Sarah P. Duke Gardens

The Sarah P. Duke Gardens are on the grounds of Duke University in Durham, NC. It was the brainchild of Dr. Frederic M. Hanes, an original faculty member of Duke Medical School. A botanical enthusiast, Dr. Hanes passed a debris-filled ravine on the way to the school every day, and so persuaded Ms. Duke, who was the widow of one of the university's founders, to finance a public garden on the land. The gardens were built, but unfortunately heavy summer rains and floods ruined them. Sarah Duke had passed away, but Dr. Hanes was still around, so he convinced Sarah's daughter, Mary Duke Biddle, to bankroll a new garden on higher ground and name it in honor of her mother. The Sarah P. Duke Gardens were dedicated in April 1939. It was designed by Ellen Biddle Shipman, an early pioneer in American landscape design. It's one of the remaining examples of her work. It has since expanded to 5 miles of trails and walkways across 55 acres.

176-178 St. Johns Place

 

This pair of Queen Anne-style row houses in Park Slope, Brooklyn, were built in 1886 for two doctors, Edward Bunker and William H. Thallon. Their profession is symbolized by the caduceus in the gable of No. 178, on the left. The buildings were designed by Rudolph L. Daus, a Mexican-born German  Catholic who trained in Berlin and Paris. They were among his first commission after setting up shop in Brooklyn in 1884. He designed multiple buildings in Brooklyn, and was known for his eclecticism, drawing on multiple styles and traditions. They were landmarked in 1973.

Biographical Info on Rudolph L. Daus

Inktober 2023 Week 4

The last batch of Inktober 2023. The last one doubles as my Halloween drawing.

Inktober 2023 Week 3

 Week 3

Power lines

 Power lines, drawn in Durham, NC.

152 Berkeley Place

 

This Neo-Tudor building in Park Slope was originally a garage. Alfred E. Clegg, vice-president of the Kerr Steamship Line, had bought a mansion nearby on 8th Avenue. He had this building constructed to house his car, with an apartment upstairs for his chauffer. Built in 1925, it was designed by Murphy & Lehman, an architecture team who mostly did projects for the Catholic Church. This was one of their few secular projects. The Eighth Avenue mansion was demolished in the 1940s, but the garage survived and is now a residence. It was landmarked in 1973.

Historical info from: Brownstoner: Building Of The Day

Inktober 2023 Week 2

 

Happy Birthday St. Thomas

 

St Thomas Church at the corner of 5th Avenue and 53rd St. celebrates its bicentennial anniversary today. The Episcopalian church was founded on October 12, 1823 in Lower Manhattan. This is the fourth building for the church, with two of the previous three being destroyed by fires. It was designed by Ralph Adams Cram, who also designed the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Ave. and St. Bartholemew's Church on Park Ave., and opened in 1913.

Inktober 2023 - Week One

 I'm doing the Inktober Challenge again, where you're challenged to produce an ink drawing every day for the month. I don't do the word prompts. Last year, I did all cats. This year it's birds. This is the first week's worth . . .

Frick Eclipse Steam Tractor

 

There's a roadside farmers market on Route 751 in Apex, NC called Jean's Neighborhood Market. There's a dozen or more antique cars, tractors, and farm equipment parked around it. I drew one of the tractors about two years ago, and on a recent trip did another. Both were made by Frick & Co. of Waynesboro, PA. The woman inside the store told me that it was from 1930, but a Google search shows advertisements for the same machine from the late 1870s.

TWA

 

The TWA Terminal at John K. Kennedy Airport. Designed by renowned architect Eero Saarinen, the building was commissioned as part of a major expansion of JFK (then named Idlewild Airport) in the mid-1950s to accommodate the Post WWII boom in commercial air travel. With its fluid, swooping Neo-Futurist curves, the building captures the sensation of flight and the optimism of the Jet Age.

The terminal opened in 1962, though unfortunately Saarinen did not live to see its completion, having passed away in 1961. Also unfortunately, despite having been built as a symbol of the jet age, it quickly proved to be too small to serve the increasing size and number of jet airliners, especially after Boeing introduced its mammoth 747 in 1970. The terminal eventually closed in 2001, but it had been named a New York City Landmark and placed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, and so avoided demolition. In 2019, the renovated terminal re-opened as a hotel.

