Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Nice Fashion Design Schools In Nc photos

Matthew Borgatti: Spaceman Lamp / Eyebeam Open Studios: Fall 2009 / 2009-10-23 / SML
fashion design schools in nc
Image by See-ming Lee 李思明 SML
Matthew Borgatti talks to See-ming Lee about his concept, idea and inspiration behind his Spaceman Lamp project. Filmed during the Eyebeam Open Studios Fall 2009, a biennial event in New York City that showcases artists who work with both art and technology.

SML 720p HD Simulcast
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+ www.flickr.com/photos/seeminglee/4049360660/?likes_hd=1
+ www.vimeo.com/7285863
+ www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ99mQuw-7k

Biography

Matthew Borgatti was born with a painfully overactive imagination, grew up a perfectionist and will probably die on a runaway carnival ride. He went to the Rhode Island School of Design and took summers off to build movie monsters in Burbank beginning with Snakes on a Plane and working his way through Aliens VS Predator II: Requiem.

After graduating with his degree in Industrial design he moved out to California to make his fortune. Although this didn't exactly work out he spent his time there interning at Instructables, building boats for Makani Power, publishing a book called Show Me How, running industrial robots for a show called Prototype This! and helping everyone from independent inventors developing their first product to artists working on giant sculptures for Burning Man through Instinct Engineering.

He once wore a tshirt so witty that people thought he was both sarcastic and sincere at the same time. The paradox stretched the fabric of spacetime so thin that he was able to high five himself. He's currently working at Eyebeam, developing prototypes for and directing the filming of Diana Eng's project Fairytale Fashion.

sinbox.org
facebook.com/gianteye
flickr.com/gianteye
www.linkedin.com/in/matthewbor...
twitter.com/gianteye
www.vimeo.com/brainchild


Credits

Still photography by Matthew Borgatti
+ www.flickr.com/photos/gianteye/3908348419/
+ www.flickr.com/photos/gianteye/3908348433/
+ www.flickr.com/photos/gianteye/3909128492/
+ www.flickr.com/photos/gianteye/3924346168/
+ www.flickr.com/photos/gianteye/4047543667/
+ www.flickr.com/photos/gianteye/4047543667/
+ www.flickr.com/photos/gianteye/4047543805/
+ www.flickr.com/photos/gianteye/4047544501/
+ www.flickr.com/photos/gianteye/4047559507/
+ www.flickr.com/photos/gianteye/4048284882/
+ www.flickr.com/photos/gianteye/4048299914/
+ www.flickr.com/photos/gianteye/4048299984/
+ www.flickr.com/photos/gianteye/4048300114/

Still photography by SML Photography
+ www.flickr.com/photos/seeminglee/4047303638/

Videography + video production by SML Channel
+ produced in Sony Vegas Pro

Original soundtrack by SML Music
+ Composed, mixed and mastered in Ableton Live

CC-BY-NC-ND 2009 See-ming Lee / SML Universe


Eyebeam Open Studios: Fall 2009

eyebeam.org/events/open-studios-fall-2009

Eyebeam is pleased to host Open Studios for its 2009 Senior Fellows, Resident Artists, and Student Residents at Eyebeam’s state-of-the-art design, research, and fabrication studio; showcasing video performance, wearable technologies, code and humor, party technology, and sustainablity design.

///////////////

Eyebeam is the leading not-for-profit art and technology center in the United States.

Founded in 1996 and incorporated in 1997, Eyebeam was conceived as a non-profit art and technology center dedicated to exposing broad and diverse audiences to new technologies and media arts, while simultaneously establishing and demonstrating new media as a significant genre of cultural production.

Since then, Eyebeam has supported more than 130 fellowships and residencies for artists and creative technologists; we've run an active education program for youth, artists' professional development and community outreach; and have mounted an extensive series of public programs, over recent years approximately 4 exhibitions and 40 workshops, performances and events annually.

