Great Falls Park

Great Fall National Park is located near Washington D.C.. In 1784 construction started on five canal systems to make the river passable. The project was supervised by George Washington. He believed that a trade route would bring the country together.

A lock looks a bit like this <===<. The water fills the lock (====<) and the door closes and the other door opens slowly and equalizes the water(<==== ). Matlidaville was built for canal workers.

The canal was used to haul flour, corn, whiskey, furs, tobacco iron ore, and timber.  In 1828 the C&O Canal system bought the canal.  They planned to expand it to Pittsburgh, but by 1850  financial problems and rivalry with the B&O Railroad caused it he project to be abandoned.  The C&O canal stayed in business until 1924 when the railroads took over.

We were able to stand on the Survey Stone were George Washington stood while overseeing the canal system construction.  The great falls, the falls that the canal went around, were amazing as well.

Written by Marcus W. Perry

 

Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt, National Historic Site, Hyde Park

“I am pure Hudson River”. Franklin Delano Roosevelt made this remark in 1944, after going home to Springwood for a couple days, for a break from his social life as President.

Franklin’s father bought the property on which Springwood now sits in 1867 for $40,000. It included a house that overlooked the Hudson River and a working farm. In that house, FDR was born. He was the only child of Sara and James Roosevelt. Growing up on the Hudson gave him a great love for the river, and he loved sailing the river. When he was a young adult he would race his ice yacht “Hawk” along the river.

When FDR contracted polio in 1921, the whole house a Springwood had to be redesigned to make it accessible to  wheelchair. After FDR father died, his mother, Sara, took to staying at Springwood. FDR retreated to his small home along the Hudson River, seeking strength and relaxation during his busy life as president.

When we arrived we went to the Visitor Center and signed up for a tour of the estate. All the tour participants gathered around a circular mural on the floor. IT was a painting of the property. Our tour guide pointed out the key points on the mural, so that we would know where we were going. We strolled towards the house, admiring it. Remember, we visited Springwood before the Newport Mansions, this was one of the largest houses we had been in. We walked in the door and there we 3 rooms straight off the main hall, the dining room, the study, and the parlor. FDR was a great collector. He collected stuffed birds and political cartoons, to ship painting and stamps. Quite a bit of his collections were on display. Upstairs was the servant quarters and many bedrooms to accommodate the large family. All the gardens were very lovely.

This home at Springwood was Franklin’s love and life. He stayed often, and always enjoyed his home along the Hudson River.

-Cali

The Parthenon

  Don’t let the title trick you; we didn’t actually go to Greece to visit the Parthenon. I wish we had, but I’m afraid the one we went to was made out of concrete and in the middle of Nashville, Tennessee.

The replica of the Parthenon was built for the Tennessee Centennial Fair. It, along with many other Greek buildings covered the park for the fair in the late 1800’s. They were all made out of wood and paper, so after 6 months they pretty much melted into the ground. In the 1920’s they rebuilt and restored the Parthenon. In the 1990’s Alan LeQuire’s Athena statue was moved into the inner room.

   You enter under the original door’s. After you pay at the front desk, you walk in to a couple rooms with the history of the Parthenon. Then you go into a art gallery. It is permanent, filled with paintings donated by James M. Cowan.

   After you walk through all that, you climb up a set of stairs, to the upper level and the statue of Athena. The statue is really something!! Her robe is gold covered and she is 42 feet tall! Nike, the goddess in her hand is 6′ tall. Everything about her has a meaning. The shield protecting the snake is to signify that Athena will protect Athens, the city names after her. On the side of the shield facing the snake there is a panting depicting the Gigantomachy (The battle between the Greek gods and giants).

  It was a marvelous place to stop on our way to Little Rock, Arkansas.

