Final Touches on the Structure

Today I spent a full day working on the model, and I'm nearly done with all the structural work! I've reassembled the final porch, replaced the trim on the porte-cochere, and even glued the tiny raven back in its rightful place. The last thing I have left to do is glue the porte-cochere to the house, and place and secure the gazebo next to it. I can find no evidence that the gazebo and the porte-cochere were ever actually glued together, which is just highlighting the importance in my mind of a solid base to place the whole model on.

Regarding the base, I can't work on it until the first week of April, so I'll be taking next week off. I'm in a strange in-between stage and I can't proceed until the supplies we've ordered have arrived. But once they do, I'll only have 8 more hours of work left until I am officially and finally done with this project! I can't even begin to express how much fun this has been...

Well, maybe "fun" isn't quite the right word. This has been an extremely educational project, and I have learned how much I truly adore working with material culture and engaging with people over the history of a community. I've gotten much more patient, and I am finally, truly appreciating how important taking the time to start a project well is.

Hours Today: 6:30

Total Hours: 72:00

Picture This...

After 10 days off for spring break, I'm back in the groove at the Regional History Center. Steve Bigolin, a local historian in DeKalb County, recently donated a variety of Haish-related artifacts to the RHC, and I'm sure glad he did! I spent part of my afternoon inspecting the collection of pictures he gave us, which included both interior and exterior shots of the house. Let me tell you, I learned A LOT!

Okay, so. First of all, there was a picture in the group that was clearly the oldest shot of the mansion that exists (to the right, on the top). This shows not a porte-cochere and gazebo, but a sunroom-area with the same upper shape and window motif as the gazebo. It turns out that was actually the original design for the home, which Haish essentially designed himself. However, when the house was built, it was discovered that there was a flaw in the plans and when it rained water would leak into the home. Instead, they built the gazebo out of the remnant of that sunroom, and the shape of both the porte-cochere and the gazebo were taken from the roof. Upon looking even closer, I think I found another detail that was changed between the first and second pictures. The part of the leftmost porch on the bottom picture that juts out horizontally doesn't appear at all on the first picture, as far as I can see. I think that was also a later addition to the house, and that theory seems correct if you consider how unsymmetrical it makes that side of the house. There's really no balance.

 I also went looking for pictures of the back of the house, which is extraordinarily plain in the model. It seemed out-of-character for Mr. Haish to neglect ornamentation on even the section of his house which is off the street, and I was right. It seems that W. Joseph Zack didn't have access to pictures of this angle, since there are two doors and porches missing completely from his model, and there is climbing vegetation affixed to the wall of the model, perhaps to hide that he has no clue what was supposed to be back here... It makes sense that there would be few pictures of this are, given that it was most likely the service entrance, and the doors probably led to the kitchen, but it is interesting nonetheless to see that there are still carved columns and stonework on the back to accent the entrances.

In addition, there were several pictures which depicted the process of tearing down the Haish house in September of 1961. It was jarring for me to see the bits and pieces that I recognized in this state, and it makes me wonder how many people were watching the demolition... There were at least three different perspectives that I could see, but there were no people aside from the workers in any of the shots.

There were also some fabulous detail photographs of things that are on a very small scale in the actual model (and thus appear as little bumps, if at all--I'm not sure that Zack knew what they were if he was working from pictures). 

(left to right) Column detail of a rooster, column detail of Jacob Haish's face, wall detail that appeared next to the shorter side's porch.

Included in the pictures were a few newspaper articles from both the time the house was built and the time the house was demolished. The oldest article, from 1885 and titled "Palace Beautiful," describes the then-newly-completed home as an "original and attractive combination of Medieval, Gothic and Queen Ann style of architecture" which they praised as the newest trend. The latest article, from August 1961, helped elucidate the picture shown below. In advance of the Haish house's demolition, members of the community were allowed to tour the inside of the mansion for one last time. This is, apparently, the source of many interior pictures we still have. Now, this was not the only time the interior was seen. The house was owned by the Lutheran church next door, and they used it to teach Sunday school, but there were some truly delightful pictures of middle-aged Swedish women posing in fromt of fireplaces and by large mirrors, like the one below. 

