1866 and all that: American Civil War Buildings

Having dug myself out of the rubble of the recent sets of ruins, I have turned my attention to three, maybe four American Civil War buildings to go up on my Buildings for Sale page. Originally I planned to make replicas of historic structures, but instead decided to make buildings strongly based on actual buildings. That change of mind came about from three directions. First, it is difficult to get useful images of all aspects of historic buildings - there is always some detail missing, usually a face of the building that hasn't been photographed or drawn, and that infuriates me. Second, most of the real buildings are large and exceed my design criteria - that is, made to a size that will fit into a box that makes shipping most cost effective. Third, sticking to an actual building plan cramps creativity and I like to add little bits here and there.

The first two buildings, shown here, are quite disconnected. First up is the Robinson House from the First Bull Run battlefield. This is as close as I can get it to the photograph of the time that only shows two faces of the building. The other two sides I have created as I imagine them. I made the basic form for this 20+ years ago...I just could never find inspiration to start 'dressing' it.

The James Robinson house photographed 1862

The actual place was built in the 1840s by James Robinson, a free African American. It was in the centre of both the First and Second Battles of Bull Run, sitting at the foot of Henry House Hill. It survived the battles only to be destroyed by arson in 1993.

Second is a barn from Gettysburg. This is very heavily based on the Abraham Trostle barn that stood behind Sickles' salient on 2 July, with a few simplifications. Having determined the actual footprint (using the measure feature of Google Maps) I then scaled that footprint to 75% of the actual size. I have also used a little less brick work than the barn on the battlefield today, because a photograph from the 1890s shows a lot more timber cladding. A model of the Trostle house and some smaller outbuildings is in progress and will follow.

The 1890s photograph of the barn

I considered making the McPherson barn instead, because it was a bit smaller, but that building was built into a slope and, since it is now long gone, there isn't a lot of detail on an accompanying McPherson house. Also, the Trostle barn has a lot more texture, featuring stone, brick and timber surfaces, which makes it much more fun to model.

I started the model by cutting a footprint, 115mm x 190mm, from dense 3mm card. The dashed line in the image below indicates where the cantilevered area will extend over and the area to the right of the solid line will be timbered 'lean to' - I call it a lean to, but it really additional storage and an alternate entrance to the lower level.

Next all the wall pieces were cut from 3mm MDF. Getting the height correct is a tricky thing here. It is all about visual balance. You can't just take the true height and scale it 75% because it will look wrong when figures are put beside it. I chose a lower level height of 35mm and a second level of 40mm. When the roof, with a height of 45mm goes on top, it will have the right tabletop appearance.

The pieces were then assembled on the base and the glue left 24 hours to set hard.

Before the cantilevered section could be assembled and fixed the stable doors had to be sculpted, because it would be impossible to work in this area once the cantilevered section was installed.

The cantilevered section was then built from 3mm card (because for trickier assemblies like this I find card is easier to cut), the underside was textured and then fixed in place.

The final piece of the base structure is the lean to. The walls were cut from MDF and the roof made from 1.5mm card.

Before it was assembled the inside areas had to be textured and painted, again because once assembled, I wasn't going to be able to work in there again.

I then sculpted most of the woodwork on the cantilevered section, the lean to and the main doors.

Next I made the basic shape of the grass ramp from polystyrene that leads up to the main doors, fitted it, then sculpted the stone base. It is a bit steeper than it ought to be because box size limitations means that I can't go any wider than 180 mm and since the footprint starts at 115mm, the remaining 75mm has to rise 35mm, giving a slope of around 45%.

The roof base was cut from MDF, but all other parts cut from heavy weight card the all glued together snd left overnight for the glue to set.

Having constructed the roof piece as a separate removable piece I changed my my mind...it was too difficult to make it fit neatly, so I glued it in place and ends were then sculpted...and what a tedious task the brickwork was!

The shingled roof was made from pieces of 0.5mm balsa wood cut 4mm by 5mm. If I thought doing the brickwork was a tedious task, it pales into insignificance compared to shingling the roof...hundreds, upon hundred, upon hundreds of the little...things...all glued on one at a time...1063(+/-10) of them, plus on the Robinson House there are another 620. The shingles were then given a coat of thinned PVA to soak into the surface of balsa, in part to ensure that it sticks well to the card base and in part to harden the surface. A liberal coating of black undercoat will also help to protect against damage.