-Cali

The Ark Encounter

The Ark encounter When you enter the park you can see it the distance. You then ride a bus to it. You enter the ark from under neath. You walk into an area with a maze of walkway though varying sized cages. The the bottom of the three floors discuses the animals they brought with them. The next floor contains an exhibit on the the pre flood world. there are exhibits on caring for the animals and a few more cages with signs that tell you about the animals. On the top floor is the living quarters and exhibits and the world after the flood. There is a moving exhibit on the spread of the Gospel all over the world. I’m so glad that I got to come here with my grandparents. This place was awesome. I would highly recommend going.

Marcus W. Perry

Toyota Factory Tour in Georgetown, Kentucky

We were in Kentucky, visiting the Ark and Creation Museum with our grandparents, so we stopped by the Toyota Plant in Georgetown, Kentucky. Dad was able to get us tickets for all of us to tour the factory.

We drove out and got there quite a bit early, so we had plenty of time to look at the displays in the lobby. After we had checked everything adequately, our guide lead us into a theater to watch a short video about Toyota and it’s factories. He talked to us for a couple minutes, then we walked to the trams that were to take us around the factory, for it was much to big to walk. When we were all in, the tour guide and tram conductor handed out our headsets that we listened to while we were on our tour.

Our first stop was stamping out the exterior of the car. The metal came in a huge roll. A crane would pick up a sheet and set it on a mold. Then it would go under a huge press and stamp it into the correct body shape for the car. Then we weaved in and out of work stations. At each our guide would explain what the worker’s were working on. We passed many stations, where they were each doing something different. Attaching the doors to the car, painting, installing the dashboard.

As we rode around, workers driving forklifts and golf carts delivered parts to many different stations. They only kept 10 transmissions or 10 dashboards at the station that put them in. So that meant that every 10 cars the station ran out of the parts they needed to put on. The car stayed at one station for 52 seconds. So about every 10 minutes they needed 10 more parts. So you had to be a very good diver to deliver parts. You would have to get the parts and get back within 10 minutes. And the factory wasn’t small. Inside the building their was multiple cafeterias, a gym, an optometrist, a couple stores, a doctor and other facilities for the workers.

All the cars made in the Georgetown plant are already ordered. All the cars that are made there already have a destination in mind. In case anyone wants to know, Ruby Pearl is the most popular Toyota color. It is a shiny red color.

-Cali

Marble House

Marble House is called Marble House because…you guessed it! It is made almost completely out of marble. And many different kinds too. Some from Italy, a bit from Egypt, a little from France. It was made out of marble because it would help cool the house in the summer (because all these “cottages” were summer homes).

The front of the house resembles the White House in design. It was done in Beaux Arts style, meaning that the house was very light with lots of windows facing the sea that was right in the backyard.

Marble House was owned by Alva Vanderbilt.  Her husband, William, gave it to her as a 39th birthday present. Alva was a real rebel. She divorced her million dollar Vanderbilt husband, and then in two months was married again. She moved in with her new husband, and used Marble House as a giant storage unit. Everything she didn’t want in her house she put there. After her second husband’s death, she moved back in, but soon moved to France to be near her daughter, Consuleo Balsan.

The first floor was all you need in a mansion; A drawing room, a dining room, a sitting room, and a special room called the Mid-evil room. The Mid-evil room was a dark room with wood paneling and book cases. In this room Alva’s daughter was proposed to by a Duke. It was a loveless marriage, as was common then.

Consuleo, at the time, was secretly engaged to a man named Winthrop Rutherfurd, but was forced by her mother to marry. Alva went as far as to threaten to murder Rutherfurd after locking Consuleo in her room. Only when Alva fell ill did she consent to the marriage. It was said that she cried behind her veil, and they were not tears of happiness. In 1906 she and the Duke separated, divorced in 1921. Her marriage to the Duke was annulled in 1926.

Consuleo remarried in 1921 to a man named Jacques Balsan. Balsan was a balloonist and assisted the Wright Brother’s with their plane. Despite of this rough history, Consuleo and her mother got along very well.