Today, Eyebeam offers residencies and fellowships for artists and technologists working in a wide range of media. At any given time, there are up to 20 resident artists and fellows onsite at Eyebeam's 15,000-square foot Chelsea offices and Labs, developing new projects and creating work for open dissemination through online, primarily open-source, publication as well as a robust calendar of public programming that includes free exhibitions, lectures and panels, participatory workshops, live performances and educational series.

eyebeam.org


De Saussure chest detail, MESDA, Winston-Salem, NC
fashion design schools in nc
Image by hdes.copeland
Figure 10 Detail of a canted corner and foot on the chest illustrated in fig. 8.

William Jones is one of the non-German cabinetmakers who clearly was a child of the German conclave yet dipped more than a toe into the waters of Massachusetts style. Based upon a labeled chest of drawers that descended in the DeSaussure family (fig. 8), four case pieces have been attributed to his shop. These objects provide a clear window on the shifting sands of fashion in Charleston’s cabinet trade at the end of the 1780s. Since he was not an orphan, nothing is known of Jones’s apprenticeship, nor do we even know whether he was a South Carolina native. There is no question, however, that he was either an apprentice or journeyman—or both—in one of the more prominent shops of the German school. He first appears in city records in 1787, located at the corner of Church and Tradd Streets. In August 1788, Jones, who described himself as a “Cabinet maker and Undertaker,” placed a notice that he had “Removed from No. 24, corner of Church and Tradd streets, to No. 54, Meeting street.” A similar notice appeared in May 1789, indicating that Jones had moved from Meeting Street to 51 King Street. He was listed there in Milligan’s city directory for 1790. Significantly, this property appears to be the same lot and building—evidently containing both a residence and a shop—that was purchased by Charles Desel in August 1790. At that time, Desel evidently was still in partnership with Henry Gesken on Church Street. Milligan’s directory does not list Desel at 51 Broad until 1794, where he remained until his death in 1807.16

Jones obviously was a successful tradesman. His advertisements were largely placed to inform his patrons of address changes and to seek journeymen. He advertised for a journeyman in the summer of 1790, and the following November he sought “one or two Journeymen Cabinet–Makers.” In both March and April of 1791 he again advertised for journeymen and noted that he had added upholstery to the services of his shop. Another notice in December 1791 announced a move to “No. 40 Tradd Street,” where Jones intended to carry on the “cabinet & upholstery business in a more extensive manner than before.” The same advertisement again sought two journeymen for the cabinet trade “and one to the upholsterers line.” Jones became a member of the South Carolina Society in the spring of 1792 and died the following November. One of the appraisers who signed his inventory of February 1793 was Jacob Sass.17

The inventory, which described Jones as a “Cabinet Maker deceased late of Tradd Street,” is both extensive and revealing. The “Stock in Trade” listed four “Mahogany Bedsteads” valued at £3.10 each, a “Pair Inlaid Tea Tables” valued at £5 apiece, 3 “Setts” of dining tables, an “inlaid Cellerett,” an inlaid “Slabb” table, a “Comode,” a “Beaureau” valued at £5, two easy chairs, an unfinished sofa, two unfinished “Wardrobes” valued at £10, ten pairs of “Mahogany Carved Bed Posts” valued at only 14 shilling a pair, and other unfinished work including a bookcase, desk, commode, tea table, and a “Chest of Drawers,” the latter valued at £5. The shop contained “Sundry Mahogany Table Leggs & Rails . . . Cutt up Chair Stuff . . . 12 Turned Bed Posts,” and other assorted furniture components along with a good deal of lumber, including mahogany, ash, pine, and “Sundry Drying Wood & Stringing.” A “lot of hair,” along with “22M Brass Nails” and “girth Webb,” tacks, “Hair Seating,” and mattress covers attest to the upholstery portion of the business. Besides furniture, coffin hardware, and “Sundry Tools,” the shop contained seven “new & old” workbenches, together worth £3.10. Also on hand were seventeen pieces of finished furniture, but since they are interspersed in the inventory with eight unfinished pieces and parts for fourteen bedsteads, it is unlikely that the finished pieces were imported furniture warehoused by Jones.18

