My
dad introduced me to American Plastic Bricks for my sixth birthday in December of
1963, fifty years ago. Since he and my mom had realized that I developed a love
for houses and architecture at an early age, and I told them I wanted to be a
carpenter when I grew up, my dad started coming home from work with all these
different construction sets, starting with Lincoln Logs in 1959. I would really
get frustrated with these earlier sets as there really was no specific way the
blocks or logs would really lock together to make what I wanted to be a
realistic looking scale building. Then he came home with American Bricks. He
showed me how they interlocked together, how to use the short and long blocks
to build interlocking brick walls, and make the rectangular openings for
windows, and it just clicked in my head. Once I mastered the concept by age
six, and dad had gotten me enough sets, I was able to pretty much build
everything in the instruction books that came with the sets, and as I got more,
I started to design and build my own stuff. When we moved to Fulton Street in
1964, I tried to replicate that house in American Bricks, but I was JUST a
little bit short in pieces and know how to do this. Nonetheless, this was one
toy that kept me quiet, and I would play with for hours if not days on end,
taking time out to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, and school.Yes I loved this
toy that much, as it spurred my creativity in me at a young age, that has never
dimmed to this day. So now I have come full circle. I have enough sets that I
was finally able to prove to myself that I could build a somewhat close replica
of our Fulton Street house after the fact after all. And without any
instruction sheets to guide me. It was/ is stored in my memory as to how to do
it. That is why I chose to build this house first. I have returned to the toy
of my youth as it still makes you think, analyze, and plan in your head as to
how you need to work stuff to get the results you want with them. It will keep
my mind sharp into old age.
This American Brick hotel (above) is somebody else's work, who's image I grabbed from another site.
A garage (above) with an included unbroken working overhead door, that I built from the first new set I got through an eBay sale about 5 years ago.
A set from the 1950's (above).
All of these subsequent images are of my Fulton Street house that I just built about two days ago with newly acquired sets, that I bought from a guy locally through eBay.
I figured in order for me to build this 1890's style Lancaster PA. townhouse when I was a kid would have required about 4 of the bigger medium sized sets, which my parents could not afford to buy for me back then.
This house is not in any of their instruction books that they published back in the day. I designed and built this model, myself. It is very large and heavy. It is 7 inches wide by 16-1/2 inches deep by 11-1/2 inches tall at the dual gable chimneys.
It took me just a little over two hours to build this to begin with.
I tore down and rebuilt the second and third floor attic
gable walls on the main house as the windows on the second floor were just too
short, as I originally built it. So I replaced them with like windows that the first floor has. I also
moved them down one course of brick away from the white lintel capstone brick
course. Gives the house a more balanced look than it did have. I also moved the
attic gable windows down three courses to center them better in between the
white lintel blocks. Looks alot better this way. A "course" is one
brick layer in height around a wall being built. The three images immediately below this text are from before I tore down and rebuilt the second and third floors.
American Plastic Bricks is one Boomer toy that has grown
up with us Boomers, as they still have a big following,today, even fifty, sixty
years later. There are many sites on the internet that attest to this. They
were/ are a very well engineered and thought out product, plus they were
American made to boot.
I spent most of an afternoon and evening, and most of the
next day dismantling and reconstructing the model permanently by rebuilding it
with Testor's plastic model kit cement. I wanted this to be a permanent
display. These bricks are 50 something years old, and the plastic in them is
starting to get somewhat brittle with age, and really, they cannot handle the
rigors of building up, and tearing down repeatedly anymore. In the process of
dismantling the house I'd say about 40-50 of the bricks cracked or broke out of
the 500-600 bricks this model has. Fortunately, I have plenty of spares. It
took 7 tubes of Testor's plastic model cement to assemble this model together!!
Gable and 3 chimney bricks waiting to be re assembled, along with the long cross gable wall brace assembly (long white blocks in left of picture).
I also made the permanent roof out of a nice textured piece
of dark green matte board, which really looks better than a roof made out of a
greasy Little Caesar's pizza box lid, as this last added pic shows.
A couple of days later, I glued the roof on permanently,
added the roof fascia mouldings underneath the eaves of the roof, and completed
the front and rear door stoop steps. The fascia mouldings are made out of the
same matte board that the roof is made from, but I glued it to the underside of
the roof with the white side facing outward. The stoop steps required me to cut
some of the damaged plastic bricks longways in half to make somewhat realistic
steps for the door stoops, and using modified American Brick cap stones as well.
Adding these fascia mouldings around the eaves of the flat
secondary roof hides the locator pegs of the top course of bricks on this
section of the house. That has the effect of cleaning up the overall look of
the model as well.
Completed front door stoop steps, above. Completed rear door stoop steps as well as newly installed roof eave fascia mouldings, below.
Adding these little details to a model like this overall are
really starting to make it "pop". I may make a pair of dormers for
the main roof, yet. I have the extra windows to do so. One dormer on the front
slope, and one on the rear.
If I make dormer windows for this model, I will make them up
to look similar to this.
This is where I am at with this model project for now.
Completed making the roof dormer window assemblies for the
American Plastic Brick "610" project house model. I just need to
prepare the roof on the main house before I install these by first cutting the
rectangular openings in the roof, then gluing the dormers in place, over the
openings. I'll do that tomorrow. It took me a total of about 4 hours to make
these, using some American Bricks for spacers inside these assemblies for the
window frames, that are also American Brick units. The dormers, themselves are
made out of the same matte board material that I made the roof of the house,
itself, out of.
Just got done installing the completed dormer window assemblies on the roof of the model, as these pics below now show.
Jim.
