This
is "610". A fanciful rendition of a typical 1880's Lancaster, PA
townhouse similar to one I lived in as a kid from 1964 through 1969. Although
the actual house in Lancaster, at the time was not as fancy as this model, I
did maintain the floor layout and foundation footprint design of the original
house. This is the first of two scale model buildings that I have built that
are fully finished (no furniture except in the kitchen) inside and out, with
finished rooms, a grand staircase, and working interior as well as exterior
doors. I built this model in 1976 out of scrap cardboard that I drew and
painted up to look like brick, as well as balsa wood window and door frames. I
had just gotten done reconditioning this model last year as some of the white
cardboard features were really turning yellow with age, so I painted them
white, and corrected some roof mouldings I did not do right the first time in
'76. I also totally repainted the dormers, as these were really aging bad. The
model is approximately 1/32 scale, and is BIG! It is 8 inches wide, 18 inches
deep, and 11 inches high at the double chimneys.
Three-quarter rear view showing kitchen/master bedroom and
balcony "wing" Since this picture was taken, I have relaminated and
painted the outside cellar door gray, as typical for these houses in the city
in the mid twentieth century.
Looking through the front door at the main staircase, up the
steps to the master bedroom. The doorway at the end of the hall along side the
staircase is open into the kitchen. Kind of hard to photograph this, though.
Remember I made this model mostly out of scrap cardboard, balsa wood, acetate
plastic for the window glass, and construction paper for the interior wall
coverings. The "carpeting" was made from an old small floral print
dress my mom had back then.
Through the hallway kitchen doorway, we can see a really ugly "space age" dining table and chair set in the kitchen. Sitting behind that on the south wall, is the range, and to the left of that is the end of a big white metal kitchen sink cabinet.
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Looking from the front door down the hall past the staircase, through the doorway into the kitchen. The doorway to the left goes into what was a formal dining room, but we used it as our television viewing room. Not visible in this picture, as soon as you were in the front door, there was a door immediately to the left off the hallway that led into the front room. We used this room originally as a formal living room, with the TV in there at first. After we moved the TV into the middle room, this front room became the stereo, and sitting room. The front room and middle room were joined together by a doorway in between them as well as to the hallway. Finally about 2 years before we moved out, this front room became my parents first floor bedroom, and my sisters got the upstairs master bedroom over the kitchen. I then got the bigger middle bedroom, and the front bedroom, seen here replicated in this picture, became a storage room.
A peek through the front second floor bedroom windows at the northeast front bedroom (looking dead on at the front of the model, the left two windows on the second floor). Visible are the closet door, and the open doorway into the middle bedroom, as well as the floral "carpeting" that I used to cover the floors of this model. Also visible on the baseboard is an "electrical outlet", and on the doorframe a "light switch" for the room "ceiling light fixture", which I did not put any of these in any of the rooms of this model.
View looking at the backside of the house at the southwest
corner.
Here
is yet another different view right before I started the repair/(re)paint work
to the 36 year old model. You'll notice the spindly dilapidated black railings,
made originally out of balsa strips on the front stoop steps in this picture
have since been replaced with two pieces of clear styrene plastic that I detail
painted with very narrow strips of black paint to give the appearance of
wrought iron railings. The drooping outside door lights have been rebuilt and
repainted, too, since this image was taken, as well. The first image I posted
of the front of this model shows those repairs.
Unique view of the south side of the building. You can see
the triple chimney setup that this place had, including the (south) kitchen
hearth chimney, which while the actual house still had this chimney when I was
a kid, it was non functional as this fireplace was long gone. As a matter of
fact, all the fireplaces this house had were all ripped out and long gone, as
only the east gable chimney was still functional. It was hooked up to a coal
furnace in the dirt floor basement that had been converted to be an oil fired furnace
sometime in the 1950's which in turn was rigged up to a hot water baseboard
heating system for the house. It had no cast iron radiators, like one would
think a house of this vintage would have. I believe the west gable chimney was
always a faux chimney, as the wall where this chimney is mounted to is where in
the real house, the staircase is there, and that chimney was noticeably
narrower than the east one. It was placed there to maintain an artistic
symmetry of the house's roofline.