Let’s move up to the second floor where all the bed rooms are. We started in Alva’s room. It was like walking into an explosion of purple. Purple or white furniture. Purple bedspread. Purple carpet. Purple wallpaper. Purple everything. I don’t think she could get it more purple if she tried.

The rest of the rooms weren’t as prominent as Alva’s room, but they were still quite nice.

When we finished the tour we went out on the lawn, to take pictures and look around. After Alva moved back in when her second husband died, she built a Chinese style tea house that looked out over the water. It was a very interesting house with an amazing history.

-Cali

Marcus added the floor plans and traced the steps we took on all the tours.

The Breakers

The Breakers is a mammoth house that sits on a 13 acre estate in the middle of Newport, Rhode Island. Newport is known for its large houses built by some of the wealthiest men of all time. They spent money like a fountain and pretty much used it all up very quickly on these towering homes.

The Breakers was owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt II. He bought the property for $450,000 (11.6 million today) and hired Richard Morris Hunt, who built most of the Newport “cottages”, to create something amazing. And Hunt did just that. To bad Mr. Vanderbilt wasn’t able to live there very long. He died of a stroke in 1899 at the age of 55. He left it to his wife, who stayed there until her death 35 years later. Then it went to Countess Gladys Szenchenyi, her daughter. She got it because of her lack of American property, and all her other siblings had no interest in the house.

We walked up the front drive. As we walked, the mansion stared down at us. Before we reached the front door, we turned and entered through the servants entrance at the side of the house. Our tour started in the Entrance Hall. The entrance hall was a very grand room, made out of white marble. It is a square room, 50ft by 50ft by 50ft. Elegant chairs covered in red velvet lined the walls. The grand staircase was the main attraction in the room. It went up to the second floor, where the Gentleman’s reception room and the Ladies’ reception rooms were. They would take off their coats and cloaks and fix their hair and do any of that before they went down to the ball in these rooms. The ballroom, a couple sitting rooms and the library were also on this level.

The second floor also held Mr. Vanderbilt’s room and dressing room, Mrs. Vanderbilt’s room and dressing room, Miss Gertrude Vanderbilt bedroom, and Countess Szencheyi bedroom as a little girl. They were all sumptuously decorated. Rich colors and elaborate wood work adorned the rooms.

Up on the third floor there are eight guest bedrooms and a sitting room. Again they were a very lavish. We didn’tspend much time in the upstairs. We exited in the basement, but before we left we looked around the kitchens. I like them. They were very clean and neat. We walked out and wandered the garden for a while then when on to the next mansion.

This one, I think, was the biggest of all the ones we toured. It is kind of blurry in my memory because we went there over two months ago and have been other places since then. So I am sorry if this post lacks detail. All the mansions were magnificent, amazing, extraordinary.

-Cali

After you walk through the Breakers’ Entrance Hall you go into the great hall. The great hall is the center of the house. On one side is the grand staircase, on the other is the fire place. On our tour we turned left toward the stairs. We passed the breakfast room. The we went into dinning room, it was amazing, it was completely guilded. Under the Grand Staircase is a fountain to cool off under. Next we went out in to the billards room. Then we walk a crossed the great hall to thee morning room. Okay so there was “silver” on the walls, but there is catch. It didn’t tarnish. It is actually platinum. The next room was the music room. It is a blue and gold room they imported from France. Lastly be fore going up stairs was the library. A dark oak paneled room. With a lots of nick nacks.

This was added by Marcus.

The Elms

 

The Elms was the summer retreat for coal magnate Edward and Herminie Berwind.

When you enter the house you come into foyer, then you continue the tour into the library. The library was a very red room. Next was the conservatory, it had plants and fountains. It had white marble walls. Next was a large great hall(living room) it was white washed and had a table in the center. I thought the color was bland.

Next was the ballroom. IT. WAS. MAGNIFICENT. A room that was   long 40 ft wide. Next we move on to the dining room the walls were covered with paintings of a roman general that the Berwinds thought they were descended from.