In addition to all the fun I had with the pictures, I also began to glue together the final porch that's been missing on the house and made a final decision about the house's base. Hopefully I'll finish the porch on Friday, then I'll take a week off and resume the home stretch on this project when my supplies come in at the beginning of April.

Hours Today: 3:30

Total Hours: 65:30

Level Placements

The end is drawing nigh, and I desperately want to get a case for this model ordered before the end of spring break. Cindy isn't sure if it will happen, but if the case does get ordered this semester it will take about 6 weeks to arrive. That means it'll be here by the end of April, which means I'll be finishing up this project during finals week... IF the case gets ordered in the next week. The ones we're looking at are in the realm of $2-4,000. Needless to say, that ain't cheap.

Today, I went over the roof area again with a fine tooth comb, and I glued down various bits of trim that were peeling off/making pests of themselves. I actually ended up taking off and reattaching the one chimney I hadn't messed with yet in this process, since it was most certainly the weakest link. Whoever thought that a loop of scotch tape would be the appropriate way to affix a broken chimney back on the house wasn't thinking clearly.

I also have officially placed the second floor on top of the first. I had some trouble aligning it, since one of the repairs I made to the tower was apparently not affixed properly, but once I addressed that issue everything came together. I actually tacked together the two floors in two different places, one on the corner by the fake climbing plants, and one on the front corner by the porch which I have already attached. This will keep the top layer from shifting while still allowing the level to be removed with a little bit of acetone applied to the place where they were glued.

I'll be taking next week off for spring break, but when I'm back I'm looking forward to the process of replacing the second porch.

Hours Today: 6:30

Total Hours: 62:00

TWO Things Were Finished Today

I'll be honest, after an exhausting weekend the last thing I wanted to do today was sit in the archives and work on the Haish model, but here I am. While I didn't fall asleep, I came uncomfortably close.

The original state of the gazebo.

The gazebo has been completely assembled!

As a reward to myself for making it here, I decided that today would be the day to glue on one of the porches. And I did it! I'd already affixed the columns to the base of the porch, but today I managed to glue the base to the wall and the columns to the roof. The wall section is now adequately supported, and I must say I am very proud. Things are really starting to come together now, to the point where I can show you before-and-after pictures!

When I found it, the porch was completely deconstructed.

Since then, the porch has been completed

Today I also very lightly tacked on the gazebo roof, as well as the tower on the base. On Friday, I'm planning to take some time to properly align and tack the upper floor of the model as well. I'm only gluing very lightly, and in easily accessible places, just in case there is some reason that the pieces need to be removed in the future--either for preservation, replacing a piece or if I just made a mistake that I haven't yet foreseen. I'm planning to be functionally done with the model reconstruction by the time I hit about 75 hours (three weeks from now, more or less, but I don't have my calendar with me), then spend my time here in April working on the base-and-case situation.

Hours Today: 3:30

Total Hours: 55:30

Gazebo Glass

Things are hitting critical mass at this point in my semester, so my day at the Regional History Center was abbreviated by a couple of meetings. However, I did get the chance to put all the glass back in the gazebo today!

The vises are holding panes of plexiglass that I've glued in

Earlier this week I cut pieces of glass for the top edge of the gazebo, and I was excited to glue that in, but I first had to glue in the larger windows on the bottom of the model. Those were all original pieces, and many of them were originally cut a little bit sloppily, so I had to do my best to hide the feathery cracks along the edges. I have a feeling that W. Joseph Zack didn't score his plexiglass as deeply as he should have before breaking it apart.

After reattaching the bottom glass, I moved to the top part. As I was leaving on Monday, I found one surviving piece of the original top glass. Guys, that stuff is paper-thin. I ended up placing it in one of the top windows so it will be clearly visible on display, but it was a nerve-wracking experience to even touch it. I felt like it was going to shatter at any moment!

But anyway, I couldn't do much beyond that due to today's time constraints but I'm excited to get back to work on Monday and achieve 3/4 of my time requirements before spring break!

Hours Today: 3:00

Total Hours: 52:00