Wituland ❤️

"Map showing the location of Witu on the Indian Ocean coast Flag of Sultan Fumobakari in 1890 Wituland (also Witu, Vitu, Witu Protectorate or Swahililand) was a territory of approximately in East Africa centered on the town of Witu just inland from Indian Ocean port of Lamu north of the mouth of the Tana River in what is now Kenya. HistoryEarly sultanate (1858–85)= Founded in 1858 by the former ruler of the insular Pate sultanate after several abortive moves to the mainland, the native sultanate of Wituland was a haven for slaves fleeing the Zanzibar slave trade and thus a target of attacks from the Sultanate of Zanzibar (ruled by a branch of the Omani dynasty, under British protectorate). Facing an increase in slaving raids from the Sultanate of Zanzibar, the Sultan of Witu formally requested German protection so that he "finally has relief from the attacks of Zanzibar warriors."German Wituland, a colonial rarity =German Protectorate (1885–90)= In 1885, the German brothers Clemens and Gustav Denhardt negotiated a treaty with Ahmed ibn Fumo Bakari, the first mfalme (Swahili for sultan or king) of Witu who ceded, on 8 April 1885, 25 square miles of territory to the brothers' "Tana Company", and the remainder of the Wituland became the German Protectorate of Wituland (Deutsch-Witu) on 27 May 1885. The Reich was represented there by the German Residents: Gustav Denhardt (1856–1917; in office 8 April 1885 – 1 July 1890) and his deputy Clemens Andreas Denhardt (1852–1928). German rule was relatively mild, and the territory continued being a haven for escaped slaves.German Wituland, a colonial rarity In 1889, Wituland issued a number of postage stamps although their postal usage has not been verified. =British Rule and the Witu Expeditions= Flag under British rule (31 July 1893 – 1920) In accord with the 1890 Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty, on 18 June 1890 a British protectorate was declared, and on 1 July 1890 imperial Germany renounced its protectorate, ceding the Wituland to Great Britain to become part of British East Africa. There were widespread protests from the inhabitants of the territory, who wished to remain under Germany's protection. First Expedition (1890) Shortly afterwards several German merchants were murdered,Witu 1890, A punitive expedition on the East African coast and a mixed British & Zanzibari punitive expedition was sent out. The troops landed and descended on Witu on October 26, 1890. After a series of shoot-outs, Sultan Fumo Bakari ibn Ahmad fled from the town, with roughly 3,000 of his remaining gunmen. He was deposed by the British and died soon afterwards. After a short reign by Bwana Shaykh ibn Ahmad, the rulership (now reduced to a shaykhdom and made a vassal of the Zanzibar Sultanate) was given to Fumo `Umar (or `Umari) ibn Ahamd. Slavery was also formally abolished in Witu, in March 1891, and Indian police were brought in to enforce the new agreement. Second Expedition (1893) A brother of Fumo Bakari, by the name of Fumo Oman, resisted the new regime and began leading increasingly violent raids on villages and farms around the nearby town of Jongeni, northeast of Witu. A brief attempt at diplomacy failed, and the British and Zanzibari governments prepared a second naval expedition to sail to Witu. A small expeditionary force landed at Witu in July and a second request to negotiate was sent to Fumo Oman. It was rejected and the marines marched on the principal towns under rebel control. Thick forest and camouflaged pits with sharpened stakes surrounded the strongly fortified towns, and the rebel gunmen had prepared defensive positions that allowed for heavy fire. However, after prolonged and intense shoot-outs, the naval marines fought their way into each town, and destroyed the fortifications.The Royal Navy and the East Coast of Africa 1890-1899 Fumo Oman fled and Fumo 'Umari bin Hamid was reinstated. Fumo 'Umari moved the capital to Jongeni, but the growth of British power and of the regional importance of Zanzibar saw Witu's position and independence gradually decline.Marina Tolmacheva, "Introduction" to The Pate Chronicle, ed. and tran. by Marina Tolmacheva (East lansing: Michigan State University, 1993) p. 1 End of Witu In 1905 oversight for Witu was moved from the Foreign Office to the Colonial Office. From then Witu was administrated as a part of Tana District of the Kenya Coast Protectorate. Since the 1923 death of Umari bin Hamid the question of Witu as an entity of its own was finally closed. =List of rulers= The known ruling Sultans (styled mfalume in Swahili) are: *1858–1888: Ahmad ibn Fumo Bakari *1888–1890: Fumo Bakari ibn Ahmad *1890–1891: Bwana Shaykh ibn Ahmad *1891–1893: Fumo `Umar ibn Ahmad (1st time) *1893 – 7 July 1895: Vacant *7 July 1895 – 1923: Fumo `Umar ibn Ahmad (2nd time) NotesExternal links *German Wituland, a colonial rarity (archived link) *Map of German Protectorate of Witu (Deutsch-Witu) *WorldStatesmen- Kenya Category:Lamu County Category:Former German colonies Category:History of German East Africa Category:Former British colonies and protectorates in Africa Category:German colonisation in Africa Category:History of Kenya Category:Sultanates Category:States and territories established in 1858 Category:Former countries in Africa Category:1890 establishments in the British Empire "

