A few nice real estate commission images I found:
NYC - East Village: Cooper Park - Peter Cooper Monument
Image by wallyg
Since the 19th century, this statue of Peter Cooper (1791–1883), a philanthropist, industrialist, and inventor, has watched over the park and school that bear his name. Cooper was a native New Yorker and workingman’s son who, with less than a year of formal schooling, became one of the most successful American businessmen of his day. He made his fortune in iron, glue, railroads, real estate, and communications. His inventions include the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable and Tom Thumb, America’s first functioning steam engine. Cooper also invented Jell-o, with help from his wife, Sarah, who added fruit to his clarified gelatin.
Despite his many successful ventures, Cooper failed in an 1876 presidential bid on the Greenback ticket; he secured just 81,737 popular votes. The real contest was between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Jones Tilden. Although Tilden won a majority of the popular vote, he was denied the presidency by a partisan Electoral Commission.
Cooper dedicated his life and wealth to philanthropy. He wanted to ensure that immigrants and children of the working class would have access to the education which he never received. He believed that education should be “as free as water or air,” and in 1859 he established the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a coeducational college that continues to provide students with full-tuition scholarships in architecture, art, and engineering. Celebrated features of the institution included a free reading room and the Great Hall, the latter providing the setting for one of Abraham Lincoln’s most important speeches in which he established his anti-slavery platform. He delivered it on February 27, 1860 during his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Following Cooper’s death in 1883, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the preeminent 19th century sculptor and one of the earliest alumni of Cooper Union (class of 1864), was commissioned to design a monument in honor of the great visionary. Saint-Gaudens collaborated with the renowned architect Stanford White who created the piece’s marble and granite canopy.
Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin and came with his family to the United States that same year. Besides studying drawing at the Cooper Union, he also trained at the National Academy of Design in New York and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He returned to New York City in 1873, and in addition to the Cooper Monument he created such notable public works as Admiral Farragut in Madison Square Park, the Shaw Memorial on the Boston Common, and General Sherman in Manhattan’s Grand Army Plaza. A founding member of the National Sculpture Society in 1893, he also maintained a home and studio in Cornish, New Hampshire.
Saint-Gaudens labored for the Cooper Monument, completing 27 sketches of different versions before settling on the final impressive design. The monument committee raised ,000 in popular subscriptions, exceeding the construction cost of ,000, and expended the remainder on park beautification. The official dedication took place on May 29, 1897 at the northern end of Cooper Park.
The park was deeded to the City in 1828 for use as a public space by Charles H. Hall, a descendant of Governor Peter Stuyvesant. Named Stuyvesant Square at the time it was acquired by Parks in 1850, it was referred to as Fourth Avenue Park when it was first planted in the late 1870s, and renamed Cooper Park in 1883.
In 1935, coinciding with reconstruction of the park, the newly created Parks Monuments Crew, with funding from the federal Works Progress Administration, performed extensive repairs and cleaned the monument. The monument was again restored in 1987 under the Adopt-a-Monument Program, a joint project of the Municipal Art Society, the Art Commission, and Parks.
Ben Thompson, 1918
Image by UA Archives | Upper Arlington History
Ben Sells Thompson, one of the founders of Upper Arlington, was born in Georgetown, Ohio in 1879. As a young man, he moved to Mansfield and worked in the hardware business. Later he attended the engineering college at The Ohio State University. In 1907, Ben joined his brother, King Thompson, in the real estate business.
In 1913, Ben Thompson and his brother, King, purchased 840 acres of land from James Terrell Miller to develop an "ideal residential community for Columbus." The land appealed to the Thompsons as a residential site because of its location on high ground, its proximity to both downtown Columbus and The Ohio State University campus, and its position upwind from larger cities. The beautiful land that was once a "well-managed, immaculately kept, working farm" was subdivided into 2500 lots. In 1914 the King Thompson Company was formed to sell this new community to the public. In August of 1914, laborers and teams of horses were hired by the Thompson brothers to construct the first street, named Roxbury Road, leading into this pristine new subdivision. Ben Thompson's home, located on Cambridge Boulevard, was completed in 1916.
In 1917, the Upper Arlington Company was established, with King Thompson as president and Ben Thompson as vice president, to manage the streets, sewers, and water lines. Ben Thompson also served as president of the Northwest Boulevard Company, which deeded the land that was eventually used to construct Northwest Boulevard. This road, known by many Upper Arlington residents as a crucial step in the development of the village, provided a convenient route from Upper Arlington directly to downtown Columbus.
On March 20, 1918 the village of Upper Arlington, with two hundred residents, was incorporated. Before the establishment of a police force, Ben Thompson was elected to the "high office of Marshal of Upper Arlington" for which he took no salary. Ben and King Thompson were very active in the life of their new community, entertaining residents, sponsoring athletic competitions, and organizing holiday activities for the families. Ben Thompson was a member of the first Village Commission, an appointed member of the Upper Arlington Park Board, and served as treasurer of the Men's Brotherhood, predecessor of the Upper Arlington Civic Association. Ben Thompson later accepted a secretarial position with the Y.M.C.A., and was stationed overseas in that capacity.
Ben Thompson was married to the former Catherine Pinney, of Flint, Ohio, and the couple resided at 1919 Cambridge Boulevard. Mrs. Thompson served as chairwoman of the Upper Arlington Red Cross Unit, established in 1917, which met weekly to socialize, as well as to sew towels, hospital clothes, and bandages in their contribution to the war effort. In addition to his work in real estate, Ben Thompson was an outdoorsman who enjoyed baseball, hunting and fishing. Ben once gave a "short and very interesting account of his northern hunting trip and the methods and difficulties encountered in bagging a grizzly bear."
This image available online at the UA Archives >>
Read the "Norwester" magazine's profile of Ben Thompson at the UA Archives >>
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Identifier: hinw12p024i01
Date (yyyy-mm-dd): c. 1918-10
Original Dimensions: 3.3 cm x 6.4 cm
Format: Black and White Halftone Photograph
Source: Norwester, October 1918, page 24
Original Publisher: Upper Arlington Community (Ohio)
Location/s: Upper Arlington (USA, Ohio, Franklin County)
Repository: Upper Arlington Historical Society
Digital Publisher: UA Archives - Upper Arlington Public Library
Credit: UA Archives - Upper Arlington Public Library (Repository: UA Historical Society)
