Panzer VK1602(a) Leopard

Panzer VK1602(a) Leopard

Image by LegoIiner PiIot
This version of the 1602 is the three wheel version(a), introduced to conserve valuable raw materials.
More info: Since 1941, plans were made for the development of a new reconnaisance tank based on PzKpfw II Ausf J (VK 1601). In March of 1942, MIAG and Daimler-Benz received orders to build a fast (medium/heavy) reconnaisance tank, designed to operate under heavy combat conditions - Gefechtsaufklarung. MIAG was to construct the chassis, while Daimler-Benz was construct the turret. Both were to be designed and ready for production by October of 1942.The main purpose of this vehicle was to be at HQ tank platoons in Panzer units.
Its hull was similar to that of PzKpfw II Ausf J (VK 1601), but was largely influenced by PzKpfw V Panther, which was still being developed at the time. Its suspension was made up of interleaved road wheels similar to PzKpfw II Ausf L - Luchs. It was planned that Leopard would eventually replace lighter (leichter) PanzerSpahwagen II Ausf L Luchs - Sd.Kfz.123 (VK 1303).Mock-up was ready in May/June of 1942 and first prototype was to be finished by the September 1st of 1942. Full scale production was to start in April of 1943.

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This is my 27th vehicle

Hopi House - wagon wheel - Grand Canyon Village - South Rim

Image by Al_HikesAZ
I went up early to the Grand Canyon South Rim for a big backpacking trip and visited several of the tourist destinations. This is the historic Hopi House.

www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/harrison/harriso...
In Hopi House, Colter's concern for an ethnohistorical correctness in this replication was an effort fueled by the contemporary scholarly interest in southwestern archeology. The building opened in 1905, at the same time that archeologist Edgar Hewitt of Santa Fe, New Mexico, was promoting the Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities which passed in 1906--an act that resulted in the establishment of a series of national monuments set aside to preserve the southwestern archeological ruins they contained. Colter's design of Hopi House went beyond the basic task of providing a good atmosphere for merchandising Indian goods. She introduced different aspects of Indian cultures--especially their architecture--to the rail-travelling public at a time when the preservation movement in the United States was in its infancy.

Hopi House (1905) is a large multi-story structure of stone masonry, shaped and built like a Hopi pueblo building. The building is rectangular in plan, and the multiple roofs are stepped at various levels giving the building the impression of pueblo architecture. The sandstone walls are reddish in color. Tiny windows, like those of true Hopi structures, allow only the smallest amount of light into the building.

On the interior, the floor finish on the first story is concrete, covered with carpeting in some of the rooms. Most of the rooms have the typical ceiling of that type of architecture: saplings, grasses, and twigs with a mud coating on top, resting on peeled log beams. Corner fireplaces, small niches in the walls, and a mud-plaster wall finish, typical of Hopi interiors, are also characteristics of this structure. Openings from one room to the next are characteristically small, and wood door frames where they exist are made of peeled saplings. The first floor is used as a sales area and an office.

The stairwell to the second story has Hopi murals on its mud plaster. The mural's artist is unknown. The second story, now used only for storage, has a wood floor, ceilings similar to those throughout the building, and mud-plastered walls. The original room configurations remain, and little has been done to change this area that is now closed to the public. One corner fireplace on this story is decorated with a "bulto" (Spanish religious statue) attached to its mantle. Paired gates separating two of the rooms are made of peeled saplings. Also on this floor is a room now erroneously called "the Kiva" which contains a Hopi shrine somewhat similar to the Powamu shrine Colter had constructed inside her Indian Building in Albuquerque. The shrine area holds religious artifacts such as kachinas and prayer feathers (ceremonial sticks with feathers attached) with bald eagle feathers. The opposite side of the shrine room contains more Hopi religious artifacts and some household and utilitarian items such as manos and metates for grinding corn, various pieces of pottery and baskets, and a piki oven for baking the paper-thin piki bread made from blue corn. The floor in this room is hard-packed adobe rather than wood. Access to this room is through a tiny handmade door, now locked for security.


IMGP0445

New Orleans - CBD: United States Custom House

Image by wallyg
The U.S. Custom House in New Orleans, Louisiana, also known as the Old Post Office and Custom House, was built starting in 1848 and constructed over a period of 33 years to house multiple federal offices, notably the main post office and federal courts, and store goods. The building was designed by Alexander Thompson Wood, who was replaced in 1850 and succeeded by eight different architects, each of whom modified the original design.

The partially completed building was first occupied in 1856 when the U.S. Customs Service moved into the first floor. The post office followed in November 1860, and the building served as the city's main post office through the remainder of the 19th century. Although construction was suspended during the Civil War, the building was occupied briefly by Confederate forces and then by the Union Army after New Orleans was occupied in 1862. It was also used to house captured Confederate soldiers, reportedly up to 2,000 men at one time. Construction resumed in 1871, with the upper floor and roof plan and sections substantially revised under the direction of the Office of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury, Alfred B. Mullett.

The immense four-stor building, sheathed in gray granite, occupies the full trapezoidal downtown city block bounded by Canal, North Peters, Iberville, and Decatur Streets.Each of the four facades is similar in design. In the center of each facade is a projecting pavilion consisting of four round, fluted, modified Egyptian, engaged columns. The first floor of the structure is faced with rusticated granite stonework. The cast-iron entablature contains widely spaced triglyphs in the frieze and dentils in the cornice, and supports a triangular pediment above the central portico on each facade. Near both ends of each facade is a slightly projecting bay composed of four modified Egyptian pilasters supporting the entablature. On the first story of the exterior of the U.S. Custom House are a series of vacant niches, originally intended these to hold heroic statues of famous Americans.

The floor plan is arranged around the Greek Revival Marble Hall, ornamented with Corinthian columns that depict the heads of the mythological god Mercury, guardian of boundaries, commerce, and roads, and the goddess Luna, whose crescent moon-shaped brow symbolizes the city's location at the crescent bend of the Mississippi River. The columns support a full classical entablature with an ornamented cornice and floral cresting. A deep cove above the cornice supports a sophisticated geometrically composed skylight. Over the entrance at the North Peters Street end of the hall are sculptures depicting founder of New Orleans, Sier de Bienville; General Andrew Jackson; and the pelican, the traditional symbol of Louisiana.

National Register #74000938 (1974)

IMG_7182 New Orleans house

Image by libbyrosof
Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Planning / Associate Professor Lawrence Sass (Cambridge)