratives of the city" as Lever House and the Plaza Hotel did.

Commentary on renovation
When 2 Columbus Circle was proposed for redevelopment in the late 1990s, there was much commentary in favor of preservation. Robert A. M. Stern believed the building merited landmark protection "by any and every standard of what a landmark is", and he described the structure as "important, thoughtful and carefully articulated". Tom Wolfe also spoke in favor of preservation, saying: that the building "really is a jewel. It's this lovely white [...] piece of drama!" David Childs, the architect of the Time Warner Center, expressed support for preserving Stone's design at 2 Columbus Circle. Other commentators favored the building's redevelopment. Donald Trump said 2 Columbus Circle "has got to be the worst building in the city of New York" and that it was "universally disliked" until the redevelopment plans were announced. The Calder Foundation's director Alexander S. C. Rower said: "We don't like Ed Stone's portholes."

Controversy continued after Cloepfil was announced as the renovation architect in 2002. Bernard Tschumi of the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation held an unfavorable view of the facade's renovation, saying that Stone's original design should either be preserved or the entire structure should be razed. Kate Wood of Landmark West said the plan "utterly erases Stone's vision for 2 Columbus Circle" in discarding the portholes and loggias, while Wolfe wrote a two-part New York Times editorial detailing his objections to the new design. By contrast, MAD director Holly Hotchner likened the existing design to a mausoleum, while MoMA curator Terence Riley compared the building to "a patient that has been on life support for so long that none of the doctors are still alive".

The LPC's refusal to hold public hearings for the building was itself a subject of contention. Muschamp described the LPC's decision as "a shocking dereliction of public duty", and Nicolai Ouroussoff cited the building as an example of the LPC's inability "to distinguish between preserving the city's architectural legacy and embalming it". Wolfe expressed a similar view against the LPC commissioners at a press conference in 2004, saying: "When anyone asks about 2 Columbus Circle, the commissioners dive under their desks." Conversely, Justin Davidson opposed the efforts to designate the building as a city landmark, saying it "minimizes flexibility and privileges the status quo, which in this case is dilapidation and uselessness". Huxtable concurred with this view, writing in The Wall Street Journal that opponents seemed "to be operating by tunnel vision and a blind resistance to change". According to Huxtable, the attempts at preservation amounted to "an unworthy performance that did little credit to anyone who cares about preservation and can only serve as an object lesson of how not to go about it."

Renovated structure
James Gardner, architecture critic for the New York Sun wrote that the original building "was indubitably a landmark; the best that can be said for its replacement is that, if we're lucky, no one will ever notice it." Five years after the renovation was complete, Gardner maintained that the redesigned structure was "far inferior" to Stone's original design. Francis Morrone, also of the Sun, wrote: "Where Stone's original building read as neatly scaled to its setting, Mr. Cloepfil's redesign reads as a piece of abstract sculpture that, at building scale, seems all wrong." Witold Rybczynski wrote in Slate that the new design "feels like an alien presence", and architecture critic Justin Davidson said, "This version won't satisfy those who thought it should never have been touched." In 2008, Ouroussoff named the renovated building as one of seven buildings in New York City that should be torn down because they "have a traumatic effect on the city".

Some critics defended the new facade. Huxtable wrote that "criticism of the structure has been alarmingly out of proportion and flagrantly out of control". Paul Goldberger praised the new building's "functional, logical, and pleasant" interior in a review in The New Yorker, even though the "proportions and composition seem just as odd and awkward as they ever did".

title: 2 Columbus Circle


text:
Richard Verreau

Richard Verreau, (January 1, 1926 – July 6, 2005) was a French-Canadian operatic tenor, particularly associated with the French and Italian repertories.

Biography
Born Richard Verreault, in Château-Richer, near Quebec City, he began singing as a child in church choir. He studied at the Laval University with Émile Larochelle. In 1949, on a Quebec government scholarship, he went to Paris and studied with Raoul Jobin. He made his debut at the Opéra de Lyon in 1951, where he sang the lead tenor roles in Lakmé, Manon, Mireille, and Les pêcheurs de perles.

