Ferncliff Farm
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Ferncliff Farm
Ferncliff Farm (or Ferncliff) was an estate established in the mid 19th century by William Backhouse Astor Jr. (1829–1892) in Rhinebeck, New York. Not far from his mother's estate of Rokeby, where he had spent summers, Ferncliff was a working farm with dairy and poultry operations, as well as stables where he bred horses. In 1902, his son and heir John Jacob Astor IV commissioned Stanford White to design a large sports pavilion (called the "Ferncliff Casino"), which included one of the first indoor pools in the United States. The sports pavilion was later converted into a residence (called "Astor Courts") for his son, Vincent Astor. After the death of Vincent Astor, the 2,800 acre estate was broken up. Some parcels (such as the gatehouse, staff quarters, teahouse and dairy barns) became private homes. Two hundred acres were donated for the founding of the Ferncliff Forest nature preserve. An additional donation of land led to the establishment of a nursing home and rehabilitati ...
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William Backhouse Astor Jr
William Backhouse Astor Jr. (July 12, 1829 – April 25, 1892) was an American businessman, racehorse owner/breeder, and yachtsman who was a member of the prominent Astor family. His elder brother, financier and philanthropist John Jacob Astor III, became head of the British line of Astors in England. William Jr. was head of the American line of Astors, while his wife, Caroline Schermerhorn, served as the leader of New York society's "Four Hundred" during the Gilded Age. Early years William Backhouse Astor Jr. was born on July 12, 1829, in New York City, New York. He was the middle son of real estate businessman William Backhouse Astor Sr. (1792–1875) and Margaret Rebecca ( née Armstrong) Astor (1800–1872). His siblings included elder brother John Jacob Astor III, who married Charlotte Augusta Gibbes; Emily Astor, who married Samuel Cutler Ward; Laura Eugenia Astor, who married Franklin Hughes Delano; Mary Alida Astor, who married John Carey; Henry Astor, who married Mal ...
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McKim, Mead & White
McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm that came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in fin de siècle New York. The firm's founding partners Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), William Rutherford Mead (1846–1928) and Stanford White (1853–1906) were giants in the architecture of their time, and remain important as innovators and leaders in the development of modern architecture worldwide. They formed a school of classically trained, technologically skilled designers who practiced well into the mid-twentieth century. According to Robert A. M. Stern, only Frank Lloyd Wright was more important to the identity and character of modern American architecture. The firm's New York City buildings include Manhattan's former Pennsylvania Station, the Brooklyn Museum, and the main campus of Columbia University. Elsewhere in New York State and New England, the firm designed college, library, school and other buildings such ...
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Chelsea Clinton
Chelsea Victoria Clinton (born February 27, 1980) is an American writer and global health advocate. She is the only child of former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former U.S. Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. She was a special correspondent for NBC News from 2011 to 2014 and now works with the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative, including taking a prominent role at the foundation with a seat on its board. Clinton was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, during her father's first term as governor. She attended public schools there until he was elected president and the family moved to the White House, where she began attending the private Sidwell Friends School. She received an undergraduate degree at Stanford University and later earned master's degrees from University of Oxford and Columbia University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in international relations from the University of Oxford in 2014. Clinton married investment banker Marc ...
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Carmelite Sisters For The Aged And Infirm
The Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm are a religious institute begun in 1929 by Mother Angeline Teresa (Bridget Teresa McCrory). The order is there to discern the differing needs of the aged, and to satisfy those needs to the best of their ability. At the Jubilee of Mother Angeline Teresa in 1964, she said that in the 1920s, while working among the aged in Brooklyn and Pittsburgh, she came to dislike the institutional flavor of existing homes, and sought to provide greater freedom for the residents. History The congregation of the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm was founded in 1929. Sister Angeline de St. Agatha McCrory was Superior of a Home of the Little Sisters of the Poor in the Bronx, New York. She felt that the European way and many of the customs in France did not meet the needs or customs of America. She also believed that old age strikes all classes of people, leaving them alone and frightened. Being unable to effect any necessary changes in her presen ...
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Rotary International
Rotary International is one of the largest service organizations in the world. Its stated mission is to "provide service to others, promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through hefellowship of business, professional, and community leaders". It is a non-political and non-religious organization. Membership is by invitation and based on various social factors. There are over 46,000 member clubs worldwide, with a membership of 1.4 million individuals, known as Rotarians. History The first years of the Rotary Club The first Rotary Club was formed when attorney Paul P. Harris called together a meeting of three business acquaintances in downtown Chicago, United States, at Harris's friend Gustave Loehr's office in the Unity Building on Dearborn Street on February 23, 1905. In addition to Harris and Loehr (a mining engineer and freemason), Silvester Schiele (a coal merchant), and Hiram E. Shorey (a tailor) were the other two who attended this ...
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Brooke Astor
Roberta Brooke Astor (née Russell; March 30, 1902 – August 13, 2007) was an American philanthropist, socialite, and writer who was the chairwoman of the Vincent Astor Foundation, established by her third husband, Vincent Astor, son of John Jacob Astor IV and great-great grandson of America's first multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor. Brooke Astor was the author of two novels and two volumes of personal memoirs. Early life Brooke Astor was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the only child of John Henry Russell Jr., the 16th Commandant of the Marine Corps, and his wife, Mabel Cecile Hornby Howard. Her paternal grandfather John Henry Russell Sr. was a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy. She was named for her maternal grandmother (Roberta) and was known as Bobby to close friends and family. Due to her father's career she spent much of her childhood abroad living in China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and other places. She briefly attended The Madeira School in 1919, but graduat ...
