Mi Tierra (song)

# Mi Tierra (song)

## Abstract

" Mi Tierra " (transl. "My Homeland") is a song by Cuban American singer Gloria Estefan, from her third studio album of the same name (1993). It was written by Estefano and the artist, with her husband Emilio Estefan, Jorge Casas, and Clay Ostwald handling the production. The song was released as the lead single from the album in 1993 by Epic Records. It is a son montuno track in which the singer narrates longing for her homeland. The song received positive reactions from music critics, who praised its arrangement.

"Mi Tierra" received the Lo Nuestro Award for Tropical Song of the Year in 1994, Tropical/Salsa Song of the Year at the 1994 Billboard Latin Music Awards, and was acknowledged as an award-winning song at the 1995 BMI Latin Awards. Commercially, the song topped the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart in the United States and ranked on several European countries' listings. The accompanying music video was directed by Alberto Tolot and features Gloria Estefan performing the song along with several musicians in the background. The song has been covered live by Ednita Nazario and Víctor Manuelle, respectively.

## Background and composition

In January 1993, Gloria Estefan announced that she was working on a Spanish-language album titled Mi Tierra. The artist had wanted to record a Spanish-language album reflecting her Cuban heritage since the beginning of her musical career. Before recording in English, Estefan and her band performed at Latin nightclubs; she also remembered her grandmother teaching her old Cuban songs. Music had an important role in Estefan's family; her paternal grandmother was a poet, and an uncle played the flute in a salsa band. The singer's desire to record an album in Spanish was also influenced by her son Nayib; she wanted him to recognize his Cuban heritage.

Mi Tierra was produced by Gloria's husband, Emilio Estefan, and fellow Miami Sound Machine members Clay Ostwald and Jorge Casas. Recording took place at the Crescent Moon Studios in Miami, Florida. Colombian musician Estefano composed four of the album's songs, including the title track, which he co-wrote with Estefan. Musically, "Mi Tierra" is a "straightforward hard- montuno strut celebrating love and longing for the old country". Estefan noted that the song could apply to any immigrant, "the song wasn't just for a Cuban", citing Estefano's Colombian origin. "o for him it meant something else. We wanted something that could catch the feeling of nostalgia felt by every Hispanic immigrant, no matter where he comes from", she added.

## Critical reception and accolades

AllMusic editor Jose F. Promis called the song as "anthemic" and referred to it as one of the album's "happy upbeat songs". Larry Flick from Billboard called the song "genius". Of the club remix, he said it is "effectively reconstructed for her newly rediscovered club following. Track tempers the original song's kinetic percussion and Glo's fierce singing with a wriggling deep-house groove and ambient keyboards." The Daily Vault ' s Mark Millan called the song "intoxicating". Anne Hurley from Entertainment Weekly stated that "moods flow from intense yearning" and it is a "meditation on longing for one's homeland". The Miami Herald reviewer Mario Tarradell felt that Estefan "rips through the fierce beat of the title track". In an otherwise negative review of the album, "Mi Tierra" was the only track that The Morning Call critic Clarence Elie-Rivera enjoyed, calling it an "upbeat dance tune".

Chuck Campbell of the Knoxville News Sentinel called "Mi Tierra" a "poignant" song that gives a "provocative look at the Cuban motherland from an expatriate standpoint". In his weekly UK chart commentary, James Masterton noted, "It is the first time she has ever charted a single sung in Spanish, which may restrict its appeal somewhat." Alan Jones from Music Week gave the song three out of five stars, adding that "the older occasional singles buyer will be lured to this by its traditional Latin-drenched original mix, while dance fans will skip it for Tommy Musto and Pablo Flores ' muscular house mixes. Regular Estefan fans are more likely to give it a miss altogether." The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette critic Betsy Kline referred it as one of the album's three best tracks. Tim Jeffery from the Record Mirror Dance Update described the song as "a nice summery Latin number".

At the 6th Annual Lo Nuestro Awards in 1994, "Mi Tierra" won Tropical Song of the Year. In the same year, it was the Tropical/Salsa Song of the Year at the inaugural Billboard Latin Music Awards. The song was acknowledged as an award-winning song at the 1995 BMI Latin Awards.

## Promotion and commercial performance

"Mi Tierra" was as released as the album's lead single in 1993 by Epic Records. The accompanying music video was directed by Alberto Tolot and features Estefan performing the song in a nightclub along with several musicians in the background. A re-recording of the song was included on her 14th studio album Brazil305 (2020) and incorporates Brazilian music. Estefan performed the track live at the 36th Annual Grammy Awards in 1994, where she also won the Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Album for Mi Tierra.

As part of the Latin Recording Academy tribute to Estefan, who was presented with the Person of the Year accolade in 2008, Puerto Rican singer Ednita Nazario sung a live cover version of "Mi Tierra". On the following day, Estefan performed it on the 9th Annual Latin Grammy Awards ceremony along with " No Llores " and " Oye Mi Canto ". Ten years later, she was honored with the Lo Nuestro Excellence Award by Univision along with her husband and the track was performed by Puerto Rican singer Víctor Manuelle during the 2018 Lo Nuestro Awards.

In the United States, the song reached numbers one and five on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs and the Hot Dance Club Songs charts, respectively. "Mi Tierra" was the second best-performing Latin song in the country after "Me Estoy Enamorando" by La Mafia. In Europe, the song peaked at number 77 on the Media Control charts in Germany, 27th on the Mega Single Top 100 chart in the Netherlands, and 36th on the UK Singles Chart.

## Track listing

- CD-Maxi single

- Mi Tierra (album version) – 4:36

- Mi Tierra (Flores Latin House Dub) – 4:08

- Mi Tierra (Latin Mix) – 6:15

- Mi Tierra (Underground Vocal) – 5:40

- Mi Tierra (Flores Latin House Mix) – 6:39

## Personnel

Adapted from the Mi Tierra liner notes:

- Randy Barlow – music arranger, trumpet, backing vocalist

- Cachao – double bass

- Jorge Casas – tres, twelve-string guitar

- Sheila E. – congas, timbales

- Luis Enrique – percussion

- Estefano – arranger

- Emilio Estefan Jr – arranger

- Nelson González – tres, percussion

- Paquito Hechavarría – piano

- Teddy Mulet – trumpet, trombone, backing vocalist

- Clay Ostwald – arranger, piano

- Rafael Padilla – percussion

- Debbie Spring – violin, viola

- Steven Sigurdson – cello

- Néstor Torres – flute

- Cheíto Quiñonez – backing vocalist

## Charts


Cyber Core

# Cyber Core

## Abstract

Cyber Core is a 1990 vertically scrolling shooter video game developed by Alfa System and published in Japan by Information Global Service (IGS) and in North America by NEC for the TurboGrafx-16. Set in the year 2269 where Earth has been overrun by an alien race known as Hyper Insects, the player controls a Chimera bio-fighter craft, piloted by the enforcer Rad Ralph (Kato Melange in the Japanese version) in order to fend off the invaders and reclaim the planet. Similar to Dragon Spirit, Ralph has a projectile weapon for destroying air-based enemies and a bomb for destroying ground-based enemies.

Co-headed by director Kenji Hisatomi and producer Kotoshi Yokoyama, Cyber Core was the first shoot 'em up title created by Alfa System, who would later work on future projects such as Down Load and the Shikigami no Shiro series. First released on the TurboGrafx-16, the game was ported to the X68000 by SPS, featuring improved visuals and audio, as well as a rebalanced difficulty. The X68000 conversion has since been re-released only in Japan for Microsoft Windows through D4 Enterprise 's Project EGG download service.

Cyber Core on the TurboGrafx-16 received mostly positive reception from critics, but the X68000 conversion was met with mixed reception; reviewers drew comparisons with Dragon Spirit due to its gameplay system but praise was given to its technical performance, visual presentation, sound, and fast-paced gameplay, but criticism was geared towards the repetitive action and enemy attack patterns, while many were divided in regards to its difficulty.

## Gameplay

Cyber Core is a science fiction-themed vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up game. The plot takes place in the year 2269, where Earth has been overrun by a cybernetic alien race called Hyper Insects. Their primary base is an underground mobile fort known only as the mothership. To fend off the Hyper Insects, Earth's defense forces create an insect-themed bio-jet in similar form to the enemy called the Chimera, which mutates the pilot into a humanoid insect upon use. This occurs to protagonist Rad Ralph (Kato Melange in the Japanese version), who has been assigned to attack the Hyper Insects and reclaim Earth.

The gameplay structure is similar to Xevious and Dragon Spirit; The player controls the Chimera through eight increasingly difficult stages over a constantly scrolling background, populated with an assortment of enemies and the scenery never stops moving until a boss is reached, which must be fought in order to progress further. The Chimera moves in eight directions and is equipped with two main weapons; a projectile weapon for air-based enemies and a bomb for ground-based enemies. The Chimera can mutate into four types of weapons by collecting their respective color eggs when shooting at the supply carrier.

Collecting three eggs in a row also grants the Chimera shield units to sustain enemy hits but this can also prove to be a risky proposition, however, as the Chimera's size is increased when more weapon eggs are collected. The Chimera can also acquire special egg types, which are dropped when firing at bosses or enemy formations, that grants additional abilities such as invincibility and a destruction egg capable of obliterating enemies and bullets on-screen. The Chimera is equipped with a speed setting, which can be increased or decreased across three levels by pressing its dedicated button. The title uses a checkpoint system in which the Chimera will start off at the beginning of the checkpoint the player managed to reach before dying. Getting hit by enemy fire reduces the Chimera's firepower and shield, which results in losing a live once the shields are depleted. The game is over once all lives are lost, though the player can use limited continues at the title screen to keep playing.

