Rockford Plantation house miniature.

Maple wood model of the Rockford plantation house in Lancaster I made while I was working at Sensenich Corporation, wood products division, at Lancaster Airport in 1977. most details are hand painted on after making the basic shape details of the house. Windows and doors are pieces of acid free paper that I hand drew the details on using what was the equivalent of a sharpie marker. Model is small. It will fit on the palm of my hand. The footprint of this model is about 5 inches by 3 inches, with the wraparound porches and such. Porch pillars were made by hand out of very small but long square strips of maple that I sanded round on a big belt sander, then cut to length to fit the porch height. Rockford House is a significant part of Lancaster County history as it was the home of General Edward Hand, involved in the Revolutionary War, around 1775 through 1784.

This model is not one of my better efforts, as I did this when I was 19 years old, and the model is based on some freehand sketches I did on site at Rock Ford plantation, itself on the south side of Lancaster City, PA, in what I believe in late 1977. The actual house was restored in 1960. The original bank barn that Hand built on the property had burned down a long time ago, but was rebuilt sometime in the 1980's.

 Nonetheless, for it's diminutive size size, it is a unique model, done in what some people would call in a "Folk Art" style.

 Backside.

Front. Note that I put the wintertime wooden window well covers where the basement windows are at. In recent years, these are not installed on the actual house, now. But at the time I built this model, they were there. If you are ever are in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Rockford Plantation is a very worthy historical site to visit. It is located on the very southern edge of Lancaster City.

Link;
http://www.rockfordplantation.org/index.htm

Jim.

Handmade wooden toy bank barn remodeling job, cupolas, and all!!

This is a model that I did not build. I bought it from someone else who built it, but he did a real rough job in doing so. I completely remodeled it, detailed it, added cupolas that I designed, as well added ventilators, windows, and cross buck details for the doors. I also added the white wooden vertical wall corner mouldings, as well. I smoothed over all the uneven joints, and added a piece of plywood to the bottom of the model to give it more structural integrity. I painted on by hand the stone details for the foundation, and the barn hill retainer walls. I repainted the roof edges white, from gray. Added two cross buck doors to the livestock barnyard side of the barn, as well as adding windows there. This model is rather large, as it is 15" long, measuring from gable to gable, and adding the roof overhang, and about 12" high at the roof peak and 13" wide, measuring at the gable end roof overhangs. The model is mostly made of painted 3/8",and 7/16" rough hewn scrap plywood, and skid slat wood construction, with painted solid maple wood cupola assemblies. The ventilator assemblies with their louvre slats on the cupolas, as well as on the barn's walls themselves, window frames, and cross buck door trim mouldings are all made from heavy gauge cardboard, and mat board material, and painted the colors as needed. The model's front and rear cross buck doors open and close on jewelry box hinges, painted white to match the rest of the barn's trim, and the door handles are tiny cuphooks screwed into the doors, painted aluminum. The "glass" in the six actual window openings in the barn is clear polystyrene plastic. The two windows on the livestock level are false windows. The guy who originally designed the overall configuration of this barn did not cut window openings there. There are only six actual window openings in the upper levels of the barn. The overall height of the barn at the central cupola weathervane lightning rod is 17-3/4". Living in Lancaster County, PA, I have seen lots of bank barns of this fancy style when I was a kid, all almost every one of them are gone, now. Victims of overdevelopement. This is not a model of any one specific barn, but of a menagerie of several barns that I remember from when I was a kid, and also a Plain friend that I work with, who gave me some pointers, and recolletions of barns his friends and relatives have, or did have.

This model was originally built to be a farm play toy, but I turned it into what would be in real life an agricultural Taj Mahal.

I got the model in October of 2010, last year, and I just put the finishing touches on it yesterday, May 15, 2011.

Here are some pictures of the completed model.

Other than some preliminary cleanup and surface prep work as well as repaint and the stone foundation detail that is painted on the model, here, these two images are of the barn, basically the way I bought it in October of 2010. I also in these pictures had already added a plywood bottom to the model, as it did not have one when I bought it at the time.