In Europe, Verreau performed in Belgium, Italy, Austria, and even Russia (then the USSR). He made his debut at the Royal Opera House in London, as the Duke in Rigoletto and Iopas in Les Troyens in 1957, other roles there included: Alfredo in La traviata, Rodolfo in La bohème, Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly.

Back in North America, he appeared regularly with the Opera Guild of Montréal and the Théâtre lyrique de Nouvelle-France. He made his debut at the New York City Opera in 1956, as Wilhelm Meister in Mignon, followed by his debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Faust, in 1963. He appeared at the San Francisco Opera, as Roméo in Roméo et Juliette.

He also performed as soloist with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Verreau was praised for the velvety quality of his voice, and his warm tone, unfortunately, an unsuccessful throat surgery ended his career in 1977.

In 1998, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2000, he was made an Officer of the National Order of Quebec.

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

title: Richard Verreau


text:
Goodbye Flatland

Goodbye Flatland is a 2003 album by Canadian alternative rock band 54-40.

Track listing

 * 1) "Ride" – 3:53
 * 2) "Animal in Pain" – 2:50
 * 3) "Take Me Out" – 4:01
 * 4) "Hope the Hell I Haven't Died" – 3:11
 * 5) "Not Enough to Make You Happy" – 3:33
 * 6) "Who is Sylvia" – 4:18
 * 7) "Broken Girl" – 4:16
 * 8) "Goodbye Flatland" – 3:26
 * 9) "Secret" – 4:31
 * 10) "Giants" – 3:40
 * 11) "Seventeen On" – 4:23
 * 12) "Wish I Knew" – 2:48

Production

 * Howard Redekopp - Producer, Engineer
 * Warne Livesey - Mixer

title: Goodbye Flatland


text:
Alta Flights

Alta Flights was a charter airline based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It operated regional passenger and cargo charters throughout Canada and the United States. Its main base was Edmonton International Airport, with hubs at Edmonton City Centre Airport and at Calgary International Airport.

History
The airline was established and started operations in 1986 as Alberta Express. It started scheduled services on 19 November 2001. Scheduled services were suspended on 1 January 2006. It was wholly owned by Telford Resources and has 105 employees. As of 1 October 2014, Alta Flights became part of Sunwest Aviation.

title: Alta Flights


text:
Talk:Odisha

Population
Someone keeps trying to update the population with 2022 numbers. The most recent attempt was to make the population "4,41,31,247." Even if that number is supposed to be "44,131,247" it is not supported by the cited reference. Please provide a current, valid reference for any new population estimate if you have expertise on the latest population estimates. Thank you. Aroundthewayboy (talk) 01:02, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Including Dialects in the Language pie chart
I replaced the data in the Language pie chart to include Dialects as distinct entities. This was reverted back as a "contentious and unsourced" change. The data is not all contentious. It was credibly sourced from the 2011 Census. The same source was mentioned as: C-16 Population by Mother Tongue: Odisha

those languages which have a population less than 0.5% have been summed under Others

if you want to verify these numbers you can download the table and see for yourself: https://censusindia.gov.in/nada/index.php/catalog/10217/download/13329/DDW-C16-STMT-MDDS-2100.XLSX

Including the dialects presents a better picture of linguistic diversity in Odisha. now, can the pie chart be reverted to the one with dialects?? —  g0d0   talk  contribs  21:08, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
 * That revert was not done as a "contentious and unsourced" change. I didn't even say "contentious and unsourced". My explanation was, in full, "Removed contentious, unsourced, badly explained changes." I stand by that. Your edit summary said what changes you made but there's no reason to do that; I can see what changes you made by just...reading them. Edit summaries need to explain why you made the changes you made. Yours read "included dialects and changed pie colors" and that tells me absolutely nothing I couldn't have learned from looking at your edit. Why did you make these changes? I have no idea.

 * In fact, your edit summary isn't even fully accurate because it didn't say anything about the most contentious part of your change. You replaced the text "Kharavela was a Jain ruler" with "Kharavela was Kalinga ruler." You removed a fact about Kharavela's faith. Why? If you'd used the edit summary box to include a decent explanation of this change, I probably would have let it stand because even though I could have undone it as unsourced, calling Kharavela a "Kalinga ruler" is obviously true.

