Formerly the Hiroshima Prefecture Industrial Promotion Hall, this building was completed in April 1915, and was located near the bomb’s hypocenter. It is one of the few buildings to survive the blast. Historic photographs of the city show a landscape flattened by the blast, with just a few structures still standing — one being the shell of the Industrial Promotion Hall. But, the building, which has not changed significantly since the bombing, is just one of a few important landmarks dedicated to Aug. 6, 1945.
The Altare della Patria (or Altar of the Fatherland) is perhaps better known as the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II (or the National Monument to Victor Emmanuel II). Many also call it the Wedding Cake. Sitting between Piazza Venezia and the Capitoline Hill, it was built to honor Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of a unified Italy. The monument is also the location of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and features an eternal flame and the museum of Italian Unification.
The Ancient Spanish Monastery, officially St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church, was originally built in the Spanish town of Sacramenia in Segovia in the 12th century and named Santa María la Real. It was closed some time between 1836 and 1840 during the reign of Isabella II of Spain and as a result of the Ecclesiastical Confiscations of Mendizábal. William Randolph Hearst purchased the structure in 1925 and was subsequently dismantled and shipped to the United States. However, as a result of an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease in Segovia, the 11,000 crates containing the historic monastery building were quarantined in New York. Though he planned to relocate it to his Hearst Castle in San Simeon, because of Hearst’s financial difficulties, the building remained in storage in New York. Raymond Moss and William Edgemon purchased the building in 1952, a year after Hearst died. The building was re-assembled on a plant nursery north of Miami.
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The Auckland Railway Station is the former main railway station of Auckland. Opened in 1930 on Beach Road, it replaced the previous Queen Street railway terminus which is approximately where the current main railway station, Britomart is located. The 1930 station was the third station to serve as the rail terminus for Auckland, and remained the sole station serving the CBD until its closure in July 2003, when Britomart became the new terminus.
Beauly Priory, in the Beauly village of the Highland area, was a Valliscaulian monastic community that was probably founded in 1230. The monastery’s founder is unknown for certain, as different sources give different names, such as Alexander II of Scotland, John Byset, or both. The French monks and Bisset, a nearby landowner, had a strong French-speaking presence, hence the name of the location and the river: “beau lieu” (“beautiful place”), which later passed into English. The priory’s ruins, protected as a scheduled monument, are one of the top attractions in Inverness.
George Vanderbilt began building the 250-room Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1889, a year after he traveled to the city on a family vacation with his mother. Roughly 1,000 people worked on the project, ranging from local laborers to internationally known artists. Indiana limestone, Italian marble and other supplies were shipped into Asheville by rail. Vanderbilt built a private railroad track from the village depot to the construction site, while an on-site kiln produced up to 32,000 bricks daily, and a woodworking factory supplied oak and walnut for the house’s floors and walls. The house was completed in 1895 and opened to the public in March 1930.
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The Bullock Hotel is a historic landmark located at the corner of Wall Street and Main Street in Deadwood, South Dakota. It was built by Seth Bullock and his business partner Sol Star around 1895 for $40,000. The hotel is the oldest in Deadwood and has 28 of its original 63 rooms and a casino and restaurant. Seth Bullock began construction on the hotel shortly after the devastating Deadwood fire of 1894, which destroyed the original two-story wood-frame building. The hotel was designed in an “Italianate” and Victorian style, with the first floor featuring a grand hotel lobby, a large dining room, and several offices. The second and third stories held 63 luxury sleeping rooms with baths down the halls and two large banks of skylights for natural lighting. All rooms were furnished with iron and brass beds and oak furnishings.
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The U.S. Lighthouse Service dedicated Cape Neddick Light Station on Nubble Island in 1879; the light house remains in use to today. Plans for a light house date to 1837, but it wasn’t until 1874 when Congress appropriated $15,000 to build a light station that work on Cape Neddick Light began.
Cardiff Castle is a medieval castle and Victorian Gothic revival mansion in the center of Cardiff, Wales. Norman invaders built the original motte and bailey castle in the late 11th century on top of a 3rd-century Roman fort. During the mid-18th century, ownership of Cardiff Castle passed to the Stuart dynasty, specifically the Marquesses of Bute. John, 1st Marquess of Bute, employed Capability Brown and Henry Holland to redo the main range, turning it into a Georgian mansion. In addition to that, the castle grounds were landscaped, and numerous older medieval buildings and walls were demolished.