Hyannis in Massachusetts

10 March 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  3 minutes

© AK-Bino/cc-by-sa-4.0

© AK-Bino/cc-by-sa-4.0

Hyannis is the largest of the seven villages in the town of Barnstable, Massachusetts, in the United States. It is the commercial and transportation hub of Cape Cod and was designated an urban area at the 1990 census. Because of this, many refer to Hyannis as the “Capital of the Cape”. It contains a majority of the Barnstable Town offices and two important shopping districts: the historic downtown Main Street and the Route 132 Commercial District, including Cape Cod Mall and Independence Park, headquarters of Cape Cod Potato Chips. Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis is the largest on Cape Cod.   read more…

Thirteen Colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America

18 February 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  7 minutes

© Richard Zietz/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Richard Zietz/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies, the Thirteen American Colonies, or later as the United Colonies, were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Founded in the 17th and 18th centuries, they began fighting the American Revolutionary War in April 1775 and formed the United States of America by declaring full independence in July 1776. Just prior to declaring independence, the Thirteen Colonies in their traditional groupings were: New England (New Hampshire; Massachusetts; Rhode Island; Connecticut); Middle (New York; New Jersey; Pennsylvania; Delaware); Southern (Maryland; Virginia; North Carolina; South Carolina; and Georgia). The Thirteen Colonies came to have very similar political, constitutional, and legal systems, dominated by Protestant English-speakers. The first of these colonies was Virginia Colony in 1607, a Southern colony. While all these colonies needed to become economically viable, the founding of the New England colonies, as well as the colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania, were substantially motivated by their founders’ concerns related to the practice of religion. The other colonies were founded for business and economic expansion. The Middle Colonies were established on an earlier Dutch colony, New Netherland. All the Thirteen Colonies were part of Britain’s possessions in the New World, which also included territory in Canada, Florida, and the Caribbean.   read more…

Edgartown in Massachusetts

15 October 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  7 minutes

Edgartown Harbor © Don Ramey Logan/cc-by-sa-4.0

Edgartown Harbor © Don Ramey Logan/cc-by-sa-4.0

Edgartown is a tourist destination on the island of Martha’s Vineyard in Dukes County, Massachusetts, United States, for which it is the county seat. It was once a major whaling port, with historic houses that have been carefully preserved. Today it hosts yachting events around its large harbour. It includes the smaller island of Chappaquiddick. Edgartown is a part of Massachusetts’s 9th congressional district, represented in the Massachusetts Senate as a portion of the Cape and Islands district. The town’s population was 5,168 at the 2020 census.   read more…

Oak Bluffs in Massachusetts

29 April 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  8 minutes

© flickr.com - Michele Schaffer/cc-by-2.0

© flickr.com – Michele Schaffer/cc-by-2.0

Oak Bluffs is a town located on the island of Martha’s Vineyard in Dukes County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 5,341 at the 2020 United States Census. It is one of the island’s principal points of arrival for summer tourists, and is noted for its “gingerbread cottages” and other well-preserved mid- to late-nineteenth-century buildings. The town has been a historically important center of African American culture since the eighteenth century.   read more…

Faneuil Hall in Boston

1 July 2021 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, House of the Month Reading Time:  2 minutes

© flickr.com - Kevin Rutherford/cc-by-sa-2.0

© flickr.com – Kevin Rutherford/cc-by-sa-2.0

Faneuil Hall is a marketplace and meeting hall located near the waterfront and today’s Government Center, in Boston, Massachusetts. Opened in 1743, it was the site of several speeches by Samuel Adams, James Otis, and others encouraging independence from Great Britain. It is now part of Boston National Historical Park and a well-known stop on the Freedom Trail. It is sometimes referred to as “the Cradle of Liberty”. In 2008, Faneuil Hall was rated number 4 in “America’s 25 Most Visited Tourist Sites” by Forbes Traveler.   read more…

Nantucket in New England

23 March 2020 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  11 minutes

© Don Ramey Logan/cc-by-sa-4.0

© Don Ramey Logan/cc-by-sa-4.0

Nantucket is an island about 30 miles (50 km) by ferry south from Cape Cod, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Together with the small islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget, it constitutes the Town of Nantucket, and the conterminous Nantucket County. Part of the town is designated the Nantucket CDP, or census-designated place. The region of Surfside on Nantucket is the southernmost settlement in Massachusetts. The name “Nantucket” is adapted from similar Algonquian names for the island, perhaps meaning “faraway land or island” or “sandy, sterile soil tempting no one.” Nantucket is a tourist destination and summer colony. Due to tourists and seasonal residents, the population of the island increases to at least 50,000 during the summer months. The average sale price for a single-family home was $2.3 million in the first quarter of 2018. The National Park Service cites Nantucket, designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1966, as being the “finest surviving architectural and environmental example of a late 18th- and early 19th-century New England seaport town.”   read more…

Salem in Massachusetts

21 August 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  5 minutes

Peirce-Nichols House © Fletcher6/cc-by-sa-3.0

Peirce-Nichols House © Fletcher6/cc-by-sa-3.0

Salem is a historic coastal city in Essex County, Massachusetts, located in the North Shore region. It was one of the most significant seaports in early American history.   read more…

Portrait: The architect and founder of the Bauhaus School Walter Gropius

24 July 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Architecture, Portrait, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  17 minutes

Walter Gropius in Ulm, 1955 © Hans G. Conrad - René Spitz/cc-by-sa-3.0-de

Walter Gropius in Ulm, 1955 © Hans G. Conrad – René Spitz/cc-by-sa-3.0-de

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. Gropius was also a leading architect of the International Style.   read more…

Harvard University in Cambridge

7 September 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture, Universities, Colleges, Academies Reading Time:  6 minutes

Harvard Law School Library in Langdell Hall at night © Chensiyuan/cc-by-sa-4.0

Harvard Law School Library in Langdell Hall at night © Chensiyuan/cc-by-sa-4.0

Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1636 and named for clergyman John Harvard (its first benefactor), its history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the world’s most prestigious universities. Harvard is the United States’ oldest institution of higher learning, and the Harvard Corporation is its first chartered corporation. Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College primarily trained Congregational and Unitarian clergy. Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century, and by the 19th century, Harvard had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites. Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot‘s long tenure (1869–1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a modern research university; Harvard was a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. A. Lawrence Lowell, who followed Eliot, further reformed the undergraduate curriculum and undertook aggressive expansion of Harvard’s land holdings and physical plant. James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College.   read more…

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