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Folly
In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but suggesting through its appearance some other purpose, or of such extravagant appearance that it transcends the range of usual garden buildings. Eighteenth-century English landscape gardening and French landscape gardening often featured mock Roman temples, symbolising classical virtues. Other 18th-century garden follies represented Chinese temples, Egyptian pyramids, ruined medieval castles or abbeys, or Tatar tents, to represent different continents or historical eras. Sometimes they represented rustic villages, mills, and cottages to symbolise rural virtues. Many follies, particularly during times of famine, such as the Great Famine (Ireland), Great Famine in Ireland, were built as a form of poor relief, to provide employment for peasants and unemployed artisans. In English, the term began as "a popular name for any costly structure considered to have shown wikt:folly#Noun, folly in the builde ...
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Mott B
Mott is both an English surname and given name. Notable people with the name include: Surname B *Basil Mott (1859–1938), British civil engineer *Bitsy Mott (1918–2001), American baseball player C * Charles James Mott (1880–1918), British baritone *Charles Stewart Mott (1875–1973), American businessman *Christopher Mott, American academic D *Dan Mott ( fl. 2000 – 2007), American actor E *Edward John Mott (1893–1967), British soldier * Elias Bertram Mott (1897–1961), American politician F *Frank Luther Mott (1886–1964), American historian *Frederick Walker Mott (1853–1926), British biochemist G *Gershom Mott (1822–1884), American army officer *Gordon Newell Mott (1812–1887), American Congressman from Nevada J *James Mott (1788–1868), American Quaker leader, husband of Lucretia *James Mott (New Jersey politician) (1739–1823), American Congressman from New Jersey * James Wheaton Mott (1883–1945), American Congressman from Oregon *Joe Mott (born 1956), Americ ...
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Serge Obolensky
Prince Sergei Platonovich Obolensky Neledinsky-Meletzky (November 3, 1890 – September 29, 1978), known as Serge Obolensky, was a Russian-born aristocrat then American citizen, U.S. Army colonel, socialite and publicist. He served as vice chairman of the board of directors of the Hilton Hotels Corporation. Early life Obolensky's parents were Prince Platon Sergeyevich Obolensky-Neledinsky-Meletzky (1850–1913) and Maria Konstantinovna Naryshkina (1861–1929). He had a younger brother, Vladimir (1896–1968), who died unmarried and childless. He was an enthusiastic polo player and played for his University Team at Oxford in 1914. Career Obolensky was a soldier in two World Wars and in the Russian Civil War and fled his native country after battling Bolsheviks as a guerrilla fighter. He was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. paratroopers and a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA, and made his first five jumps in 1943 at the age of 53. After ...
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Ava Alice Muriel Astor
Ava Alice Muriel Astor (July 7, 1902 – July 19, 1956) was an American heiress, socialite, and member of the Astor family. She was the daughter of John Jacob Astor IV and Ava Lowle Willing, and sister of Vincent Astor and half-sister of John Jacob Astor VI. Early life Ava Astor was born on July 7, 1902, in Manhattan, New York. She was the only daughter of Colonel John Jacob "Jack" Astor IV (1864–1912) and Ava Lowle Willing (1868–1958). Her paternal grandparents were real estate businessman and race horse breeder/owner William Backhouse Astor, Jr. (1829–1892) and socialite Caroline Webster "Lina" Schermerhorn (1830–1908), while her maternal grandparents were businessman Edward Shippen Willing (1822–1906) and socialite Alice Bell Barton (1833–1903). In September 1911, Ava and her mother moved to England. They lived in her townhouse on Grosvenor Square in Mayfair, London (from October–April) and her country estate, Sutton Place in Guildford, Surrey (from May–Sep ...
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Hudson River Historic District
The Hudson River Historic District, also known as Hudson River Heritage Historic District, is the largest Federally designated district on the mainland of the contiguous United States.The Nantucket Historic District includes all of the island of Nantucket. Montana's Butte-Anaconda Historic District, the next largest, covers 9,774 acres (15.2 square miles). The Adirondack Park, also in New York, and Alaska's Cape Krusenstern are larger, but are not conventional historic districts. It covers an area of 22,205 acres (34.6 square miles, 89 km²) extending inland roughly a mile (1.6 km) from the east bank of the Hudson River between Staatsburg and Germantown in Dutchess and Columbia counties in the U.S. state of New York. This area includes the riverfront sections of the towns of Clermont, Red Hook, Rhinebeck and part of Hyde Park. This strip includes in their entirety the hamlets of Annandale, Barrytown, Rhinecliff and the village of Tivoli. Bard College and two p ...
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New York Central Railroad
The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Midwest, along with the intermediate cities of Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Rochester and Syracuse. New York Central was headquartered in New York City's New York Central Building, adjacent to its largest station, Grand Central Terminal. The railroad was established in 1853, consolidating several existing railroad companies. In 1968, the NYC merged with its former rival, the Pennsylvania Railroad, to form Penn Central. Penn Central went bankrupt in 1970 and merged into Conrail in 1976. Conrail was broken-up in 1999, and portions of its system were transferred to CSX and Norfolk Southern Railway, with CSX acquiring most of the old New York Central trackage. Extensive trackage existed in the states of New York, Pennsyl ...
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