## Development and release

Cyber Core was the first shoot 'em up title created by Alfa System, who would later work on future projects such as Down Load and the Shikigami no Shiro series. Its development was co-led by director Kenji Hisatomi and producer Kotoshi Yokoyama. Sei Mochizuki and a member under the pseudonym "Bokegi!" served as co-programmers. The scenario was written by Syuichi Kouyama, while Kiyofumi Katō and Satoru Kubota acted as co-designers, in addition of Masashige Yumoto acting as illustrator. The soundtrack was co-composed by Masahiro Teramoto, who also created the game's sound effects, and Toshio Murai.

Cyber Core was first published in Japan by Information Global Service (IGS) on March 9, 1990, for the PC Engine and later in North America by NEC in May 1990 for the TurboGrafx-16. The game was ported to the X68000 by SPS on October 25, 1991, featuring improved visuals and audio, as well as a rebalanced difficulty. The original X68000 version has since been re-released in digital form for Microsoft Windows through D4 Enterprise 's Project EGG service on March 26, 2013.

## Reception

Cyber Core on the TurboGrafx-16 received mostly positive reception from critics, most of which reviewed it as an import title. However, public reception of the original PC Engine release was mixed; readers of PC Engine Fan voted to give the game a 19.26 out of 30 score, ranking at the number 378 spot in a poll, indicating a middling following. The X68000 conversion was also met with mixed reception from reviewers.

Famitsu ' s four reviewers drew comparisons with Dragon Spirit due to its gameplay system. However, they praised the game's sense of speed, as well as the insect character sprites for being quite attractive and slightly creepy but criticized the enemy attack patterns. Génération 4 ' s Philippe Querleux also felt that the title was similar to Dragon Spirit, but with mecha and insect characters. Regardless, Querleux expressed that "fans of the genre will not be disappointed" with Cyber Core. Aktueller Software Markt ' s Torsten Oppermann noted that the game borrowed ideas from Dragon Spirit as well, but stated that it stands out among the PC Engine library. Oppermann commended visuals, sound and addictive gameplay.

Joystick ' s Jean-Marc Demoly gave positive remarks to its animated graphics, sound and controls. Electronic Gaming Monthly ' s four reviewers criticized its repetitive action for not being varied as Blazing Lazers and lack of difficulty balance due to the overpowered weapons. Nevertheless, they gave positive commentary to the frantic gameplay, graphical presentation and large bosses. Power Play ' s Martin Gaksch praised Cyber Core for its technical performance, good visuals, enemy variety, sound and customizable gameplay. Gaksch also commended the game's adjustable difficulty system that changes the enemy's behavior based on how much items are collected, but noted that it "stole" ideas from both Dragon Spirit and Tiger-Heli.

VideoGames & Computer Entertainment ' s Clayton Walnum gave positive remarks to the vivid backgrounds, detailed insect sprites, music, interesting sound effects and fast-pacing but felt mixed in regards to the difficult playability. Takahashi Tetushi of Japanese magazine Oh!X gave the X68000 version a positive overview, commending its graphics and music. In contrast, Japanese publication Technopolis gave the X68000 port a mixed outlook. Hardcore Gaming 101 ' s Steven Barbato noted its Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind -esque world and aesthetic, as well as the skill-based power-up system but criticized the game's difficulty for being occasionally unfair.


Cyber Core


Chen Pokong

# Chen Pokong

## Abstract

Chen Pokong (Chinese: 陳破空; born December 20, 1963), also known as Jinsong Chen (Chinese: 陳勁松), is a Chinese-American columnist, political commentator, author, television pundit and YouTuber. Chen played a key role in organizing the democracy movement during the 1989 democracy protest in China, for which he was imprisoned and subsequently exiled to the United States.

In December 1985, Chen Pokong, who was then a graduate student at Tongji University, led nine fellow graduate students to petition the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Hu Yaobang, calling for political reform and the advancement of the democratic process. This event is seen as a precursor to the student movement a year later, historically known as the 1986 Student Protests ("86 Student Movement"). In December 1986, Chen Pokong initiated the 1986 Student Movement in Shanghai, advocating for democratic reforms, with Tongji University becoming the main force behind the protests in the city. The movement spread to over a dozen major cities across China, reaching its peak in Shanghai. After the peaceful conclusion of the movement, Hu Yaobang, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party at the time, was dismissed by Deng Xiaoping and other political elders due to his sympathy for the students' democratic demands. This event laid the groundwork for the larger-scale 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

After graduating from Tongji University, Chen Pokong went to teach at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, where he quickly developed and organized local pro-democracy movements. In 1989, Chen initiated and helped organize the Guangzhou student protests, establishing the "Democracy Salon" at Sun Yat-sen University in January of that year. In April, he joined student leaders Chen Wei and Yu Shiwen at Haizhu Square to launch the pro-democracy movement in Guangzhou. During this period, he wrote a large number of manifestos and promotional materials to support the growth of the democracy movement. After the suppression of the 1989 pro-democracy movement, Chen was placed on the government's wanted list and was imprisoned twice (in 1989 and 1993), serving a total of four and a half years.

Before being exiled to the United States, Chen worked as an assistant professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. Chen was invited to Columbia University as a visiting scholar in 1996, and later obtained a master's degree of MPA. from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Since the late 1990s, Chen has been one of the most influential Chinese political commentators, critics and authors.

Chen has been providing commentary for Radio Free Asia since 1997, and had regularly appeared on Voice of America 's weekly Pros and Cons show for decades.

Chen has been invited to visit Taiwan several times and has met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in both 2010 and 2019. In 2009, he was invited to visit Dharamshala, India, where he met with the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile. Chen Pokong has expressed his firm support for democracy in Taiwan and a free Tibet. He was also invited to speak at the Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union, where he delivered speeches and participated in debates. In these speeches and debates, Chen Pokong called for urgent attention to the threat of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He emphasized that this was not just a "China Threat," but rather a CCP Threat, which poses a common threat to both the Chinese people and the people of the world.

Chen has turned to be an influential YouTuber since 2017. By 2023, Chen had held over 430,000 subscribers. Chen has been a prominent member of the " zi meiti " (YouTube)(zh), a campaign known as ‘self-media’ or ‘self-broadcasting’, which came into prominence in 2017 amongst exiled Chinese dissidents. The phenomenon is categorized by the proliferation of routine and online broadcasts on websites such as YouTube.

## Early life

Chen Pokong (Chinese: 陳破空) was born in the Sichuan province of China, Chen is a graduate of Hunan University and a postgraduate of Tongji University in Shanghai. As a postgraduate student in 1985, he submitted a joint letter calling for political reform to former Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang. As one of the student leaders, Chen then co-organized the massive 1986 Chinese student demonstrations in Shanghai calling for democracy.

## Chinese democracy movement

In 1985, as a graduate student in Tongji University of Shanghai, Chen wrote a letter to then General Secretary of Chinese Communist Party Hu Yaobang, a known reformist in CCP, calling for political reform to build up a democratic China. This letter was co-signed by 9 other students at Tongji University. Mr. Hu sent two senior officers to meet Chen and his fellow colleagues in Shanghai and listened to their voices and suggestions.

In 1986, Chen co-founded and co-organized a large scale democracy movement in Shanghai called 1986 Student Movement which spreading to more than 15 cities in China, calling for democracy and anti- corruption in China. Then General Secretary Hu Yaobang was later purged by Deng Xiaoping and other senior politicians, accusing Hu of tolerating the student movements led by Chen Pokong and his fellow colleagues and joined by tens of thousands of students and citizens. The 1986 student movement that happened in Shanghai contributed to the nationwide 1989 democracy movement two and half years later, centered in Beijing, known as Tiananmen Square Protests.

In 1989, Chen initiated and organized a large-scale democracy movement in Guangzhou. After establishing a "democracy salon" in Sun Yat-sen University in January, on April 22, Chen joined Chen Wei, Yu Shiwen and other student leaders in launching student protests in Guangzhou in support of the student protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square., after Hu Yaobang suddenly passed away on April 15, 1989. The nationwide protests for democracy lasted for about two months. After the nationwide protests were cracked down by the CCP and its army PLA, Chen was wanted and subsequently arrested by the Chinese government for his leading role in the movement. He then spent the years between 1989 and 1993 in prison and forced labor camps.

### Imprisonment

As a political prisoner, Chen was sent to prison or forced labor on two occasions:

- In August 1989, he was arrested for his involvement in democracy activities. He was charged in February 1990 with "carrying out counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement." On March 1, 1991, he was sentenced to three years in prison by the Guangzhou City Intermediate People's Court.

From 1992 to 1995, Chen had resumed political activities after his release from prison in July 1992 and was wanted by the government by 1993. He fled to Hong Kong and applied for political asylum but was rejected; after being repatriated, he was sent to forced labor.

- In October 1993, Chen was sentenced again to re-education through forced labor for two years under the charges of "illegally political activities and crossing state borders," a sentence that was carried out without a trial, as is custom with the re-education through forced labor system in China.

In a letter to the international community in 1994, Chen alleged that the prisoners in the Guangzhou No. 1 Reeducation-Through-Labor Center were often beaten and "subjected to conditions which amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment." Chen had the letter smuggled out of the camp in the latter half of 1994, which was reported on by international human rights groups. The letter claimed that production quotas force prisoners to work over 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, with only 3 days of holiday per year. It also claimed that heavy labor was performed during the daytime, including the transportation and loading of stones from a quarry to a boat; at night, prisoners were forced to make artificial flowers for export. The food supplied to prisoners by camp authorities was often insufficient and consisted of "coarse rice and rotten vegetables," according to Amnesty International.

