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19th Century Buildings

General Notes on 19th Century Architecture Books

One warning I have to give is that these books show buildings that were never built or were very special and not typical. If possible, I would use photographs of the neighborhoods that I wanted to reproduce. If that is an upscale neighborhood these books can help with the details. Still they have a wealth of other information that can be useful as well like costs and colors used in the period.

Costs of Building in the 19th Century

It's interesting to note how much inflation there's been over the past 140 years or so. Bicknell's Village Builder gives the building cost for many of the designs represented. They vary widely but $2-$5 a square foot is not a bad guess for higher end dwellings. Contrast this with the $100+ per square foot nowadays, though granted wiring, indoor plumbing, gas and insulation are nice to have. Note that the houses had a tendency to be much smaller than today's McMansions, another nice aspect of 19th Century modeling.

Oddball websites

Endangered Durham NC

Researching and Building Structures – List of Books

Styrene Modelling For scratchbuilding in plastic, I recommend the Evergreen book as a good basic introduction. The people at Evergreen are even nice enough to put most of it on line:

In addition to Google, I have to thank John Nehrich for the excellent RPI site that gave me a great list of books to start with.

Searches used so far: publisher – Bicknell, Comstock, Bicknell & Comstock. AJ Bicknell Titles - Bicknell's

Victorian Building Colors

Some craft paint colors I found that were close matches for the various paint chips I've seen.

Since these are for scale 1:1 houses seen in daylight, they are probably too dark for most layouts, you will have to experiment a bit.

Random notes

> Posted by: "Joseph Karkusiewicz" igoregor007@yahoo.com igoregor007
> 15 lb. felt paper would have been have been used like what Tyvek is
> used for today.

It was also used in heavier weights as cheap roofing material.

> If you go to financially or
> econimically depressed areas, they install rooled roofing the wrong
> way, instead of like a large shingle.

Why's that? I've seen it installed up and down on very shallow roofs but have never figured out why unless it was misinstalled?


> When were floor tiles (as we think of
> them today) invented/used in home applications?

At least 100 years ago. It's called linoleum and was a popular Victorian flooring material glued down with a nasty tar. I've removed it from homes built in the 1900's

> rolled vinyl with coved borders at walls.

Yuck ;) Linoleum is better than vinyl, also more expensive....

> It is true that rolled roofing was used
> in past decades as a quick & cheap roof covering,

Still used today. My shack in Long Beach had it. Since it was on the third layer before the tear off, I think the bottom layer was the original. They lasted about 25 years a piece!

> Today felt paper is stapled to a roof (seldom used on a wall) but 50
> years ago hammer tacker staplers did not exist so small flat head
> roofing nails were used which would quickly rust & the paper dry out
> & crack & pull away from the nail. In those days felt paper was not
> used as a water barrier under other materials. Wood shingles & siding
> was applied directly to the roof or wall.

??? Sorry I've done a fair amount of work on 50-100 year old buildings in southern California and most had tarpaper/building paper under the siding, this could be a regional thing. Matter of fact I can only thing of a couple of exceptions with storage sheds.

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