The most significant documentation of Jones’s Charleston career is the fragment of a label pasted over a lock inside one of the drawers of the DeSaussure chest (figs. 8, 9). Most of the label was destroyed when the lock was removed, but it is possible to extrapolate the missing portion. Accompanying illustrations of tasseled drapery, an upholstered armchair, and a shield-back side chair stuffed over the rails was the text: “william jones,/Upholsterer & Cabinet Maker/N... Meeting Street/Charleston.” The competently-engraved label is signed “Abernathie” in the lower right corner. Thomas Abernathie (d. 1796) first advertised his trade to the citizens of Charleston in June 1786. In January 1795, he was located at 42 Queen Street, where he advertised as an “Engraver in General” and offered to carry out “Copper Plate Printing . . . With accuracy and dispatch.” In a notice published late in 1786 he indicated that he also conducted “the business of a Land Surveyor.”19

The “N... Meeting Street” address on Jones’s label suggests that he made the chest between August 1788, when he advertised that he had moved from the corner of Church and Broad to Meeting Street, and May 1789, when he informed his clients that he had “removed” to 51 Broad. When discovered, the chest was almost as shabby as its mutilated label. The rear feet and face veneers of the drawer fronts were missing, and the cockbeading had been cut flush with the altered drawer faces. Typical of Charleston case furniture of the 1780s and early 1790s, the drawers were not veneered on horizontally-laminated cores. To avoid excessive waste from sawing the serpentine facade from single, thick boards, Jones face-glued three pieces of thin, full-height mahogany scantling together, resulting in visible vertical joints inside several drawers. The veneer facings of the foot cants were also missing. They have been replaced with the inclusion of simple outline stringing to match the existing front faces of the feet (fig. 10). The single-line string on the feet suggested a similar treatment for the drawers, which, judging from other work attributed to Jones, probably had book-matched veneers originally. Following the usual treatment of the later phase of the German school, the case cants have horizontally grained panels of mahogany outlined with a single string. The base molding above the foot cants is cut integrally with the wedge-shaped pieces forming the cants themselves.

The case design of Jones’s chest is similar to a pre-Revolutionary Charleston example attributed to Pfeninger and his associates in the German school (see Savage, p. 116, fig. 14). The serpentine front, canted corners, and sharp coves behind the cants are a subdued British response to the French style. Chests of this plan follow the design of a “Commode Cloths Press” that Chippendale illustrated in all three editions of the Director (pl. 130 in the 3d edition). Chests of drawers with the same plan occurred in Philadelphia at about the same time that the Pfeninger example was made, probably during the mid- to late 1770s. Brock Jobe has proposed that this form could have been brought to Charleston from New England; however, few Massachusetts-school examples can be dated before the 1780s. Two canted-corner chests from Salem (in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, U.S. Department of State) certainly could date early in that decade, but a majority of the early examples appear to be from South Carolina and Pennsylvania shops. In Charleston, the canted-corner plan evidently originated in the German-school shops, since its earliest appearance is the base of the Edwards library bookcase, which probably dates no later than 1770 (see Savage, pp. 106–7, fig. 1). As on the chest attributed to Pfeninger, the case cants of the Jones chest, as well as the coves behind them, are formed from full-height vertical appliqués at the leading edges of the case sides; the joint at the front is covered by the veneer facings of the cants. Unlike the flat cants of the Jones chest, the cants on the Pfeninger piece are “swelld” at the feet, a detail much in tune with the baroque fugues of the German school. The Jones piece is virtually the same size as the Pfeninger example, and both have ungraduated drawers like a chest that descended in the Porcher family of Charleston. The latter chest, illustrated in figures 13 and 14 of E. Milby Burton’s Charleston Furniture, 1700–1825, has veneer-paneled canted corners and replaced feet.