 * You didn't explain why you changed the table's colors. What was the point of doing that?

 * You didn't include a source for all of those updates in the table. You didn't include a source for the four additional entries you added to that table. If the sources in your message here are reliable, and I think they are, they needed to be included in your edit to the article.

 * I apologize because I know this is frustrating. The problem is, the topic area of South Asia is one of the most contentious parts of Wikipedia. In light of years and years and years of conflict on this website regarding it, I would say that if something of substance gets added without a source to an article that has anything to do with South Asia, it should probably get reverted.  City O f  Silver  02:11, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @CityOfSilver hi, my bad I didn't mention why I changed the pie and its colours. I changed them to match the colours of the map above it. Honestly, what colours are used isn't important, the previously used colours will be fine too as long as the dialects are mentioned.
 * To explain why the dialects need to be included... a pie chart with only major languages presents a misleading picture of languages prevalent in Odisha. for example, dialects like Sambalpuri is distinct from Odia and Sadri is distinct from Hindi, they are only similar in the script used.
 * another reason is that, the map shows languages like Kui and Sambalpuri as widespread languages, however this is only geographical popularity. The pie inclusive of dialects would show that they actually have very small shares of population.
 * Also, that ruler thing wasnt my edit, someone before me maybe. I only added the linguistic map, and changed the pie.
 * and thanks for the tip, ill make sure to add Why i made changes henceforth, instead of what. —  g0d0   talk  contribs  07:04, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Why "d" and "sh"?
The article states the pronunciation is [oɽiˈsa].

In other words, Orisa.

How did we arrive at this nonsensical spelling "Odisha" when Orissa was already correct just the way it was?

66.97.20.206 (talk) 23:29, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

 * It's in the article. — kashmīrī  TALK  04:39, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Odisha


text:
Nevada State Route 207

State Route 207 (SR 207) is an 11.082 mi state highway in western Douglas County, Nevada, United States. Commonly known as the Kingsbury Grade, it is one of three Nevada highways that connect the western edge of the state to the Lake Tahoe region through the Carson Range. The route was part of State Route 19 prior to 1976.

Route description
SR 207 begins at a junction with U.S. Route 50 in Stateline, less than 1 mi from the California state line near the southern shores of Lake Tahoe. From there, the route heads eastward on an uphill climb through the Kingsbury area to travel through Daggett Pass (elevation 7344 ft).

After exiting the pass, SR 207 continues its trek eastward through Toiyabe National Forest lands. It goes through several switchbacks, eventually turning southward as it descends the mountains. The road goes down an escarpment to the Carson Valley floor. SR 207 comes to an end at its junction with Foothill Road (SR 206), at the site of Mottsville west of Gardnerville.

History

A road connecting Lake Tahoe to the Carson Valley, situated in the approximate location of today's SR 207, appears on Nevada state maps as early as 1919. By 1929, this unimproved road was included in the state highway system as the northwestern end of the former SR 19, a longer route stretching from Lake Tahoe through Minden and south to the California state line near Holbrook. This section of the former SR 19 was 13 mi long, about 9 mi of which comprised the Kingsbury Grade portion of highway. SR 19 through the mountains remained unimproved for many years; the route was not paved until 1967. By 1968, the eastern end of the Kingsbury Grade was moved southwards to line up with what is now Mottsville Lane, mirroring the approximately 11 mi alignment of the present highway.

Following the realignment, the Kingsbury Grade section of SR 19 was not altered until the 1976 renumbering of Nevada's state highway system on July 1, 1976. In that process, this portion of SR 19 was assigned to the new SR 207. This change was first seen on state highway maps in 1978. Also included in the new SR 207 was the 3 mi section of Mottsville Lane which connects Kingsbury Grade to SR 88, making SR 207 about 14 mi long; however, this section appears to have been removed from the route by 1983. The route has been largely unchanged since.

title: Nevada State Route 207


text:
Al-Wazir

Al-Wazir (الوزير) is an Arabic language surname. Notable people with the surname include:
 * Intissar al-Wazir (1941), member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and a former PNA minister
 * Kamel al-Wazir, Transport Minister of Egypt
 * Khalil al-Wazir (1935–1988), Palestinian leader and co-founder of the nationalist party Fatah
 * Tarek Al-Wazir (1971), politician in the German Green Party

title: Al-Wazir


text:
The Carol Duvall Show

The Carol Duvall Show is an arts and crafts show which aired on the HGTV cable channel from 1994 to 2005 hosted by Carol Duvall. It was also broadcast on the DIY Network from 2005 until late-2009. Recordings of segments from the show can be viewed on their website.

