440 South Church
440 South Church is a 15-story skyscraper in Charlotte, North Carolina with 363,000 square feet (33,700 m2) of space. Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart & Associates designed the building, and Bovis Lend Lease was the general contractor. Major tenants are Ally Bank and HDR. It was built according to LEED gold standards, making it a green building.
On June 19, 2008, Novare Group and Trinity Capital Advisors broke ground on the $78 million 440 South Church project and opened a sales office for Catalyst, a 27-story condominium project, both on the same 5.2-acre (21,000 m2) site between Third Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard in uptown Charlotte. HDR, an architectural and engineering firm with 140 Charlotte employees, became the first tenant with plans for 45,000 square feet (4,200 m2) of space. The "topping out" ceremony took place March 6, 2009.
In April 2009, GMAC Financial Services announced plans to move its corporate center from Ballantyne to 106,525 square feet (9,896.5 m2) on four floors of 440 South Church, with possible expansion later. At the time, GMAC had 265 Charlotte employees in three business units, with plans to cut as many as 60 jobs. However, 30 new sales jobs and 236 new jobs at the corporate center meant a net increase of 200 jobs. By creating the jobs and keeping them for nine years, GMAC would receive $4.5 million in incentives from the state of North Carolina. Charlotte had many employees with banking knowledge who had been laid off from Wachovia and Bank of America, and GMAC Financial CEO Al de Molina, who spent 17 years at Bank of America, lived in Charlotte. The GMAC headquarters, however, would remain in Detroit.
Zuiderkerk
The Zuiderkerk ("southern church") is a 17th-century Protestant church in the Nieuwmarkt area of Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. The church played an important part in the life of Rembrandt and was the subject of a painting by Claude Monet.
The Zuiderkerk was the city's first church built specifically for Protestant services. It was constructed between 1603 and 1611 and stands on the Zuiderkerkhof ("Southern Graveyard") square near the Sint Antoniesbreestraat. The distinctive church tower, which dominates the surrounding area, was not completed until 1614 and contains a carillon of bells built by the brothers Hemony, installed in 1656 along with four bells which are rang monthly.
The design of the church in Amsterdam Renaissance style is by Hendrick de Keyser, who was also buried in the church in 1621. A memorial stone was placed on top of his tomb in 1921. De Keyser designed the church as a pseudo-basilica in Gothic style, with a central nave and two lower side aisles, six bays long, with Tuscan columns, timber barrel vaults and dormers. The stained glass in the rectangular windows was replaced by transparent glass in the 17th Century. The richly detailed tower is a square stone substructure, on which an octagonal sandstone section stands with free-standing columns on the corners. On top of this is a wooden, lead-covered spire.
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