Jeff McCoy stands in front of the T.G. Wilkinson House, which he bought last year and is in the process of restoring. The Art Moderne-style home is constructed of steel-reinforced concrete faced with brick veneer that has been painted white, an element of the original design. Photo Courtesy Indiana Landmarks.Jeff McCoy stands in front of the T.G. Wilkinson House, which he bought last year and is in the process of restoring. The Art Modern-style home is constructed of steel-reinforced concrete faced with brick veneer that has been painted white, an element of the original design. Photo Courtesy Indiana Landmarks. MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) – A Muncie man who once admired a 1930s-era house that is a rare example of Art Moderne-style architecture is now working to preserve the dwelling as its owner.
Jeff McCoy bought the T.G. Wilkinson House in May 2012 at a sheriff’s sale after the property was placed on Indiana Landmarks’ list of the 10 Most Endangered Historic Places.
McCoy tells The Star Press he has always been attracted to older, unique homes. The Wilkinson house is often compared to a movie star’s home.
The house was designed by Indianapolis architect Leslie Ayres in 1933.
McCoy, who is director of testing at nearby Ball State University, says Art Moderne-style homes were often chic homes of wealthy residents who liked to entertain.
McCoy says he doesn’t have time to entertain because fixing up the house is a huge undertaking.
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Jeff McCoy stands in front of the T.G. Wilkinson House, which he bought last year and is in the process of restoring. The Art Moderne-style home is constructed of steel-reinforced concrete faced with brick veneer that has been painted white, an element of the original design. Photo Courtesy Indiana Landmarks.Jeff McCoy stands in front of the T.G. Wilkinson House, which he bought last year and is in the process of restoring. The Art Modern-style home is constructed of steel-reinforced concrete faced with brick veneer that has been painted white, an element of the original design. Photo Courtesy Indiana Landmarks.
The ‘Frankenstein’ poster sold for $262,900 at Heritage Auctions, a record for a movie insert poster. Heritage Auctions image. DALLAS – An original 1931 poster for Frankenstein set a world record as the most valuable insert movie poster ever sold at auction when it realized $262,900 at Heritage Auctions on July 27.
The sale provided a monster payday for the collector who bought it as a teenager for only a few dollars at a local antique store and later kept it in the closet for over 30 years. The entire auction sold more than $1.86 million in movie posters and related movie memorabilia.
LiveAuctioneers.com provided Internet live bidding.
The Frankenstein poster was owned by Keith Johnson, of Ottawa, Ill.
“I got it from an antique store in town in either 1968 or 1969, and I probably only paid $2 to $5 for it,” said Johnson.
Johnson’s wife, Julie, said the framed Frankenstein poster “was kept in the closet for the 30-plus years we’ve been married. Every once in a while we would pour ourselves a glass of wine and go take a look at it. We always loved it, and thought it was very cool.”
“It was strong sale overall and people were out in numbers participating,” said Grey Smith, director of movie posters at Heritage. “We couldn’t be happier for the consignor.”
Insert posters were printed on card stock paper and designed for movie theater display cases that would fit a 14-by-36-inch poster such as this one, Smith explained.
Oskar Schindler as photographed in Argentina after World War II. Origin: Wikipedia.org, courtesy of Yad Vashem Photo Archive. This image is a faithful digitization of a unique historic image, and the copyright is most likely held by the person who took the photograph or the agency that employed the photographer. Fair use of low-resolution image under guidelines of US Copyright law.
LOS ANGELES (AFP) – An original copy of the list of Jews saved by Oskar Schindler from the Holocaust has gone unsold on eBay, but the auctioneer said Monday he’s not disappointed.
The 14-page typewritten list—bearing the names of 801 men—originated with the German industrialist’s right-hand man Itzhak Stern and had a steep opening bid of $3 million.
But by the end of the online auction Sunday at 6 p.m. Los Angeles time, not one bid had been placed—although there was no lack of interest.
“Over half a million people viewed the auction on eBay and we had more than 13,000 ‘watchers’ (individuals monitoring a potential sale), which is exceptionally high,” auctioneer Eric Gazin told AFP by email.
Without giving details, Gazin said “active discussions” now are underway with “multiple parties” who are still interested in acquiring the one-of-a-kind document.
In the meantime, he added, “there are no plans to relist the list or lower the price.”
The list is one of four known to exist, and the only one in private hands. The others are in museums in Israel and the United States.
It once belonged to a nephew of Stern in Israel who sold it about three years ago to the current owner, who acquired it as an investment, Gazin’s partner Gary Zimet, of momentsintime.com, told AFP.