Early working design drawings of  the cupolas I did before making them.

Jim.

The OLD Hotel Brunswick, Lancaster,PA scale model

This first image was the very first artist rendering of what the building was to look like upon completion in late 1914. Then the image was used as the Brunswick's first post card,where I got this image from. This is a very rare post card that has a post mark of what I believe is the early 1920's.
Here is the Brunswick, shortly after completion,(around 1914).

Here is the Brunswick sometime in the 1920's or early 1930's after they added on to it.Here is a Lancaster Newspapers photo of the first night of demolition of the building on May 1, 1967.


Here is a model that took about a year to research,and plan, and about six years to complete. I started the work on this model in February of 1994, and finished building it in 2001. It took me that long to build this because the actual building was demolished in May of 1967. I watched them tear this beautiful Beaux Arts style building down as a nine year old that year. I look back on it now,and i still think, "What a waste!!"
Built in 1914,the hotel was well known for its Pennsylvania Dutch hospitality, and it great "home style" food. Also known for its "Seven Sweets & Seven Sours". I haven't figured out what that is yet,even though I was born and still live here in Lancaster County!!

Designed by C. Emlen Urban, the famous Lancaster City architect of the late 19th, and early 20th century, it was built in two stages. The first main part that sat at the corner of East Chestnut street, and North Queen streets, was built in 1914. There were covered entrances on both these streets, but the main entrance was facing Chestnut Street. They added on to the building by making the Chestnut street facade longer, and adding a ballroom hall. This was done in 1925.

It was built by Paul Heine ,an immigrant from Germany. This was the man who started the tourism industry here in Lancaster County, and made this area a fashionable place to visit.

By the 1960's,after Heine's son died, the management ran the hotel into the ground, and it closed its doors in 1964. At this time in American history,people pretty much were going to the suburbs for shopping needs and other purposes, and store owners were quick to do the same to stay in business. People used their cars more to go places rather than walk to stores in center city. Downtown was(is) not very car parking friendly, so people left. It got to the point where most of the store fronts were vacant in that block where the hotel stood. The hotel itself had some stores,at street level.

By 1965, both sides of that block of North Queen streets, and the whole south side of the block of East Chestnut streets , including the nine story tall Brunswick,were declared as "blighted" properties,and I believe that they were seized through Eminent Domain,by the city of Lancaster,via then mayor Monagham. The city got a federal grant to redevelop the blocks, but only they would only get the grant, if they, (the feds) saw the land was cleared first.

Mass demolition of the buildings commenced in the spring of 1965, and was wrapped up in the summer of 1967. Many beautiful building were laid to waste, some even dating back to the colonial era, Victorian, Beaux Arts, and other magnificent structures, including a Greek revival design bank building, complete with a sweeping multistory arch window, and flanking Corinthian columns!! People did try to stop this, but to no avail. You can't stop big government. the signs around the demolition sights stated, ironically,"Tearing Down To Make Way For Progress". What a joke that was.

After the land was cleared, they did put up a new hotel on the same sight where the old Brunswick stood, and it was built as a Hilton Inn. It almost has the exact same "footprint" as the old building did. It is a slab sided monolithic red brick with horizontal white concrete striped structure that still stands today. Ironically,after the Hilton chain sold it to a private company in 1976, they change the name back to the "Hotel Brunswick" to try to appease the people of Lancaster for the loss of one of the most popular hangouts for the locals for generations.....

Here are some pictures of my scale model. The first image is from a vintage post card. One of the other images is is a period Lancaster Newspapers photograph from about 1965.

There are some more historic pictures of the actual building at the beginning, and the end of its existence,also, (the first four pictures of this post).

Jim.

This is the NEW Hotel Brunswick as it stands today. It stands on the exact same site as where the original stood. Construction started in 1968, and was completed in 1970, as a Hilton Inn. The Hilton Inn chain sold the building to a private company in 1976, and changed the name back to the "Hotel Brunswick",and totally renovated the interior of the building. I took this photograph myself on August 27,1999, for this where we stayed on our tenth wedding anniversary "getaway".