San Quentin State Prison is located on 432 acres (1.7 km²) on Point Quentin in Marin County, California, United States, north of San Francisco. San Quentin State Prison was opened in July 1852, and is the oldest prison in California. It was built by inmates who were housed on the prison ship Waban during the construction. San Quentin held both male and female inmates until 1933 when the women's prison at Tehachapi was built.

The state's male death row is located at San Quentin, as well as its only gas chamber. In recent years, however, the gas chamber has been used to carry out lethal injections.

It has its own ZIP Code, 94964; the surrounding area is 94974. It is bordered by the water of the San Francisco Bay to the south and east and by Interstate 580, just after it crosses the bay on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

The Googleplex is the Google company headquarters, located at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California, near San Jose.

Googleplex is a play on words, googolplex being the name given to 10googol (a one followed by a googol zeros). It is also a portmanteau of Google and complex — in the architectural sense.

The interior of the headquarters is furnished with items like shade lamps and giant rubber balls. The lobby contains a piano and a projection of current live Google search queries. It is the former home of computer company Silicon Graphics (SGI). Although relatively short in height, the complex covers an extremely large area.

The Googleplex is located between Charleston Road, Amphitheatre Parkway, and Shoreline Boulevard in north Mountain View close to the Shoreline Park wetlands. Google outgrew the original Googleplex early on and has leased a large number of older buildings adjacent to it.

Battery Park (to New Yorkers, The Battery) is a 21-acre (8.5 ha) public park located at the southern tip of Manhattan in New York City. The park is named for the artillery that was stationed there at various times by the Dutch and British in order to protect the harbor. At one end of the park is Pier A and Hope Garden, a memorial to AIDS victims. At the other end is Battery Gardens restaurant, next to the United States Coast Guard Battery Building. Along the waterfront, ferries depart for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

To the northwest of the park lies Battery Park City, an area of landfill redevelopment built in the 1970s and 80s, which includes Robert F. Wagner Park and the Battery Park City Promenade. Together with Hudson River Park a system of greenspaces, bikeways and prominades now extend up the Hudson shoreline. A bikeway is being built through the park that will connect to the Hudson River Park bikeway, north of the park across Battery Place that runs past Battery Park City and the World Fincial Center and up the West Side. Across State Street to the northeast lies the U.S. Customs House/Museum of the American Indian. Peter Minuit Plaza abuts the southeast end of the park, directly in front of the South Ferry Terminal of the Staten Island Ferry.

Ellis Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor, was at one time the main immigration port for immigrants entering the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ellis Island is within the boundaries of Jersey City, New Jersey, but is within both the states of New Jersey and New York. It is wholly in the possession of the Federal government as a part of Statue of Liberty National Monument, and is under the jurisdiction of the US National Park Service. According to the United States Census Bureau, the island, which was largely artificially created through the landfill process, has an official land area of 129,619 square meters, or 32.03 acres, more than 83 percent of which lies in the city of Jersey City. The natural portion of the island, lying in New York City, is 21,458 square meters (5.302 acres), and is completely surrounded by the artificially created New Jersey portion. The Ellis Island Immigrant Station was designed by architects Edward Lippincott Tilton and William Boring. They received a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition for the buildings' design. They were later hired to design and construct the magnificent Tome School for Boys in Port Deposit Maryland.

The Palau de la Música Catalana ("Palace of Catalan Music") in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, is a concert hall built between 1905 and 1908, designed by the Catalan architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner. It was inaugurated in 1908, and its style is known as modernisme, the local term to design the Art Nouveau, whose most noteworthy practitioner was Antoni Gaudí.

The Palau de la Música Catalana was built to be the concert hall of the Orfeó Català ("Catalan Choir"), the most important choir in Catalonia in the begining of the XXth century. The project was financed by this institution, principally, but also by the donations of the well-living bourgeoisie in the city.

Dueing to the wealth circumtances and the increasing sympathy shown by industrialists and bourgeoisie to the Catalan nationalism, Montaner was asked for a national, symbolist architecture and building. So he added the traditional ceramics and "maons", and asked other well-known Catalan artists to work with him. As a consequence, the Palau shows a wide variety of techniques and materials, both inside and outside.

Park Güell is a garden complex with architectural elements situated on the hill of el Carmel in the Gràcia district of Barcelona, Spain. It was designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí and built in the years 1900 to 1914. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Works of Antoni Gaudí".

The park was originally part of a commercially unsuccessful housing site, the idea of Count Eusebi de Güell. It was inspired by the English garden city movement, hence the original English name Park. It has since been converted into a municipal garden. It can be reached by underground railway (although the stations are at a distance from the Park), or by regular buses, or by commercial tourist buses. While entrance to the Park is free, Gaudí's house — containing furniture that he designed — can be only visited for an entrance fee.

The present Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (Catalan for Hospital of the Holy Cross and Saint Paul) in the Eixample, Barcelona, Catalonia, is a complex built between 1901 and 1930, designed by the Catalan architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner. It is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Today it is still a fully functional hospital. There have been discussions to convert this building to a museum sometime in the future.

Although the hospital's current buildings date from the 20th century, the Hospital de Sant Pau was founded in 1401 when six small medieval hospitals merged. The hospital's former buildings near the center of Barcelona date from the 15th century, and now house an art school (Escola Massana) and Biblioteca de Catalunya (National Library of Catalonia).

[Source: Wikipedia]

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Himeji Castle (Japanese: 姫路城; -jō) is a Japanese castle located in Himeji in Hyogo Prefecture. It is one of the oldest surviving structures from medieval Japan, and has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a Japanese National Cultural Treasure. Along with Matsumoto Castle and Kumamoto Castle, it is one of Japan's "Three Famous Castles", and is the most visited castle in Japan. It is occasionally known as Hakurojō or Shirasagijō ("White Heron Castle") because of its brilliant white exterior.

Himeji Castle frequently appears on Japanese television. Edo Castle (the present Kokyo) does not have a keep, so when a fictional show such as Abarenbo Shogun needs a magnificent substitute, the producers turn to Himeji.

Himeji serves as an excellent example of the prototypical Japanese castle, containing many of the defensive and architectural features most associated with Japanese castles. The tall stone foundations, whitewash walls, and organization of the buildings within the complex are standard elements of any Japanese castle, and the site also features many other examples of typical castle design, including gun emplacements and stone-dropping holes. The current keep dates from 1601.