Schindler is credited with saving the lives of some 1,200 Jews employed in his factories during World War II. He died in anonymity in Germany in 1974 at the age of 66.
His story was the focal point of director Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List in 1993.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Oskar Schindler as photographed in Argentina after World War II. Origin: Wikipedia.org, courtesy of Yad Vashem Photo Archive. This image is a faithful digitization of a unique historic image, and the copyright is most likely held by the person who took the photograph or the agency that employed the photographer. Fair use of low-resolution image under guidelines of US Copyright law.
A 1900 Locomobile. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) – As William U. Martin traveled the streets of South Bend in 1901 on his business appointments as a piano tuner, the little Locomobile steamer he drove captured the public eye.
After all, it was one of the first automobiles in the city.
That early steam-powered auto still exists, although it’s in fragile condition. Part of the Center for History’s collection, it’s been stored away from public view for about 20 years.
The vehicle, about the size of a horse cart, looks more like a small wagon or sleigh than a modern automobile.
It’s believed to be the oldest car still in existence from the dawn of the auto age in South Bend.
Martin, the car’s original owner, was a South Bend musician and a piano and organ tuner for the Elbel music store for nearly 40 years. Martin drove it on the job making house calls to tune musical instruments, according to newspaper accounts. It was the first auto bought and used for commercial purposes in the city.
The Locomobile Co. of America was an automobile manufacturer founded in 1899 in Watertown, Mass., but production transferred a year later to Bridgeport, Conn., where it continued in business until 1929. The firm produced small steam cars until 1903, then switched to larger gasoline internal-combustion vehicles.
By 1902, Locomobile (the name was a combination of the words “locomotive” and “automobile”) had sold 5,200 vehicles, making the company, at that time, the largest producer of autos in the country, according to the Locomobile Society of America.
(1902 was the same year the Studebaker carriage and wagon company, based in South Bend, entered the automotive market with production of electric cars. The oldest Studebaker auto in the Studebaker National Museum collection dates from 1904.)
The new car was delivered to Martin in South Bend on March 4, 1901, according to a February 1932 interview he gave to the South Bend News-Times.
Martin ordered the Locomobile from Manlove A. “Cap” Shuey, who established the first automotive garage in South Bend and was the city’s first local car dealer.
“It was a bad day in South Bend, a heavy snow falling, but Capt. Shuey and I unloaded the thing, got it started and drove over some of the streets. Of course, automobiles were a curiosity in South Bend, this contraption aroused much interest and people stopped to watch it as we moved through the streets at what to-day would be a very modest speed,” Martin recalled in the interview.
Leighton Pine, an executive at the Singer Sewing Machine works in South Bend, had bought a Locomobile earlier (likely a 1900 model) but had trouble with it. “He did not seem to think much of it and told me it was all right as a toy but would never be of practical use,” Martin said. Pine died in 1905.
Martin said shortly after getting his car, while he was driving it near Rolling Prairie, the vehicle startled a horse, which started running ahead of the Locomobile down the road. The scene was viewed with astonishment by a group of schoolchildren, some of whom likely had never before seen a “horseless carriage.” Martin said one boy yelled at him: “Hey there, mister, you’ve lost your horse.”
By 1932, Martin had donated his Locomobile to the collection of the Northern Indiana Historical Society and it was a popular item on display in the Old Court House Museum. The year he donated the vehicle is unknown.
Martin died at age 78 in March 1932.
It isn’t known how many Locomobile steam autos still exist. A restored 1900 Locomobile steam runabout, previously part of the S. Ray Miller auto collection in Elkhart, Ind., sold at auction in 2004 for $49,500.
The South Bend Locomobile is believed to have last been on public view in the Old Court House Museum in the early 1990s.
Center for History records show that the Locomobile was examined by an auto expert in 1983 and determined to be in fair but nonrunning condition. It was stated that the car would need a total restoration in order to continue on public display. At the time, its value was estimated at $30,000.
The museum staff would like to put the Locomobile back on public display, but that will take work and expense.
The Locomobile is so fragile that “it’s a skeleton of what it was,” Center for History Executive Director Randy Ray said. And that creates a dilemma for museum professionals, he said.
A complete restoration to shiny, 1901 showroom-like condition would require so many new parts that little of the original car would remain, he said.
An alternative would be conservation of the car. Conservation is a careful process designed to stabilize the condition of an object so it can remain on public view, not to make it look like new. “I’d love to have it looking good enough to put on display,” Ray said.
Another possibility would be to sell or give the Locomobile to another museum that has an interest in displaying it, he said. Auctioning it off would be unlikely, because it probably would sell to a private collector and be removed permanently from public view, he said.
