title: English Mastiff

text: Systematic breeding began in the 19th century, when J.W. (John Wigglesworth) Thompson purchased a bitch, Dorah, from John Crabtree, the head gamekeeper of Kirklees Hall, whose dogs were often held in the name of his employer, Sir George Armitage. Dorah was descended in part from animals owned by Thompson's grandfather Commissioner Thompson at the beginning of the century, as well as a Mastiff of the Bold Hall line (recorded from 1705), a bitch purchased from canal boat men, another caught by Crabtree in a fox trap, a dog from Nostal priory and another dog from Walton Hall, owned by the naturalist, Charles Waterton. J. W. Thompson's first stud dog, Hector, came from crossing a bitch, Juno, bought from animal dealer Bill George, to a dog, Tiger, owned by a Captain Fenton. Neither of these had any pedigree, as was normal for the period. Between 1830 and 1850 he bred the descendants of these dogs and some others to produce a line with the short, broad head and massive build he favoured. In 1835, T.V.H. Lukey started his operations by breeding an Alpine Mastiff bitch of the Chatsworth line, Old Bob-Tailed Countess (bought from dog dealer Bill White), to Pluto, a large black Mastiff of unknown origin belonging to the Marquis of Hertford. The result was a bitch called Yarrow, who was mated to Couchez, another Alpine Mastiff belonging (at the time) to White and later mated to a brindle dog also in White's possession. Lukey produced animals that were taller but less massive than Thompson's. After 1850, Thompson and Lukey collaborated, and the modern Mastiff was created, though animals without pedigree or of dubious pedigree continued to be bred from into the 20th century.


title: English Mastiff

text: Another important contribution to the breed was made by a dog called Lion, owned by Captain (later Colonel) John Garnier of The Royal Engineers. He bought two Mastiffs from the previously mentioned dealer Bill George. The bitch, Eve, bought by George at Leadenhall Market, was old enough to be grey-muzzled, but of good type. The dog, Adam, was of reputed Lyme Hall origin, but bought at Tattersalls and suspected by Garnier of containing a "dash of Boarhound", an ancestral form of Great Dane. Garnier took them with him when he was posted to Canada and brought back their puppy, Lion. He was bred to Lukey's Countess to produce Governor, the source of all existing male Mastiff lines (Lion was also mated to Lufra, a Scottish Deerhound, and their puppy Marquis appears in the pedigrees of both Deerhounds and Irish Wolfhounds). In the 1880s soundness was sacrificed for type, which was widely attributed to the short-headed, massive, but straight-stifled and chocolate-masked Ch. Crown Prince. This dog dominated all of his contemporaries in terms of the number of offspring. Subsequently, the Mastiff lost popularity but gained a consistency of type, with leaner, longer-headed specimens becoming relatively less common. Prominent among the breeders of this era who began to restore soundness were Edgar Hanbury and his relation, the politician and philanthropist Mark Hanbury Beaufoy, later Chairman of The Kennel Club, who reaching his peak as a breeder with the Crown Prince grandson, Ch. Beaufort, eventually exported to America.


title: English Mastiff

text: AKC recognition occurred in 1885. Despite such imports, Mastiff numbers in the US declined steadily through the 1890s and the early 20th century. From 1906 to 1918, only 24 Mastiffs were registered in the United States. After 1910, none of these were bred in America. By the time World War I ended, other than a few exports to North America, the breed was extinct outside of Great Britain.


title: English Mastiff

text: In 1918, a dog called Beowulf, bred in Canada from British imports Priam of Wingfied and Parkgate Duchess, was registered by the American Kennel Club, starting a slow re-establishment of the breed in North America. Priam and Duchess, along with fellow imports Ch Weland, Thor of the Isles, Caractacus of Hellingly and Brutus of Saxondale, ultimately contributed a total of only two descendants who would produce further offspring: Buster of Saxondale and Buddy. There were, however, a number of other imports in the period between the wars and in the early days of the Second World War Those who can still be found in modern pedigrees were 12 in number, meaning the North American contribution to the gene pool after 1945 (including Buster and Buddy) consisted of 14 Mastiffs.


title: English Mastiff

text: In the British Isles during World War II, virtually all Mastiff breeding stopped due to the rationing of meat. After the war, such puppies as were produced mostly succumbed to canine distemper, for which no vaccine was developed until 1950. Only a single bitch puppy produced by the elderly stock that survived the war reached maturity, Nydia of Frithend. Her sire had to be declared a Mastiff by the Kennel Club, as his parentage was unknown, and he was thought by some to be a Bullmastiff.


title: English Mastiff

text: After the war, animals from North America (predominantly from Canada) were imported into Britain. Therefore, all Mastiffs in the late 1950s were descended from Nydia and the 14 Mastiffs previously mentioned, with each all-male bloodline going back to Ch. Crown Prince. It has been alleged that the Mastiff was bred with other more numerically significant giant breeds, such as Bullmastiffs and St. Bernards, with the justification that these were considered close relatives to the Mastiff. In 1959, a Dogue de Bordeaux, Fidelle de Fenelon, was imported from France to the U.S., registered as a Mastiff, and became the 16th animal in the post-war gene pool. Since that time, the breed has gradually been restored in Great Britain, has reached the 28th most popular breed in the U.S., and is now found worldwide.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: 111 West 57th Street, also known as Steinway Tower, is a supertall residential skyscraper in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Developed by JDS Development Group and Property Markets Group, it is situated along Billionaires' Row on the north side of 57th Street near Sixth Avenue. The main portion of the building is an 84-story, tower designed by SHoP Architects and completed in 2021. Preserved at the base is the 16-story Steinway Building (also Steinway Hall), a former Steinway & Sons store designed by Warren and Wetmore and completed in 1925, which originally carried the address 111 West 57th Street.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: 111 West 57th Street contains 60 luxury condominiums: 14 in Steinway Hall and 46 in the tower. The residential tower has a glass facade with piers made of terracotta; its pinnacle contains setbacks on the southern side. The tower is the fourth-tallest building in the United States as of November 2022, as well as the thinnest skyscraper in the world with a width-to-height ratio of about 1:24. Steinway Hall, a New York City designated landmark, contains a facade made mostly of brick, limestone, and terracotta. 111 West 57th Street contains numerous resident amenities, housed mostly in the building's base, as well as a large rotunda within Steinway Hall that is also a designated city landmark.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The Steinway & Sons store at 111 West 57th Street was planned in 1916 but was not completed for nine years due to lawsuits and other delays. Steinway Hall served as a store, recital hall, and office building for almost nine decades, though it was unsuccessful as a speculative development. Plans for a residential skyscraper on the site date to 2005, and JDS acquired the lots for the skyscraper between 2012 and 2013. Despite the tower's size, it was technically constructed as an addition to Steinway Hall. Construction on the tower began in 2014, and Steinway Hall was restored as part of the residential project. The development faced several challenges, including financing difficulties, lawsuits, and controversies over employment. The tower's concrete form topped out during April 2019, and work was completed in 2021.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: 111 West 57th Street is in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, just south of Central Park, between Sixth Avenue to the east and Seventh Avenue to the west. The building occupies the land lots at 105–113 West 57th Street and contains frontage along 57th Street to the south and 58th Street to the north. The rectangular site covers , with a frontage of on 57th and 58th Streets, and a depth of between the two streets.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: 111 West 57th Street occupies the same city block as the Calvary Baptist Church, One57, and Alwyn Court to the west, and abuts The Quin immediately to the east. 111 West 57th Street is also near Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Hall Tower, and Metropolitan Tower one block west; Parker New York, 130 West 57th Street, and 140 West 57th Street across 57th Street to the south; and Hampshire House and Trump Parc across 58th Street to the north. The building stands across from the 57th Street station of the New York City Subway's . 111 West 57th Street is one of several major developments around 57th Street and Central Park that are collectively dubbed Billionaires' Row by the media. Other buildings along Billionaires' Row include 432 Park Avenue four blocks southeast, 220 Central Park South one block northwest, Central Park Tower one block west, and the nearby One57.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: 111 West 57th Street's base contains Steinway Hall, a former store and recital hall for Steinway & Sons. Steinway Hall was completed in 1925 by Warren & Wetmore and is a New York City designated landmark. Steinway Hall was part of an artistic hub developed around the two blocks of West 57th Street from Sixth Avenue west to Broadway during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, following the opening of Carnegie Hall in 1891. The area contains several buildings constructed as residences for artists and musicians, such as 130 and 140 West 57th Street, the Rodin Studios, and the Osborne Apartments. In addition, the area contained the headquarters of organizations such as the American Fine Arts Society, the Lotos Club, and the American Society of Civil Engineers.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: 111 West 57th Street, also known as Steinway Tower, was developed by Michael Stern's JDS Development Group and Kevin P. Maloney's Property Markets Group (PMG). WSP USA was the structural engineer for the project, while Jaros, Baum & Bolles was the engineer in charge of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The building has two components. Warren and Wetmore's original Steinway Hall, at the base of the development, is topped by a tower designed by SHoP Architects. According to documents filed by SHoP Architects principal Gregg Pasquarelli, the roof slab of the tower is above ground level while the pinnacle is above ground. The building contains 84 stories above ground level or 85 including the roof slab. The top story is numbered as floor 91, while floor numbers 5–7, 13, and 21–25 are skipped. The tallest habitable story of the tower is above ground level. There is also a sub-cellar and cellar, used primarily for utilities and storage.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The 16-story, "L"-shaped Steinway Hall fills most of the base, with frontages of along 57th Street and on 58th Street. The concert hall has a setback above the 12th story on 57th Street, and setbacks above the 9th and 12th stories on 58th Street. The 16th story along 57th Street (marketed as floor 19) is also set back from all sides. The roof of Steinway Hall contains a campanile with a pyramidal copper roof and lantern, similar to the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. Christopher Gray of "The New York Times" described the campanile as having a "sculptural, even funerary, caste".


