Wingsch Real Estate Investments   

Hearst Castle on the Pacific Coast Highway

3 October 2018 | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika | Rubric: General, Architecture, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks Reading Time:  8 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post Hearst Castle is a National Historic Landmark and California Historical Landmark mansion located on the Central Coast of California, United States. Designed by architect Julia Morgan, it was a residence for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst between 1919 and 1947. Hearst died in 1951, and it became a California State Park in 1954. The site was opened to visitors in 1958. Since that time, it has been operated as the Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument, where the estate, and its considerable collection of art and antiques, is open for public tours. Despite its location far from any urban center, the site attracts “millions of travelers each year”. Hearst formally named the estate “La Cuesta Encantada” (“The Enchanted Hill”), but usually called it “the ranch”. Hearst Castle and grounds are also sometimes referred to as “San Simeon“, without distinguishing between the Hearst property and the adjacent unincorporated area of the same name.   read more…

One57 in New York

1 October 2018 | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika | Rubric: General, House of the Month, New York City Reading Time:  13 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post One57, formerly known as Carnegie 57 and nicknamed “The Billionaire Building”, is a 75-story (marketed as 90-story) supertall skyscraper at 157 West 57th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues in the Midtown neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Upon completion in 2014, it stood at 1,005 feet (306 m) tall, making it the tallest residential building in the city for a few months until the completion of 432 Park Avenue. The building has 92 condominium units on top of a new Park Hyatt Hotel with 210 rooms, which is set to become the flagship Hyatt property. The building’s developer is Extell Development Company, the contractor is Lend Lease Project Management & Construction, and the architect is Christian de Portzamparc. As of January 2015, it is home to the most expensive residence ever sold in New York City.   read more…

Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore

19 September 2018 | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika | Rubric: General, Architecture, Universities, Colleges, Academies Reading Time:  6 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post Johns Hopkins University is an American private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, the university was named for its first benefactor, the American entrepreneur, abolitionist, and philanthropist Johns Hopkins. His $7 million bequest (~$150 million in 2017 dollars)—of which half financed the establishment of Johns Hopkins Hospital—was the largest philanthropic gift in the history of the United States at that time. Daniel Coit Gilman, who was inaugurated as the institution’s first president on February 22, 1876, led the university to revolutionize higher education in the U.S. by integrating teaching and research. Adopting the concept of a graduate school from Germany‘s ancient Heidelberg University, Johns Hopkins University is considered the first research university in the United States.   read more…

Stanford University in California

17 September 2018 | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika | Rubric: General, Architecture, San Francisco Bay Area, Universities, Colleges, Academies Reading Time:  6 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post Stanford University (officially Leland Stanford Junior University, colloquially the Farm) is a private research university in Stanford, California. Stanford is known for its academic strength, wealth, proximity to Silicon Valley, and ranking as one of the world’s top-ten universities. The university was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford was a former Governor of California and U.S. Senator who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a coeducational and non-denominational institution.   read more…

Harvard University in Cambridge

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

🔊 Listen to this Post 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…

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge

5 September 2018 | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika | Rubric: General, Architecture, Universities, Colleges, Academies Reading Time:  5 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, MIT adopted an European polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. The Institute is traditionally known for its research and education in the physical sciences and engineering, but more recently in biology, economics, linguistics and management as well. MIT is often ranked among the world’s most prestigious universities.   read more…

University of California, Berkeley

3 September 2018 | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika | Rubric: General, Architecture, San Francisco Bay Area, Universities, Colleges, Academies Reading Time:  15 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post The University of California, Berkeley is a public research university in Berkeley, California. Founded in 1868, Berkeley is the flagship institution of the ten research universities affiliated with the University of California system. It is often ranked as a top-ten university in the world and the top public university in the United States. Established in 1868 as the University of California, resulting from the merger of the private College of California and the public Agricultural, Mining and Mechanical Arts College in Oakland, Berkeley offers approximately 350 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. The Dwinelle Bill of March 5, 1868 (California Assembly Bill No. 583) stated that the “University shall have for its design, to provide instruction and thorough and complete education in all departments of science, literature and art, industrial and profession[al] pursuits, and general education, and also special courses of instruction in preparation for the professions”.   read more…

The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island

1 September 2018 | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika | Rubric: General, Architecture, House of the Month, Hotels Reading Time:  12 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post The Grand Hotel is a historic hotel and coastal resort on Mackinac Island in Michigan, a small island located at the eastern end of the Straits of Mackinac within Lake Huron between the state’s Upper and Lower peninsulas. Constructed in the late 19th century, the facility advertises itself as having the world’s largest veranda. The Grand Hotel is well known for a number of notable visitors, including five U.S. presidents Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, inventor Thomas Edison, and author Mark Twain. Grand Hotel is a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In 1957, the Grand Hotel was designated a State Historic Building. In 1972, the hotel was named to the National Register of Historic Places, and on June 29, 1989, the hotel was made a National Historic Landmark.   read more…

Capitola in California

31 August 2018 | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika | Rubric: General, San Francisco Bay Area Reading Time:  2 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post Capitola is a city in Santa Cruz County, California, United States, on the coast of Monterey Bay. The population is at 10,000. The original settlement now known as Capitola grew out of what was then called Soquel Landing. Soquel Landing got its name from a wharf located at the mouth of Soquel Creek. This wharf, which dates back to the 1850s, served as an outlet for the produce and lumber grown in the interior. In 1865, Captain John Pope Davenport, a whaleman at Monterey, moved his operations to be near the wharf. Unable to capture any whales, he moved his operations the following year to Point Año Nuevo.   read more…