The show is devoted to demonstrating and teaching a wide variety of crafts from very basic "cut and glue" projects to intricate polymer clay creations. Duvall's program was one of the original offerings on the newly founded Home & Garden Television network in 1994, and it has remained one of the lifestyle network's most popular shows throughout its 12-year run. She introduced many polymer clay artists to the community including Judy Belcher, Maureen Carlson, Kim Cavender, Katherine Dewey, Emi Fukushima, Syndee Holt, Debbie Jackson, Donna Kato, Barbara McGuire, Ann Mitchell, Karen Mitchell, Becky Meverden, Lisa Pavelka, Gail Ritchey, Nan Roche, Michelle Ross, and Bob Wiley who have inspired countless polymer enthusiasts.

The "Carol Duvall Show" was a popular DIY and crafting television program that aired from 1994 to 2005. Hosted by Carol Duvall, the show featured a wide range of creative projects, crafting techniques, and interviews with skilled artisans. It became a go-to source for enthusiasts seeking inspiration and guidance in various crafting endeavors, showcasing everything from paper crafts to home decor ideas. The program had a significant impact on the crafting community and left a lasting legacy in the world of do-it-yourself crafting.

The show also featured interviews with crafters and fine artists - painters, sculptors, glass-blowers, etc. with footage of them at work in their studios.

The cancellation of the show on HGTV caused dismay among many of her fans; whose protests might have influenced the decision to continue broadcasting it on the DIY Network (owned by the same parent company Scripps Networks).

title: The Carol Duvall Show


text:
Nadir of American race relations

The nadir of American race relations was the period in African-American history and the history of the United States from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the early 20th century, when racism in the country, and particularly anti-black racism, was more open and pronounced than it had ever been during any other period in the nation's history. During this period, African Americans lost access to many of the civil rights which they had gained during Reconstruction. Anti-black violence, lynchings, segregation, legalized racial discrimination, and expressions of white supremacy all increased. Asian Americans were also not spared from such sentiments.

Historian Rayford Logan coined the phrase in his 1954 book The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901. Logan tried to determine the period when "the Negro's status in American society" reached its lowest point. He argued for 1901 as its end, suggesting that race relations improved after that year; other historians, such as John Hope Franklin and Henry Arthur Callis, argued for dates as late as 1923.

The term continues to be used; most notably, it is used in books by James W. Loewen as recently as 2006, and it is also used in books by other scholars. Loewen chooses later dates, arguing that the post-Reconstruction era was in fact one of widespread hope for racial equity due to idealistic Northern support for civil rights. In Loewen's view, the true nadir only began when Northern Republicans ceased supporting Southern blacks' rights around 1890, and it lasted until the United States entered World War II in 1941. This period followed the financial Panic of 1873 and a continuing decline in cotton prices. It overlapped with both the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, and was characterized by the nationwide sundown town phenomenon.

Logan's focus was exclusively on African Americans in the Southern United States, but the time period which he covered also represents the worst period of anti-Chinese discrimination and wider anti-Asian discrimination which was due to fear of the so-called Yellow Peril, which included harassment and violence on the West Coast of the United States, such as the destruction of Chinatown, Denver as well as anti-Asian discrimination in Canada, particularly after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

Reconstruction revisionism
In the early part of the 20th century, some white historians put forth the claim that Reconstruction was a tragic period, when Republicans who were motivated by revenge and profit used troops to force Southerners to accept corrupt governments that were run by unscrupulous Northerners and unqualified blacks. Such scholars generally dismissed the idea that blacks could ever be capable of governing societies.

Notable proponents of this view were referred to as the Dunning School, named after William Archibald Dunning, an influential historian at Columbia University. Another Columbia professor, John Burgess, was notorious for writing that "black skin means membership in a race of men which has never of itself... created any civilization of any kind."