Part of Chen's letter said: "Inmates who labour slightly slower are brutally beaten and misused by supervisors and team leaders (themselves inmates). Inmates are often beaten until they are blood-stained all over, collapse or lose consciousness (shortly before I was sent here, one inmate was beaten to death.)... Many inmates, including myself, their hands and feet squashed by big stones, stained with blood and pus, have to labour as usual. As a consequence, many inmates were crippled for life." In his letter, he said the Guangdong No. 1 Reform Through Labor, Quarry 1, Company 9 in Chini Town, Hua County, was the "most vicious," and that he was sent there so the Guangdong authorities could "vent their bitter hatred on me."

In a House Congressional testimony on the subject of Chinese forced labor, Nancy Pelosi called Chen "a courageous young professor", and characterized Chen's letter as "a compelling appeal for help, relating the terrible tale of ill-treatment and slave labor" in Chinese prison camps. Chen was reportedly the first person and the first political prisoner to provide the United Nations with evidence that the Chinese government and its agencies used forced labor to manufacture products for sale overseas.

## Works

Chen was an assistant professor of economics at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou when the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations began in China. He co-organized the protests and was arrested in 1989. After nearly five years in prison on two separate occasions, Chen was exiled to the United States in 1996. There, he became a visiting scholar at Columbia University, where he obtained an MPA. Chen later built a career as the principal of a business school located in Manhattan, New York.

At the same time, he has been writing for Chinese pro-reform or pro-democracy publications. He is also an author of a number of books on Chinese political culture and international conflicts, mostly published in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Chen regularly appears as an analyst on Chinese current affair programs, including Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, New Tang Dynasty Television, SET Taiwan, Radio Los Angeles 1300, Hong Kong Open Magazine, Beijing Spring, and others; speaking at news conferences, panel discussions, and other events; and offering commentary to media. He frequently writes political columns for Radio Free Asia, Hong Kong's Open Magazine, and other publications. In 2007, Chen was awarded the "Prominent News and Culture Award." Chen was an editorial contributor for The Taipei Times. Topics of Chen's analysis include a range of contemporary issues involving modern China and its relationship with the US and the rest of the world. Other topics discussed include human rights, minority issues, official corruption, social instability, economic inequality, military expansion, and cross-strait tension.


Robert Ardrey

# Robert Ardrey

## Abstract

Robert Ardrey (October 16, 1908 – January 14, 1980) was an American playwright, screenwriter and science writer perhaps best known for The Territorial Imperative (1966). After a Broadway and Hollywood career, he returned to his academic training in anthropology in the 1950s.

As a playwright and screenwriter Ardrey received many accolades. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1937, won the inaugural Sidney Howard Memorial Award in 1940, and in 1966 received an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay for his script for Khartoum. His most famous play is Thunder Rock.

Ardrey's science writing challenged models in the social sciences of his time. African Genesis (1961) and The Territorial Imperative (1966), two of his most widely read works, increased public awareness of evolutionary science. However he was criticized by scientists for having misunderstood the science and misinterpreted the evidence.

## Life

Ardrey was born in Chicago, the son of Robert Leslie Ardrey, an editor and publisher, and Marie (née Haswell). His father died in 1919 from pneumonia during the influenza epidemic and he was raised by his mother. He grew up on the South Side of Chicago and attended the nearby University of Chicago, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1930 as a Ph.B. While in attendance, he studied creative writing with Thornton Wilder, who would become his lifelong mentor.

His first play, Star Spangled, opened on Broadway in 1935 and lasted only a few days, but resulted in the award of a Guggenheim Fellowship. The award granted Ardrey the financial independence to focus on writing plays. Several of his subsequent plays, including Casey Jones, How to Get Tough About It, and his most famous play, Thunder Rock, were produced on Broadway.

In 1938 he moved to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he would eventually become MGM's highest paid writer. There he wrote many screenplays, including those for adaptations such as The Three Musketeers (1948, with Gene Kelly), Madame Bovary (1949), The Secret Garden (1949), and The Wonderful Country (1959, with Robert Mitchum; The Wonderful Country also had a cameo from famed Negro leagues pitcher Satchel Paige). He also wrote original screenplays, including the screenplay for Khartoum (1966, directed by Basil Dearden, starring Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier) for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Writing, Story, and Screenplay.

During the 1950s Ardrey became increasingly disenchanted with Hollywood and what he saw as the growing role money had started to play in creative decisions. At the same time and largely by accident, he renewed his interest in human origins and human behavior, which he had studied at the University of Chicago. In the summer of 1956 he moved with his wife and two sons to Geneva. He spent the following years traveling in Southern and Eastern Africa, conducting research for what was to become his first book on the subject, African Genesis (1961), ultimately an international bestseller. Subsequently, he went on to write a total of four books in his widely read Nature of Man Series, including his best known book The Territorial Imperative (1966).

In October 1960 he moved with his second wife to Trastevere, Rome, where they lived for 17 years. In 1977 they moved to a small town named Kalk Bay just outside Cape Town, South Africa. He continued to publish influential works until his death on January 14, 1980, from lung cancer. His ashes, along with those of his wife, are interred in the Holy Trinity Church overlooking False Bay.

## Theater and film career

After graduating from the University of Chicago, under the continuing mentorship of Thornton Wilder, Ardrey wrote a novel, several plays, and many short stories, all of which remained unpublished. It was Wilder's rule that "A young author should not write for market until his style 'crystallized'". Wilder and Ardrey agreed that this moment came with the writing of the play Star Spangled.

Star Spangled opened on Broadway in 1935. It was a comedy that brought to life the classic struggles of an immigrant family living on the South Side of Chicago. It received largely negative reviews and lasted only a few days. However it did catch the attention of notable playwright Sidney Howard, whom Ardrey claims was instrumental in the resulting award of a Guggenheim fellowship for promise as a young playwright. The award allowed Ardrey the financial independence to remain in Chicago and focus on writing plays.

While in Chicago Ardrey wrote two more plays. The first, Casey Jones, was a play about railroad men and their love for their machines. The second, How to Get Tough About It, Ardrey describes as "A proletarian love story of pleasant dimensions." In 1938 Guthrie McClintic presented How to Get Tough About It and Elia Kazan directed Casey Jones. The plays opened ten days apart and were massive failures. In his preface to Plays of Three Decades Ardrey writes:

No author in Broadway memory had attained two such failures on a scale quite so grand on evenings quite so close together. Had they opened six months apart, none would have noticed. Coming as they did, I became a kind of upside-down white-headed boy, a figure thundering toward literary glory in reverse gear. Hollywood, incapable of resisting the colossal, bid lavishly for my services. And Samuel Goldwyn, buyer of none but the best, bought me.

Ardrey signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and moved for the first time to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter. He worked on several projects, including Samuel Goldwyn's notorious boondoggle remake of Graustark, which was cancelled, and a western called The Cowboy and the Lady, from which he was dropped (though he later used most of the plot for his smash success Lady Takes A Chance). While in Los Angeles he would meet and work with Samuel Goldwyn, Clarence Brown, Pandro Berman, Garson Kanin, Gene Fowler, Lillian Hellman, Sidney Howard, and S.N. Behrman.

In 1938, however, he received word that his Broadway agent, Harold Freedman, had sold the film rights to his play How to Get Tough About It. Ardrey decided to use the opportunity to take time off to write a play. He travelled to Tucson where he married Helen Johnson with famed Hollywood director Garson Kanin as his best man. Following his wedding, he sent a note to Samuel Goldwyn which read: "Dear Mr. Goldwyn. I fear that I am wasting your money, and I'm sure you are wasting my time." He moved with his new wife back to the east coast and set to work, first on a minor project which he would abandon, and then on the play that would become Thunder Rock.

### Thunder Rock

Robert Ardrey wrote Thunder Rock during the period of escalation in Europe which would lead to World War II. Despairing of the growing isolationism among Americans, Ardrey became convinced that American involvement in the war was a moral necessity. However he did not intend to write a play about the conflict until he was struck by a moment of inspiration during a performance of Swan Lake, in which he conceived of "the play from beginning to end, complete with first, second, and third act curtains."

In his autobiography, Ardrey gives the following summary of the play:

My story was that of a renowned journalist who having experienced the disillusionments of the 1930s had given up all hope of influencing man toward a better world. In his depths, he takes a job as keeper of a lonely lighthouse on a rock in Lake Michigan. On that rock, a century earlier, had been wrecked a ship carrying immigrants to the New World. It was a time of legitimate hope – he thought. And there – within this lighthouse, symbolically the shape of his mind – he recreated a little world populated by the hopeful immigrants to the New World. The play consists of the journalist-lightkeeper and the long-dead people of his own resurrection, his relations with characters existing only in his own mind. Yet in the probing of his own creations, his integrity catches up with him. They were as much escaping problems of their world as he was of his. In the end he returns to reality.

Thunder Rock, an anti-isolationist play, opened on Broadway in November, 1939 to isolationist critics and a public wary of war. It received largely negative reviews and a poor reception. In the introduction to Plays of Three Decades, Ardrey writes that it opened "to the worst reviews I have ever received. Our most eminent critic deplored a play containing so much thunder and so little rock." Despite the negative initial reception, later commentators have described the play as prescient. Though unpopular at the time, it presaged the collapse of American isolationism. It was also one of the few pieces of art to warn not only about the European, but also about the Asian threat. Albert Wertheim remarked, "Ardrey's play is remarkable in another way as well. It is one of the only—perhaps the only—play of the period to see the conflicts and dangers across the Pacific. All other pre-Pearl Harbor plays of note look exclusively across the Atlantic to Hitler, Mussolini, and Europe."

