BLINDE SUNGLASSES 88

New Dorp, Staten Island, New York City, New York

The Gustave A. Mayer House, a fine Italianate villa, was among the first rural residences in that style built on Staten Island and is a rare survivor of its type and period within the city limits. It is significant, as well, due to its virtually intact condition. In sympathy with the theories of the Picturesque espoused by Alexander Jackson Davis and his collaborator Andrew Jackson Downing, the house is placed to take best advantage of its sloping site.

Occupying a crest overlooking a historically-important Staten Island crossroads, the Mayer House was originally built for David R. Ryers between 1855 and 1856 by an architect and/or builder unknown to us today. This symmetrically arranged, two-and-a-half-story frame structure is characterized by a full-width porch, consistently fine detailing, and elegant belvedere. In the 1890s confectioner and inventor Gustave Mayer made the villa both his home and place of business, there manufacturing innovative items such as fancy sugar wafers, decorative metal objects, and other products.

Members of Mayer's family still occupy the house which dominates grounds that recall the original Picturesque landscaping, at one time carefully tended by Mayer himself.

Early History of the Site

The Mayer House's locality has been developed as far back as Staten Island's earliest colonization; the neighboring settlement at Nieuwe Dorp (1670s) was one of the island's first. Around 1720, the property was sold to the Vanderbilt family as farmland; however, the site included the juncture of routes leading to New York, Richmond, and Philadelphia which induced the Vanderbilts to accommodate travellers.

A number of inns, "The Rose and Crown" and "The Black Horse" being the most renowned, were built at this intersection. The site's importance to Staten Island's history was ensured when Daniel D. Tompkins instituted his steamboat ferry line from the island's southern tip to New Jersey in 1817, making Richmond Road the preferred route from New York to points south.

In 1855 the Parkinson family sold the old "Rose and Crown" property (which apparently had reverted to domestic use) to David R. Ryers. He was descended from a Dutch family which had settled in Flatbush as early as 1671 and was prominent in the eighteenth-century history of Staten Island. One of the few surviving members of the family, Ryers (also spelled Ryerse, Ryerss) owned the inn at the Richmond County Hall during the early 1850s and commanded the Westfield contingent of the New York State Militia.

In 1855 he demolished "The Rose and Crown" and by 1856 had replaced it, at a higher elevation on the site, with the large Italianate residence still standing today.

The Picturesque Movement and Technology in the United States

During the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the work and publications of architect Alexander Jackson Davis (1803-92) and landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-52) promoted a revolution in American rural and suburban architecture. Their conception of the house in relation to the surrounding landscape—secluded in nature and designed for the enjoyment of vistas—was based on English theories of the Picturesque, a painterly approach to scenery emphasizing texture, variation, and intricacy. In his only published work, Rural Residences (1837/38) , Davis offered the "first and most evocative" house pattern book for Americans interested in villa architecture, understood to be a country residence built by a person of means and taste, whose cultivated life required that the surroundings be laid out for the pleasure of its occupants.

This model of rural life was furthered by the pattern books of Downing. Visiting the United States from Sweden between 1849 and 1851, Fredrika Bremer noted that "nobody, whether he be rich or poor, builds a house or lays out a garden without consulting Downing's works . .."

Although public structures and the more costly and prestigious residences were often constructed in masonry, wood

was the more available, and thus more economical, building material throughout much of the United States.

The revolutionary balloon-framing system, popularized in Chicago during the 1830s, replaced the traditional and slow braced-frame construction method (involving hewn joints and massive timbers) with a quickly assembled frame of nailed joints and two-inch boards of varying width. It is significant, therefore, that in Victorian Cottage Residences Downing—apparently then unaware of the new system of construction—praised the aesthetic qualities of wooden frame structures.

He wrote that bracketed construction gave a home a character of lightness; this concept, along with European influences, helped to inspire the development of Picturesque frame houses in America. In short, Downing's aesthetic recommendations had a technological counterpart; both influenced the reali

The waters of Yamuna distinguishable as "clear blue" as compared to silt-ridden yellow of the Ganges. However, due to high density population growth, rapid industrialization, today Yamuna is one of the most polluted rivers in the world, especially around New Delhi, the capital of India, which dumps about 58% of its waste into the river. Though numerous attempts have been made to clean it, the efforts have proven to be futile. Although the government of India has spent nearly $500 million to clean up the river, the river continues to be polluted with garbage while most sewage treatment facilities are underfunded or malfunctioning. In addition, the water in this river remains stagnant for almost 9 months in a year aggravating the situation. Delhi alone contributes around 3,296 MLD (million litres per day) of sewage in the river. The government of India over the next five years has prepared plans to rebuild and repair the sewage system and the drains that empty into the river. To address river pollution, certain measures of cleaning river have been taken by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) of the Government of India (GOI) in 12 towns of Haryana, 8 towns of Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi under an action plan (Yamuna Action Plan-YAP) which is being implemented since 1993 by the National River Conservation Directorate (NRCD) of the Ministry of Environment and Forests. The Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) is participating in the Yamuna Action Plan in 15 of the above 21 towns (excluding 6 towns of Haryana included later on the direction of Supreme Court of India) with soft loan assistance of 17.773 billion Japanese Yen (equivalent to about Rs. 700 crore INR) while GOI is providing the funds for the remaining 6 towns added later. The Indian government's plans to repair sewage lines are predicted to improve the water quality of the river 90% by the year 2010.