Coffey Street

 

A garage-turned-residence in Red Hook, Brooklyn

Berea Baptist Church

Berea Baptist Church, Durham N.C. Built circa 1900.

Process:

Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

 

Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary was founded in 1855 to serve the needs of the burgeoning Irish and German Catholic population of Red Hook, Brooklyn, The name of the parish refers to a story in the Gospel of Luke in which the pregnant Virgin Mary visits with her cousin Elizabeth, who is also pregnant, with the future John the Baptist. According to the story, Fetus John the Baptist sense Fetus Jesus within Mary, and starts to leap around Betsy's womb.

Anyway . . . This is the third building for the parish. The congregation quickly outgrew the original building, and the second, larger church was destroyed by fire. The third church, this one, was consecrated in 1898. The Romanesque and Gothic Revival stone church is constructed of Manhattan schist, the native bedrock stone of New York City. The architect is not identified in any church history, but is possibly the work of Thomas Houghton.

Red Hook Pentecostal

Red Hook Pentecostal Holiness Church at 110 Wolcott St. in Red Hook, Brooklyn. This building was originally built in 1900 by the Episcopalian Christ Church for its Red Hook Mission. It was designed by Scottish architect brothers William James Audsley and George Ashdown Audsley. In the 1970s, the building was sold to the Pentecostal Church.

The Mary A Whalen

The Mary A Whalen is a decommissioned oil tanker docked at Pier 11 in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Built in 1938, she was originally called the S.T. Kiddoo, after Solomon Thomas Kiddoo, the Vice President of the company that manufacturing its engines. The ship was built for Ira S. Bushey & Sons, a Red Hook business that operated a combination shipyard and fuel terminal. She is 172' (52m) long and 31.5' (9.6m) wide, with a gross tonnage of 613 and a capacity of 8.019 barrels of fuel.

The ship delivered fuel up and down the east coast between 1938 and 1968. In 1962, she was purchased by the Eklof Marine Corporation of Staten Island and re-christend the Mary A. Whalen. I'm not entirely sure who that is. She went out of service in 1994, due to a damaged engine crankshaft.

The ship is the last of its kind. It's an early example of lap-welding, a technique in which one steel plate overlaps the other, and is also one of the few surviving examples of a bell boat. On a bell boat, the captain or mate steering has no control over the throttle or direction of the boat, and uses a manual system of bells to signal instructions to an engineer in the lower levels to determine speed and direction. She is also significant for being the subject of the 1975 Supreme Court case U.S. v Reliable Transfer Co., and important maritime law case.

Currently, she is owned by PortSide NewYork, a non-profit advocacy group for waterfront development, and serves as their headquarters and museum. In 2012, she was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Mary A Whalen History at PortSide NewYork

344 Ninth Street

This brownstone on Ninth Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn, is one of a row of four houses designed by architect Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert in 1887. The four houses all measure 17.83 feet (5.4m) wide by 45 feet (13.7m) long, but all are different. No. 344 is the only one to retain its original details, and is still a one-family home. It was originally owned by a gravel and sand merchant named Michael Fitzsimmons. Between 1902 and 1913, it was occupied by the European Conservatory of Music, later called the Manhattan Conservatory.

C.P.H. Gilbert was born in 1861. Little is known of his early life or training, but eventually he wound up designing mining towns in Arizona and Colorado, where he also learned trick riding and shooting. He returned to New York City in 1883. These four houses were his first Brooklyn commissions. He later designed numerous mansions and townhouses in Park Slope, especially on Carroll St. and Montgomery Place. He also had many clients among Manhattan's elite, including F.W. Woolworth.

His Brooklyn buildings were eclectic in design, as opposed to his Manhattan projects. This New York Times feature says, "Whereas Gilbert's Manhattan mansions are all about good taste and sober politesse, his Brooklyn work tends toward a rugby scrum: the houses tangle and tussle with one another like cats and dogs in a burlap bag. He left no diary, no notes, no thoughts on design, no hint as to whether he later regretted his Brooklyn work, or looked on it with affection."

The drawing in process, pencil drawing and inked. . .

Info on this house and C.P.H. Gilbert:

NY Times: Brooklyn Streetscapes C.P.H. Gilbert-The Wild Years

Brownstoner: Building of the Day: 340-344 9th Street, a Study in Change in Park Slope