During the summer of 1940 Ardrey discovered, when he read a syndicated column from Britain, that unbeknownst to him Thunder Rock had been having a massively successful run in London. In the column Vincent Sheehan wrote that it had become so emblematic as to be "London's Chu Chin Chow of World War II." The British rights had been sold to Herbert Marshall, who had launched a production starring Michael Redgrave. The play had been so successful that the British Minister of Information, Duff Cooper, arranged to have the Treasury department fund a production at the Globe Theatre in London's West End.

The play deeply resonated with a British public under siege. Eminent theater critic Harold Hobson wrote of Thunder Rock:

"The theatre... did a great deal to keep the morale of the British people high. One intellectual play had an enormous effect in keeping alight a spirit of hope at a time when it was nearer to extinction than it had ever been, either before or after. This was Thunder Rock, by Robert Ardrey. What he accomplished for the British people at a moment of supreme despair... merits their lasting gratitude.... He, more quietly but equally effectively as Churchill, urged us never to surrender."

Following its success in London, Thunder Rock has had a lasting legacy. Later in 1940 the BBC broadcast a live radio version, and in 1946 they produced an adaption for television. In 1942, Thunder Rock was turned into a film, directed by the Boulting Brothers, also starring Michael Redgrave. (See Thunder Rock (film))

Shortly following the war, productions of Thunder Rock were quickly launched in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and, most famously, in Allied-occupied Berlin where it was the first modern play to go up in the American zone. It continues to be commonly produced in American university theaters and productions have gone up all around the globe, including in Harare (formerly Salisbury), Zimbabwe, and Nairobi, Kenya.

### Hollywood 1939–1946

After Thunder Rock quickly closed on Broadway, Ardrey returned to Hollywood. His first official credit was the screenplay for the adaptation of Sidney Howard's Pulitzer Prize-winning play They Knew What They Wanted (1939). It was directed by Garson Kanin, starred Carole Lombard and Charles Laughton, and was shot on location in Napa Valley. In 1946, after a series of talks with RKO, Ardrey and his new agent Harold Norling Swanson negotiated the first-ever independent contract with a major Hollywood studio for him to write the screen adaptation of the A. J. Cronin novel The Green Years. The contract stipulated that Ardrey could work at his home in Brentwood – an unprecedented studio concession – and he was not to be bothered until he completed the screenplay in around six weeks. The Green Years debuted to record profits and went on to be one of the highest-grossing films of 1946.

Following these successes in Hollywood, Ardrey returned to New York to reengage the theater. There he wrote Jeb.

### Jeb

Jeb was a play about a disabled African American soldier returning to his home in the rural south after having fought in the war in the Pacific. He has lost one leg, but gained the ability to run an adding machine. Seeking out employment, he is faced with the bigotry of his countrymen. Jeb opened in New York in 1946. It received largely positive reviews (famed American theatre critic George Jean Nathan called it the best play on the topic of civil rights) and found small but enthusiastic audiences. However, due to factors including high production costs and relatively low revenues, the play had to close after a run of only one week. The critical consensus, with which Ardrey came to agree, was that Jeb was far ahead of its time.

### Hollywood 1946–1966

Following the short run of Jeb Ardrey moved back to Hollywood and signed a two-picture deal with MGM. In 1946 and '47 he wrote The Secret Garden. In 1947 he wrote the screenplay for The Three Musketeers, (which would become the second-highest-grossing film of 1948.) starring Lana Turner and Gene Kelly. This became Gene Kelly's favorite non-musical role. In 1949, Ardrey wrote the screenplay for Gustave Flaubert's classic novel Madame Bovary. The film starred Jennifer Jones with James Mason playing the role of Flaubert. The novel was originally tried for obscenity in France and Ardrey used this as a device to frame the story and allow for a commentator.

In 1947, Ardrey, amid growing persecution of Hollywood by the House Un-American Activities Committee, was elected to the board of the Screen Writers Guild and made chairman of its Political Advisory Committee. Following the founding of the Committee for the First Amendment, Ardrey flew to Washington, along with Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye, and John Huston, to defend The Hollywood Ten. Later, on behalf of the Guild, Ardrey worked with Thurman Arnold to lodge a suit against the Hollywood blacklist with the Supreme Court. The suit came up for review four years later, but the Guild dropped it.

In the early '50s, partly due to its enforcement of the blacklists and partly due to the increasing role banks were playing in creative decisions, Ardrey began to feel a growing dissatisfaction with Hollywood and started to travel abroad. He travelled to Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, the Riviera, Venice, Yugoslavia, where he spent a month living in Belgrade, Greece, Istanbul, and Munich. He later described these travels as "necessary exercises" for his book African Genesis.

In 1952 Ardrey joined the presidential campaign of Democratic Senator Adlai Stevenson against the Republican nominee, Dwight D. Eisenhower, as a part of the group "Hollywood for Stevenson". The group sponsored an investigator to go to the hometown of Eisenhower's running mate, Richard Nixon, for research. While there the investigator discovered, in the high school newspaper archives, that Nixon had been known as "Tricky Dick".

In 1954 Ardrey wrote a play about the persecution of accused communists in post- Cold War America. This play, Sing Me No Lullaby, was presented at the Phoenix Theatre in London. Brooks Atkinson, in his New York Times review, wrote:

"...the contribution has made in the last act is a clear and perceptive statement of this nameless, formless situation and an estimation of what it is doing to America... Mr. Ardrey... is a man of principle and taste. In Sing Me No Lullaby he has performed the function of a writer. He has found the words to describe something that is vague and elusive but ominous. And he has got far enough away from political recriminations to state it in terms of character and the life of the spirit."

Also in 1954 Ardrey wrote the adaptation of John Masters' novel Bhowani Junction. Due in part to the intervention of the banks financing the film, Ardrey entered into contested negotiations over rewrites. Eventually he quit and took his name off the film.

In 1958 Ardrey wrote the play Shadow of Heroes about the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. The play resulted in the release from Soviet custody of two political prisoners, Julia Rajk and her son.

Ardrey next turned his attention toward Africa. He was soon to begin his pioneering work in paleoanthropology, but he also continued his career as a screenwriter. In 1964 he wrote the first screenplay adaptation of Isak Dinesen 's novel Out of Africa. In 1966 he wrote another screenplay set in Africa, the Academy Award -nominated Khartoum.

### Khartoum

Khartoum was written and produced in 1966, directed by Basil Dearden. The film is based on historical accounts of British Gen. Charles "Chinese" Gordon 's defense of the Sudanese city of Khartoum from the forces of the Mahdist army during the Siege of Khartoum.

Khartoum starred Charlton Heston as General Gordon and Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi (Muhammad Ahmed). Heston, in his autobiography, wrote about his decision to take the role: "It's a good part, presents the challenge of doing a mystic, as well as the English thing. Also, it's a helluva good script."

The academy agreed with Heston's assessment of the script. In 1967 Khartoum earned Ardrey a nomination for the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Ardrey died, aged 71, in South Africa.

## Africa

In 1955, when Ardrey was considering a trip to Africa, Max Ascoli, publisher of The Reporter, offered to buy anything that Ardrey would write there. At the same time, Ardrey renewed an acquaintance with prominent geologist Richard Foster Flint. Because of Ardrey's background in geology and paleontology, Flint arranged for Ardrey to investigate claims made by Raymond Dart about a specimen of Australopithecus africanus.

Ardrey met Dart in South Africa and examined his evidence. Particularly, Dart had amassed a sample of 5,000 fossils from the Makapan cave. Among the fossils, some bones that could be used as tools—the lower jaw bones of small gazelles, which could be used as cutting tools, and the humerus of antelope, which could be used as clubs—were overrepresented (more frequent) by a factor of ten. This led Dart to theorize that in australopithecines, as man's direct ancestors, the use of weapons evolutionarily predated the development of large brains. Ardrey wrote an article about Dart's theory for The Reporter. After receiving significant attention, it was reprinted in Science Digest and led to The Smithsonian Institution contacting Dart. The theory was later refuted but was influential at the time.

This trip would serve as the beginning of Ardrey's renewed interest in the human sciences and the initiation of his writing on paleoanthropology.

## Paleoanthropology

Ardrey spent the latter part of his life working as a science writer. (In 1969 he was also contracted by Universal to write a screenplay of Baroness Karen Blixen 's memoir Out of Africa, but it was never produced.) While this work at first appears disparate with his early career, later commentators have emphasized the continuity. In his New York Times obituary, Bayard Webster wrote, "A closer look at his dramas and his behavioral books disclose that he was writing about social conditions in both genres. One involved humans, the other concerned both humans and other animals. But the dramatic theme was the same: the difficulties humans and other animals have in dealing with each other, and the reasons for their actions."

The writing quality of Ardrey's work was widely praised. The biologist and naturalist E. O. Wilson admired The Hunting Hypothesis, commenting:

In his excellent new book Robert Ardrey continues as the lyric poet of human evolution, capturing the Homeric quality of the subject that so many scientists by and large feel but are unable to put into words. His opinions, like those in his earlier works, are controversial but more open, squarely stated, and closer to the truth than the protests of his most scandalized critics.

In his 1964 book The Analysis of Prose, William D. Templeman used African Genesis as his third lesson. The volume included analysis and questions from his students at the University of Southern California.

