Well I haven't updated my old forum post on the 1/25 scale Fireball Roberts 57 Ford model I was building. Good reason too considering the weather just hasn't been right for me to mix up my clear and clear coat the body to continue with the construction. But this post wont be revolving around that, I am already in the planning stages of the next great build that will take some time to come up with.

As many will know, I have a old `56 Fairlane that I bought a 1/25 scale 1956 Ford Victoria AMT kit in the retro box. I still haven't gotten a email from Star Models for them having the 1956 Club Sedan resin body being back in stock. But my goal was to use the Club Sedan body and scribe the back doors on the body and shave the handles off the Victoria body to make a replica of my Town Sedan. I will be doing this twice how ever, both will be used in a diorama and I already completed the design stage for the first diorama using this car which will be the old wooden two car shed that the car resided in till I brought the car home.

Below is a crude MS Paint drawing in scale of the layout of the 2 car shed.


That is a fairly simple diorama to build as I got literally hundreds of pictures of the car sitting in the shed to know the layout of the shed. I also spent a lot of time in the shed as well and know the layout by memory too.

But that still isn't the modeling on a 2.0 scale level that prompted this post. This diorama I am planning right now could be considered the holy grail as a rough estimation of the diorama base for part 1 of the 2 part diorama will be 50.4" x 43.2" in dimensions. I would know a more exact dimensions of the base once my digging turns up some blueprints to make my life easier vs guessing dimensions of the structure from google earth which isn't very precise.

As I know for a fact my `56 came from Ivy Russell Ford in May or April 1956. The original service policy has a typed up date for delivery as May 12, 1956 and I do not know if that was a pick up date for when my grandfather picked the car up or if that was just simply when the car arrived at the dealership. I don't even know if the car was a special order by him and May 12, 1956 is the actual receive date. In any case I found years ago this photo of Ivy Russell Ford taken some time in late 1957 or early 1958 showing off the new 1958 Ford model year cars.


This helps with my diorama as the photograph which is the only one I ever have been able to find and is probably the only one that exists does help me out quite a bit. It shows me the color scheme of the building, I can also make out one interior wall that appears to be aligned with the last glass block window above the awning on the right side. This has me leading to the assumption to the far left in the divot area where more glass blocks are is maybe yet another wall dividing up a huge show room. Not sure on the exact layout as this photo makes it very hard to go by, which is why I am on a mission to locate some blueprints or even just exterior dimensions of the building to make my life a bit easier for this project.

As many can figure by now I am going to build the dealership where my '56 was sold from as a diorama and place my '56 model on the lot as well. I got many ideas for this scene that will be listed further down after I put out my ideas for the diorama base and building itself.

First off I went to google earth there are two aerial photos from this time period, the first one is dated Dec 31, 1943 but is listed as 1944 on google earth.


This grainy photo from the 1940`s shows the building in what I believe is its original configuration from when it was built in 1936. This here in the 1940`s would be when it was the Henke & Pillot grocery store shown here below taken some time in the early 1940s of the same building.


This building is clearly just a square bland box which bears nothing in resemblance to the art deco style of the Ivy Russel dealership. For the dealership its hit and miss on information. ive seen it stated that Ivy Russell didn't move in till the late 1950s but I wouldn't call 1956 as late 1950s and my 1956 came from this dealership as evident by my original warranty card.

While using google earth some more the next oldest aerial image is dated Dec 31, 1952 listed as a 1953 image.


This image here you can clearly make out the divot on the west side of the building indicating by Dec 31, 1952 the building had already received its art deco remodeling. Now I do not know if the art deco remodeling happened when the dealership took over the building as they would have had to put in large walls of glass for their show room or if the remodeling was done and then they came in and just knocked down some walls and replaced them with glass. I am inclined to believe that the art deco remodeling was done with the soul purpose of turning the old square Henke and Pillot Grocery store into Ivy Russel Ford.

Now I have lucked out because the building is still standing to this day with its original art deco styling intact. How ever the building is a bit larger now as in the late 1970`s the building was added onto making it larger when it became Eckards Drug Store.



This is the building how it stands today. You can clearly see via the roof the original shape of the building before the addition was made in the 1970`s. I am greatful they left it this obvious as it helps me out greatly for the diorama.

Below first is a MS Paint drawing I did in scale of a few different ideas for making a diorama. I couldn't build the whole dealership as the whole lot the dealership sits on is 263.19ft x 147.93ft and when you scale it down to 1/25 scale the diorama base would be 10.53ft x 5.92ft. Not something I could display for sure.

To make it easy to understand whats going on in this crude drawing in paint, the green line represents the size of the lot itself. 1 dot = 1 foot in this scale. The black lines represent the building itself in scale in its proper orientation on the lot. The Red line represents my initial idea for the diorama which was to show the whole width of the dealership while omitting the back side. This would be 6.2ft x 4.8ft in dimensions which was still too large. The dark blue line represents me giving up some parking lot spacing to try and shrink the diorama down in size. This diorama would be 6.2ft x 3.2ft in dimensions. Next we have the orange line, this is a diamond which will only show case the yellow portion of the dealership. This would encase the most of the dealership and its art deco styling but also minimizing the size. This would be 3.2ft x 3.2ft. While it is a good size the problem I would run into is the small triangle shape I would have of the actual street itself which would in my opinion be weird. I do like the size cause it would allow me to modify a F100 kit into a F600 truck and put the truck on the lot making a car delivery. But I just cant fathom what I could use that small sliver of street for to have a reason for having it there. Lastly we get to the pink line, this is the final draft of the diamond shaped base which reduced the size down to 3.2ft x 2.2ft. This is quite compact and it maintains all I would want as well as maintaining the customer parking out front of the show room. Also allows me to display up to nine 1/25 scale cars in the parking lot along with the cars in the show room.