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The residential tower atop Steinway Hall is one of the tallest buildings in the United States, as well as the thinnest skyscraper in the world with a width-to-height ratio of about 1:24. Due to its slenderness, the top stories sway several feet during high winds. The building has been characterized as part of a new breed of New York City "pencil towers". The tower's northern elevation rises directly up to the pinnacle, and the southern elevation contains several setbacks as the tower rises, thinning the tower's footprint on higher floors. The pinnacle's lighting pattern was commissioned by L'Observatoire International. Because of the shape of the tower's pinnacle, 111 West 57th Street is nicknamed "Stairway to Heaven".


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: On the first three stories of Steinway Hall's southern elevation, facing 57th Street, the facade is made of Indiana Limestone above a pink-granite water table. Two rectangular portals flank a large central arch there. The outer portals contain wooden pocket doors, which are surrounded by moldings and topped with entablatures. The central opening is a display window that contains an entablature supported by Ionic columns on either side, as well as a lunette above the entablature. The lunette has a cement sculptural group by Leo Lentelli, which contains a bas-relief of Apollo. Above the third story is a frieze with portraits of classical composers and pianists, as well as a central plaque with the name "Steinway".


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The northern elevation on 58th Street is clad with brick, limestone, and terracotta. The lowest two floors contain rusticated limestone blocks; the first floor has loading docks on either end. One of the 58th Street loading docks led to a freight elevator for Steinway Hall's tenants, while the other led to a freight elevator used specifically by Steinway & Sons.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: Steinway Hall's upper stories are clad with brick. On 57th Street, there are three pairs of windows on each of the 4th through 12th stories. On 58th Street, there are five windows on each of the 3rd through 12th stories; there is a balustrade at the third story and a cornice atop the 9th story. Above the 12th story, on both 57th and 58th Streets, is a parapet capped by urns. The western elevation is clad with plain brick and contains some window openings. The 13th through 15th stories of Steinway Hall have chamfered corners and Ionic colonnades, with a parapet above the 15th story. The 16th story has brick piers at each corner, shallow arches on each side, band courses at the bottom, and a cornice at the top.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The tower's facade was designed by BuroHappold. The portion of the tower's base at ground level, which is not occupied by Steinway Hall, contains doors with aluminum or bronze frames. This section serves as the retail entrance and was included only because zoning rules mandated it. The northern and southern elevations consist of large glass curtain walls. There are bronze mullions between the windows, which project slightly from the glass curtain wall. The top section of the northern elevation, above the highest habitable story, contains reflective glass panels in front of the pinnacle's reinforced concrete walls. There are glass parapets above each setback, and the roof terraces also contain guard rails made of aluminum, bronze, or steel.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The eastern and western elevations contain narrow windows between vertical piers of glazed terracotta. Six tones of white were used for the terracotta. The terracotta piers are made of extruded and glazed blocks arranged in a wave-like pattern. The piers are meant to be reminiscent of older terracotta designs in New York City, and the beige color complements the limestone facade of Steinway Hall. Each of the terracotta piers rises to the height of one of the setbacks on the pinnacle. There are also bronze mullions, which contain curving patterns resembling bird feathers, between the piers. The piers and mullions serve partially to stabilize the tower by creating wind turbulence.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The existing Steinway Hall contains a structural steel frame atop a foundation with reinforced concrete and steel grillages. The foundations of the tower contain about 200 rock anchors that descend at most into the underlying bedrock. These deep foundations are necessitated by the tower's extreme slenderness. The building has two cellar levels. Steinway Hall originally had a cellar vault extending under the roadway at 57th Street, which was partially infilled and modified as part of the tower's construction.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The superstructure of 111 West 57th Street's tower is made mostly of concrete. The core structural system is formed by two large shear walls installed behind the eastern and western facades, maximizing usable floor area. The two shear walls range in thickness from on the lower stories to on the upper stories, and are recessed on upper floors to accommodate corner windows. The tower's floor plates are high-strength concrete slabs with a compressive strength of . They are reinforced with of rebar and welded plates. The floors are also supported by additional beams at three-story intervals, as well as four outrigger walls on the mechanical floors and beams on the southern side of each floor. Interior walls above the floor slabs also connect the shear walls. The top of the tower includes an tuned mass damper to provide stability against high winds or earthquakes. The damper consists of tuned steel plates.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: 111 West 57th Street's interior spaces were designed by Studio Sofield, though the interior of the original Steinway Hall was planned by Walter L. Hopkins. There are 60 apartments in total: 46 in the tower and 14 in Steinway Hall. According to the New York City Department of City Planning, the building has a gross floor area of .