The next room was the breakfast room. It’s walls are covered in ancient Chinese art.

On the landing up stairs there was a large marble table. I don’t really remember the rooms up stairs but there were midevil tapestries. The Elms was my favorite house. I am all ready to move in.

M W Perry

Kingscote

Unlike the rest of the Newport mansions we visited, Kingscote wasn’t all that fancy. It was big, but not huge like Elms or The Breakers. The owner tried to keep up with the building boom, modernizing the house as time went on, but you couldn’t make a 900 square foot house look like a 125,339 square foot mansion.

Kingscote was done in Gothic style, like what was popular in the early 1800’s. Books like Jane Austen’s novel Northhanger Abbey, and Sir Walter Scott’s book Ivanhoe inspired this architecture. It has gingerbread house like details and uneven roof lines.

When we visited, the front was under construction, so we didn’t get a good first look, but I am sure it would have been quite cute. We stepped in the door and looked around. It was very dark. There was nothing very grand about the entrance. In Rosecliff or The Breakers the entrance is very big and grand and most of the time the staircase is what draws your attention.

We turned left then and stepped into a small office. There our tour guide told us what to expect in the house. Then we went trough the parlor and into the dining room. This room had been expanded, to hold more friends and neighbors. After dinner you could move into the parlor for a cup of tea while the servants moved the table and chairs into another room. Then the dinning room would be a ballroom.

We then went up stairs. That’s where all the bedrooms were. Originally it was only a summer house, but when the owner died, his wife and daughter moved in and lived there full time. They each had a summer bed room facing the sea. When winter came they moved into bedrooms on the other side of the house.

After we finished upstairs we went back down and saw two other parlors, one for family gatherings, and one for neighbors and guests. That’s where our tour ended. We went back outside and looked around the stables. Soon we moved on to the next mansion, which was Elms. I am happy that we got to look around the house, even thought it wasn’t as fancy.

-Cali

Chateau-Sur-Mer

 

Chateau-sur-Mer. A residence with an Italian exterior, Gothic-Victorian interior, a French name, and Chinese inspired gates guarding this pastiche. A crash pad with many fashions, this one is popular with me.

Walking through the front door is like stepping into a fantasy. The gardens, so light and bright, contrast greatly. Inside is dark; dark wood, dark furnishing, dark fittings.

But if you look you can find hints of light; in the stained glass panels over the fireplaces, in the Lady of the house’s room and the ballroom.

    On the underside of the stairs there is a pretty painting of  a tree, growing through the whole house, decorated with butterflies, birds, and bugs. It lightens up the rooms.

Our tour started in the study. This, you could tell, was a place for seriousness. Bookshelves line the dark oak panel walls. A huge desk sits in the middle of the room covered in photographs and stuffed birds.

We next moved on to the former entrance hall. I say former because in the 1870’s, the Wetmore’s (they owned the place at this time), left for an extensive tour of Europe and left architect Richard Moris Hunt in charge of remodeling and redecorating the house. Hunt moved the entrance to the side of the mansion and turned the hall into a place to display art work.
We walked along the hall until we reached the ballroom and receiving room. They were both done in French style, and were much lighter. There was only one original piece, an over stuffed couch, with a flowered covering. All the other chairs were reproductions. The receiving room was green, the most expensive color at the time.

Next was the dining room. It was done in the dark greens and browns. Here the guide told us something very interesting. This was the oldest running house, with servants and an old family living there. The World War I was the downfall of the rest of the houses, but this one managed to keep going until 1913, when the last Wetmore died.

We climbed up the intricately designed stair case into the upper floors. We could only view the next level, and not he two above, because someone actually lives in the upper floors to take care of the house. This next floor was just bedrooms, one for the Master, one for his Mistress, a couple for the Master’s daughters’, a couple for the Master’s sons’.

     This Newport “cottage” was really something to see. If you ever have the chance, go admire this massive piece of artwork.