The Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House (originally the New York Custom House) is a former custom house, a government building, and a museum at 1 Bowling Green, near the southern end of Manhattan.  Designed by Cass Gilbert in the Beaux-Arts style, it was erected from 1902 to 1907 by the U.S. government as a headquarters for the Port of New York's duty collection operations.  The building contains the George Gustav Heye Center museum, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, and the New York regional offices of the National Archives.  The facade and part of the interior are New York City designated landmarks, and the building is a National Historic Landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).  It is also a contributing property to the Wall Street Historic District, listed on the NRHP.  The Custom House is a seven-story steel-framed structure with a stone facade and elaborate interiors.  The exterior is decorated with nautical motifs as well as sculptures by twelve artists.  The second through fourth stories contain colonnades with Corinthian columns. The main entrance consists of a grand staircase flanked by Four Continents, a set of four statues by Daniel Chester French.  The second-story entrance vestibule leads to a transverse lobby, a rotunda, and offices.  The rotunda includes a skylight and ceiling murals by Reginald Marsh.  The George Gustav Heye Center, a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian, operates within the ground and second stories, while the upper stories contain offices for the U.S. government.  The building was proposed in 1889 as a replacement for the previous New York Custom House at 55 Wall Street. Due to various disagreements, the Bowling Green Custom House was not approved until 1899; Gilbert was selected as architect following a competition. The building opened in 1907, and the murals in the rotunda were added in 1938 during  a Works Progress Administration project.  The United States Customs Service moved out of the building in 1974, and it remained vacant for over a decade until renovations in the late 1980s.  The Custom House was renamed in 1990 to commemorate Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and its first Secretary of the Treasury.  The Heye Center opened in 1994.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton_U.S._Custom_House   

George Gustav Heye (1874–1957) was an American collector of Native American artifacts in the Western Hemisphere, particularly in North America.  He founded the Museum of the American Indian, and his collection became the core of the National Museum of the American Indian.  It is described as the largest and most comprehensive collection in the world.  During his years of collecting and study, Heye funded numerous archeological expeditions and supported scholarly work of the time.  He established the Heye Foundation in the early 20th century to support such work, as well as contributing independently.  Heye was born in 1874, the son of Carl Friederich Gustav Heye and Marie Antoinette Lawrence of Hudson, New York.  His father was a German immigrant who earned wealth in the new petroleum industry.  George Gustav Heye graduated from Columbia School of Mines (now Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science) in 1896 with a degree in electrical engineering.  While superintending railroad construction in Kingman, Arizona in 1897, Heye acquired a Navajo deerskin shirt, his first Native American item.  He continued to acquire individual items until 1903, then he began collecting material in larger numbers.  Through the years, Heye accumulated the largest private collection of Native American objects in the world.  They included both prehistoric and historic items.  The collection was initially stored in Heye's Madison Avenue apartment in New York City, and later in a rented room.  By 1908, Heye was referring to the collection as "The Heye Museum."  He began to lend materials for exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania, at what later became its Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gustav_Heye   

Couscous sometimes called kusksi or kseksu–is a dish of small steamed granules of rolled durum wheat semolina that is often served with a stew spooned on top.  Pearl millet, sorghum, bulgur, and other cereals are sometimes cooked in a similar way in other regions, and the resulting dishes are also sometimes called couscous.  Couscous is a staple food throughout the Maghrebi cuisines of Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania, Morocco, and Libya.  It was integrated into French and European cuisine at the beginning of the twentieth century, through the French colonial empire and the Pieds-Noirs of Algeria.  In 2020, couscous was added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list.  The word couscous (alternately cuscus or kuskus) was first noted in early 17th century French, from Arabic kuskus, from kaskasa ‘to pound’, and is probably of Berber origin.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couscous   

The Maghreb, also known as Northwest Africa, is the western part of North Africa and the Arab world.  The region includes Algeria, Libya, Mauritania (also considered part of West Africa), Morocco, and Tunisia.  The Maghreb also includes the disputed territory of Western Sahara (controlled mostly by Morocco and partly by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) and the Spanish cities Ceuta and Melilla.  As of 2018, the region had a population of over 100 million people.  Through the 18th and 19th centuries, English sources often referred to the region as the Barbary Coast or the Barbary States, a term derived from the demonym of the Berbers.  Sometimes, the region is referred to as the Land of the Atlas, referring to the Atlas Mountains, which are located within it.  The Maghreb is usually defined as encompassing much of the northern part of Africa, including a large portion of the Sahara Desert, but excluding Egypt and Sudan, which are considered to be located in the Mashriq— the eastern part of the Arab world. The traditional definition of the Maghreb— which restricted its scope to the Atlas Mountains and the coastal plains of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya—was expanded in modern times to include Mauritania and the disputed territory of Western Sahara.  During the era of Al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula (711–1492), the Maghreb's inhabitants—the Muslim Berbers, or Maghrebi—were known by Europeans as the "Moors".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maghreb   

Sfenj (from the Arabic word Arabic: السفنج, romanized:  Safanj, meaning sponge) is a Maghrebi doughnut: a light, spongy ring of dough fried in oil.  Sfenj is eaten plain, sprinkled with sugar, or soaked in honey.  It is a well-known dish in the Maghreb and is traditionally made and sold early in the morning for breakfast or in the late afternoon accompanied by tea—usually Maghrebi mint tea—or coffee.  The term sfenj is used in Algeria and other parts of the Maghreb.  It is called bambalouni in Tunisia, and sfinz in Libya.  In Morocco, the term "sfenj" is used, also sometimes nicknamed in the literature "Moroccan doughnuts".  It is also called Khfaf or ftayr in Algeria, and is sometimes also dubbed as the "Algerian doughnut".  Sfenj originated in Al-Andalus (Moorish Spain). According to legend, sfenj was created by mistake, when a baker accidentally dropped a ball of dough into a pan of hot oil.  Sfenj was an important part of Andalusi culture, whose role was best summarised by a verse from a contemporary poet:  "The sfenj bakers are worth as much as kings" ("سفاجين تحسبهم ملوكا").  It is unclear how sfenj first spread to the Maghreb, although it is said to have been well known to the Marinid Dynasty, which ruled Morocco from 1270 to 1465.  It spread to France during the 13th century, where it inspired beignets. Sfenj were only sweetened with sugar starting in the 18th century, even though sugarcane has been widely cultivated in the Arab world since the 8th century.  Before that, they were sweetened with honey or syrup, or simply served plain.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sfenj  See also https://www.thespruceeats.com/sfenj-recipe-moroccan-doughnuts-2394817   

I have a trunk containing continents. - Beryl Markham, adventurer (26 Oct 1902-1986)  Beryl Markham, née Beryl Clutterbuck, was a English professional pilot, horse trainer and breeder, writer, and adventurer, best known for her memoir, West with the Night (1942; reissued 1983).  She was also the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean from east to west.  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Beryl-Markham   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2583  October 26, 2022