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The building has of amenity space across several floors. Spanning the cellar and floors 1, 3, and 4 is a "non-residential unit", which contains of commercial space. Several stories in the tower and base contain mechanical equipment. Additionally, floors 51, 71, and 86 contain windbreaks and are not occupied. 111 West 57th Street contains fourteen elevators: five in Steinway Hall and nine in the tower. Seven of the tower elevators are within individual suites, while the remaining seven elevators are shared by all residents. Steinway Hall had initially contained six elevators, one of which was upgraded as part of the residential project.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The original western and eastern entrance vestibules on 57th Street have pink-granite floors and coffered domed ceilings. The eastern vestibule leads to a rectangular foyer with a vaulted ceiling, which in turn connects to the main rotunda and the original floor 2. The western vestibule leads north to a marble corridor that connects to Steinway Hall's original elevator lobby. The original elevator lobby had Botticino marble walls and black-and-white terrazzo flooring. A stone porte-cochère for residents is on 58th Street. There is a passenger and freight elevator connecting the cellar and ground-level loading dock.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: Steinway Hall's octagonal rotunda features a domed ceiling reaching and measuring across. The sides of the rotunda consist of four white marble arches, green marble pilasters with coffered pendentives, and a continuous marble cornice just below the dome. A large chandelier hangs from the dome. Four paintings by Paul Arndt, depicting "the influence of music on human relations", are hung on the wall. The paintings are surrounded by grotesques and images painted by Cooper and Gentiluomo. The rotunda's southern wall contains the arched display window facing 57th Street. Behind the northern wall are three green-marble archways on floor 1 and a balcony on floor 2. The central arch on the north wall led to piano showrooms in the rear of floor 1, while the right arch led to the basement. The rotunda sat up to 300 guests and a small symphony orchestra. When used by Steinway & Sons, the rotunda contained ornate furniture and paintings evocative of an upper-class home.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: Steinway Hall's showrooms were clustered around a corridor that led from the rotunda. The corridor from the rotunda to these showrooms had dull red and old rose furniture, as well as green wall surfaces. The showrooms were covered with wood panels for better acoustics. The first showroom past the rotunda and foyers was the Pine Room, which had pine-paneled walls, draped windows, illumination from chandeliers and ceiling bulbs, and an ivory-white plaster ceiling in low relief. Dimmers were provided so the light could be intensified for instrument examination. Two other showrooms had cream-colored, paneled walls and low-relief ceilings; one of these rooms had decorative paintings and medallions on the ceiling. Another showroom, known as the skylight room, had black-and-white wallpaper decorations depicting scenes in the French Empire style, as well as a skylight over more than half the room. The rear of the ground floor contained the Walnut Room, with walnut-paneled walls, windows facing 58th Street, and a beamed ceiling with pastel-color designs. Antique pieces throughout all the display rooms were arranged to complement the piano displays.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: Following the construction of the residential tower, the rotunda was converted to a retail space with entrances from the residential lobby and the street. The residential lobby contains gold and silver-leaf murals with ebony and elephant motifs, a reference to the materials used in pianos. Also in the lobby is a mailroom, concierge area, shared toilet, and lounge. The elevator lobby contains custom bronze doors by Nancy Lorenz.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: Floor 2 contained four display rooms, which generally were larger than the ground-floor showrooms. They generally had cream-colored walls and ceilings and were connected by a corridor with pea-green walls. The floor surfaces were laid in California redwood planks thick, which could withstand the weight of the pianos. Floor 3 was initially Steinway Hall's executive offices while floors 4 and 8 (originally the fourth and fifth floors, respectively) were composed of soundproof music studios. The original musical salon on floor 3 could fit 250 people and was designed with blue-gray plaster walls, a cream-colored low-relief ceiling, a gold-leaf cornice, an oak parquet floor, and a lighting system with a dimmer. Following the residential conversion, floor 8 has contained a residents' rehearsal room and offices; the room's design references the building's historical use. The non-residential areas between the cellar and floor 4 are served by a single elevator.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: Floors 10 and 10M constitute the building's common amenity area. There is an indoor pool with a limestone deck and cabanas, as well as sauna, steam, and treatment rooms adjacent to the pool. Floors 10 and 10M also contain a private dining room, fitness center, and study. The amenity areas on floors 10 and 10M are connected by their own elevator.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The remaining stories of Steinway Hall were originally rented as office space. The floors up to the 15th story (now floor 18) typically measured , with more space facing 58th Street than 57th Street. The 16th story (now floor 19) was much smaller and was intended as a studio apartment. After the residential conversion, the space above the amenity area was converted to 14 units, which range between . They consist of ten 3-bedroom units, three 1-bedroom units, and one studio apartment. Floor 11 has one 3-bedroom unit as well as the studio and 1-bedroom units, while floors 12, 14, 16, and 17 each have two 3-bedroom units. The largest unit, a three-bedroom duplex penthouse on floors 19 and 20, contains a stone entrance foyer, private terraces, an office, a den, a kitchen, and a living room with ceilings. These units are all connected to ground level and floor 10 by a pair of elevators.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The 46 condominiums in the building's tower range from . The apartments start above the 17th story, numbered as floor 20, because the views of Central Park from the lower floors are obstructed by neighboring buildings. The units are mostly three-bedroom apartments each occupying one full floor, except for seven duplex units on floors 60–61 and 72–83, which each have between two and four bedrooms. Many of the stories are open in plan and have ceilings. , prices ranged from $16 million for a studio apartment to over $66 million for the triplex penthouse.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: P. E. Guerin Hardware designed bronze doorknobs on the living-room doors, which are shaped like the tower itself. The kitchens typically have quartzite counters as well as built-in appliances such as dishwashers, ovens, refrigerators, and freezers. The units also contain dark wood and onyx floors, an acknowledgment of the design of Steinway Hall. A typical unit, such as the residence on floor 43, has a living room facing north toward Central Park and master and guest bedrooms facing south, as well as walk-in closets and custom bathroom appliances. Some tower units have been customized, such as a unit on floor 34, designed by Kelly Behun with a musically-influenced theme. A pair of elevators connect each of the tower stories to the ground level and floor 10. One is a double-deck elevator with a service cab on the lower deck, which also descends to the cellar, while the other is a single-deck elevator. In addition, each of the duplex units have private elevators connecting both floors in the unit.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: Since 1864, Steinway & Sons had operated a piano showroom and performance auditorium at 14th Street in Lower Manhattan, where the piano industry was concentrated. When Carnegie Hall opened in 1891, the piano industry moved uptown to 57th Street, prompting Steinway & Sons to look for new sites in that area.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: By July 1916, the company had identified a site at 109–113 West 57th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, with a parcel extending back to 58th Street. William K. Benedict and Marvin & Davis designed a 10-story building for the site. Work was delayed because the 1916 Zoning Resolution prohibited non-residential buildings on that section of 58th Street; additionally, neighborhood residents had filed lawsuits against Steinway & Sons, which were settled by July 1920. Steinway & Sons acquired eight lots on 57th and 58th Streets from 1920 to 1924, and Warren and Wetmore designed a 16-story building, for which plans were filed in July 1923. The new Steinway Hall was built from June 1924 to April 1925. Many of the studios had already been rented by late 1924.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The hall at 111 West 57th Street officially opened on October 27, 1925, with a performance by Willem Mengelberg and 35 musicians from the New York Philharmonic, broadcast over radio. The building had cost $3 million, representing about a quarter of Steinway & Sons' total assets at the time. Steinway & Sons used the five lowest floors and rented out the upper floors. The basement housed storage, shipping, and a grand-piano testing area; the first story, a reception room and salesroom; the second story, salesrooms; the third floor, executive offices; and the fourth and fifth stories, music studios. Steinway & Sons used only the rear of the fourth story, where it had a large workroom. The "piano bank" in the basement had over 300 pianos, valued at over $15 million.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: According to a "New Yorker" article in 2001, "almost every twentieth-century virtuoso has passed through" the first-floor reception room while headed to the Concert and Artists Department in the basement. Among the notable performances at the 57th Street building was the 1928 duo piano recital by Vladimir Horowitz and Sergei Rachmaninoff. The 57th Street building was also intended as a speculative development for Steinway & Sons; it was not particularly successful in that respect, with a rate of return of only 2 percent. Even so, by 1940, all studios in the Steinway Building had been leased. Throughout the years, the building's tenants also included publications such as "Musical America", "Architectural Forum", and "The Economist", as well as CBS broadcasting studios.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: Steinway Hall received an $850,000 first mortgage from Hubbard, Westervelt & Mottelay Inc. in 1939. The onset of World War II forced the closure of the building's recital hall. In March 1957, the Manhattan Life Insurance Company leased some space on the third floor for its tabulating and accounting departments. Steinway Hall and its land were sold to Manhattan Life the following year, with the insurance company planning to occupy the building as its home office. At that time, "Musical Forum", Columbia Artists Management, and the Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York were among Steinway Hall's tenants. 111 West 57th Street was thus renamed the Manhattan Life Insurance Company Building. Steinway & Sons continued to lease space there, including the ground-floor showroom. Steinway Hall was acquired by 111 West 57th Street Associates in 1980. Bernard H. Mendik had acquired the leasehold for $8.65 million in that transaction.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: In 1990, the Apollo sculpture above the main entrance was restored, and the plaque above the entrance was replaced, after "The Economist" became a tenant at 111 West 57th Street. In 1997, Jeffrey Biegel performed the first classical music recital transmitted live over the internet, with audio and video, at Steinway Hall. Steinway bought back the building in May 1999 for approximately $62 million; the firm leased the land for 99 years from the building's former owner, who chose to retain ownership of the land. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated Steinway Hall as a New York City landmark in November 2001. Manhattan Life moved out of the building that year, and an XM Satellite Radio studio opened there.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: In May 2005, Investcorp and Ceebraid-Signal purchased the one-story Ritz Fur Shop building at 107 West 57th Street, adjacent to Steinway Hall, for $23 million, along with $8.75 million for neighboring air rights. According to "The Real Deal", the sale was finalized in 2006 for $52 million. The companies planned a 35-story tower on the site with 37 residential units, three lower floors of office space, and ground floor and basement retail space.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: In October 2006, Barry Sternlicht's Starwood Capital Group purchased the site at 105–107 West 57th Street for $52 million with a $30 million loan from Eurohypo. Demolition of the site was underway the same year. Before the financial crisis of 2007–2008, Starwood Capital reportedly planned to construct a new hotel tower for sister company Starwood as part of a new "Hotel Crillon" luxury brand based on Paris's Hôtel de Crillon. In early 2012, Starwood sold a majority interest in the assemblage to JDS Development Group for $40 million and stayed on as a joint venture partner. That March, the first plans for the site at 105–107 West 57th Street were filed with the New York City Department of Buildings for a 51-story tower rising and containing 27 condominiums. Renderings of the planned development were revealed that September, showing a sloping tower by CetraRuddy, covered with balconies facing Central Park. At the time, construction was expected to take place from early 2013 to late 2014.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: At the end of 2012, Steinway & Sons announced that it would sell Steinway Hall, adjacent to the planned development at 107 West 57th Street, for $46 million. At the time, Steinway & Sons was losing $5 million a year from continuing to own Steinway Hall. In March 2013, a joint venture of JDS Development, PMG, and Arthur P. Becker officially purchased Steinway Hall. Becker allegedly purchased his stake with the help of a $21 million loan from Russian oligarchs Serguei Adoniev and Albert Avdolyan, concealed via numerous offshore LLCs in the British Virgin Islands and Hong Kong orchestrated by British financier Andy Ruhan. JDS paid $131.5 million to Wexford Capital for the land underneath the building, an adjacent structure, and air rights in July 2013. After the purchase, Starwood Capital Group exited their investment, leaving JDS and PMG as the developers. While the original assemblage allowed the developers to build a structure up to tall, the acquisition of Steinway Hall and air rights allowed JDS and PMG to develop a building twice as high. However, because of Steinway Hall's existing city landmark status, the LPC could approve or deny any plans involving modification of Steinway Hall, and any additions would need to be constructed around the existing structure.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: Steinway & Sons was allowed to remain in the building for 18 months after the sale. The developers either bought out the other eleven tenants' leases or waited for the leases to expire. Not long after the developers bought Steinway Hall, they secured a $230 million acquisition loan from Annaly Capital Management on the development site. Stern and Maloney did not yet have the cash to fund the tower's construction. Although Ruhan had promised to be a primary investor, he subsequently lowered his investment and took a 26.3 percent stake with his partner Arthur P. Becker. Accordingly, AmBase Corporation purchased a 59 percent stake in the development for $56 million in June 2013. Stern and Maloney retained the remaining 14.7 percent stake.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: With the acquisition of Steinway Hall, the developers decided to create new plans. The developers considered several architects, including CetraRuddy, Gehry, and HOK, before ultimately hiring SHoP Architects. In an interview, Stern said that he had selected SHoP because the firm was "not afraid to push boundaries", as in its design of the Barclays Center arena. In August 2013, the developers filed permits for a 74-story, tower that would hold 100 condominiums above six floors of retail. SHoP's plans incorporated the existing structure into the base of the new tower. Further complicating the planning process, the LPC had considered landmark status for Steinway Hall's rotunda in mid-2013; such a designation would require the developers to preserve the space. JDS and PMG expressed support for the landmark status, and the LPC designated the rotunda as a landmark that September. The same month, "The Wall Street Journal" published updated renderings for the tower. The new design would stretch tall with 45 full-floor apartments, giving the tower a slenderness ratio of 1:23. JDS and Property Markets Group presented their plans to the LPC in October 2013, and the commission approved the plans, paving the way for full construction permits.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The developers broke ground on the project in early 2014. That July, the developers installed the tallest freestanding crane in New York City history, measuring , to construct the residential tower. In January 2015, the New York City Department of Buildings approved final permits for the project. The new permits called for the tower to rise 80 stories, with a roof and a crown bringing its pinnacle to . At the time, the tower was to contain 55 luxury condominiums and would be finished in 2017. Due to technicalities in New York City zoning law, the new tower was classified as an alteration of the existing Steinway Hall, which also had the address 111 West 57th Street. With the tower's construction, that building's floor area would increase 2,850 percent. The tower's proposed height was slightly increased in March 2015 to .