The Dunning School's view of Reconstruction held sway for years. It was represented in D. W. Griffith's popular movie The Birth of a Nation (1915) and to some extent, it was also represented in Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind (1934). More recent historians of the period have rejected many of the Dunning School's conclusions, and in their place, they offer a different assessment.

History of Reconstruction
Today's consensus regards Reconstruction as a time of idealism and hope, a time which was marked by some practical achievements. The Radical Republicans who passed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were, for the most part, motivated by a desire to help freedmen. African-American historian W. E. B. Du Bois put this view forward in 1910, and later historians Kenneth Stampp and Eric Foner expanded it. The Republican Reconstruction governments had their share of corruption, but they benefited many whites, and were no more corrupt than Democratic governments or Northern Republican governments.

Furthermore, the Reconstruction governments established public education and social welfare institutions for the first time, improving education for both blacks and whites, and they also tried to improve social conditions for the many people who were left in poverty after the long war. No Reconstruction state government was dominated by blacks; in fact, blacks did not attain a level of representation that was equal to the size of their population in any state.

Reconstruction era violence
For several years after the Civil War, the federal government, pushed by Northern opinion, showed that it was willing to intervene to protect the rights of black Americans. There were limits, however, to Republican efforts on behalf of blacks: In Washington, a proposal of land reform made by the Freedmen's Bureau, which would have granted blacks plots on the plantation land (forty acres and a mule) on which they worked, never came to pass. In the South, many former Confederates were stripped of the right to vote, but they resisted Reconstruction with violence and intimidation. James Loewen notes that, between 1865 and 1867, when white Democrats controlled the government, whites murdered an average of one black person every day in Hinds County, Mississippi. Black schools were especially targeted: School buildings frequently were burned, and teachers were flogged and occasionally murdered. The postwar terrorist group Ku Klux Klan (KKK) acted with significant local support, attacking freedmen and their white allies; the group largely was suppressed by federal efforts under the Enforcement Acts of 1870–1871, but did not disappear, and it had a resurgence in the early 20th century.

Despite these failures, blacks continued to vote and attend school. Literacy soared, and many African Americans were elected to local and statewide offices, with several serving in Congress. Because of the black community's commitment to education, the majority of blacks were literate by 1900.

Continued violence in the South, especially heated around electoral campaigns, sapped Northern intentions. More significantly, after the long years and losses of the Civil War, Northerners had lost heart for the massive commitment of money and arms that would have been required to stifle the white insurgency. The financial panic of 1873 disrupted the economy nationwide, causing more difficulties. The white insurgency took on new life ten years after the war. Conservative white Democrats waged an increasingly violent campaign, with the Colfax and Coushatta massacres in Louisiana in 1873 as signs. The next year saw the formation of paramilitary groups, such as the White League in Louisiana (1874) and Red Shirts in Mississippi and the Carolinas, that worked openly to turn Republicans out of office, disrupt black organizing, and intimidate and suppress black voting. They invited press coverage. One historian described them as "the military arm of the Democratic Party."

In 1874, in a continuation of the disputed gubernatorial election of 1872, thousands of White League militiamen fought against New Orleans police and Louisiana state militia and won. They turned out the Republican governor and installed the Democrat Samuel D. McEnery, took over the capitol, state house and armory for a few days, and then retreated in the face of Federal troops. This was known as the "Battle of Liberty Place".

End of Reconstruction
Northerners waffled and finally capitulated to the South, giving up on being able to control election violence. Abolitionist leaders like Horace Greeley began to ally themselves with Democrats in attacking Reconstruction governments. By 1875, there was a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. President Ulysses S. Grant, who as a general had led the Union to victory in the Civil War, initially refused to send troops to Mississippi in 1875 when the governor of the state asked him to. Violence surrounded the presidential election of 1876 in many areas, beginning a trend. After Grant, it would be many years before any President would do anything to extend the protection of the law to black people.

