The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 97 pages of information about The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890.

The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 97 pages of information about The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890.
to it for the instant indication of the return of consciousness to any who had been prematurely entombed, and would promise and provide the most perfect and permanent protection against intrusion or theft that can be found on earth.  In arrangement these sepulchres would have to conform to the price paid and the taste of the purchaser.  Many would be like the single graves that thickly ridge portions of our cemeteries; many more would be grouped together after the semblance of a family-tomb; but in the general impression, in the surroundings and suggestions, the resemblance to the provisions of a cemetery would go no farther.  For here there could be no burning sun, no chilling cold, no inclement storm; for the living, as they should pay the last sad honor to the dead, or in any subsequent tribute of affection, there could be no exposure, and for the dead there would be only the constant semblance of the comfort and the quiet of the best-ordered and most tranquil home.  Thus, in providing the utmost that exacting affection and sanitary science can require, and in taxing to the utmost the resources of art, in architecture, in sculpture and in the use of subdued and according hues and forms for appropriate decoration, these “Campo Santos,” or “Mausoleums,” or “Mansions of the Dead,” will seem to have realized the ideal disposition of the mortal remains of those who depart this life.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 3:  Extracts from a paper read before the Boston Electric Club, December 23, 1889, by F.C.  Child.]

[Footnote 4:  Extracts from an address by Rev. Charles R. Treat before the American Public Health Association at Brooklyn, N.Y., October 23, 1889.]

* * * * *

THE VEKPLANCK HOMESTEAD, FISHKILL, N.Y.

[Illustration:  The Old Verplanck Homestead at Fishkill, Hudson River, in which the Society of the Cincinnati originated.]

The Verplanck homestead stands on the lands granted by the Wappinger Indians, in 1683, to Gulian Verplanck and Francis Rombout, under a license given by Governor Thomas Dongan Commander-in-Chief of the Province of New York, and confirmed, in 1685, by letters patent from King-James the II.  The purchase included “all that Tract or Parcell of land Scituate on the East side of Hudson’s river, beginning from the South side of a Creek called the fresh Kill and by the Indians Matteawan, and from thence Northward along said Hudson’s river five hundred Rodd beyond the Great Wappin’s Kill, and from thence into the woods fouer Houres goeing”; or, in our speech, easterly sixteen English miles.  There were eighty-five thousand acres in this grant, and the “Schedull or Perticuler” of money and goods given to the natives, in exchange, by ffrancis Rumbout and Gulyne Ver Planke sounds oddly to-day: 

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The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.