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: Meanwhile, construction costs had risen by over $50 million because of complications in working around Steinway Hall. The site had to be excavated manually to avoid disturbing Steinway Hall's tenants; materials had to be staged inside the building; and the crane could not operate if the wind speed was over . To cover the extra costs, the developers had issued six capital calls totaling $63.6 million. AmBase participated in only the first four calls, and each time, provided a small portion of the funding that JDS and PMG requested. AmBase's stake was subsequently reduced from 60.3 percent to 43.5 percent, and by May 2015, AmBase was looking to reduce its involvement in 111 West 57th Street. The next month, the developers received a four-year, $725 million construction loan, split between a $400 million senior loan from American International Group and a $325 million mezzanine loan from Apollo Global Management. The Qatar Investment Authority provided $161.5 million of the mezzanine loan through investment vehicles managed by Apollo.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: In March 2016, Maloney told Bloomberg News that sales at the building would not commence until the following year. This was attributed to a general slowdown in the luxury residential market. By June 2016, the project had risen above street level. The project still encountered financial difficulty and faced a lawsuit from AmBase. In January 2017, the developers had defaulted on the $325 million mezzanine loan from Apollo. However, they negotiated a forbearance agreement on $300 million of the debt and the remaining $25 million was sold to Spruce Capital Management. The developers were in the process of negotiating another $100 million mezzanine loan from Baupost Group to repay Spruce but the loan was vetoed by AmBase. Meanwhile, the landmark facade of Steinway Hall was restored in early 2017. Construction had stalled by July 2017, after the tower had been built to 20 stories. At the time, Spruce claimed that it had not received payment on the $25 million mezzanine loan and filed paperwork to begin the process of foreclosure, leading AmBase to file another lawsuit against Maloney, Stern, and Spruce. The next month, the New York Supreme Court ruled that Spruce Capital could proceed with foreclosure. This allowed the lender to transfer the development entirely to Maloney and Stern, wiping out AmBase's investment completely.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: By November 2017, the tower had reached a height of roughly , and initial glass facade installation had begun. Despite the building's monetary and legal issues, a number of apartments in the tower had already gone to contract. In March 2018, the tower's height surpassed the halfway point at over . Two months later, Madison Realty Capital provided a $90 million preferred equity investment in the tower, allowing construction to continue. The developers filed paperwork with the Attorney General of New York to raise prices at the project in August 2018. Sales at the project officially relaunched the next month with prices ranging from $18 million to over $57 million. By then, the building was more commonly known by its address than as "Steinway Tower".


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The building's concrete form topped out during April 2019, and the steel reached the top of the parapet that October. Despite an unfavorable luxury real estate market, the building's penthouse entered contract in mid-2019 for "close to" its asking price of $58 million, making it one of the most expensive New York condo sales of 2019. In August 2019, the developers hired Newmark Group to find tenants for the building's of retail space on the building's first four floors and basement. One month later, JDS asked lenders for a $1.1 billion loan to replace AIG's $725 million in construction debt.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: In 2020, Steinway Hall's landmarked rotunda was restored by John Canning Studios, which mitigated water damage, repaired the ceiling and entablatures, and cleaned the walls and metalwork. The facade and roof of the hall were also restored. That April, the first sale for a unit in Steinway Hall was finalized. However, construction slowed considerably in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. This caused the project to fall into danger of missing key construction deadlines and a corresponding decline in sales, and thus face the possibility of having to repay outstanding debt. Despite a general decrease in real estate activity due to the pandemic, there were several multi-million-dollar sales at 111 West 57th Street during mid-2020, and a penthouse went into contract for $50 million that December.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The facade of the tower was being completed by September 2020. The exterior hoist was being disassembled from the facade by March 2021, as the tower approached completion. In May 2021, Todd Morley said he would construct the world's largest non-fungible token museum at 111 West 57th Street. According to Morley, his blockchain company Overline would use the top of the building as an antenna. Corcoran Group replaced Douglas Elliman as the building's brokerage in February 2022, and the podium was being completed by that March. By the next month, workers had installed the final elements of the facade, and the first condominium sales were being finalized. By May 2022, nearly half of the condominiums had been sold.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: AmBase filed a lawsuit in April 2016, alleging that the developers neglected to account for cost overruns reaching $50 million. AmBase sought damages of $105 million in relation to the two capital calls in which they did not participate, claiming that these capital calls served mainly to dilute their stake. AmBase also claimed that Becker and Ruhan did not have their 26 percent stake diluted despite not participating in the capital calls. Since construction costs had allegedly risen by more than 10 percent, AmBase claimed their contract entitled them to full repayment of their $66 million investment along with 20 percent interest. JDS and PMG countersued in January 2017, alleging that since there had never been an officially approved budget, there was no measure by which to determine cost overruns.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: AmBase filed another lawsuit in mid-2017, claiming that Maloney and Stern were colluding with the lender to allow a foreclosure which would wipe out AmBase's $66 million equity investment while preserving Maloney and Stern's $35 million stake. The New York Supreme Court's trial division ruled in August 2017 that Maloney and Stern would receive full control of the project. AmBase lost its appeal to the Appellate Division in January 2018.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: AmBase refiled the second lawsuit in federal court in early 2018, claiming that Maloney and Stern's alleged collusion with Spruce violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and seeking a $136 million judgment. At the time, AmBase and founder Richard Bianco faced their own lawsuit from hedge fund IsZo Capital, which claimed the company had purposefully forced the 2017 foreclosure by denying the Baupost Group loan, for Bianco's own benefit. In October 2018, AmBase's federal lawsuit was dismissed after the court found no evidence of collusion between Maloney, Stern, and Spruce. After the dismissal of their three previous lawsuits, AmBase again sued Spruce Capital, Maloney, and Stern in May 2019, restating previous allegations of collusion and seeking additional damages for the developers' alleged breach of their fiduciary duties. AmBase then appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which declined the appeal in September 2019.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: In June 2018, Barbara Corcoran sued the building's developers for $30 million, claiming that her brokerage company's contract to market the building's units had been unfairly terminated. The developers claimed that the brokerage had been replaced with Douglas Elliman after failing to sell 25 percent of the building's units by the middle of 2018 as required by their contract. However, Corcoran claimed that due to the numerous lawsuits, delays, and cost overruns, the developers had halted marketing and sales for the units which made it impossible for the brokerage to reach their sales hurdles. Corcoran also sued Douglas Elliman for tortious interference, claiming the company had hired away the building's sales director in violation of her non-compete clause.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: In December 2020, JDS sued HVAC contractor Copper II and the contractor's insurer Talisman Casualty for over $11.7 million. In its lawsuit, the developers claimed that Copper II had delayed its installation of the HVAC system, leading them to warn the contractor in November 2018. JDS also claimed that, due to improper installation of the HVAC system, ten stories sustained water damage during July 2019. In August 2021, JDS sued crane contractor US Crane & Rigging and one of its subsidiaries for $50 million, claiming that the contractor's negligence had caused glass panels on the facade to break the previous October (see ).


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The developers intended for the tower to become New York City's tallest building constructed with non-union labor. Non-unionized workers could be paid at cheaper rates and did not have to be paid double overtime, hourly pension fees, and benefit fees. The decision was condemned by the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York's leader, Gary LaBarbera, who in May 2015 criticized the developers for not using union labor or giving the workers adequate safety training. The union detailed multiple incidents that had occurred at the site including "a worker falling from scaffold that lacked a railing, one worker who fell in a partial building collapse and another who had his leg crushed when a steel beam slipped." Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer sided with LaBarbera, sending Stern a letter expressing concern over the workers' safety, training, and pay. New York City Public Advocate Letitia James echoed Brewer's concerns and agreed that the usage of non-union labor could lead to increased danger for workers.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: Cyrus Vance Jr., then the New York County District Attorney, indicted subcontractor Parkside Construction in May 2018 for several financial crimes. The indictment included charges of stealing $1.7 million from 520 workers on the project by purposely shorting their hours and failing to pay them overtime, hiding nearly $42 million in wages from state insurance officials to avoid paying workers' compensation premiums, and using undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Ecuador. The company's owners, Francesco and Salvatore Pugliese, were arrested and charged with grand larceny, insurance fraud and scheme to defraud. The company's construction foreman, its payroll manager, and an outside accountant were also charged in the scheme. Parkside had previously been sued in 2015 in a class-action lawsuit by former workers on the site, who had alleged widespread wage theft. In February 2021, the Pugliese brothers pleaded guilty to insurance fraud and were forced to pay the insurance fund $1.4 million in exchange for a conditional discharge. The brothers did not receive a prison sentence, nor were they forced to give restitution to their employees.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: On January 21, 2019, a suspended scaffold attached to the building broke free from the exterior of floor 55 and showered pieces of broken glass from cracked windows over nearby sidewalks due to high winds. The New York City Buildings Department initiated a partial stop work order, and issued the site a violation for failure to safeguard construction equipment. A year later, in January 2020, a terracotta block fell from the tower, denting the roof of a passing taxi. Another high wind on October 29, 2020, knocked the tower's construction crane loose, causing debris to fall. While the crane was quickly secured and no one was injured, the surrounding neighborhood was closed off for several hours. Two weeks later, on November 15, a glass curtain wall fell 56 floors into a nearby street. On December 24, 2020, an pane of glass fell from the 58th Street side of the building, although nobody was hurt.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: In February 2022, a slab of ice was suspected to have fallen from 111 West 57th Street, damaging a car on the ground and injuring its driver. The Department of Buildings fined the building's owners after that incident.


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: Writing for "Vanity Fair", architectural critic Paul Goldberger referred to the plans for the tower as "quite possibly the most elegant" of Billionaires' Row's structures. Goldberger described it as "a subtle and graceful re-interpretation in modern form of the stepped-back, "wedding cake" towers of New York's past". C. J. Hughes of "The New York Times" said that the tower rejected "the crystalline look so popular with new developments in the neighborhood". Architectural critic Carter Horsley wrote that the tower was "a very original design by SHoP" and that it "definitely has a feminine character" with its crown resembling a tiara. Justin Davidson of "New York" magazine wrote: "No tower will be the last, biggest, or tallest for long, but this one might be the best." A writer for "The Wall Street Journal" in 2021 said of the building's slenderness ratio: "These are not the proportions of a classical column but of a coffee stirrer."


title: 111 West 57th Street

text: The construction of 111 West 57th Street also garnered some criticism. In 2015, when the tower was still in development, a neighborhood group protested the fact that the Steinway Tower and other Billionaires' Row towers would cast long shadows over Central Park. When the building was nearly complete, in 2019, a writer for "Business Insider" visited one of the condominium units, saying: "I can't say that my tour of its first condo felt too different from another Billionaires' Row apartment I've visited." Edwin Heathcote of the "Financial Times" described the new residential skyscraper as a "skinnyscraper" which was the "purest illustration of architecture as an expression of surplus capital", and lamented that its purpose, rather than being a bustling city unto itself that would unite people, which was the goal of 1920s-1930s skyscrapers, was the "exclusion of 99.99 per cent".