Half-collared kingfisher ❤️

"The half-collared kingfisher (Alcedo semitorquata) is a kingfisher in the subfamily Alcedininae that is found in southern and eastern Africa. It feeds almost exclusively on fish and frequents streams, rivers and larger bodies of water. The half-collared kingfisher was described by the English ornithologist William John Swainson in 1823 and given its current binomial name Alcedo semitorquata. The word Alcedo is the Latin for a "kingfisher". The specific epithet semitorquata is from the Latin semi- for "half" or "small" and torquatus for "collared". The blue-eared kingfisher is one of seven species in the genus Alcedo and is most closely related to the shining-blue kingfisher (Alcedo quadribrachys). Description The half-collared kingfisher is a medium sized kingfisher. It is around in length with a weight of . It has blue upperparts, a white throat and pale orange underparts. The head has alternating light blue and dark blue bands running across the crown and each side of the neck has a creamy white stripe. The dark blue patches on either side of the neck form a half collar. The legs and feet are red. The sexes are very similar but the bill of the male is entirely black while the female has some red at the base of the lower mandible. ReferencesExternal links * Half-collared kingfisher - Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds. * Animal Diversity Web's Taxon Tree half-collared kingfisher Category:Birds of East Africa Category:Birds of Southern Africa half-collared kingfisher "

Alexander Jackson Davis ❤️

"Federal Hall National Memorial, New York City Lyndhurst, 1838 and 1864 Blandwood Mansion is an example of Italianate design by Davis. 1844 in Greensboro, North Carolina Davis's Italianate villa "Winyah Park" in New Rochelle, New York Tudor Villa" in New Rochelle, New York Whitby Castle in winter Gothic villa, watercolor. A faculty residence on the Parade Ground, Virginia Military Institute, 1850s Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, 1842. Henry Austin (1804-91). Yale Skull & Bones' tomb showing A. J. Davis' towers salvaged from his Yale Alumni Hall (1851-3) at right rear Alexander Jackson Davis, or A. J. Davis (July 24, 1803 – January 14, 1892), was an American architect, known particularly for his association with the Gothic Revival style. Education Davis was born in New York City and studied at the American Academy of Fine Arts, the New-York Drawing Association, and from the Antique casts of the National Academy of Design. Dropping out of school, he became a respectable lithographer and from 1826 he worked as a draftsman for Josiah R. Brady, a New York architect who was an early exponent of the Gothic revival style: Brady's Gothic 1824 St. Luke's Episcopal Church is the oldest surviving structure in Rochester, New York. CareerPartnership with Ithiel Town= Davis made a first independent career as an architectural illustrator in the 1820s, but his friends, especially painter John Trumbull, convinced him to turn his hand to designing buildings. Picturesque siting, massing and contrasts remained essential to his work, even when he was building in a Classical style. In 1826, Davis went to work in the office of Ithiel Town and Martin E. Thompson, the most prestigious architectural firm of the Greek Revival; in the office Davis had access to the best architectural library in the country, in a congenial atmosphere where he gained a thorough grounding. From 1829, in partnership with Town, Davis formed the first recognizably modern architectural office and designed many late Classical buildings, including some of public prominence. In Washington, Davis designed the Executive Department offices and with Robert Mills the first Patent Office building (1834–36). He also designed the Custom House of New York City (1833–42). Bridgeport City Hall, constructed in 1853 and 1854, is a later government building Davis designed in the Classical style. A series of consultations over state capitols followed, none apparently built entirely as Davis planned: the Indiana State