White supremacy
As noted above, white paramilitary forces contributed to whites' taking over power in the late 1870s. A brief coalition of populists took over in some states, but Democrats had returned to power after the 1880s. From 1890 to 1908, they proceeded to pass legislation and constitutional amendments to disenfranchise most blacks and many poor whites, with Mississippi and Louisiana creating new state constitutions in 1890 and 1895 respectively, to disenfranchise African Americans. Democrats used a combination of restrictions on voter registration and voting methods, such as poll taxes, literacy and residency requirements, and ballot box changes. The main push came from elite Democrats in the Solid South, where blacks were a majority of voters. The elite Democrats also acted to disenfranchise poor whites. African Americans were an absolute majority of the population in Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, and represented more than 40% of the population in four other former Confederate states. Accordingly, many whites perceived African Americans as a major political threat, because in free and fair elections, they would hold the balance of power in a majority of the South. South Carolina U.S. Senator Ben Tillman proudly proclaimed in 1900, "We have done our level best [to prevent blacks from voting]... we have scratched our heads to find out how we could eliminate the last one of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it."

Conservative white Democratic governments passed Jim Crow legislation, creating a system of legal racial segregation in public and private facilities. Blacks were separated in schools and the few hospitals, were restricted in seating on trains, and had to use separate sections in some restaurants and public transportation systems. They were often barred from some stores, or forbidden to use lunchrooms, restrooms and fitting rooms. Because they could not vote, they could not serve on juries, which meant they had little if any legal recourse in the system. Between 1889 and 1922, as political disenfranchisement and segregation were being established, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) calculates lynchings reached their worst level in history. Almost 3,500 people fell victim to lynching, almost all of them black men.

Lynchings
Historian James Loewen notes that lynching emphasized the powerlessness of blacks: "the defining characteristic of a lynching is that the murder takes place in public, so everyone knows who did it, yet the crime goes unpunished." African American civil rights activist Ida Bell Wells-Barnett conducted one of the first systematic studies of the subject. She documented that the most prevalent accusation against lynching victims was murder or attempted murder. She found blacks were "lynched for anything or nothing" – for wife-beating, stealing hogs, being "saucy to white people", sleeping with a consenting white woman – for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Blacks who were economically successful faced reprisals or sanctions. When Richard Wright tried to train to become an optometrist and lens-grinder, the other men in the shop threatened him until he was forced to leave. In 1911 blacks were barred from participating in the Kentucky Derby because African Americans won more than half of the first twenty-eight races. Through violence and legal restrictions, whites often prevented blacks from working as common laborers, much less as skilled artisans or in the professions. Under such conditions, even the most ambitious and talented black person found it extremely difficult to advance.

This situation called the views of Booker T. Washington, the most prominent black leader during the early part of the nadir into question. He had argued that black people could better themselves by doing hard work and being thrifty. He believed that they had to master basic work before they went on to pursue college careers and professional aspirations. Washington believed that his programs trained blacks for the lives which they were likely to lead as well as for the jobs which they could get in the South.

However, as W. E. B. Du Bois stated...

"...'it is utterly impossible, under modern competitive methods, for working men and property-owners to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage'." Washington had always (though often clandestinely) supported the right of black suffrage, and had fought against disfranchisement laws in Georgia, Louisiana, and other Southern states. This included secretive funding of litigation resulting in Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475 (1903), which lost due to Supreme Court reluctance to interfere with states' rights.

African American migration
Many blacks left the South in an attempt to find better living and working conditions. In 1879, Logan notes, "some 40,000 Negroes virtually stampeded from Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia for the Midwest." More significantly, beginning in about 1915, many blacks moved to Northern cities in what became known as the Great Migration. Through the 1930s, more than 1.5 million blacks would leave the South for better lives in the North, seeking work and the chance to escape from lynchings and legal segregation. While they faced difficulties, overall, they had better chances in the North. They had to make great cultural changes, as most went from rural areas to major industrial cities, and they also had to adjust from being rural workers to being urban workers. As an example, in its years of expansion, the Pennsylvania Railroad recruited tens of thousands of workers from the South. In the South, alarmed whites, worried that their labor force was leaving, often tried to block black migration.

Black Americans who fled racial oppression either returned to retrieve the rest of their family or sent train tickets back home. In response, as white southerners observed train platforms packed with African Americans, several cities passed ordinances that made it illegal for trains to accept pre-paid tickets. There were ordinances put in place to also prevent group travel of Black families or clusters of African Americans tried to purchase group rates.