Photo and text posted: 8 March 2011
Revised: 24 March 2011
Copyright reference: Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, MESDA, Old Salem, NC

Origin of text: www.chipstone.org

1997 - "The material in this article is adapted from a manuscript under preparation by Bradford Rauschenberg and John Bivins for the forthcoming monograph Charleston Furniture 1680–1820, to be published by the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts and distributed by the University of North Carolina Press."



De Saussure chest, MESDA, Winston-Salem, NC
fashion design schools in nc
Image by hdes.copeland
Figure 8 Chest of drawers labeled by William Jones, Charleston, 1788–1789. Mahogany and mahogany veneer with white pine, ash, tulip poplar, and mahogany. H. 34 1/2", W. 42", D. 21 3/4". (Collection of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts.) The drawer-face veneers and stringing are replaced.

William Jones is one of the non-German cabinetmakers who clearly was a child of the German conclave yet dipped more than a toe into the waters of Massachusetts style. Based upon a labeled chest of drawers that descended in the DeSaussure family (fig. 8), four case pieces have been attributed to his shop. These objects provide a clear window on the shifting sands of fashion in Charleston’s cabinet trade at the end of the 1780s. Since he was not an orphan, nothing is known of Jones’s apprenticeship, nor do we even know whether he was a South Carolina native. There is no question, however, that he was either an apprentice or journeyman—or both—in one of the more prominent shops of the German school. He first appears in city records in 1787, located at the corner of Church and Tradd Streets. In August 1788, Jones, who described himself as a “Cabinet maker and Undertaker,” placed a notice that he had “Removed from No. 24, corner of Church and Tradd streets, to No. 54, Meeting street.” A similar notice appeared in May 1789, indicating that Jones had moved from Meeting Street to 51 King Street. He was listed there in Milligan’s city directory for 1790. Significantly, this property appears to be the same lot and building—evidently containing both a residence and a shop—that was purchased by Charles Desel in August 1790. At that time, Desel evidently was still in partnership with Henry Gesken on Church Street. Milligan’s directory does not list Desel at 51 Broad until 1794, where he remained until his death in 1807.16

Jones obviously was a successful tradesman. His advertisements were largely placed to inform his patrons of address changes and to seek journeymen. He advertised for a journeyman in the summer of 1790, and the following November he sought “one or two Journeymen Cabinet–Makers.” In both March and April of 1791 he again advertised for journeymen and noted that he had added upholstery to the services of his shop. Another notice in December 1791 announced a move to “No. 40 Tradd Street,” where Jones intended to carry on the “cabinet & upholstery business in a more extensive manner than before.” The same advertisement again sought two journeymen for the cabinet trade “and one to the upholsterers line.” Jones became a member of the South Carolina Society in the spring of 1792 and died the following November. One of the appraisers who signed his inventory of February 1793 was Jacob Sass.17

The inventory, which described Jones as a “Cabinet Maker deceased late of Tradd Street,” is both extensive and revealing. The “Stock in Trade” listed four “Mahogany Bedsteads” valued at £3.10 each, a “Pair Inlaid Tea Tables” valued at £5 apiece, 3 “Setts” of dining tables, an “inlaid Cellerett,” an inlaid “Slabb” table, a “Comode,” a “Beaureau” valued at £5, two easy chairs, an unfinished sofa, two unfinished “Wardrobes” valued at £10, ten pairs of “Mahogany Carved Bed Posts” valued at only 14 shilling a pair, and other unfinished work including a bookcase, desk, commode, tea table, and a “Chest of Drawers,” the latter valued at £5. The shop contained “Sundry Mahogany Table Leggs & Rails . . . Cutt up Chair Stuff . . . 12 Turned Bed Posts,” and other assorted furniture components along with a good deal of lumber, including mahogany, ash, pine, and “Sundry Drying Wood & Stringing.” A “lot of hair,” along with “22M Brass Nails” and “girth Webb,” tacks, “Hair Seating,” and mattress covers attest to the upholstery portion of the business. Besides furniture, coffin hardware, and “Sundry Tools,” the shop contained seven “new & old” workbenches, together worth £3.10. Also on hand were seventeen pieces of finished furniture, but since they are interspersed in the inventory with eight unfinished pieces and parts for fourteen bedsteads, it is unlikely that the finished pieces were imported furniture warehoused by Jones.18