A.J. Jacobs, who wrote the 2004 book The Know-It-All, about reading the entire Encyclopædia Britannica, asserts that a quote in the philosophy section from African Genesis was the most profound thing he read while reading the Encyclopædia.

His work was so popular that some scientists cited it as inspiring them to enter their fields.

Ardrey wrote for popular audiences on topics in paleoanthropology, which encompasses anthropology, ethology, paleontology, zoology and human evolution. He was praised for crossing the boundaries of scientific specialism. The Observer, for instance, in its review of The Social Contract, wrote that "Robert Ardrey... leaps across the fences with which scientists nowadays surround their special subjects. He reports their findings in clear English. He attempts to relate them in a single science of Man, by which all of us may try to know ourselves."

This single "science of Man" was postulated in Ardrey's influential Nature of Man Series, which is composed of four books: African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (1961), The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry Into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (1966), The Social Contract: A Personal Inquiry into the Evolutionary Sources of Order and Disorder (1970), and The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man (1976).

Along with Raymond Dart and Konrad Lorenz, Robert Ardrey became one of the three most famous proponents of the hunting hypothesis and the killer ape theory. Ardrey postulated that precursors of Australopithecus survived millions of years of drought in the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, as the savannah spread and the forests shrank, by adapting the hunting ways of carnivorous species. Changes in survival techniques and social organization gradually differentiated pre-humans from other primates. Concomitant changes in diet potentiated unique developments in the human brain.

The killer ape theory posits that aggression, a vital factor in hunting prey for food, was a fundamental characteristic which distinguished prehuman ancestors from other primates. Ardrey also argued that aggression was therefore an inherited evolutionary trait still present in man. He challenged the reigning blank-slate hypothesis (similarly aligned with cultural determinism). The blank-slate hypothesis was defended (and Ardrey was famously attacked) by Ashley Montagu. This debate led to popular interest in human origins. Ardrey's ideas influenced director Sam Peckinpah, to whom Strother Martin gave copies of two of Ardrey's books, as well as Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick in the development of 2001: A Space Odyssey. More recently, according to archeology expert K. Kris Hirst, reviewing the Dawn of Humanity (2015 PBS film) documentary which describes the 2015 studies of fossils of Homo naledi, the violent behavior of apes in the "Dawn of Man" sequence of 2001 has been "proven false", since contemporary evidence suggests that they were actually vegetarians. Although Ardrey's theories on aggression have been disproven, his books influenced public views at the time.

These themes have also been investigated in academia by, among others:

- Konrad Lorenz: On Aggression (1966)

- University of Chicago "Man the Hunter" symposium (1966): Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore, eds., Man the Hunter: Symposium on Man the Hunter, University of Chicago. Chicago: Aldine Publishing.

- Sherwood Washburn and Chet Lancaster: Man the Hunter (1968). (Washburn's students Lee and DeVore organised the 1966 Chicago conference.)

- Craig Stanford: The Hunting Apes: Meat Eating and the Origins of Human Behavior, Princeton University Press (2001).

- Erich Fromm: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973)

- Matt Cartmill: A View to a Death in the Morning: Hunting and Nature Through History (1996)

### Researchers

Some scientists whose research informed Robert Ardrey's ideas, several of whom Ardrey consulted while writing his four books in Africa:

- Warder Clyde Allee

- Charles Kimberlin Brain

- Robert Broom

- Helmut Karl Buechner

- Clarence Ray Carpenter

- Raymond Dart

- Henry Eliot Howard

- James Kitching

- Louis Leakey

- Eugène Marais

- Kenneth Oakley

- George Schaller

### Criticism

A 1964 review said "Much of African Genesis is pure speculation, much is bad interpretation of well-known phenomena, and more than a little of it is simply untrue."

A 1966 review by Edmund Leach said Ardrey was "a mine of scientific-sounding misinformation" and his book was "noisy and foolish".

A 1967 review by Patrick Bateson said "The arguments on which he bases his conclusions are shot through with such elementary mistakes, and his definitions are so loose, that he will surely mislead anyone who takes him seriously... Ardrey seems to be scarcely aware of the interactions involved in biological processes and to know nothing of the scientific method."

A 1970 review by Carroll Quigley said "Ardrey pretends to be a scientist, or at least a science reporter; but in this book there is no more science than there is in a comic strip... It is true that Ardrey has read a great deal about animal behavior, but he never seems to grasp what it all means, and his biases prevent him from seeing what is really there."

Around 1970, anthropologist Sherwood Washburn described Ardrey as "a popularizer of data he does not understand".

A 1970 review by C. E. S. Franks said "however well written they may be, his books are neither scientific works nor the works of a scientist. Robert Ardrey has misunderstood two of the basic concepts of the new biology, "aggression" and "territory", and has misapplied them in discussing human society".

A 1972 review by anthropologist Michael G. Kenny said "though Ardrey says on occasion that one cannot reasonably argue from animals to man, he systematically ignores his own advice" and that Ardrey "does not in general cite any clear evidence for his case" and "pays no attention at all to much material which, for good or ill, could bear on his case. The result is that he became so thoroughly muddled there was no possibility that he might have given some kind of sense to the analysis of the bio-social nature of society".

A 1972 review by David Pilbeam said Ardrey's ideas were "based upon misinterpretation of ethological studies and a total ignorance of the rich variety of human behavior documented by anthropologists".

A 1984 article said "the hard evidence for Ardrey's killer-ape hypothesis, all from Dart, is slim" and was refuted in the early 1970s by paleontologists, in particular CK Brain and Elisabeth Vrba.

A 1996 article by anthropologist Glenn E. King suggested Ardrey was a pseudoscientist. King said "when a person who is 'not a formally trained scientist' who flatly contradicts highly trained experts who have done original research" and "that person accuses scientists of avoiding 'awkward facts' that contradict their views, this is the typical rhetoric of the pseudoscientist seeking the support (and usually the money) of a gullible public". King cited Ardrey as an example of this.

A 2023 article said the disconfirmation of Ardrey's theories started arriving as early as 1966.

## Books

Fiction

- Worlds Beginning (1944) (Cited in Everett F. Bleiler 's The Checklist of Fantastic Literature, 1948.)

- The Brotherhood of Fear (1952)

- Plays of Three Decades: Thunder Rock / Jeb / Shadow of Heroes (1968) (Includes an autobiographical preface)

Nonfiction

- African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (1961)

- The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (1966)

- The Social Contract: A Personal Inquiry into the Evolutionary Sources of Order and Disorder (1970)

- The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man (1976)

- Aggression and Violence in Man: A Dialogue Between Dr. L.S.B. Leakey and Robert Ardrey (1971) OCLC 631758464 Online version

## Plays

- Star Spangled (1936)

- Casey Jones (1938)

- How to Get Tough About It (1938)

- Thunder Rock (1939) (filmed in 1942 in the UK, released 1944 in the US)

- God and Texas (1943)

- Jeb (1946)

- Sing Me No Lullaby (1954)

- Shadow of Heroes (1958) (produced in London as Stone and Star)

## Screenplays

- They Knew What They Wanted (1940)

- A Lady Takes a Chance (1943)

- The Green Years (1946)

- Song of Love (1947)

- The Three Musketeers (1948)

- Madame Bovary (1949)

- The Secret Garden (1949)

- The Schumann Story (1950) short film adaptation of Song of Love

- The Adventures of Quentin Durward (1955)

- The Power and the Prize (1956)

- The Wonderful Country (1959)

- Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962)

- Khartoum (1966) Nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay

- Out of Africa (1969, unproduced)

- The Animal Within (1975) documentary

## Awards and honors

- 1935: Sergel Drama Award.

- 1937: Guggenheim Fellowship.

- 1940: Sidney Howard Memorial Award.

- 1961: Theresa Helburn Memorial Award.

- 1963: Willkie Brothers Grant for Anthropology.

- Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

## Additional resources

There are a number of university libraries that house Robert Ardrey's papers. The primary archive for the Robert Ardrey Collection is at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center in the Mugar Memorial Library at Boston University. There are also additional collections of Robert Ardrey's works held at UCLA, Rutgers, and the University of Chicago.


The Draughtsman's Contract

# The Draughtsman's Contract

## Abstract

The Draughtsman's Contract is a 1982 British period comedy-drama film written and directed by Peter Greenaway – his first conventional feature film (following the feature-length mockumentary The Falls). Originally produced for Channel 4, the film is a form of murder mystery, set in rural Wiltshire, England in 1694 (during the joint reign of William III and Mary II). The period setting is reflected in Michael Nyman 's score, which borrows widely from Henry Purcell, and in the extensive and elaborate costume designs (which, for effect, slightly exaggerate those of the period). The action was shot on location in the house and formal gardens of Groombridge Place. The film received the Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association.

## Plot

Mr Neville, a young and conceited artist, is contracted by Mrs Virginia Herbert to produce a series of twelve landscape drawings of her country house, its outbuildings and gardens, as a gift for her cold and neglectful husband, who is currently away on business.

Part of the contract is that Mrs Herbert agrees to comply with Mr Neville's sexual demands. Several sexual encounters between them follow, each indicating reluctance or distress on the part of Mrs Herbert, and sexual aggression or insensitivity on the part of Mr Neville. During his stay, Mr Neville becomes disliked by several of the estate's inhabitants and visitors, especially by Mrs Herbert's German son-in-law, Mr Talmann.