title: Comics

text: The history of comics has followed different paths in different cultures. Scholars have posited a pre-history as far back as the Lascaux cave paintings. By the mid-20th century, comics flourished, particularly in the United States, western Europe (especially France and Belgium), and Japan. The history of European comics is often traced to Rodolphe Töpffer's cartoon strips of the 1830s, and became popular following the success in the 1930s of strips and books such as "The Adventures of Tintin". American comics emerged as a mass medium in the early 20th century with the advent of newspaper comic strips; magazine-style comic books followed in the 1930s, in which the superhero genre became prominent after Superman appeared in 1938. Histories of Japanese comics and cartooning ("") propose origins as early as the 12th century. Modern comic strips emerged in Japan in the early 20th century, and the output of comics magazines and books rapidly expanded in the post-World War II era (1945–) with the popularity of cartoonists such as Osamu Tezuka. had a lowbrow reputation for much of its history, but towards the end of the 20th century began to find greater acceptance with the public and academics.


title: Comics

text: The English term "comics" is used as a singular noun when it refers to the medium itself (e.g. ""Comics is" a visual art form."), but becomes plural when referring to works collectively (e.g. ""Comics are" popular reading material.").


title: Comics

text: The European, American, and Japanese comics traditions have followed different paths. Europeans have seen their tradition as beginning with the Swiss Rodolphe Töpffer from as early as 1827 and Americans have seen the origin of theirs in Richard F. Outcault's 1890s newspaper strip "The Yellow Kid", though many Americans have come to recognize Töpffer's precedence. Japan has a long history of satirical cartoons and comics leading up to the World War II era. The ukiyo-e artist Hokusai popularized the Japanese term for comics and cartooning, "", in the early 19th century. In the 1930s Harry "A" Chesler started a comics studio, which eventually at its height employed 40 artists working for 50 different publishers who helped make the comics medium flourish in "the Golden Age of Comics" after World War II. In the post-war era modern Japanese comics began to flourish when Osamu Tezuka produced a prolific body of work. Towards the close of the 20th century, these three traditions converged in a trend towards book-length comics: the comic album in Europe, the in Japan, and the graphic novel in the English-speaking countries.


title: Comics

text: Outside of these genealogies, comics theorists and historians have seen precedents for comics in the Lascaux cave paintings in France (some of which appear to be chronological sequences of images), Egyptian hieroglyphs, Trajan's Column in Rome, the 11th-century Norman Bayeux Tapestry, the 1370 ' woodcut, the 15th-century ' and block books, Michelangelo's "The Last Judgment" in the Sistine Chapel, and William Hogarth's 18th-century sequential engravings, amongst others.


title: Comics

text: Illustrated humour periodicals were popular in 19th-century Britain, the earliest of which was the short-lived "The Glasgow Looking Glass" in 1825. The most popular was "Punch", which popularized the term "cartoon" for its humorous caricatures. On occasion the cartoons in these magazines appeared in sequences; the character Ally Sloper featured in the earliest serialized comic strip when the character began to feature in its own weekly magazine in 1884.


title: Comics

text: American comics developed out of such magazines as "Puck", "Judge", and "Life". The success of illustrated humour supplements in the "New York World" and later the "New York American", particularly Outcault's "The Yellow Kid", led to the development of newspaper comic strips. Early Sunday strips were full-page and often in colour. Between 1896 and 1901 cartoonists experimented with sequentiality, movement, and speech balloons. An example is Gustave Verbeek, who wrote his comic series "The UpsideDowns of Old Man Muffaroo and Little Lady Lovekins" between 1903 and 1905. These comics were made in such a way that one could read the 6-panel comic, flip the book and keep reading. He made 64 such comics in total. In 2012 a remake of a selection of the comics was made by Marcus Ivarsson in the book 'In Uppåner med Lilla Lisen & Gamle Muppen'. ()


title: Comics

text: Shorter, black-and-white daily strips began to appear early in the 20th century, and became established in newspapers after the success in 1907 of Bud Fisher's "Mutt and Jeff". In Britain, the Amalgamated Press established a popular style of a sequence of images with text beneath them, including "Illustrated Chips" and "Comic Cuts". Humour strips predominated at first, and in the 1920s and 1930s strips with continuing stories in genres such as adventure and drama also became popular.


title: Comics

text: Thin periodicals called comic books appeared in the 1930s, at first reprinting newspaper comic strips; by the end of the decade, original content began to dominate. The success in 1938 of "Action Comics" and its lead hero Superman marked the beginning of the Golden Age of Comic Books, in which the superhero genre was prominent. In the UK and the Commonwealth, the DC Thomson-created "Dandy" (1937) and "Beano" (1938) became successful humor-based titles, with a combined circulation of over 2 million copies by the 1950s. Their characters, including "Dennis the Menace", "Desperate Dan" and "The Bash Street Kids" have been read by generations of British children. The comics originally experimented with superheroes and action stories before settling on humorous strips featuring a mix of the Amalgamated Press and US comic book styles.


title: Comics

text: The popularity of superhero comic books declined following World War II, while comic book sales continued to increase as other genres proliferated, such as romance, westerns, crime, horror, and humour. Following a sales peak in the early 1950s, the content of comic books (particularly crime and horror) was subjected to scrutiny from parent groups and government agencies, which culminated in Senate hearings that led to the establishment of the Comics Code Authority self-censoring body. The Code has been blamed for stunting the growth of American comics and maintaining its low status in American society for much of the remainder of the century. Superheroes re-established themselves as the most prominent comic book genre by the early 1960s. Underground comix challenged the Code and readers with adult, countercultural content in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The underground gave birth to the alternative comics movement in the 1980s and its mature, often experimental content in non-superhero genres.


title: Comics

text: Comics in the US has had a lowbrow reputation stemming from its roots in mass culture; cultural elites sometimes saw popular culture as threatening culture and society. In the latter half of the 20th century, popular culture won greater acceptance, and the lines between high and low culture began to blur. Comics nevertheless continued to be stigmatized, as the medium was seen as entertainment for children and illiterates.


title: Comics

text: The graphic novel—book-length comics—began to gain attention after Will Eisner popularized the term with his book "A Contract with God" (1978). The term became widely known with the public after the commercial success of "Maus", "Watchmen", and "The Dark Knight Returns" in the mid-1980s. In the 21st century graphic novels became established in mainstream bookstores and libraries and webcomics became common.


title: Comics

text: The francophone Swiss Rodolphe Töpffer produced comic strips beginning in 1827, and published theories behind the form. Cartoons appeared widely in newspapers and magazines from the 19th century. The success of "Zig et Puce" in 1925 popularized the use of speech balloons in European comics, after which Franco-Belgian comics began to dominate. "The Adventures of Tintin", with its signature clear line style, was first serialized in newspaper comics supplements beginning in 1929, and became an icon of Franco-Belgian comics.


title: Comics

text: Following the success of (est. 1934), dedicated comics magazines like "Spirou" (est. 1938) and "Tintin" (1946-1993), and full-colour comic albums became the primary outlet for comics in the mid-20th century. As in the US, at the time comics were seen as infantile and a threat to culture and literacy; commentators stated that "none bear up to the slightest serious analysis", and that comics were "the sabotage of all art and all literature".


title: Comics

text: In the 1960s, the term "" ("drawn strips") came into wide use in French to denote the medium. Cartoonists began creating comics for mature audiences, and the term "Ninth Art" was coined, as comics began to attract public and academic attention as an artform. A group including René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo founded the magazine "Pilote" in 1959 to give artists greater freedom over their work. Goscinny and Uderzo's "The Adventures of Asterix" appeared in it and went on to become the best-selling French-language comics series. From 1960, the satirical and taboo-breaking "Hara-Kiri" defied censorship laws in the countercultural spirit that led to the May 1968 events.


title: Comics

text: Frustration with censorship and editorial interference led to a group of "Pilote" cartoonists to found the adults-only "L'Écho des savanes" in 1972. Adult-oriented and experimental comics flourished in the 1970s, such as in the experimental science fiction of Mœbius and others in "Métal hurlant", even mainstream publishers took to publishing prestige-format adult comics.


title: Comics

text: From the 1980s, mainstream sensibilities were reasserted and serialization became less common as the number of comics magazines decreased and many comics began to be published directly as albums. Smaller publishers such as L'Association that published longer works in non-traditional formats by "auteur"-istic creators also became common. Since the 1990s, mergers resulted in fewer large publishers, while smaller publishers proliferated. Sales overall continued to grow despite the trend towards a shrinking print market.


title: Comics

text: Japanese comics and cartooning ('), have a history that has been seen as far back as the anthropomorphic characters in the 12th-to-13th-century ', 17th-century ' and ' picture books, and woodblock prints such as ukiyo-e which were popular between the 17th and 20th centuries. The "" contained examples of sequential images, movement lines, and sound effects.


title: Comics

text: Illustrated magazines for Western expatriates introduced Western-style satirical cartoons to Japan in the late 19th century. New publications in both the Western and Japanese styles became popular, and at the end of the 1890s, American-style newspaper comics supplements began to appear in Japan, as well as some American comic strips. 1900 saw the debut of the "Jiji Manga" in the "Jiji Shinpō" newspaper—the first use of the word "manga" in its modern sense, and where, in 1902, Rakuten Kitazawa began the first modern Japanese comic strip. By the 1930s, comic strips were serialized in large-circulation monthly girls' and boys' magazine and collected into hardback volumes.


title: Comics

text: The modern era of comics in Japan began after World War II, propelled by the success of the serialized comics of the prolific Osamu Tezuka and the comic strip "Sazae-san". Genres and audiences diversified over the following decades. Stories are usually first serialized in magazines which are often hundreds of pages thick and may contain over a dozen stories; they are later compiled in ""-format books. At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, nearly a quarter of all printed material in Japan was comics. Translations became extremely popular in foreign markets—in some cases equaling or surpassing the sales of domestic comics.