“It’s hard for me to say just leave it there (in storage). It’s not doing anyone any good. I’d rather see it go somewhere and be appreciated,” Ray told the South Bend Tribune.
“Very few of those original Locomobiles are still around,” said Tom Kimmel, of Berrien Springs, Mich., president of the Steam Automobile Club of America, when told the South Bend museum owns an early model. “Everybody wants one of those originals.”
Many people still build modern replicas of steam Locomobiles today, he said.
Shuey, the car dealer who sold Martin the car in 1901, was a colorful character who in his early career was part owner of Elbel’s music store. He later operated a river steamboat, the Ben Hamilton, between South Bend and Mishawaka, Ind., but his boat was destroyed by fire in 1897, according to Shuey’s obituary in the Oct. 21, 1924, South Bend Tribune.
In about 1902, Shuey went to Detroit and bought a Ford automobile from Henry Ford, then soon established a Ford dealership and garage in South Bend. He later also served as an agent for Waverly, Oldsmobile, Krit, Apperson and Michell autos.
Shuey gave up the dealership in 1911 and became an occasional taxi driver, according to his obituary. At the time of his death, he had been suffering for four years from injuries he sustained when he was crushed by a car that slid down an incline from a garage’s second floor, according to the article.
Some early news articles state Shuey was the first man in South Bend to own an auto, also a Locomobile, possibly before Leighton Pine did. Frederick G. Collmer, a St. Joseph County resident who died in 1945, also owned an early Locomobile steamer, according to newspaper archives.
It is unknown what became of those other early South Bend Locomobiles.
Frederic Remington’s ‘Cutting Out Pony Herds’ (1908), oil on canvas, 27 × 40 inches, sold for $5.6 million. Image courtesy of Coeur d’Alene Art Auction. RENO, Nev. (AP) – A Frederic Remington painting depicting U.S. Cavalry soldiers has fetched $5.6 million and a Norman Rockwell painting featuring a Boy Scout has drawn $4.2 million at an auction in Reno.
Mike Overby of the annual Coeur d’Alene Art Auction says Remington’s Cutting Out Pony Herds and Rockwell’s A Scout is Loyal were sold to private collectors on Saturday.
Remington’s painting features a soldier charging across the plains on horseback with the rest of the Cavalry following behind. One of his last works, it was done in 1908, a year before he died.
Rockwell’s 1940 painting has a patriotic theme with a Boy Scout standing in front of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Rockwell was known for his work for the Boy Scouts of America, producing covers for their magazine and calendars.
Some 600 bidders took part in what’s billed as the world’s largest Western art sale. Over 300 works were sold for a total of $28.5 million, up from $17.2 million last year.
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
Frederic Remington’s ‘Cutting Out Pony Herds’ (1908), oil on canvas, 27 × 40 inches, sold for $5.6 million. Image courtesy of Coeur d’Alene Art Auction.Norman Rockwell (1894–1978), ‘A Scout is Loyal’ (1940), oil on canvas, 39 × 27 inches, price realized: $4.2 million. Image courtesy of Coeur d’Alene Art Auction.
Eagle Harbor Lighthouse at Eagle Harbor, Mich. Image by Keweenaw Tourism Council, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. EAGLE HARBOR, Mich. (AP) – A former U.S. Coast Guard lifesaving station in Keweenaw County that played a role in hundreds of Lake Superior rescue missions has been converted into a museum.
Descendants of Coast Guard personnel who served at the station in Eagle Harbor attended a grand opening ceremony this month, honoring those who risked their lives to protect imperiled boaters.
The station was established in 1912 and operated until 1950. The current building was constructed in 1939 and is filled with artifacts for the public to see.
“Not only do we have memorabilia that we’ve collected, but we also have the physical items, the surfboats that they used, the equipment that they used,” Mark Rowe, maritime chairman for the Keweenaw County Historical Society, told WLUC-TV.
One of the most notable rescues was the saving of the L.C. Waldo shipwreck crew in 1913. The steamer ran aground at the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan’s far northwestern Upper Peninsula. Surfmen from the Eagle Harbor and Portage Canal lifesaving stations rescued 22 men, two women and a dog and received the rare Life Saving Gold Medal for their efforts.
“They had a horrific snowstorm blowing through, 50 to 70 mile an hour winds, 24 degree air temperature, freezing spray, and these surfmen took the challenge, and they went out in the lake and they saved the shipwreck crew,” Rowe said.
One of the rescuers was Anthony Glaza, whose grandson, Timothy Glaza, donated his medal to the museum during the grand opening.
“It’s been a part of our family folklore forever to hear and to retell the story of Grandpa Tony’s time here and his participation in the rescue of the Waldo,” Glaza said.