The most significant documentation of Jones’s Charleston career is the fragment of a label pasted over a lock inside one of the drawers of the DeSaussure chest (figs. 8, 9). Most of the label was destroyed when the lock was removed, but it is possible to extrapolate the missing portion. Accompanying illustrations of tasseled drapery, an upholstered armchair, and a shield-back side chair stuffed over the rails was the text: “william jones,/Upholsterer & Cabinet Maker/N... Meeting Street/Charleston.” The competently-engraved label is signed “Abernathie” in the lower right corner. Thomas Abernathie (d. 1796) first advertised his trade to the citizens of Charleston in June 1786. In January 1795, he was located at 42 Queen Street, where he advertised as an “Engraver in General” and offered to carry out “Copper Plate Printing . . . With accuracy and dispatch.” In a notice published late in 1786 he indicated that he also conducted “the business of a Land Surveyor.”19

The “N... Meeting Street” address on Jones’s label suggests that he made the chest between August 1788, when he advertised that he had moved from the corner of Church and Broad to Meeting Street, and May 1789, when he informed his clients that he had “removed” to 51 Broad. When discovered, the chest was almost as shabby as its mutilated label. The rear feet and face veneers of the drawer fronts were missing, and the cockbeading had been cut flush with the altered drawer faces. Typical of Charleston case furniture of the 1780s and early 1790s, the drawers were not veneered on horizontally-laminated cores. To avoid excessive waste from sawing the serpentine facade from single, thick boards, Jones face-glued three pieces of thin, full-height mahogany scantling together, resulting in visible vertical joints inside several drawers. The veneer facings of the foot cants were also missing. They have been replaced with the inclusion of simple outline stringing to match the existing front faces of the feet (fig. 10). The single-line string on the feet suggested a similar treatment for the drawers, which, judging from other work attributed to Jones, probably had book-matched veneers originally. Following the usual treatment of the later phase of the German school, the case cants have horizontally grained panels of mahogany outlined with a single string. The base molding above the foot cants is cut integrally with the wedge-shaped pieces forming the cants themselves.

The case design of Jones’s chest is similar to a pre-Revolutionary Charleston example attributed to Pfeninger and his associates in the German school (see Savage, p. 116, fig. 14). The serpentine front, canted corners, and sharp coves behind the cants are a subdued British response to the French style. Chests of this plan follow the design of a “Commode Cloths Press” that Chippendale illustrated in all three editions of the Director (pl. 130 in the 3d edition). Chests of drawers with the same plan occurred in Philadelphia at about the same time that the Pfeninger example was made, probably during the mid- to late 1770s. Brock Jobe has proposed that this form could have been brought to Charleston from New England; however, few Massachusetts-school examples can be dated before the 1780s. Two canted-corner chests from Salem (in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, U.S. Department of State) certainly could date early in that decade, but a majority of the early examples appear to be from South Carolina and Pennsylvania shops. In Charleston, the canted-corner plan evidently originated in the German-school shops, since its earliest appearance is the base of the Edwards library bookcase, which probably dates no later than 1770 (see Savage, pp. 106–7, fig. 1). As on the chest attributed to Pfeninger, the case cants of the Jones chest, as well as the coves behind them, are formed from full-height vertical appliqués at the leading edges of the case sides; the joint at the front is covered by the veneer facings of the cants. Unlike the flat cants of the Jones chest, the cants on the Pfeninger piece are “swelld” at the feet, a detail much in tune with the baroque fugues of the German school. The Jones piece is virtually the same size as the Pfeninger example, and both have ungraduated drawers like a chest that descended in the Porcher family of Charleston. The latter chest, illustrated in figures 13 and 14 of E. Milby Burton’s Charleston Furniture, 1700–1825, has veneer-paneled canted corners and replaced feet.

