Notre-Dame Cathedral 1972 "Pizza Box Model", Revisited...

Because of recent events in Paris with the devastating fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral, I thought it would be a good time to do some refurbishing work on my old 1972 model. It is like the real building in dire need for some maintenance/ repair and enhancing work. The way the model was, it is still the way I completed it in '72. It has  silverfish damage that needs to be addressed. I was 14 when I built this, but I am now almost 62. I feel this is my last chance to solidify this model one last time before I pass on...

This will be an ongoing project, and as I make progress I'll add new pictures, here.

As you can see, I have painted the roof and repainted the spire. I have also added cut bamboo skewers to the outside edges of the flying buttresses to simulate the spires that were incorporated on them on the actual building.

 More later as I make progress, mostly refreshing the window and door details on the old model

This picture shows the model with the new  south side transept spires in place. They are more proportionately correct than the old ones were. This would be the view one would have of the cathedral if you were on the Seine River looking back at it. Note now that all the window details have been highlighted with a No. 2 lead pencil to make them stand out more.

 This is the view of the north side with the new transept spires in place there.

This is a before photo showing the old and incorrectly proportioned transept spires.

What you are looking at here is the demolition debris of the 47 year old transept spires which I made at the time out of acid based typewriter paper. They were so brittle with age that they literally crumbled in my hands when I removed them from the model building. Also in this picture is a spare new transept spire along with an extra spire tower tube sheet that I did not need to use and fold up into a tube as I only needed to make 4 of these, and I did enough to produce 6. I did make 5 complete ones, though.

Replacing the North and South transept spires alleviates almost all the serious silverfish damage the model did have, There is some minor silverfish damage to what I now call my incorrectly installed transept wings, but nothing serious that would affect the structural integrity of them , or the model as a whole. Anyway, I have been thinking about removing these as the actual building never had them. The view of the photo I used showed these what I thought were attached, they way I did with the model, are actually completely detached parsonage buildings.  They way they are actually positioned, they will not fit on the existing posterboard baseplate the model is built on. The transept facades actually have doors located there, instead.

"Pizza box" building models

Before I built any other kinds of models, when I was a young kid, I would build models of houses, and famous buildings out of what they now call posterboard. My parents, and I used to call it "shirt cardboard" because new shirts that you would buy in the stores usually were packed with a rectangular piece of cardboard to stiffen the package bag that it was in, plus about 30 million pins! I would use this shirt cardboard to cut up, and make model buildings out of it, because my parents were not exactly rich. My dad used to buy also alot of pizzas that came in the same type of cardboard boxes, that new and starched shirts came packed with. I LOVED pizza boxes, because it would yield alot of material for me to make bigger models with. My dad showed me how to do this around the spring of 1964, by showing me how to make a "birdhouse" out of the stuff, incorporating tabs and slots into his design, held in place with scotch tape. I took his basic design concepts, and ran away with them. I used to LOVE to build models of churches, and houses, the most. I would draw on the details, such as stairs, doors, and windows with pencils, and crayons, markers, and pens. Since I liked do this so much as a six year old kid, my mom, really started to trust me enough to let me use her really sharp scissors. I was able to keep her trust, for I knew, at a young age, that they were SHARP, and I never did cut myself with them.From 1964 to about 1973, I probably built about forty models. The later ones graduated from tape to Elmer's Glue, which is much stronger, and more durable. Due to time, age, circumstances, attrition, and a destructive temper in my younger years, only three from 1971-1972 survived to today. The first one is the Taj Mahal. I built this in August of 1971, when I was thirteen.I developed an extreme fascination and love for this building in 1966, after I saw a scene of it in ruins in the movie, "The War Of The Worlds", on TV,on "NBC (name your day) Night At The Movies" I still love the building, today. The second survivor is Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lancaster, PA, where I was baptized as an infant, and where we attended until about 1968. This is a neat red brick building that I actually modeled three different times. This is the second model, which I built in November of 1971, out of a white pizza box. I actually built it one more time after this, in 1989, but with much more correct coloring, and 1000% more relief detail. The third survivor is a model that I built for my ancient history class, but I did not want to turn it in, because every time I would turn a model in to my history teacher, she wanted to keep them, because she thought for a kid, my modeling was exquisite!! So I kept it. Still have it today. this was also the last model that I built out of plain white posterboard, with draw on details. It was built in three days,in March of 1972, and it is the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. I built this model,using a grand total of two photographs. One of the main facade, the other a 3/4 view of the back , photographed from the Seine river. This model, although it has some age, and silverfish damage, is in the best condition, of these three surviving "pizza box models"

Jim.