Northern reactions
During the nadir, Northern areas struggled with upheaval and hostility. In the Midwest and West, many towns posted "sundown" warnings, threatening to kill African Americans who remained overnight. These "Sundown" towns also expelled African-Americans who had settled in those towns both before and during Reconstruction. Monuments to Confederate War dead were erected across the nation – as far away as in Montana, for example.

Black housing was often segregated in the North. There was competition for jobs and housing as blacks entered cities which were also the destination of millions of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. As more blacks moved north, they encountered racism where they had to battle over territory, often against Irish American communities, including in support of local political power bases. In some regions, blacks could not serve on juries. Blackface shows, in which whites dressed as blacks portrayed African Americans as ignorant clowns, were popular in North and South. The Supreme Court reflected conservative tendencies and did not overrule Southern constitutional changes resulting in disfranchisement. In 1896, the Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" facilities for blacks were constitutional; the Court was made up almost entirely of Northerners. However, equal facilities were rarely provided, as there was no state or federal legislation requiring them. It would not be until 58 years later, with Brown v. Board of Education (1954), that the Court overruled the decision.

While there were critics in the scientific community such as Franz Boas, eugenics and scientific racism were promoted in academia by many scientists, like Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant, who argued "scientific evidence" for the racial superiority of whites and thereby worked to justify racial segregation and second-class citizenship for blacks.

Ku Klux Klan
Numerous black people had voted for Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 election, based on his promise to work for them. Instead, he segregated government workplaces and employment in some agencies. The film The Birth of a Nation (1915), which celebrated the original Ku Klux Klan, was shown at the White House to President Wilson and his cabinet members. Writing in 1921 to Joseph Tumulty, Wilson said of the film "I have always felt that this was a very unfortunate production and I wish most sincerely that its production might be avoided, particularly in communities where there are so many colored people."

The Birth of a Nation resulted in the rebirth of the Klan, which in the 1920s had more power and influence than the original Klan ever did. In 1924, the Klan had four million members. It also controlled the governorship and a majority of the state legislature in Indiana, and exerted a powerful political influence in Arkansas, Oklahoma, California, Georgia, Oregon, and Texas.

Mob violence and massacres
In the years during and after World War I there were great social tensions in the nation. In addition to the Great Migration and immigration from Europe, African-American Army veterans, newly demobilized, sought jobs, and as trained soldiers, were less likely to acquiesce to discrimination. Massacres and attacks on blacks that developed out of strikes and economic competition occurred in Houston, Philadelphia, and East St. Louis in 1917.

In 1919, there were so many violent attacks in several major cities that the summer of that year became known as Red Summer. The Chicago race riot of 1919 erupted into mob violence for several days. It left 15 whites and 23 blacks dead, over 500 injured and more than 1,000 homeless. An investigation found that ethnic Irish, who had established their own power base earlier on the South Side, were heavily implicated in the riots. The 1921 Tulsa race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was even more deadly; white mobs invaded and burned the Greenwood district of Tulsa; 1,256 homes were destroyed and 39 people (26 black, 13 white) were confirmed killed, although recent investigations suggest that the number of black deaths could be considerably higher.

Culture
Black literacy levels, which rose during Reconstruction, continued to increase through this period. The NAACP was established in 1909, and by 1920 the group won a few important anti-discrimination lawsuits. African Americans, such as Du Bois and Wells-Barnett, continued the tradition of advocacy, organizing, and journalism which helped spur abolitionism, and also developed new tactics that helped to spur the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The Harlem Renaissance and the popularity of jazz music during the early part of the 20th century made many Americans more aware of black culture and more accepting of black celebrities.

Instability
Overall, however, the nadir was a disaster, certainly for black people. Foner points out:

"...by the early twentieth century [racism] had become more deeply embedded in the nation's culture and politics than at any time since the beginning of the antislavery crusade and perhaps in our nation's entire history."

Similarly, Loewen argues that the family instability and crime which many sociologists have found in black communities can be traced, not to slavery, but to the nadir and its aftermath.