For an image of the same chest before restoration was begun, see another photo in this same file: www.flickr.com/photos/hdescopeland/6855978979/in/set-7215...

Photo and text posted: 8 March 2011
Revised: 17 February 2012
Copyright reference: Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, MESDA, Old Salem, NC

Origin of text: www.chipstone.org

1997 - "The material in this article is adapted from a manuscript under preparation by Bradford Rauschenberg and John Bivins for the forthcoming monograph Charleston Furniture 1680–1820, to be published by the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts and distributed by the University of North Carolina Press."



North Carolina, Salisbury, John Steele House
fashion design schools in nc
Image by hdes.copeland
Martin, age 10, and Mary at the John Steele house, c.1799, in Salisbury, NC. Photo taken October, 1988.

John Steele was a US Congressman representing North Carolina in the First US Congress convened after ratification of the new constitution...the same one we have now. John Steele was the son of Elizabeth Maxwell Gillespie Steele whose contributions to General Greene prior to the fateful Battle of Guilford Courthouse are still celebrated. His father, William, was a Quaker whose family had immigrated to North Carolina from Pennsylvania in the early 1700's. They very likely immigrated to Pennsylvania from Ireland in the late 1600's or very early 1700's.

After serving in Congress, John Steele was later appointed to the position of Comptroller of the US Mint under the administrations of Presidents Washington, Adams and Jefferson. Incidentally, during his tenure as Comptroller, the third Director of the US Mint under Washington was Henry William de Saussure of South Carolina. Direct descendants of both men would later marry.

John Steele's wife, Polly, managed the family plantations from this house in Salisbury while John lived in the nation's capital, first at Philadelphia and later in the District of Columbia which only later came to be known as the city of Washington. John Steele's days were interesting and filled with opportunities to observe the leaders of the new nation. His letters to his wife are filled with his accounts and experiences while living in the capital and working among the leaders of every state represented in the new union.

His letters also contain detailed instructions on how his wife, Polly, still living in Salisbury, should oversee the family estate, the construction and later renovations of this house, the introduction of new crops such as upland cotton and the education of their three daughters. Of course, she had no time to respond, in spite of his pleas that she communicate with him. Hell, she had no time left to write anything that wasn't directly related to keeping the place in Salisbury going!

Mary Nesfield Steele, Polly as she was known, was well educated and could keep track of journals, account ledgers, temporary laborers, slaves and commodity brokers. Polly managed to successfully run the family holdings while John continued to serve in the national government. She later sent their daughters to him so they could complete their formal education in the finishing schools of Philadelphia and, later, Washington.

Though John Steele died in 1815, Polly lived for many years as a widow who was quite able to manage her own affairs. She had a lot of practice. Polly, the widow, oversaw the marriage of her three daughters and then assisted in the raising and later marriages of her many grandchildren.

Though she was a child at the time of the American revolution growing up on her father's plantations near Wilmington, she would live long enough to read the excited letters of her grandchildren describing the arrival of the first train at the city of Columbia in the late 1830's. That train had departed only hours earlier from Charleston to initiate regular passenger service between the two cities...it was then the longest railroad line in the world.

As seen from the exterior, this is a modest house typical of the inland communities of North Carolina during the last quarter of the 18th century. Elegant, though simple, architectural details are found on the interior which reflect the builder's attempt to replicate the latest European styles and tastes readily found in the larger American cities on the coast.