House, Indianapolis (1831 – 35), elicited calls for his advice and designs in building other state capitols in the 1830s: North Carolina's (1833 – 40, with local architect David Paton), the Illinois State Capitol, often attributed entirely to the Springfield, Illinois architect John F. Rague, who was at work on the Iowa State Capitol at the same time, and in 1839, the committee responsible for commissioning a design for the Ohio Statehouse asked his advice. The resulting capitol in Columbus, Ohio, often attributed to the Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole consulting with Davis and Ithiel Town, has a stark Greek Doric order colonnade across a recessed entrance, flanked by recessed window bays that continue the rhythm of the central portico, all under a unique drum capped by a low saucer dome. With Town's partner James Dakin, he designed the noble colossal Corinthian order of the Greek Revival "Colonnade Row" on New York's Lafayette Street, the very first apartments designed for the prosperous American middle class (1833, half still standing). Two years after its completion, Davis was hired to design the Dutch Reformed Church upriver in Newburgh, inspired by the Temple of Poseidon, both positioned for the viewing of maritime travelers. He continued in partnership with Town until shortly before Town's death in 1844. In 1831, he was elected an associate member of the National Academy. From 1835, Davis began work on his own on Rural Residences, his only publication, the first pattern book for picturesque residences in a domesticated Gothic Revival taste, which could be executed in carpentry, and also containing the first of the Italianate style "Tuscan" villas, flat-roofed with wide overhanging eaves and picturesque corner towers. Unfortunately the Panic of 1837 cut short his plans for a series of like volumes, but Davis soon formed a partnership with Andrew Jackson Downing, illustrating his widely read books. Additions to Vesper Cliff were built in 1834. See also: =Country residences (1840 - 1860) = The 1840s and 1850s were Davis's two most fruitful decades as a designer of country houses. His villa "Lyndhurst" at Tarrytown, New York, is his single most famous house. Many of his villas were built in the scenic Hudson River Valley— where his style informed the vernacular Hudson River Bracketed that gave Edith Wharton a title for a novel —but Davis sent plans and specifications to clients as far afield as Indiana. He designed Blandwood, the 1846 home of Governor John Motley Morehead that stands as America's earliest Italianate Tuscan Villa. Innovative interior features, including his designs for mantels and sideboards, were also widely imitated in the trade. Other influential interior details include pocket shutters at windows, bay windows, and mirrored surfaces to reflect natural light. The Greek Revival style William Walsh House was built at Albany, New York, and Gothic Revival style Belmead was built near Powhatan, Virginia, in 1845. Two smaller but well known structures designed by Davis include one built for John Cox Stevens in 1845; Stevens was the first Commodore of New York Yacht Club and the small Carpenter Gothic building on his property near Hoboken was given to NYYC to be used as its first clubhouse. This building, fondly called "Station 10", still exists and can be found in Newport. Davis built a similar pavilion for his colleague and fellow NYYC founder, John Clarkson Jay, on Jay's Long Island Sound waterfront property in Rye, New York, in 1849. Although this building was taken down in the 1950s, the original setting and garden where it was once located is part of a National Historic Landmark site and open to the public. Inspired in part by friend Andrew Jackson Downing, Davis constructed several Gothic Revival cottage-style homes in Central New York, including the 1852-completed Reuel E. Smith House, which is included in the National Register of Historic Places. In 1851, Davis completed Winyah Park, one of approximately eighteen or more Italianate houses he designed in the 1850s. Winyah was built for Richard Lathers, who had studied architecture with Davis in New York in the 1830s. It was situated on Lathers's estate in the town of New Rochelle in Westchester County, New York. For this design Davis won the first architectural prize at the New York World's Fair of 1853–54.Edwards, Lee M., et al. (1986). Bliss: Family Life in American Painting, 1840-1910, p. 38. The Hudson River Museum. He used its most striking feature, two adjacent yet contrasting towers, in a much larger house named Grace Hill, built in Brooklyn between 1853 and 1854. In both Winyah and Grace Hill, broad octagonal towers serve as visual anchors for