Windmill Island

Windmill Island Gardens is a municipal park located in the city of Holland, Michigan. It is home to the 251-year-old windmill De Zwaan, the only authentic, working Dutch windmill in the United States.

History

In 1964, the City of Holland purchased the windmill De Zwaan from a retired miller in the town of Vinkel in the province of Noord Brabant, the Netherlands. The windmill was shipped from the Netherlands to the port of Muskegon, Michigan on the ship Prins Willem van Oranje. It was brought by truck from Muskegon to its present location on Windmill Island. Reconstruction of the mill began in 1964 and the park opened in April 1965. The island, formerly farmed by Henry F. Koop, was chosen because of the favorable wind conditions there. Although originally a peninsula, a manmade canal turned the land into an artificial island. Before the arrival of De Zwaan, it was known as Hyma Island.

On April 10, 1965, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands became the first visitor to the park and presided over the grand opening. His ticket and the ten guilder bill he used to purchase it are still on display in the park today.

Island Gardens

Coordinates: 51°29′13.4″N 00°00′28.5″W / 51.487056°N 0.007917°W / 51.487056; -0.007917 Island Gardens is a public park located in Cubitt Town at the southern end of the Isle of Dogs—hence the name 'Island'—in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets on the north bank of the River Thames. The park was formally opened on 3 August 1895 by prominent local politician Will Crooks—one of many local improvements he instigated.

The 1.12-hectare (2.8-acre) waterside park is notable for its spectacular cross-river view of the classical buildings of the former Greenwich Hospital, the Cutty Sark and the National Maritime Museum, with Greenwich Park forming a backdrop. The northern entrance of the Greenwich foot tunnel is also within the park. It is almost certain that the view from this location is the one that the Canaletto painting 'Greenwich Hospital from the North Bank of the Thames' is taken from, though whether Canaletto himself actually visited the site is in doubt.

The park also gave its name to Island Gardens DLR station. This opened in 1987 as the southern terminus of the DLR's initial system, and was an elevated terminal station situated to the west of the park. The later construction of the DLR extension to Lewisham involved a tunnel under the Thames, and Island Gardens station was relocated about 100 metres (330 ft) north, close to the northern entrance to the tunnel by Millwall Park. The new station is largely underground; the original elevated station was demolished.

Holland, Michigan

Holland is a coastal city in the western region of the Lower Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated near the eastern shore of Lake Michigan on Lake Macatawa, which is fed by the Macatawa River (formerly known locally as the Black River).

The city spans the Ottawa/Allegan county line, with 9.08 square miles (23.52 km²) in Ottawa and the remaining 8.13 square miles (21.06 km²) in Allegan. As of the 2010 census, the population was 33,051, with an Urbanized Area population of 95,394.

Holland is the largest city in Ottawa County, and as of 2013 part of the Grand Rapids-Wyoming-Muskegon Metropolitan Statistical Area. Holland was founded by Dutch Americans, and is in an area that has a large percentage of citizens of Dutch American heritage. It is home to Hope College and Western Theological Seminary, institutions of the Reformed Church in America.

History

Ottawa County was originally populated by Ottawa Indians. In 1846, Reverend George Smith established the Old Wing Mission as an outreach to the native population.

Windmill

A windmill is a mill that converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Centuries ago, windmills usually were used to mill grain, pump water, or both. Thus they often were gristmills, windpumps, or both. The majority of modern windmills take the form of wind turbines used to generate electricity, or windpumps used to pump water, either for land drainage or to extract groundwater.

Windmills in antiquity

The windwheel of the Greek engineer Heron of Alexandria in the first century is the earliest known instance of using a wind-driven wheel to power a machine. Another early example of a wind-driven wheel was the prayer wheel, which has been used in Tibet and China since the fourth century. It has been claimed that the Babylonian emperor Hammurabi planned to use wind power for his ambitious irrigation project in the seventeenth century BCE.

Horizontal windmills

The first practical windmills had sails that rotated in a horizontal plane, around a vertical axis. According to Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, these panemone windmills were invented in eastern Persia as recorded by the Persian geographer Estakhri in the ninth century. The authenticity of an earlier anecdote of a windmill involving the second caliph Umar (AD 634–644) is questioned on the grounds that it appears in a tenth-century document. Made of six to 12 sails covered in reed matting or cloth material, these windmills were used to grind grain or draw up water, and were quite different from the later European vertical windmills. Windmills were in widespread use across the Middle East and Central Asia, and later spread to China and India from there.

De Zwaan

De Zwaan may refer to:

See also