Eventually Mrs Herbert, wearied by Mr Neville's excessive sexual appetite, tries to terminate the contract before the drawings are completed. But Neville refuses and their encounters continue as before. Then Mrs Herbert's married but childless daughter, Mrs Talmann, frustrated by her husband's lack of interest in sex, blackmails Neville into a second contract, in which he agrees to comply with her sexual demands, rather than she with his. Mrs Talman wishes to become pregnant, and knows this is unlikely to happen with her husband.

Mr Herbert does not return when expected, and his dead body is eventually discovered in the moat. Mr Neville completes his drawings and leaves, but returns to make an unlucky thirteenth drawing. During his visit, he is surprised when Mrs Herbert propositions him for sex, and they make love. Mrs Herbert also indicates that her daughter's plan to conceive a child by Mr Neville has been successful.

In the evening, while Mr Neville is apparently finishing the final sketch, he is approached by a masked man, obviously Mr Talmann in disguise, who is then joined by the estate manager and Mrs Herbert's former fiancé, Mr Noyes, her neighbour Mr Seymour, and the Poulenc twins, eccentric local landowners.

The party accuses Mr Neville of the murder of Mr Herbert, for the drawings can be interpreted to suggest more than one illegal act and to implicate more than one person. They also accuse him of the sexual violation of Mrs Herbert, as evidenced by his sexual congress with her that afternoon.

Neville realises, too late, that he has been entrapped by Mrs Herbert. Despite his protests, the group of men blind him and beat him to death, finally casting his body into the moat at the place where Mr Herbert's corpse was found.

## Cast

- Anthony Higgins as R. Neville

- Janet Suzman as Virginia Herbert

- Dave Hill as Mr Herbert

- Anne-Louise Lambert as Sarah Talmann

- Hugh Fraser as Mr Talmann

- Neil Cunningham as Thomas Noyes

- David Meyer as Poulenc brother

- Tony Meyer as Poulenc brother

- Nicholas Amer as Parkes

- Suzan Crowley as Mrs Pierpont

- Lynda La Plante as Mrs Clement

- Michael Feast as the Statue

- David Gant as Seymour

- Alastair Cumming as Philip

- Steve Ubels as Hoyten

## Themes

Although there is a murder mystery, its resolution is not explicit; it is implied that the mother (Mrs Herbert) and daughter (Mrs Talmann) planned the murder of Mr Herbert. Mrs Herbert and Mrs Talmann were aided by Mr Clarke, the gardener, and his assistant.

In order to keep the estate in their hands, they needed an heir. Because Mr Talmann was impotent, they used Mr Neville as a stud. Mr Herbert was murdered at the site where Mr Neville is murdered. (In the original treatment, Mr Herbert is murdered on his return on the 12th day and the site was vetoed as a painting site, because it was instead to be used as a murder site.)

## Background

The film was inspired when Greenaway, who trained as an artist before becoming a filmmaker, spent three weeks drawing a house near Hay-on-Wye while holidaying with his family. Much like Mr Neville in the final film, every day he would work on a particular view at a set time, to preserve the lighting effects while sketching from day to day. The hands shown drawing in the film are Greenaway's own, as are the completed drawings.

The original cut of the film was about three hours long. The opening scene was about 30 minutes long and showed each character talking, at least once, with every other character. Possibly to make the film easier to watch, Greenaway edited it to 103 minutes. The opening scene is now about 10 minutes long and no longer shows all the interactions among all of the characters. Some anomalies in the longer version film are deliberate anachronisms: the depiction of the use of a cordless phone in the 17th century and the inclusion on the walls of the house of paintings by Greenaway in emulation of Roy Lichtenstein which are partly visible in the released version of the film.

The released final version provides fewer explanations to the plot's numerous oddities and mysteries. The main murder mystery is never solved, though little doubt remains as to who did it. The reasons for the 'living statue' in the garden and why Mr Neville attached so many conditions to his contract were also more developed in the first version.

## Locations

Groombridge Place was the main location in this tale of 17th-century intrigue and murder.

## Music

Michael Nyman 's score is derived from grounds by Henry Purcell overlaid with new melodies, while one of the recurring tracks, apparently excluded from the film's soundtrack, is at least partly derived from the second movement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 's Violin Sonata in E Minor, K. 304. The original plan was to use one ground for every two of the twelve drawings but Nyman states in the liner notes that this was unworkable. The ground for one of the most popular pieces, "An Eye for Optical Theory", is considered to be probably composed by William Croft, a contemporary of Purcell. The goal was to create a generalized memory of Purcell, rather than specific memories, so a piece as readily recognizable as " Dido's Lament " was not considered an acceptable source of a ground. Purcell is credited as a "music consultant".

The album was the fourth album release by Michael Nyman and the third to feature the Michael Nyman Band. "It's like harpsichord and a lot of strings, woodwind and a bit of brass," remarked Neil Hannon, frontman of The Divine Comedy. "Somehow they just manage to… rock. With a vengeance."

The following ground sources are taken from the chart in Pwyll ap Siôn's The Music of Michael Nyman: Text, Context and Intertext, reordered to match their sequence on the album.

### Track listing

- " Chasing Sheep Is Best Left to Shepherds "- 2:33 (King Arthur, Act III, Scene 2, Prelude (as Cupid descends))

- "The Disposition of the Linen"- 4:47 ("She Loves and She Confesses Too" (Secular Song, Z.413))

- "A Watery Death"- 3:31 ("Pavan in B flat," Z. 750; " Chaconne " from Suite No. 2 in G Minor)

- "The Garden Is Becoming a Robe Room"- 6:05 ("Here the deities approve" from Welcome to all the Pleasures (Ode); E minor ground in Henry Playford 's collection, Musick's Hand-Maid (Second Part))

- "Queen of the Night"- 6:09 ("So when the glitt'ring Queen of the Night" from The Yorkshire Feast Song)

- "An Eye for Optical Theory"- 5:09 (Ground in C minor (D221))

- "Bravura in the Face of Grief"- 12:16 ("The Plaint" from The Fairy-Queen, Act V)

The first music heard in the film is, in fact, a bit of Purcell's song "Queen of the Night." "The Disposition of the Linen," in its Nyman formulation, is a waltz, a form that postdates Purcell by c. 150 years.

The album was issued on compact disc in 1989 by Virgin Records, marketed in the United States by Caroline Records under their Blue Plate imprint. Initially this was indicated with a sticker; it was later incorporated into the back cover design in a much smaller size.

The entire album has been rerecorded by the current lineup of the Michael Nyman Band. See The Composer's Cut Series Vol. I: The Draughtsman's Contract.

## Art references

The visual references for the film are paintings by Caravaggio, de La Tour, Rembrandt, Vermeer and other Baroque artists and this gives the film a "painterly quality". Greenaway also said: "I consider that 90% of my films one way or another refers to paintings. "Contract" quite openly refers to Caravaggio, Georges de La Tour and other French and Italian artists".

## Reception

The Draughtsman's Contract has a 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 31 reviews, with a weighted average of 8.3/10. The site's consensus reads: "Smart and utterly original, The Draughtsman's Contract is a period piece that marks the further maturation of a writer-director with a thrillingly unique vision". Roger Ebert, who gave the film a full four stars, wrote, "What we have here is a tantalizing puzzle, wrapped in eroticism and presented with the utmost elegance. All of the characters speak in complete, elegant, literary sentences. All of the camera strategies are formal and mannered. The movie advances with the grace and precision of a well-behaved novel." In Slant, a mildly positive Jeremiah Kipp called it "a first, fledgling attempt at what he later perfected, but that modesty could be seen as a virtue, since there is indeed some form of narrative here instead of the nonlinear, compulsive list-making and categorization that drives some people crazy about his other films. The story marches forward like a death march and is resolved with merciless efficiency." Danny Peary wrote that "Greenaway handles everything with such elegance that we are totally unprepared for the final act of cruelty. Ending is haunting; it makes you reassess all that went before – supposed victims are really heartless predators."

## Restoration

The film was originally shot on Super 16mm film then blown up to 35mm for cinema releases. In 2003 the BFI restored the film digitally and this restoration was released on DVD. Umbrella Entertainment released the digitally restored film on DVD in Australia, with special features including an introduction and commentary by Peter Greenaway, an interview with composer Michael Nyman, behind the scenes footage and on set interviews, deleted scenes, trailers and a featurette on the film's digital restoration.


Downtown Waterbury Historic District

# Downtown Waterbury Historic District

## Abstract

The Downtown Waterbury Historic District is the core of the city of Waterbury, Connecticut, United States. It is a roughly rectangular area centered on West Main Street and Waterbury Green, the remnant of the original town commons, which has been called "one of the most attractive downtown parks in New England."

The Green was the city's first center, with the buildings around it representing all types of uses, from residences to churches to public buildings. Many early buildings were cleared as the city grew and industrialized. Nearby Exchange Place, the junction of the city's streetcar lines, later emerged as a center for retailing. A devastating 1902 fire in that area led to more clearing and rebuilding. In its wake the city's government buildings were moved to a new municipal complex on Grand Street designed by Cass Gilbert, in accordance with the principles of the City Beautiful movement.

Most of its buildings, large commercial blocks, date to the peak years of the city's industrial prosperity, the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A few earlier buildings survived a devastating 1902 fire. Among them works by locally and nationally prominent architects, the latter group including Henry Bacon and Henry Dudley in addition to Gilbert. They include a variety of contemporary architectural styles, particularly the Second Renaissance Revival, Georgian Revival and Romanesque Revival modes.

In 1983 the area was recognized as a historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. At that time, there were three listings on the Register within the district, including the municipal complex and a pair of houses listed together. Another old hotel has since been listed as well as a contributing property.