title: Comics

text: Comic strips are generally short, multipanel comics that traditionally most commonly appeared in newspapers. In the US, daily strips have normally occupied a single tier, while Sunday strips have been given multiple tiers. In the early 20th century, daily strips were typically in black-and-white and Sundays were usually in colour and often occupied a full page.


title: Comics

text: Specialized comics periodicals formats vary greatly in different cultures. Comic books, primarily an American format, are thin periodicals usually published in colour. European and Japanese comics are frequently serialized in magazines—monthly or weekly in Europe, and usually black-and-white and weekly in Japan. Japanese comics magazine typically run to hundreds of pages.


title: Comics

text: Book-length comics take different forms in different cultures. European comic albums are most commonly printed in A4-size colour volumes. In English-speaking countries, the trade paperback format originating from collected comic books have also been chosen for original material. Otherwise, bound volumes of comics are called graphic novels and are available in various formats. Despite incorporating the term "novel"—a term normally associated with fiction—"graphic novel" also refers to non-fiction and collections of short works. Japanese comics are collected in volumes called "tankōbon" following magazine serialization.


title: Comics

text: Gag and editorial cartoons usually consist of a single panel, often incorporating a caption or speech balloon. Definitions of comics which emphasize sequence usually exclude gag, editorial, and other single-panel cartoons; they can be included in definitions that emphasize the combination of word and image. Gag cartoons first began to proliferate in broadsheets published in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the term "cartoon" was first used to describe them in 1843 in the British humour magazine "Punch".


title: Comics

text: Webcomics are comics that are available on the internet. They are able to reach large audiences, and new readers usually can access archived installments. Webcomics can make use of an infinite canvas—meaning they are not constrained by size or dimensions of a page.


title: Comics

text: Some consider storyboards and wordless novels to be comics. Film studios, especially in animation, often use sequences of images as guides for film sequences. These storyboards are not intended as an end product and are rarely seen by the public. Wordless novels are books which use sequences of captionless images to deliver a narrative.


title: Comics

text: Similar to the problems of defining literature and film, no consensus has been reached on a definition of the comics medium, and attempted definitions and descriptions have fallen prey to numerous exceptions. Theorists such as Töpffer, R.C. Harvey, Will Eisner, David Carrier, Alain Rey, and Lawrence Grove emphasize the combination of text and images, though there are prominent examples of pantomime comics throughout its history. Other critics, such as Thierry Groensteen and Scott McCloud, have emphasized the primacy of sequences of images. Towards the close of the 20th century, different cultures' discoveries of each other's comics traditions, the rediscovery of forgotten early comics forms, and the rise of new forms made defining comics a more complicated task.


title: Comics

text: European comics studies began with Töpffer's theories of his own work in the 1840s, which emphasized panel transitions and the visual–verbal combination. No further progress was made until the 1970s. Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle then took a semiotics approach to the study of comics, analyzing text–image relations, page-level image relations, and image discontinuities, or what Scott McCloud later dubbed "closure". In 1987, Henri Vanlier introduced the term ', or "multiframe", to refer to the comics page as a semantic unit. By the 1990s, theorists such as Benoît Peeters and Thierry Groensteen turned attention to artists' poïetic creative choices. Thierry Smolderen and Harry Morgan have held relativistic views of the definition of comics, a medium that has taken various, equally valid forms over its history. Morgan sees comics as a subset of "'" (or "drawn literatures"). French theory has come to give special attention to the page, in distinction from American theories such as McCloud's which focus on panel-to-panel transitions. In the mid-2000s, Neil Cohn began analyzing how comics are understood using tools from cognitive science, extending beyond theory by using actual psychological and neuroscience experiments. This work has argued that sequential images and page layouts both use separate rule-bound "grammars" to be understood that extend beyond panel-to-panel transitions and categorical distinctions of types of layouts, and that the brain's comprehension of comics is similar to comprehending other domains, such as language and music.


title: Comics

text: Historical narratives of "manga" tend to focus either on its recent, post-WWII history, or on attempts to demonstrate deep roots in the past, such as to the ' picture scroll of the 12th and 13th centuries, or the early 19th-century "Hokusai Manga". The first historical overview of Japanese comics was Seiki Hosokibara's in 1924. Early post-war Japanese criticism was mostly of a left-wing political nature until the 1986 publication of Tomofusa Kure's "Modern Manga: The Complete Picture", which de-emphasized politics in favour of formal aspects, such as structure and a "grammar" of comics. The field of studies increased rapidly, with numerous books on the subject appearing in the 1990s. Formal theories of ' have focused on developing a "manga expression theory", with emphasis on spatial relationships in the structure of images on the page, distinguishing the medium from film or literature, in which the flow of time is the basic organizing element. Comics studies courses have proliferated at Japanese universities, and Japan Society for Studies in Cartoon and Comics was established in 2001 to promote comics scholarship. The publication of Frederik L. Schodt's "Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics" in 1983 led to the spread of use of the word "manga" outside Japan to mean "Japanese comics" or "Japanese-style comics".


title: Comics

text: Coulton Waugh attempted the first comprehensive history of American comics with "The Comics" (1947). Will Eisner's "Comics and Sequential Art" (1985) and Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" (1993) were early attempts in English to formalize the study of comics. David Carrier's "The Aesthetics of Comics" (2000) was the first full-length treatment of comics from a philosophical perspective. Prominent American attempts at definitions of comics include Eisner's, McCloud's, and Harvey's. Eisner described what he called "sequential art" as "the arrangement of pictures or images and words to narrate a story or dramatize an idea"; Scott McCloud defined comics as "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer", a strictly formal definition which detached comics from its historical and cultural trappings. R.C. Harvey defined comics as "pictorial narratives or expositions in which words (often lettered into the picture area within speech balloons) usually contribute to the meaning of the pictures and vice versa". Each definition has had its detractors. Harvey saw McCloud's definition as excluding single-panel cartoons, and objected to McCloud's de-emphasizing verbal elements, insisting "the essential characteristic of comics is the incorporation of verbal content". Aaron Meskin saw McCloud's theories as an artificial attempt to legitimize the place of comics in art history.


title: Comics

text: Cross-cultural study of comics is complicated by the great difference in meaning and scope of the words for "comics" in different languages. The French term for comics, ' ("drawn strip") emphasizes the juxtaposition of drawn images as a defining factor, which can imply the exclusion of even photographic comics. The term ' is used in Japanese to indicate all forms of comics, cartooning, and caricature.


title: Comics

text: The term "comics" refers to the comics medium when used as an uncountable noun and thus takes the singular: "comics "is" a medium" rather than "comics "are" a medium". When "comic" appears as a countable noun it refers to instances of the medium, such as individual comic strips or comic books: "Tom's comics "are" in the basement."


title: Comics

text: Panels are individual images containing a segment of action, often surrounded by a border. Prime moments in a narrative are broken down into panels via a process called encapsulation. The reader puts the pieces together via the process of closure by using background knowledge and an understanding of panel relations to combine panels mentally into events. The size, shape, and arrangement of panels each affect the timing and pacing of the narrative. The contents of a panel may be asynchronous, with events depicted in the same image not necessarily occurring at the same time.


title: Comics

text: Text is frequently incorporated into comics via speech balloons, captions, and sound effects. Speech balloons indicate dialogue (or thought, in the case of thought balloons), with tails pointing at their respective speakers. Captions can give voice to a narrator, convey characters' dialogue or thoughts, or indicate place or time. Speech balloons themselves are strongly associated with comics, such that the addition of one to an image is sufficient to turn the image into comics. Sound effects mimic non-vocal sounds textually using onomatopoeia sound-words.


title: Comics

text: Cartooning is most frequently used in making comics, traditionally using ink (especially India ink) with dip pens or ink brushes; mixed media and digital technology have become common. Cartooning techniques such as motion lines and abstract symbols are often employed.


title: Comics

text: While comics are often the work of a single creator, the labour of making them is frequently divided between a number of specialists. There may be separate writers and artists, and artists may specialize in parts of the artwork such as characters or backgrounds, as is common in Japan. Particularly in American superhero comic books, the art may be divided between a penciller, who lays out the artwork in pencil; an inker, who finishes the artwork in ink; a colourist; and a letterer, who adds the captions and speech balloons.


title: Comics

text: The English-language term "comics" derives from the humorous (or "comic") work which predominated in early American newspaper comic strips, but usage of the term has become standard for non-humorous works as well. The alternate spelling "comix" – coined by the underground comix movement – is sometimes used to address this ambiguities. The term "comic book" has a similarly confusing history since they are most often not humorous and are periodicals, not regular books. It is common in English to refer to the comics of different cultures by the terms used in their languages, such as ' for Japanese comics, or ' for French-language Franco-Belgian comics.