The land holdings surrounding this home, originally on the outskirts of Salisbury, comfortably sustained a family involved in public service, but the income it produced would not make anyone overly wealthy. In spite of the almost frontier agrarian character of North Carolina's upcountry, it was still a place that was aware of and had a taste for specific styles coming out of Europe and appearing in the American coastal trading centers. It just took a little longer for these to get into the American interior. Once the new fashions arrived, the scale was modified to match their life style. As a result, the small size and simplicity of this house is functional for the location, but it would hardly be considered a masterpiece of Robert Adam or his contemporaries. Instead it's just a North Carolina takeoff of Robert Adam's influences on the Federal style then found in cities like Wilmington, Charleston and Philadelphia. Just as the United States was reinventing itself as a new classical republic, Robert Adam was reinventing the architectural designs of republican Greece and Rome. For the new American republic it was a convenient marriage of style and politics.

Like their counterparts in the British Isles who traveled to Dublin, Edinburgh and London for business and politics, the tastes of the new American gentry were shaped by what they saw in Philadelphia, by what their children learned from a formal education received in the capital of the new nation and by what they learned or observed from the well educated and well traveled people they met in Philadelphia, as well as Wilmington and Charleston. Even Salisbury would become a distribution point for the styles of the day, being a major inland port and market center located at the highest navigable point, or fall line, of the rivers of the vast coastal plains. From Salisbury commodities were sent overland to what was still the American frontier. Salisbury remained important until Charlotte replaced it as a major trading, distribution and banking center for the entire region soon after the American civil war ended in 1865.

The Steele family descendents include the Henderson family of North Carolina and the Lynch family of South Carolina, among others. This house was where Polly lived until she died. In this house her second daughter, Elizabeth Steele, married Robert Macnamara, a Catholic. Their daughter, Polly's grand daughter, Elizabeth Steele Macnamara, married Dr. John Lynch of Cheraw, also a Catholic. A proud Presbyterian, Polly reportedly refused to attend the marriage of her daughter, but it is believed she did attend the latter one. Ironically, Robert Macnamara proved to be a loyal and attentive son-in-law in spite of Polly's anti-popish sentiments. Sometime after Polly Steele's death, her heirs sold the property as all of her grandchildren had become established in other cities.

The Steele family plantation lands located in and around Salisbury were subdivided as the 18th and 19th century town expanded to include 20th century suburbs. Residential subdivisions were laid out in tracts that were once experimental fields where Polly tested some of North Carolina's first successful plantings of upland cotton. By the time of the Great Depression, after 1930, and after much of the local employment was found in the textile mills and the furniture factories of the region, this and other surviving 18th century buildings in Salisbury had been converted to apartments.

By the 1960's and 1970's, the old house was in danger of being demolished, burned or lost to the elements. The state of North Carolina also began about the same time to identify its threatened historic and cultural assets. The state also made an effort to find potential buyers and match appropriate properties with those best in a position to save these endangered landmarks.

In the 1980's a private individual purchased and restored this house for what it was originally intended...a private residence. It has an added purpose of serving as an historic landmark for the community reflecting Salisbury's direct ties to those who founded the country and shaped its social and economic future.

John Steele's house is still a home. It also survives as a reminder of the political influence and importance that so many vibrant communities in the backcountry held as the American people were stitching themselves and thirteen former colonial provinces into a single nation more than 200 years ago. The distribution of commodities on a vast scale in Salisbury isn't just ancient history. The international grocery chain, Food Lion, began there more than 50 years ago. Eventually becoming part of a multi-national corporation based in Europe, Food Lion still maintains its North American headquarters in Salisbury.

About the two people in the photo: Martin is Mary's grandson. Mary is the great granddaughter of Elizabeth Steele Macnamara and Dr. John Lynch.

Photo and text posted: 9 June 2008.
Revised: 2 February 2011.
Copyrights reserved: hdescopeland.

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