## Geography

The district is a 75-acre (30 ha) area between the railroad tracks along the Naugatuck River and the Waterbury branch campus of the University of Connecticut. It is an intensively developed urban area, with many multi-story mixed-use buildings. There are 130 in total, with six objects and one structure counted among the contributing resources. Seventeen of the buildings are considered non-contributing, either due to construction outside the period of significance or later alterations. The oldest date to the 1805s; there is some modern infill.

Among the buildings are large parking lots, and two small parks, Waterbury Green and Library Park, provide open space. The terrain is generally flat, the former flood plain of the river valley. To the south Interstate 84 crosses the city and valley on an elevated viaduct, affording a panoramic view of the skyline to eastbound traffic on the upper level.

The northwestern corner is the intersection of State and West Main streets. The district boundary follows the middle of West Main for two blocks to Park Place, where it turns north, excluding the Mattatuck Museum Arts and History Center and including Immaculate Conception Church and other properties on the north side of West Main. At North Main Street it turns south again, then east along East Main to the eastern corner of the district, the open square at the junction of that street and North and South Elm streets.

From there it follows a diagonal course along property lines, crossing Scovill and South Main streets to the junction of Bank and Grand streets. There it follows Grand westward, including the properties on the south side west of Cottage Place. It detours down Field Street in order to include the armory, then all of Library Park and the former American Brass Company headquarters. After following Meadow Street back to Grand, it follows State Street back to the northwest corner.

Leavenworth Street, in the middle of the district, divides the two major uses of the district. To its east are more commercial blocks, with buildings packed densely, covering most of their lots, centered on Exchange Place, the blocks between East Main, Leavenworth, Bank and Grand. West, the buildings are primarily institutional, dominated by the row of buildings forming part of the Waterbury Municipal Center Complex, with large setbacks from the street and each other. There are some commercial buildings among them, and one major institutional building, the post office, is located in the eastern half.

## History

Downtown Waterbury's history has four distinct eras, the same as the city as a whole: the period from settlement in the late 17th century to the beginning of industrialization, the industrial era of the rest of the century, the planned development after the 1902 fire, and the years of industrial decline since World War II.

### 1677–1820: Pre-industrial era

From the time of its settlement in the 1670s, Waterbury had been a lightly populated agricultural community. Its growth was hampered in the early years by flood and plague, and later the difficulty of farming the land. Several decades after the Revolution, its population was not much larger than it had been a century earlier.

Industrialization began in the early 1820s, with makers of carriages, buttons and clocks attracted to the water power offered by the many streams draining into the Naugatuck in the area, the feature which had given the town its name. To serve them, some local businessmen went into the brassmaking business. They established mills of their own which drew on British expertise in the area to make the alloy in sheets, beginning the industry the city was to become known for.

The industrialists began to change the city. Their first suggestion to the community was the creation of a town green. On Independence Day in 1825, the townspeople gathered to blast some stubborn boulders from the swampy, neglected two-acre (8,000 m) remnant of the town common around which many of the original settlers had built their homes. In the following years the town drained and graded the area, realigned streets around it and moved the meeting house off the land. In 1842 it was fenced off, ending its use as pasture, and seven years later it was officially named Center Square, although the original name of Waterbury Green has prevailed over the years.

Few buildings remain anywhere in Waterbury from the city's early years, due to the extensive rebuilding that followed. The dearth, in a region where many communities have 18th- and sometimes 17th-century buildings extant, is such that the local historical society has printed a brochure explaining the lack of such structure in Waterbury to visitors, and the city's daily newspaper once ran a contest to find its oldest house. Within the district, the oldest structure is an 1835 Greek Revival building at 67–73 South Main Street. Its layout and dimensions remain intact; its exterior has been so extensively altered that it is not considered a contributing property despite its advanced age.

### 1825–1902: Industrialization

Waterbury's growth continued to be steady but slow until it incorporated as a city in 1853. By 1860 its population had doubled to over 10,000. During this period Exchange Place, at the junction of the main east–west and north–south routes of the city, established itself as the central business hub of the city. The Greek Revival buildings on those blocks reflect that era.

Waterbury Green continued to develop, surrounded by a mix of public and private buildings, including City Hall, the library, and some private houses. The first monument, a flagpole, was added in 1851, joined by rectilinear dirt pathways later in the decade (themselves replaces with the current curved concrete paths in 1873). In 1884, to honor local veterans of the Civil War the Soldiers' Monument by George Edwin Bissell, was added. Four years later, the Welton Fountain, memorializing its donor's favorite horse, joined it at the opposite end of the park.

Industry, at first located in that core, began moving to larger spaces further away from it as the city expanded and grew with them. Merchants moved into bigger buildings, such as the 1888 Romanesque Revival Platt Block and 1890 Queen Anne Hanlon Block on East Main Street. The 1894 Apothecaries' Hall, a seven-story flatiron -shaped building at Bank and South Main, has remained the focal point of Exchange Place ever since.

Local architects who would make their mark on the district began to do at this time. Wilfred E. Griggs ' first building of note, the Odd Fellows Hall on North Main, with its rare American use of the Venetian Gothic mode, went up in 1893. It was the first of two buildings he would design for local chapters of international fraternal organizations, reflecting their growing role in the city's social and political life. The 1889 Richardsonian Romanesque St. Patrick's Hall on East Main marked the rise of Irish Americans, not only in its social-service function but in the person of its architect, Joseph A. Jackson, himself the son of an Irish immigrant builder.

Wealthier residents built grand homes on West Main Street, like the John Kendrick House, as the expansion of the commercial district began pushing residential use out of that area. Houses of worship such as Henry C. Dudley 's 1873 St. John's Episcopal Church, and Henry Congden's Trinity Episcopal Church, ten years later, followed them. In 1894 the Silas Bronson library moved from the Green to its current location on Grand Street, the first such move of a major public building.

### 1902–1945: Planning era

By the turn of the century Waterbury was producing 48 percent of all American brass. The strength of the city's industries, many of whom were building newer and larger facilities anyway, left it in a good position to recover from the 1902 fire which destroyed 42 buildings on three acres (1.2 ha) downtown, many newer construction in the Italianate style, such as the surviving 1854 Reynolds Block on North Main. After the flames were extinguished, the city set about restoring itself, giving the future district many of its distinctive buildings. The first, the Second Renaissance Revival Howland Hughes department store building on Bank Street, was opened the following year, the first such enterprise in Waterbury; and architect Wilfred E. Griggs followed it with the similarly styled Elton Hotel on West Main across from the Green the next year and the Masonic Temple further down the street in 1912. Such large-scale buildings ensured downtown remained the city's economic center, at the cost of driving all remaining residential use out. Residential buildings that remained were converted to institutional use; large apartment blocks like the 1910 Jacobethan Hitchcock and Northrop, two buildings next to the Masonic temple that shared a common elevator tower, were also built on the periphery of downtown.

As it had when creating Waterbury Green, an early urban renewal program was undertaken to create the new Library Park at the intersection of Grand and Meadow streets. Old commercial buildings and tenements in the area were demolished, and the streets realigned and straightened to create an appropriate neighborhood for the new Waterbury Union Station, which opened in 1909. Although outside the district, its 240-foot (73 m) clock tower, modeled on the Torre del Mangia in Siena, Italy, has since become the city's distinguishing landmark owing to its dominance of the skyline.

Within the future district, American Brass, the city's largest employer, built its Renaissance Revival headquarters in 1913 at the Grand and Meadow corner, facing the station. It was complemented by the Georgian Revival Waterbury City Hall to the east designed by Cass Gilbert and completed in 1917, five years after the original building at Leavenworth and West Main was destroyed by an arsonist. Gilbert complemented it at the same time with the Chase Headquarters Building, for another one of the city's brassmakers. Other large buildings, mainly the headquarters of local banks, filled out Grand Street. These were all part of a conscious attempt, following the contemporary City Beautiful movement, to provide impressive vistas both approaching and leaving the commercial center at Exchange Place, now the hub of the city's trolley lines.

During World War I the city's brass mills were in constant operation for military contracts, first from the Allies and later the federal government when the United States joined them. Afterward, the prosperity continued into the Roaring Twenties, introducing more significant new buildings to the city. Some were in styles that had already been used downtown, like the Georgian Revival YMCA building on West Main, Gilbert's 1921 Waterbury Savings Bank next to the municipal complex, and the Second Renaissance Revival Waterbury Savings Bank on North Main. Henry Bacon contributed the Citizen's and Manufacturer's Bank on Leavenworth Street in that style, in 1921, and the following year a third one, the Palace Theater on West Main, gave the city what was to be its premier theater for many years. The later years of the decade brought in newer styles like the Baroque Revival Immaculate Conception Church, a 1928 edifice reflecting the progress of Waterbury's Catholic immigrant communities.

The last significant architectural style downtown, the Art Deco and modernist buildings, came at the end of this period, just before the Great Depression put a halt to most new private construction. The most prominent examples of these styles in the district are the 1930 Brown Building at the corner of East and South Main, and the 1931 Art Deco post office on Grand Street. Further down the street the same year's Telephone Building, by Douglas Orr, uses modernistic brick detailing on a Georgian Revival design.

### 1946–present: Decline and renewal

A decade later, prosperity returned as World War II drove the brass mills into round-the-clock production again. This time it did not continue after the war, as plastics began to displace brass in manufacturing. Downtown also suffered as returning veterans, who were honored with a new, star-shaped monument on the Green, sought to live in more suburban neighborhoods, with a single-family house and a yard, a living option that no longer existed in the center of the city. This created a demand for newer and bigger roads to accommodate the automobile traffic that came to the city from those suburbs, and buildings were demolished to build them.