title: Comics

text: Many cultures have taken their word for comics from English, including Russian (, ') and German ('). Similarly, the Chinese term ' and the Korean ' derive from the Chinese characters with which the Japanese term "" is written.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: Alice Cooper (also known as the Alice Cooper Group or the Alice Cooper Band) was an American rock band formed in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1964. The band consisted of lead singer Vince Furnier (stage name Alice Cooper), Glen Buxton (lead guitar), Michael Bruce (rhythm guitar, keyboards), Dennis Dunaway (bass guitar), and Neal Smith (drums). Furnier legally changed his name to Alice Cooper and has had a solo career under that name since the band became inactive in 1975. The band was notorious for their elaborate, theatrical shock rock stage shows. In 2011, the original Alice Cooper band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: After years of obscurity, the Alice Cooper band rose to fame in 1971 with the hit single "I'm Eighteen" and the album "Love It to Death". Success continued with the popular single "School's Out" and the album of the same name in 1972. The band peaked in popularity in 1973 with their next album "Billion Dollar Babies" and its tour, which broke box-office records previously held by the Rolling Stones.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: In 1964, 16-year-old Furnier, then a student at Cortez High School, was eager to participate in the local annual Letterman's talent show, so he gathered four teammates from his high school's cross-country team to form a group for the show: Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway, John Tatum and John Speer. They named themselves the Earwigs. They dressed up in costumes and wigs to resemble the Beatles, and performed several parodies of Beatles songs, with the lyrics modified to refer to the track team: in their rendition of "Please Please Me", for example, the line "Last night I said these words to my girl" was replaced with "Last night I ran four laps for my coach". Of the group, only Buxton and Tatum knew how to play an instrument—the guitar—so Buxton and Tatum played guitars while the rest mimed on their instruments. The group got an overwhelming response from the audience and won the talent show. As a result of their positive experience, the group decided to try to turn into a real band. They acquired musical instruments from a local pawn shop, and proceeded to learn how to play them, with Buxton doing most of the teaching, as well as much of the early songwriting. They soon renamed themselves the Spiders, featuring Furnier on vocals, Buxton on lead guitar, Tatum on rhythm guitar, Dunaway on bass guitar, and Speer on drums. Musically, the group was inspired by artists such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks, the Doors, and the Yardbirds. For the next year the band performed regularly around the Phoenix area with a huge black spider's web as their backdrop, the group's first stage prop.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: In 1965, the Spiders recorded their first single, "Why Don't You Love Me". The single's B-side track was the Marvin Gaye Tamla Records hit, "Hitch Hike". The single was released by local record label, Mascot Records, owned by Jack Curtis, a concert promoter who also owned the Stage 7 teen club which later became the VIP Club where the Spiders were the house band. At the VIP Club the band supported other bands including – the Lovin' Spoonful, the Yardbirds, Them, the Animals, the Kinks and the Byrds.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: In 1966, the Spiders graduated from high school and after North High School footballer Michael Bruce replaced John Tatum on rhythm guitar, the band released their second single, "Don't Blow Your Mind", an original composition which became a local #1 hit, backed by "No Price Tag". The single was recorded at Copper State Recording Studio and issued by local micro-imprint, Santa Cruz Records.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: By 1967, the band had begun to make regular road trips to Los Angeles to play shows. They soon renamed themselves Nazz and released the single "Wonder Who's Lovin' Her Now", backed with future Alice Cooper track "Lay Down and Die, Goodbye". Around this time, drummer John Speer was replaced by Neal Smith. By the end of the year, the band had relocated to Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, the band's lifestyle involved regular car trips into the desert. Activities included shooting rabbits with a 0.22 rifle. In 1967, Neal Smith moved into the range of Furnier's rifle as the latter was about to fire. Smith was hit in the ankle. He has the fragment in his ankle to this day. Around this time, the band and three others were driving in Los Angeles in a van. An incident on the road caused the driver to lose control of the van and it went off the road rolling over four times. The van was destroyed, but all band members and the three other passengers survived without serious injury.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: In 1968, the band learned that Todd Rundgren also had a band called Nazz, and found themselves in need of another stage name. Furnier also believed that the group needed a gimmick to succeed, and that other bands were not exploiting the showmanship potential of the stage. The legend is that the name "Alice Cooper" came from a session with a Ouija board, largely chosen because it sounded innocuous and wholesome, in humorous contrast to the band's image and music. However, in an interview with Mark Radcliffe on the Radcliffe and Maconie show on BBC Radio 2 on November 30, 2009, Vince Furnier described the incident with the ouija board as an urban legend. He said "We literally got that whole story about the witch thing the way you guys got it. It was like just pure urban legend. I heard about the witch thing probably the same day you did, but it was a great story." Eventually Furnier adopted this stage name as his own, being referred to as Alice Cooper on the cover of the band's debut album from 1969 already. He recalled:


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: The classic Alice Cooper group line-up consisted of Furnier, lead guitarist Glen Buxton, rhythm guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neal Smith – all former members of the Spiders. This lineup stayed intact through 1974.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: The band's first gig that used the name Alice Cooper was on March 16, 1968, at Earl Warren Fairgrounds in Santa Barbara. The posters still showed the band as the Nazz. After a 1968 gig at the Cheetah club in Venice, California, where most of the club's patrons left after hearing the band play just ten minutes, they were approached by music manager Shep Gordon, who saw the band's negative impact that night as a force that could be turned in a more productive direction. Shep arranged an audition for the band with renowned musical artist and record producer Frank Zappa, who was looking to sign bizarre music acts to his new record label, Straight Records. Zappa told them to come to his house "at 7 o'clock" for an audition. The band mistakenly assumed he meant 7 o'clock in the morning. Being woken up by a band willing to play that particular brand of music at seven in the morning impressed Zappa enough for him to sign them to a three-album deal. "Frank was the only one who stuck out his neck for us, for me," recalled Furnier himself. "He was the one who said, 'Here's a band that everybody in the business is laughing at – I like 'em.' … He was the outcast in L.A. and so were we." The first three Alice Cooper albums were released on Zappa's Straight label.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: Another Zappa-signed act, the all-female GTOs, were encouraged to dress up the Alice Cooper band members in women's clothing and heavy makeup, and played a major role in developing the band's early onstage look.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: In June 1969, Alice Cooper released its first album, "Pretties for You", which barely cracked the "Billboard" Top 200 albums chart at No. 193. The band was the subject of media criticism after Furnier threw a live chicken into the audience during the 1969 Toronto Rock 'n' Roll Revival Festival. The audience ripped the chicken, whose name was Dutchess, to shreds.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: In March 1970, the band released the album "Easy Action", which did not chart. Also in 1970, the band had two songs ("Titanic Overture" and "Refrigerator Heaven") that appeared on a Warner Bros sampler album, "Zapped", featuring acts produced by Zappa.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: Slow sales of the band's first two albums, as well as Californians' indifference to their act, led the band to relocate again in 1970, this time to Pontiac, Michigan near Furnier's original home town of Detroit. Here, their bizarre stage act was much better received by Midwestern crowds accustomed to the proto punk styles of local bands such as the Stooges and the MC5. "L.A. just didn't get it," Furnier stated. "They were all on the wrong drug for us. They were on acid and we were basically drinking beer. We fit much more in Detroit than we did anywhere else."


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: Hooking up with young producer Bob Ezrin, Alice Cooper released the single "I'm Eighteen" in November 1970, and it became a surprise Top 40 hit by early 1971. The single's success convinced Warner Bros that the band could be a viable commercial act, leading to much stronger investment in the third Alice Cooper album, "Love It to Death". The album was initially released on Straight Records, but was reissued on the Warner label following its buyout of the imprint from Zappa, giving Alice Cooper even greater exposure. Under Ezrin's direction, the band's sound moved from psychedelic rock to a tighter, guitar-driven hard rock sound, even as much of the lyrical content continued to explore "decadence, perversion and psychosis."


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: In 1971 the band was doing its first headliner tour. Backstage at a gig in Florida, a young woman came in with a Boa Constrictor coiled around her arm. This gave Furnier a fright, and after experiencing this kind of reaction, the idea of using a snake in the stage performance began. With "Love It to Death" and its follow-up album "Killer" both charting well, the band was able to afford a more elaborate stage show, including sophisticated props and elements of gothic horror, and they became a highly popular concert attraction in the US and UK over the next few years. Calls by members of British Parliament in 1972 to have the group banned from performing in the UK only solidified the band's legend, and the next year's "Billion Dollar Babies" tour broke box office records. Cindy Dunaway (Neal Smith's sister who married Dennis Dunaway) designed the band's costumes and occasionally performed in the stage show (she was the "dancing tooth" on the "Billion Dollar Babies" tour). A 1973 gig in São Paulo, Brazil, was performed in front of 158,000 people. The Guinness Book of World Records gave the band the world record for playing in front of the biggest indoor audience ever.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: Following "Killer", Alice Cooper released three more top ten albums, the pinnacle being 1973's "Billion Dollar Babies" which rose all the way to No. 1 on the US and UK album charts. The band headlined highly successful tours from 1972 to 1974, before breaking up. The band made so much money in 1973 and 1974 that Furnier appeared on the cover of "Forbes" Magazine in 1973. The article listed him among the highest-earning American "music superstars": "Lounging in a $160-a-day Beverly Hills Hotel suite, Alice Cooper, who's a he, ..."


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: The original Alice Cooper band played their final show on April 8, 1974, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There are varying reasons former band members have given for the breakup. Smith said the members wanted to take a year off to slow down and possibly do solo projects, and just never reunited. Cooper said there was disagreement over how much money to sink back into stage shows, which had become costly. Bruce contends that Buxton's issues with substance abuse, which at one time led him to pull a switchblade on the band's tour manager, likely hastened the breakup.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: The breakup was made public in 1975. Vincent Furnier continued using his stage name "Alice Cooper", carrying on with a new group of musicians. He also adopted the name legally.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: Bruce, Dunaway and Smith would go on to form the short-lived band Billion Dollar Babies, producing one album – "Battle Axe" – in 1977. While occasionally performing with one another and Glen Buxton, they would not reunite with Alice until October 23, 1999, at the second Glen Buxton Memorial Weekend for a show at CoopersTown in Phoenix (Buxton having died in 1997). They reunited for another show, with Steve Hunter on guitar, on December 16, 2010, at the Dodge Theatre in Phoenix. This lineup would perform together again (televised) on March 14, 2011, at the induction of the original Alice Cooper group into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as well as on May 11, 2011, at London's Battersea Power Station at the Jägermeister Ice Cold 4D event (webcast). Bruce, Dunaway and Smith appeared on three tracks they co-wrote on Alice's 2011 album "Welcome 2 My Nightmare".


