MEMPHIS BELLE (B-17)
The MEMPHIS BELLE was the first B-17 to complete 25 missions over German occupied Europe with herself and crew intact.  Her crew was brought home on leave after which they were sent around the country on a War Bond tour before being trained to fly the new Boeing B-29.  Their plane, Dauntless Dottie, was the first plane to fly over Japan from the new bases in Saipan on a reconnaissance mission in 1944, and then participated in the first bombing missions on Japan from bases there.  All her ten-man crew survived to see the 1990 movie MEMPHIS BELLE premiere in
Memphis.  Pilot Robert Morgan died this year (2004) in Ashville, NC.  The MEMPHIS BELLE was loaned to the citizens of Memphis after the war and for years stood as a gate guard at the Memphis Airport until being moved to Mud
Island.  Recently while undergoing an extensive preservation, the USAF served "sixty day" notice that she was wanted at the USAF Museum in Dayton, OH, as the original contracts had prescribed.  That move is on hold at the
moment.  For more see "The Official Memphis Belle Web Site".

DESOTO HOTEL
The DeSoto Hotel in Savannah was built in the last decades of the 19th Century, and was a palace famous for it's Yule Log and the meetings of the Georgia Bar Association held there until it was torn down in the early 1970's. The source for this drawing I did in 1980 was a photograph in the Cordray Foltz collection at the Georgia Historical Society.  In the background, right, is the ARMORY, home of the "Savannah Guards" and left, the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist.  The original pen and ink was the first drawing I did using matte board and at the time was the largest pen and ink I had ever attempted, 26"x35" on 32"x40" board.  The picture of the entrance to the DeSoto Hotel is 1/12th of the area of the full drawing .. cropped for composition to show detail.

THE HERMITAGE
This was the residence of President Andrew Jackson in Old Hickory, Tennessee (about ten miles east of Nashville). Of all the presidents' homes, only Mt. Vernon has more visitors.  This picture measures 16"x25".

WINDSOR HOTEL
The Windsor Hotel in Americus, Georgia, was built 1n 1891-2.  Americus is not far from the infamous ANDERSONVILLE PRISON, and at that time was situated on the crossing of two major railroads, the SAVANNAH and MONTGOMERY and the CENTRAL OF GEORGIA.  The hotel flourished until the first decade of the 20th Century, when with the "conquering" of malaria and yellow fever, Florida "opened up" as a wintering ground.  The fact that Georgia had passed prohibition and made any public consumption of alcohol illegal, did not help the Windsor to remain profitable.   In 1978, the Howard Dayton family gave the property to the city of Americus.

WILLIAM CULBERT HOUSE
Culbert was a boilermaker for the steam packets that plied the Cumberland, Tennessee, and Ohio Rivers, and a close
friend of Captain Tom Ryman, for whom the "Mother Church Of Country Music", the Ryman Auditorium. is named.  Ryman, a free-wheeling river boat captain, commissioned the building of the Union Gospel Tabernacle after his conversion in the 1870's.  Later, that became the home of the Grand Ole Opry until the building of the Opry House at Opryland.  The Culbert house is one of the finer intact examples of the old residences that used to denominate Rutledge Hill in the Southeast portion of downtown Nashville.  Of dozens of these old houses, only a handful remain.