Enter a new problem how ever. The right triangle of the dealership means the show room would have a unnatural wall to close it off which would also limit the vehicles I could put inside the show room.

This is where day 2 of brain storming comes in on this project and now I made the switch to using google earth image to do my planning roughly.


The red line represents where the original building ended at. The black lines is what didn't exist before the mid to late 1970`s. The yellow line represents the triangle that I originally planned on using for the diorama. The light blue line is the wall ending the show room as I initially thought. But noticing the glass blocks are aligned with the wall at the back of the show room on the right side of the old image I assume it would be the same for the left side which would put the wall at the dark blue line instead. This means a small sliver of the show room would be seen and I couldn't fathom how to end the diorama without having a huge wall running at an angle across the show room floor. Only option would be to leave the back open which presents new problems especially if I want to photograph the diorama and make it appear life like.

This next image is me playing around with how I could build the service bay area of the dealership and make a modular diorama where the two pieces could be slid together to create a larger diorama together. They could also be displayed separately as stand alone dioramas. Problem is with this diamond shaped base it makes building the sevice bay area even more complex to make them merge seamlessly without a weird base.




So enter option 2 that I came up with last night. This base would be 50.4" x 43.2" or 4.2ft x 3.6ft which is big but not so large it couldn't be displayed on a table or desk. The length can also be made longer to move the internal show room wall to where I believe it should be at. That shouldn't add more than 7 inches tops to the length.


This new layout while a bit larger than my compact design is better as it uses the internal wall at the back to be a cut off point which can serve as a hinged access panel as well as a latching mechanism for the roof to make swapping the cars in the show room out easy. I assume the wall is dividing up office space for the salesmen as well as for storage rooms for the paperwork and accessories. Might even have been like a service desk for buying/order accessory parts or supplies for your new vehicle. With this I can still model those areas just model them in a way that they have frosted privacy glass to provide a good positive stop for the model itself. I will take liberty in this aspect as I do not know how the interior was laid out so I will go with what my gut says unless I am able to find proper blueprints that shows the layout of the exterior and interior of the building.

Now onto the ideas I have they are as follows for the scene.

Idea #1 : Use parking spots in front of dealership show room as parking for new cars. Place lower end vehicles here while higher end vehicles such as the skyliner, sunliner, crown Victoria, and thunderbird are on display in the showroom. This would result in my '56 Fairlane being parked visible out in the front as it wouldn't have been considered a high end model.

Idea #2 : Use parking spots in front of dealership as customer parking, this will allow flexibility in year/make/model to be placed in front of the show room. Place new model Fords in the show room. This would give me two options. Can place my '56 in front as a customer as in the car was already bought. Or place it in the show room along with a Thunderbird, a Crown Victoria, and other '56 Ford models that can fit in the show room area.

Idea #3 : This will use Idea #1 except for my '56 Fairlane model would not be displayed on the showroom diorama base. This would have my vehicle on the service department diorama that would interconnect with the show room base. Idea here would be to have a F600 truck with car hauler attached unloading four new deliveries to the dealership. This would have three of the vehicles covered in cloth like was done in transit with my '56 model uncovered or partially uncovered fixing to be unloaded from the hauler trailer.

Idea #4 : Same as Idea #1 but taking a piece of Idea #3 for the service department diorama using a F600 truck unloading new vehicles. I am partial to this, that way the show room diorama has my vehicle in it and the service department would have its own diorama which is more than just simply doing service jobs on vehicles they are receiving a new shipment of cars. It also drives home the point of where this diorama is taking place considering how the delivery trucks were done as shown in the photo below.




So this is what I have right now and don't know when I will be updating this with some actual progress as this is still in the development stage for me. Main point of posting this is to get this out there and maybe get some ideas that I haven't thought of from others that might make some tweaks to the final product. Right now I am heavily focused on trying to source some blueprints of this building or try to find out the name of the designer of the art deco remodeling. that might be enough even to find blueprints mislabeled even that are for this building.

 

Made a little progress in my research.

First off found a bit more about the back history of the structure which is not what I originally thought.

First the building was designed by Stayton Nunn-Milton McGinty as an A-B-C Grocery store in 1936.

Second the A-B-C Grocery chain was bought in 1941 by the Henke and Pillot Grocery chain.

The remodeling happened some time by 1950 as the following sanborn fire map updated in 1950 shows the art deco remodeling of the building.

Ivy Russell Ford did not come to be at this location till 1955. Which means for the 1956 model year fords were the first fords sold at this location. Maybe 1955 year models as well as I don't have a specific date of when they came here just 1955 with 1954 being the last year henke and pilot was at this location.

The following Sanborn Firemap helps some but not entirely. It does show the layout but it shows the layout of the building as a grocery store with one interior wall segment. I do not know what kind of interior changes were made in 1955 when it was converted into a dealership. There would have to have been garage doors installed to allow access of vehicles into the interior of the building for the show room floor. It also means that the showroom floor could not have been fully walled off either unless a access door was provided for the cars to enter the showroom floor.

The one thing it does help with is it states 18ft which I assume is the height. but now the question is, is the 18ft a 18ft height from slab to ceiling or was it 18ft height from slab to the roof itself.