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: A documentary about the band entitled "Super Duper Alice Cooper" premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 17, 2014, and was scheduled to be screened at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival a week later.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: On October 6, 2015, a surprise reunion show took place in Dallas at Dunaway's book signing session. He was joined by Bruce, Smith, Cooper and Ryan Roxie, who replaced the late Glen Buxton. The surviving members of the band were set to record and release an album. However, the only material to surface was two bonus tracks on Cooper's 27th studio album Paranormal.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: The four surviving original members reunited again for a five-song set on May 14, 2017, at a show in Nashville, Tennessee. The four reunited yet again later that same year for a UK tour.


title: Alice Cooper (band)

text: In 2021, the surviving members of the band reunited for Cooper's "Detroit Stories" album. Producer Bob Ezrin as well as Cooper himself have hinted that a new album with the surviving members may be possible.


title: Buford Pusser

text: Buford Hayse Pusser (December 12, 1937 – August 21, 1974) was the sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, from 1964 to 1970, and constable of Adamsville from 1970 to 1972. Pusser is known for his virtual one-man war on moonshining, prostitution, gambling, and other vices along the Mississippi–Tennessee state line. His efforts have inspired several books, songs, and movies, and a TV series. He was also a wrestler known as "Buford the Bull" in the Mid-South.


title: Buford Pusser

text: The Buford Pusser Museum was established at the home he lived in at the time of his death in 1974. A Buford Pusser Festival is held each May in his hometown of Adamsville, Tennessee.


title: Buford Pusser

text: Buford Pusser was born in Finger, McNairy County, Tennessee, on December 12, 1937, the son of Helen (née Harris) and Carl Pusser. His father was the police chief of Adamsville, Tennessee. Buford Pusser was a high-school football and basketball player and was tall. He joined the United States Marine Corps when he graduated from high school. His service ended during his United States Marine Corps Recruit Training, when he was given a medical discharge for asthma.


title: Buford Pusser

text: In 1957, he moved to Chicago, where he was a local wrestler known as "Buford The Bull". He married Pauline Mullins on December 5, 1959. Pusser returned home in 1962. He was Adamsville's police chief and constable from 1962 to 1964. After incumbent sheriff James Dickey was killed in an auto accident, Pusser was then elected sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, becoming the youngest sheriff in Tennessee's history. Pusser promptly began trying to eliminate the Dixie Mafia and the State Line Mob.


title: Buford Pusser

text: Pusser survived several assassination attempts. On February 1, 1966, Louise Hathcock attempted to kill Pusser during an on-site investigation of a robbery complaint at The Shamrock. Hathcock fired on Pusser with a concealed .38 pistol. Pusser returned fire and killed Hathcock. On January 2, 1967, Pusser was shot three times by an unidentified gunman.


title: Buford Pusser

text: Already a local hero, Pusser's "war" on the State Line Mob was brought to national prominence when his wife, Pauline, was killed on August 12, 1967, during an assassination ambush intended for Pusser and instigated by Hathcock's common-law husband. Pusser named Kirksey Nix as the contractor of his wife's killers, although neither Nix nor anyone else was ever charged with the crime. Pusser shot and killed an intoxicated Charles Russell Hamilton on December 25, 1968, after responding to a complaint that Hamilton had threatened his landlord with a gun.


title: Buford Pusser

text: Pusser was ineligible for re-election in 1970 due to the term limit then in effect. He was defeated in his bid for sheriff in 1972. Pusser blamed the loss to incumbent Sheriff Clifford Coleman in part on the controversy surrounding the making of the semibiographical movie, "Walking Tall." He was re-elected as constable of Adamsville by a majority of voters, who wrote in his name on their ballots. He served as constable for two more years (1970–1972).


title: Buford Pusser

text: According to Pusser, his phone rang before dawn on the morning of August 12, 1967, informing him of a disturbance on New Hope Road in McNairy County; Pusser responded and his wife Pauline rode along. Shortly after they passed the New Hope Methodist Church, a fast-moving car came alongside theirs and the occupants opened fire, killing Pauline and leaving Pusser for dead. Doctors said he was struck on the left side of his jaw by at least two, or possibly three, rounds from a .30-caliber carbine. He spent 18 days in the hospital before returning home, and needed several more surgeries to restore his appearance.


title: Buford Pusser

text: Despite vowing to bring his wife's murderers to justice, Pusser was unable to bring Kirksey Nix or any of the accused to trial. Nix was sentenced to the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola for the 1971 Easter Saturday murder of New Orleans grocer Frank J. Corso. While imprisoned, Nix ordered the 1987 murder-for-hire of Judge Vincent Sherry and his wife Margaret, in Biloxi, Mississippi. His co-conspirator, Biloxi Mayor Pete Halat, had, in his capacity as Nix's attorney, stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars that Nix had amassed in a massive lonely hearts scam, blaming it on his law partner, Judge Sherry. Nix was later sentenced to isolation for the rest of his life. According to a 1990 AP story in "The Town Talk", a newspaper in Alexandria, Louisiana, Nix denied being involved in the drive-by ambush on the Pussers.


title: Buford Pusser

text: Pusser died on August 21, 1974, of injuries sustained in a one-car automobile accident at . Earlier that day, he contracted with Bing Crosby Productions in Memphis to portray himself in the sequel to "Walking Tall". That evening, returning home alone from the McNairy County Fair in his specially modified Corvette, Pusser struck an embankment at high speed that ejected him from the vehicle. The car caught fire and burned.


title: Buford Pusser

text: Local speculation as to the cause included rumors of sabotage to the steering mechanism and the tie rods. The state trooper who worked the accident, Paul Ervin, later became McNairy County sheriff. Ervin claimed that Pusser's death was caused by drunk driving without a seat belt. Buford’s daughter, Dwana Pusser, a passenger in another car, came upon the scene of the accident minutes later. No autopsy of Pusser's body was performed. As sheriff, Pusser was credited with surviving seven stabbings and eight shootings. Pusser's memorial service was held at the Adamsville Church of Christ.


title: Buford Pusser

text: Singer Eddie Bond wrote and recorded several songs honoring Pusser, beginning with "Buford Pusser" in 1968. Many of them were collected on a 1973 LP album, "Eddie Bond Sings The Legend Of Buford Pusser". Pusser himself was also a recording artist, with "It Happened In Tennessee", released in October 1973 on Stax Records subsidiary Respect. Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers told the story of Pusser's battle with organized crime in the songs "The Boys from Alabama", "Cottonseed", and "The Buford Stick" from their 2004 album "The Dirty South". In the songs "The Buford Stick" and "The Boys From Alabama", they speculated on how criminals might have viewed Pusser.


title: Buford Pusser

text: His name is mentioned in the song "First Blood" on the 2022 album "Bleed Out" by the American folk-indie band The Mountain Goats.


title: Buford Pusser

text: Pusser was the subject of three biographical books written by W.R. Morris: "The Twelfth of August: The Story of Buford Pusser" (1971), "Buford: True Story of "Walking Tall" Sheriff Buford Pusser" (1984), and "The State Line Mob: A True Story of Murder and Intrigue" (1990). In addition, Morris also created a pictorial history book of Buford called "The Legacy of Buford Pusser: A Pictorial History of the "Walking Tall" Sheriff" (1997). Pusser's daughter Dwana released a book in 2009 entitled "Walking On", which is also an account of his life.


title: Buford Pusser

text: The 1973 movie "Walking Tall" was based on Pusser's story. It was followed by two sequels in 1975 and , a TV movie in 1978, and a brief TV series in 1981.


title: Buford Pusser

text: A remake by the same title was released in 2004 starring Dwayne Johnson as the main character, renamed Chris Vaughn.


title: Buford Pusser

text: After the success of the 2004 film, "" was released in 2007 direct-to-video. The name of the main character, who was portrayed by Kevin Sorbo, was changed to Nick Prescott, and the movie was set in the Dallas area. Later that year, on September 25, 2007, Sorbo returned in "".


title: Buford Pusser

text: Jimmy Buffett refers to an altercation between Pusser and himself in the songs "Presents To Send You" and "Semi-True Stories" (from the albums "A1A" and "Beach House on the Moon", respectively). According to Buffet, Pusser and he were staying in the same Nashville motel when Buffet decided to go out for some food and bring it back to the motel. Buffet, who had been drinking, could not find his rental car and decided to climb up on a Cadillac for a better view. That Cadillac turned out to belong to Pusser, who was not at all pleased to find this stranger atop his car.


title: Buford Pusser

text: Pusser is mentioned in season three, episode eight of "The Wire" by Officer Jimmy McNulty in reference to a sheriff to whom he plans to speak.


title: Buford Pusser

text: Comedian Jeff Foxworthy, in his 1993 studio album, "You Might Be a Redneck if...", refers to Buford Pusser in a joke about his wife's childbirth retellings, remarking, "You didn't have more stitches than Buford Pusser".


title: Ericsson

text: Ericsson has been a major contributor to the development of the telecommunications industry and is one of the leaders in 5G.


title: Ericsson

text: The company was founded in 1876 by Lars Magnus Ericsson and is jointly controlled by the Wallenberg family through its holding company Investor AB, and the universal bank Handelsbanken through its investment company Industrivärden. The Wallenbergs and the Handelsbanken sphere acquired their voting-strong A-shares, and thus the control of Ericsson, after the fall of the Kreuger empire in the early 1930s.


title: Ericsson

text: Lars Magnus Ericsson began his association with telephones in his youth as an instrument maker. He worked for a firm that made telegraph equipment for the Swedish government agency Telegrafverket. In 1876, at the age of 30, he started a telegraph repair shop with help from his friend Carl Johan Andersson in central Stockholm and repaired foreign-made telephones. In 1878 Ericsson began making and selling his telephone equipment. His telephones were not technically innovative. In 1878 he agreed to supply telephones and switchboards to Sweden's first telecommunications operating company, Stockholms Allmänna Telefonaktiebolag.


title: Ericsson

text: As production grew in the late 1890s, and the Swedish market seemed to be reaching saturation, Ericsson expanded into foreign markets through a number of agents. The UK (Ericsson Telephones Ltd.) and Russia were early markets, where factories were later established to improve the chances of gaining local contracts and augment the output of the Swedish factory. In the UK, the National Telephone Company was a major customer; by 1897 sold 28% of its output in the UK. The Nordic countries were also Ericsson customers; they were encouraged by the growth of telephone services in Sweden.