Head-on view of west side of the model.
East side of the model, as what one would have seen from the side yard that the actual house had. (Sorry, I thought this photo was posted but misplaced it when I was doing this post. Here it is now in it's proper place.)
North side , or street front view of the house. The daylight shining through the attic fanlight dormer windows is a cool effect.
Second floor balcony detail shots. Design is in typical urban 1880's -1890's townhouse style. I used straight pins that I cut off with oversize round pin heads as light globe fixtures above the kitchen door, and master bedroom door on the balcony. Typical 1920's- 1930's electrical refit light fixtures for these old houses.
Light shining through attic dormers.
Rear south facing dormer, and roof shingle detail, as viewed if one were standing on the very south end of the flat "tar paper" roof. Shingles were made from acid free heavy gauge paper that I spray painted two 8-1/2" X 11" sheets flat black, then I cut them into even strips. Then each strip, I notched half way up with vertical cuts at fixed regular intervals. Then I glued them on the roof, overlapping them half way the total width of the strips so that only the notch was showing, and staggering the notches to give the effect of individual shingles. As you can see, the look of the texture is about perfect for the scale of this model! Even though this model is kind of scruffy compared to my later stuff, it is a cool model of one of my favorite childhood homes, albeit the way my mom and I wanted it to look if we would have been able to buy the house and remodel it to our likings.
My daughter just took this picture of me holding the model, today, after I did more clean up and repaint work on the thing. Specifically the evening up of the edges of the roof shingles at the edges of the roof. The trim job I did at the edges of the roof was a little sloppy, so I evened them up using an X-acto knife with a No.#11 blade in it, as well as using an emory board to help flush up the edges. After that, I touched up the edges with flat black paint, and the model looks alot better now, at the roofline. I also dusted the thing off. It gets dirty fast, in my house. It has been on continuous display since I completed it in 1977, so it is only natural that it needs some maintenance work, much like a real house.
These three pictures I just added, as I just got done redesigning, and restoring the model's baseplate, with a new baseplate that is made out of 1/4" plywood that I laminated cardboard to, so I could rebuild, and add to the house's "concrete" walks around the two sides of the structure. The wider base allowed me to add an adjoining walkway along the east side of the house to join the concrete "patio" at the kitchen door under the balcony with the walk that is on the streetside front of the house. I used "Polly" brand model railroading paint in a concrete color to give the old yellowed cardboard "concrete" a uniform, more concrete color with the new side walkway I just installed on the model.
The new look continues along the west side of the model, as the plywood underneath that long wall was also laminated with cardboard, and painted with the same concrete paint to make the house look like it has a foundation, now. Painting almost all the remaining exposed cardboard surfaces will also keep anymore silverfish from damaging the model, as silverfish like to munch on old cardboard. The front stoop steps had some very minor superficial surface damage from them. Since I painted the stoop steps, that should put a stop to that. Silverfish don't like paint.
These new additions and renovations to this old model make it now look like I just built the whole thing now, instead of it looking like it was built in 1977. It will also allow me now to securely anchor the model in a wood and plexiglas dust proof display box, which I am in the process of building right now. This will not only keep anymore dirt from getting on the model, but it will also protect it from getting hit by any objects that may accidently fall near it. It will also stop me from doing stupid stuff to it, like I used to sit stuff up on the flat "tar paper" roof of the thing for storage purposes and/ or because of lack of room, or just for "fun". If it is taken care of, the plexiglas display box should keep this model nice for many years to come, long after I'm gone.
Update. October 5, 2012. 610's new wood and plexiglas protective display box is complete, and model will not suffer anymore dust and silverfish damage, as well as hit damage, to boot. Old model looks fantastic with it's new "concrete" walkways and concrete painted stoop steps, now. Everything is clean, and what is supposed to be white is white, again, not an ugly yellow/brown. Other than some minor tweaking I need to do yet to the display box, itself, I consider the restoration work on this model to be complete. Anymore work to the model itself would destroy the original 1976 design character of the structure that I originally came up with back then.
Jim.
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