Foner noted that "none of Reconstruction's black officials created a family political dynasty" and concluded that the nadir "aborted the development of the South's black political leadership."

title: Nadir of American race relations


text:
File:Flight of the Amazon Queen box art.jpg

Found here: http://www.exotica.org.uk/wiki/Amiga_Game_Box_Scans/F

Rationale
This game has been released as freeware by the developers, so I believe that this picture is ok. as Binary Illusions are defunct. So therefore it should be ok as no one holds the copyrights any longer. Philbuck222 (talk) 20:23, 2 January 2008 (UTC)


text:
Rina Uchiyama

Rina Uchiyama (内山 理名) is a Japanese actress and idol.

Career
Uchiyama was first discovered in her hometown in Kanagawa Prefecture by the talent agency Sweet Power at the age of 15. She was signed up by the agency, and in 1998, moved to Tokyo to launch her career in the entertainment industry.

Uchiyama left Sweet Power in March 2024, and switched to her husband private agency, Dhuta.

Personal life
On November 21, 2021, Uchiyama announced that she is married to actor Eisaku Yoshida.

Film

 * Utukushii Hito (1999)
 * Go-Con! Japanese Love Culture (2000) as Jun
 * Satorare (2001)
 * Sotsugyo (2002)
 * Shinku (The Deep Red) (2005) as Kanako Akiba
 * Nobuhiro-san (2005)
 * Tooku no Sora (2010) as Mie Matsuki
 * Kyoryu o horo! (2013) as Sachiko Matsumoto
 * Kakekomi (2015)
 * Yurari (2017)
 * Mirai eno Katachi (2021)

Television

 * Nanisama (TBS, 1998) as Mizuki
 * Suzuran (NHK, 1999)
 * LxIxVxE (TBS, 1999) as Matsubara Chieas
 * Utsukushii hito (TBS, 1999)
 * Bus Stop (Fuji TV, 2000) as Miyamae Matsuri
 * Hensyuo (Fuji TV, 2000)
 * Strawberry on the Shortcake (SOS) (TBS, 2001) as Sawamura Haruka
 * Rookie! (Fuji TV, 2001) as Sato Kaori
 * Handoku (TBS, 2001) as Kojima Michiko
 * Yonimo Kimyona Monogatari (Mushi game) (Fuji TV, 2002)
 * Wedding Planner (Fuji TV, 2002, ep4) as Fujinami Chizuru
 * Good Luck!! (TBS, 2003) as Fukaura Urara
 * Moto Kare (TBS, 2003) as Hayakawa Nao
 * Musashi (NHK, 2003) as Akemi
 * Higuchi Ichiyo Monogatari (TBS, 2004) as Higuchi Ichiyo
 * Fire Boys (Fuji TV, 2004) as Sonoda Mahiru
 * Koi no Kara Sawagi Drama Special (Love Stories) (NTV, 2004)
 * Hoshino Senichi Monogatari (TBS, 2005)
 * Rikon Bengoshi 2 (Fuji TV, 2005, ep1)
 * Oku: Hana no Ran (Fuji TV, 2005) as Yasuko
 * Earthquake (NTV, 2006)
 * Message (MBS, 2006)
 * Bokutachi no Senso (TBS, 2006)
 * Yonimo Kimyona Monogatari (Neko ga Ongaeshi) (Fuji TV)
 * Kiraware Matsuko no Issho (TBS, 2006) as Kawajiri Matsuko
 * Seito Shokun! (TV Asahi, 2007) as Hokujo Shoko
 * Kodoku no Utagoe (Wowow, 2007)
 * Ten to Sen (TV Asahi, 2007)
 * Yagyu Ichizoku no Inbo (TV Asahi, 2008)
 * Daibutsu Kaigen (NHK, 2010)
 * Brutus no Shinzo (Fuji TV, 2011)
 * Toshi Densetsu no Onna (TV Asahi, 2012, ep1)
 * |Utamaro's Mashie (TV Asahi, 2012)
 * Sosa Chizu no Onna (TV Asahi, 2012)
 * Honey Trap (Fuji TV, 2013) as Kaoru Nakagawa
 * Joyu Reiko Honoo no Youni (TV Tokyo, 2013) as Reiko Ohara

title: Rina Uchiyama