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Old 10-18-2017, 01:19 PM
Matt B Matt B is offline
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Travelers Insurance Home Office

Has anyone tried building one of these old models found on the Library of Congress website?

https://www.loc.gov/item/2006677656/
https://www.loc.gov/item/2006677655/

I thought they were pretty interesting because they are so old (1880 & 1881).

I did a little photoshop work to fix the missing pieces which are cut off of the "Home Office" model. The art is hand-drawn lithographs so there are few minor mis-matches on the heights of the walls and the widths of the sides of the chimneys, but otherwise it went together well.

I contacted the Travelers Insurance Company and they sent me this last photo which shows the building in Hartford depicted in the model in 1872. It was a residential building before the company purchased it as an office. Later the building was changed by so many additions and extra floors that you can no longer tell that this house was hiding inside!
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Travelers Insurance Home Office-homeofficeright3qtr-copy.jpg   Travelers Insurance Home Office-homeofficeleft3qtr-copy.jpg   Travelers Insurance Home Office-travelershomeoffice1872.jpg  
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Old 10-18-2017, 01:51 PM
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Vermin_King Vermin_King is offline
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Very nicely done. Did you work from the tiff files? Or the jpeg's?

That was an awful lot of photoshop work, but you still retained the vintage feel
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Old 10-19-2017, 11:20 PM
Matt B Matt B is offline
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I started from the tiff files which are pretty high resolution. For some reason the laser prints ended up a little dark so I wish I'd lightened the colors somewhat. Instead the finished model does have a faded old-timey look to it.
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Old 11-20-2017, 05:32 AM
davetun davetun is offline
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Matt, the model looks great and very old. I want to give it a try. What are the dimensions of your model?
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Old 11-20-2017, 10:55 PM
Matt B Matt B is offline
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I reduced the model to save on storage space for the finished model. To print two sheets on a letter-sized paper I had to squeeze the images down to 47%. At that size the house wasn't too difficult to build except for the tiny stairs which were a bit fussy. The final model is about 3.5" wide x 6" long x 3" high.

The scale of the original isn't marked, but I'd like to figure it out... An archivist at the LOC told me that the original sheets are about 9.5" x 13". Guessing that the man on the steps in the photo is about 5'11" or 6' with his hat on, then the porch columns would be about 10'6" tall. Compared to the printed model where the porch is about 1-1/8" tall... the model is very roughly 1:100 scale. More or less! It seems fairly accurate to the real house seen in the photograph, although the artist left off the picturesque signs on the front and side of the house and only included the sign on the annex in back.
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Old 11-21-2017, 02:14 PM
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Sakrison Sakrison is offline
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Nicely done!
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Old 11-21-2017, 02:26 PM
davetun davetun is offline
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Thanks for the details. Maybe it's my imagination, but the model, especially the landscape around it, looks varnished.
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Old 11-21-2017, 08:03 PM
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ashevilleangler ashevilleangler is offline
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Very nice model Matt. What search terms did you use on the LOC site to find these?

Curt
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Old 11-22-2017, 04:27 PM
lairdre lairdre is offline
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There is also a locomotive on the site.
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Old 11-23-2017, 12:23 PM
Matt B Matt B is offline
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Dave - no varnish, its probably just the way the printout came out too dark and there's a little gloss from the color laserprint. I did try spraying it lightly with a matte finish but that just made it look dusty. Maybe that helps make the model look like its from 1880?

Curt - I found this one mentioned in an old post on the forum, so I didn't do any searching for it. But the librarian at the Library of Congress who answered my questions about the model said that there could be many more paper cutouts there in the boxes of "unprocessed collections" there. I don't live near Washington, but if you have the time and enjoy digging you can go there to take a look! He said:

Quote:
In terms of other materials of the "paper cutout" variety, there are a lot of places we could look but many are in unprocessed collections (Access to Unprocessed Materials - (Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of Congress)). I could do a little looking on your behalf, but there is so much that probably you would need to make a visit to the library and request materials yourself, to do a more thorough search. I included the link above to the information page that itself links to the request form. Below is a list of the places we might look for more material:

processed/digitized material

Cutouts

The donkey party game of putting the tail on the donkey. The funniest novelty of the age

Children's paper dolls and cutouts, 1900-

Petites constructions. Wagons

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2009633698/

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2015651623/

unprocessed materials

(PAGA/PGA - Popular and Applied Graphic Arts) - ephemera in "PAGA 7"

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010631509/

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010651961/

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010632121/

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/95504989/

Random copyright deposits by Class by year starting in 1909.

Random copyright deposits before 1909 - much harder to pin down as all classes are together. It is probably not worth looking for this specific person, but if you decided you wanted to see the variety of paper novelties published in a certain year, then this might be something to look through - I say that without knowing your timeline and ability to visit in person.

There is a large collection of paper ephemera called the Dietrich Hecht Collection of Bilderbogen, and this includes miniature paper theatrical sets and other interesting things, but they are not from the U.S.
Could be a lot to discover if anyone is in DC and has the time to dig thru the archives!

P.S. For those interested in the model, I wrote up a little bio of what I could discover about the artist RT Sperry: http://www.wurlington-bros.com/Works...aldSperry.html
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