The American Opus novel

The original Bleak House built by Tom Winans in Newport, Rhode Island on the Narragansett Bay. Tom's son Ross Revillon Winans later demolished the house and built one more to his liking.

Tom Winans is the protagonist of the novel "The American Opus."

Ross Winans; the patriarch of the Baltimore Winans family; his technical genius was primarily responsible for the B&O Railroad's early survival, along with several financial rescues by America's first investment banker, Alexander Brown.

The Baltimore Sun's first obituary for a woman was on its front page for Celeste Winans on March 22, 1861 after her death at age 33, five days after delivering a stillborn child.

The brownstone-bordered burial ground for the Winans family at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, MD. Tom and Celeste are buried under the large central stone and Ross is buried in the back right corner of the site.

This is a modern map of the area that once constituted Tom Winans' 900+ acre estate. Baltimore City built a paved hiking/biking trail from the Winans estate (known in modern times as Leakin Park) through the Gwynns Falls park to downtown Baltimore.

Tom Winans' Baltimore country estate was called Crimea. The estate's mansion was named Orianda and this is a modern view of the east facade.

This is Tom Winans' "Alexandroffsky" estate in Baltimore, showing the Hollins Street entry gate.

This photo of Major George Washington Whistler was taken in 1842, shortly before he traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia to head construction of that nation's first public railroad, which connected St. Petersburg and Moscow, a distance of over 400 miles.

St. Petersburg's Vasilievsky Island is where Major George Washington Whistler's son James Whistler studied art at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts while his father's American partnership was building Russia's first public railroad in the 1840s.

This is a photo of the Alexandrovsky foundry just southeast of St. Petersburg, where all of the rolling stock was manufactured by an American partnership for Russia's first significant railroad, which connected St. Petersburg to Moscow.

This is a photo of Celeste Revillon, the French-born Russian citizen who married Tom Winans and opened the first large soup-house in the United States, sometimes feeding thousands a day in the church her husband Tom bought her for that purpose. The Baltimore Sun's first-ever obituary for a woman was written for her.