The effect on the district was mixed. While the bus routes that replaced the trolley lines continued to meet at Exchange Place, urban renewal programs later in the 20th century eliminated some major properties, most notably the McKim, Mead and White Buckingham Block at the corner of Bank and Grand and the neighboring Democrat Building. At West Main and Bank, Baubee's Corner, a brick building inspired by Federal style rowhouses of the early 19th century, also met the wrecking ball. Other historic buildings, such as the 1908 Rietner Building on North Main, home to the city's Chamber of Commerce, were modernized to an extent that their historic character was lost.

Newer construction continued in the district, with the new UConn campus taking up much of the cleared land in the east, obliterating Spring and School streets in the process. A new Bronson Library was built in 1963, followed by a new state courthouse nine years later, in 1974. Downtown has remained the economic center of the city and its surrounding region of the Naugatuck Valley, with many local banks still clustering their offices around the Green.

In the early 2000s neglect of City Hall led to the city's own building department citing it as unsafe. In 2006 a $48 million bond issue for renovations was rejected by voters in a referendum. The next year the city's Board of Aldermen put together a $36 million plan for which no referendum was sought. The rebuilt building opened in early 2011.

## Significant contributing properties

At the time the district was listed on the Register, there were three properties within it that had previously been listed. Another one has been added since. In addition, there are many other contributing properties notable within the context of the district. Some have been nominated to the Register in the past, and may be listed themselves in the future.

### National Register of Historic Places

- Elton Hotel, 16–30 West Main Street. This six-story Second Renaissance Revival brick structure with limestone trim, designed by Wilfred E. Griggs, has dominated the Green ever since its construction in 1904. Today it is a senior living facility.

- Enoch Hubbard and George Granniss Houses, 33 and 41 Church Street. These two wood frame houses, in the Italianate and Stick styles respectively, date to the 1860s. They are among the few single-family residences remaining downtown, both since converted to commercial use.

- John Kendrick House, 119 West Main Street. The Mattatuck Museum operates this brick Italianate house on the Green, also built in the 1860s.

- Waterbury Municipal Center Complex, Grand and Field streets. Waterbury's City Hall is surrounded by other large buildings in the City Beautiful monumental style, not all of them originally public in function. Cass Gilbert 's designs were built between 1914 and 1922.

### Other notable contributing properties

- American Brass Company Building, 414–436 Meadow Street. The brick Second Renaissance Revival headquarters of the largest company in the city's most important industry was opened in 1913.

- Apothecaries' Hall, 63 Bank Street. Built in 1894 from a Second Renaissance Revival design by local architect Theodore B. Peck, this seven-story flatiron -shaped building has long been the focal point of Exchange Place. Recently remodeled into luxury apartments.

- Brown Building, 20 East Main Street. One of the last large commercial buildings erected during the district's period of significance, this three-story corner modernist structure from 1930 has intricate Art Deco detailing.

- Catholic Family Services, 56 Church Street. Dating to 1856, this wood frame Italianate house with fluted Tower of the Winds -style columns is one of the oldest residential buildings in the district. Like so many of the other houses, it has been adapted for institutional use.

- Citizens' National Bank, 18 Leavenworth Street. This stone 1922 Second Renaissance Revival structure was designed by Lincoln Memorial architect Henry Bacon. Its interior has since mostly been modernized.

- Benjamin Franklin Statue, Library Park. This 1918 bronze rendering of a seated Franklin by Paul Wayland Bartlett is the only contributing object in the district outside of Waterbury Green.

- The Grand Apartments, 180–182 Grand Street. Two 1910 joined four-story brick structures are the only Beaux-Arts buildings in the district.

- Hanlon Block, 181–187 East Main Street. This four-story brick structure, built around 1890, is one of the rare commercial uses of the Queen Anne Style.

- The Hitchcock and The Northrop, 164–184 West Main Street. Wilfred E. Griggs designed one of these two 1910 Jacobethan apartment buildings. The five-story brick structures, with yellow brick and limestone detailing, are joined by a common elevator tower.

- Howland-Hughes Company Building, 114–138 Bank Street. Griggs & Hunt built this five-story Second Renaissance Revival home to Waterbury's first true department store within a year of the 1902 fire. Today it is home to The Connecticut Store, which sells only items made in the state.

- Immaculate Conception Church, West Main Street. This 1928 limestone Baroque Revival Roman Catholic church was based on a 17th-century Roman basilica.

- Johnson Building, 111–115 Bank Street. A 4-story concrete structure from 1925, it is the only Late Gothic Revival building in the district. It has been slightly remodeled with a modern storefront.

- Masonic Temple, 160 West Main Street. The later of Wilfred E. Griggs ' two buildings for a local chapter of an international fraternal organization is a four-story stone Second Renaissance Revival structure finished in 1912. It consists of two distinct sections joined at right angles along the corner of West Main and Park Place.

- New Haven County Courthouse Building, 15–17 Kendrick Street. This stone Second Renaissance Revival courthouse was another of the monumental public buildings envisioned for the Grand Street corridor. It has since been replaced with a newer building nearby, reflecting Connecticut's abolition of county government.

- Odd Fellows Hall, 36 North Main Street. This 1893 building for the fraternal organization marked their growing importance within the city. Local architect Wilfred E. Griggs made rare use of the Venetian Gothic mode in one of his earliest buildings.

- Palace Theatre, 86–110 East Main Street. For years after its 1922 opening, this Second Renaissance Revival building was the city's premier theater. Hotel rooms were also included.

- Palomba Building, 150 Bank Street. An 1845 Italianate commercial structure that is one of the few intact buildings from that era remaining. Originally built as a house, with modern storefronts attached.

- Platt Block, 43 East Main Street. A four-story stone brick building with limestone trim, it was one of the first large commercial buildings in the district when built in 1888.

- Reynolds Block, 26–28 North Main Street. Half of an otherwise intact 1854 Italianate building facing the Welton Fountain, it is typical of the buildings that characterized downtown Waterbury before the 1902 fire.

- Rose Building, 77–85 South Main Street. This modernist brick commercial building with the Art Deco letters spelling out "Rose" on the facade dates to approximately 1950, making it the district's youngest contributing property.

- St. John's Episcopal Church Complex, 16 Church Street. Henry Dudley 's 1873 granite Gothic Revival church is complemented with an 1890 Romanesque center by local architect R.W. Hill and 1922 Richard Henry Dana stone Jacobethan parish house.

- St. Patrick's Hall, 112–118 East Main Street. Joseph A. Jackson, the son of an Irish immigrant builder, designed this 1889 brick Romanesque structure with a brownstone front facade. His credit as architect, and the building's use, marked the social arrival of Waterbury's Irish American community.

- Telephone Building, 348 Grand Street. On its 1930 brick Georgian Revival facade is Art Deco detailing and brickwork.

- Trinity Episcopal Church, 21 Prospect Street. The smallest church in the district is Henry Martyn Congdon 's 1883 stone structure in the Early English Gothic Revival style. A parish house was added to the rear in 1900. This building was demolished in 2018.

- U.S. Post Office, Grand Street. The most significant modern public building in the district is this 1931 white marble Art Deco edifice. George Oakley Totten Jr., under Treasury Department Supervising Architect James Wetmore, was credited with the design.

- Waterbury Armory, Field Street. Its use of the Romanesque style in 1922 was one of the last in the district. It complements the adjacent public and private structures in the Gilbert municipal complex.

- Waterbury YMCA, 122–130 West Main Street. One of the last large Georgian Revival buildings in the city when it was erected in 1924.

### Waterbury Green

The two-acre (8,000 m) park between North, East and West Main and Leavenworth streets, the symbolic center of the city, links Waterbury to its early years, as a renovated fragment of the original town common. Over the course of the 19th century it assumed its current configuration with curved concrete walkways. Since its creation it has been the venue for many public events such as troop musters during wartime, demonstrations against those wars and economic hardship during the Panic of 1893 and Great Depression, and speeches by John, Robert and Ted Kennedy.

It has four monuments, all but one of which are contributing objects to the district:

- The Soldiers' Monument, at the west end. George Edwin Bissell sculpted this bronze " Winged Victory " atop a 48-foot (15 m) granite base with smaller figures in its niches. It was installed in 1884 to honor and memorialize local veterans of the Civil War.

- Veterans' Monument, near the east end. The city commissioned this modernist 1958 monument to all local veterans. It is non-contributing.

- The Waterbury Clock, center. The head of the local Chamber of Commerce fought to have this tall granite Seth Thomas clock tower, commemorating another important local business, placed on the Green in 1915. It is still sometimes referred to as the Colley Clock, after him.

- Welton Fountain, east end. This 1888 Karl Gerhardt statue of donor Caroline Welton's favorite horse, "Knight", is atop a fountain.

## Preservation and redevelopment

Waterbury's zoning code recognizes the downtown area as its Central Business District (CBD). Its purpose is "to encourage intensive development of a diversity of land uses within the area." The only provision unique to it is that any residential use must have a side or rear setback of at least 15 feet (4.6 m). There are no special provisions for historic preservation.

In 1998 the city established an Information Technology Zone over a 42- block area including the historic district. The state spent $2.2 million installing fiber optic, and set aside money for incentives to encourage businesses to locate in the zone. These include tax abatements and financing for eligible businesses, those which use modern technology to conduct their business.

Private businesses, landowners, residents and city officials have also joined to create Main Street Waterbury. Its goal is "to increase the political, physical, and economic value of Downtown Waterbury." It promotes the cultural and business opportunities available downtown for residents and visitors alike.