My inspiration for this model was an old photo in an early Philadelphia industrial photo book. Since the book was published in 1986 I cannot post the 1915 photo here due to copyright. My model is fairly faithful to the prototype with minor exceptions such as the font style on the front of the building. The fonts were unusual and I do not have easy access to them. This industry was primarily a galvanizing company which apparently has a successor still in existence though in a different location with a more modern business. At the time of the photo the company also had a sideline selling (and maybe making) auto tire filler material.
The prototype photo shows this building against a taller structure on the left hence the unusual form. On the right was a fenced area with a shed apparently part of this business - in any event I will next be building an outside work yard for the right side of my building. There is no interior detail in this building. All windows are commercial products.
As you can see by this 3/4 view the roof is tarpaper style. The shelf detail on the right side is a commercial casting. I painted the structure front (and rear) a cream color as the B&W photo showed the prototype was apparently a light (though not white) color. The right side is unpainted with the wood stained only by my india ink and alcohol mixture as this side adjoins the outside work area and I want that all to look rustic. The prototype photo showed only the front so I was on my own for the rest of the building.
This view shows the rear of the building and the multiple roof slopes. For the rear wall I used a probably now extinct product once made by a company called Acme Visible Records, Inc. It consisted of flexible sheets of thin wood strips covered with paper and was used in filing systems. This is left over from a long ago job when I was a working guy. The "boards" are a scale 12" width and they are already connected into a "wall". I merely added paint and weathering.
Originally I built this structure without windows in the front doors as below.
After I was finished I decided it would look better with the windows in the doors as that was what the prototype had so I removed the doors, modified them, then added them back. Since I mostly use white glue that was not a problem.
For me, the most interesting part of this industry was the Bettern-air business. The product was described as a vulcanized vegetable product like rubber (actually raw rubber came from trees so was effectively a vegetable product). Information on the Bettern-air product was not easy to find. They claimed it was more resilient than rubber and came in 24 inch long "logs" with diameters designed to fit inside the tire casings, replacing inner tubes (another thankfully long gone product). They cautioned the product should not be used at high speeds which they defined as being over 30 MPH. Since the resulting tire was effectively solid "rubber" I am guessing the ride would have been rough - especially with he poor roads of the time. While reading about the vaguely defined material I could not help but wonder if this could have been an early use of Gutta Percha. Since the prototype photo was from 1915 and I model 1939 it is not clear the product would still have been in use during my era - but not impossible. As to inner tubes, I recall riding on moderately long automobile trips in the 1940s with my parents and it was not uncommon to have one or more flat tires during the trip.
My next project will be the work yard beside the building.
No comments:
Post a Comment