the taller square towers. Lathers later employed Davis to design four additional "investment houses" on his property which became known as "Lathers's Hill". The homes included two Gothic cottages and "Tudor Villa" constructed in 1858, and "Pointed Villa" constructed in 1859. In 1890, the artist Frederic Remington purchased one of these cottages from which he created his estate "Endion", which served as the studio for most of his artistic career.Study of a New York Suburb - New Rochelle, Architectural Record 1909 The success of "Winyah Park" and "Lathers's Hill" generated other important commissions for Davis in New Rochelle, including two cottage-villas, Wildcliff and Sans Souci, which he designed for members of a prominent Davenport family. Both homes feature Davis's signature central gable. Another extant Gothic Revival commission is Whitby Castle, designed in 1852 for Davis' lifelong friend William Chapman. The building is part of the Boston Post Road Historic District (Rye, New York) and retains many original features. Davis was invited to become a member of the American Institute of Architects shortly after its founding in 1857. In the late 1850s, Davis worked with the entrepreneur Llewellyn S. Haskell to create Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey, a garden suburb that was one of the first planned residential communities in the United States. Davis designed buildings for the University of Michigan in 1838, and in the 1840s he designed buildings for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. At Virginia Military Institute, Jackson's designs from 1848 through the 1850s created the first entirely Gothic revival college campus, built in brick and stuccoed to imitate stone.Mary Ann Sullivan, Clayton Hall, Virginia Military Institute Barracks Davis's plan for the Barracks quadrangle was interrupted by the Civil War; it was sympathetically completed to designs of Bertram Goodhue in the early 20th century. He married Margaret Beale in 1853 and had two children. =Declining patronage and retirement (1860 - 1892)= With the onset of Civil War in 1861, patronage in house building dried up, and after the war, new styles unsympathetic to Davis's nature were in vogue. In 1867, he designed the Hurst-Pierrepont Estate. In 1878, Davis closed his office. He built little in the last thirty years of his life, but spent his easy retirement in West Orange drawing plans for grandiose schemes that he never expected to build, and selecting and ordering his designs and papers, by which he determined to be remembered. They are shared by four New York institutions: the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, the New York Public Library, the New-York Historical Society, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A further collection of Davis material has been assembled at the Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum library. Davis is interred in Bloomfield Cemetery in Bloomfield, New Jersey.NJ Historical Trust See also * John Henry Devereux, South Carolina architect who shared a client with Alexander Jackson Davis ReferencesExternal links * Alexander Jackson Davis architectural drawings and papers, circa 1804-1900.Held by the Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. *Art and the empire city: New York, 1825-1861, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Davis (see index) *Peck, Amelia, “Alexander Jackson Davis (1803–1892).” The Metropolitan Museum of Art "Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History." *John Thorn, "Alexander Jackson Davis : picturesque American" *A.J. Davis at the Virginia Military Institute: plans and elevations at VMI *Great Buildings on-line: Town and Davis * Blandwood Mansion Greensboro, NC *Driving map of Davis structures in the Hudson Valley * Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on A.J. Davis. *The Alexander Jackson Davis Architectural Drawing Collection at the New York Historical Society Further reading Peck, Amelia. “Alexander Jackson Davis (1803–1892).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/davs/hd_davs.htm (October 2004) * *Aspirations for Excellence : Alexander Jackson Davis and the First Campus Plan for the University of Michigan, 1838 *Great Houses of the Hudson River, Michael Middleton Dwyer, editor, with preface by Mark Rockefeller, Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, published in association with Historic Hudson Valley, 2001. . * Category:1803 births Category:1892 deaths Category:Greek Revival architects Category:Architects from New York City Category:Defunct architecture firms based in New York City Category:People from West Orange, New Jersey Category:19th-century American architects "