RIVERVIEW MANSION
This Queen Anne house was built in 1894 next to a river that runs along side a small middle American town. It was a private home until sold in 1927, then it was converted into a commercial property. From that time to the present it has undergone numerous renovations and alterations of both the structure and the surrounding topography and has housed a variety of businesses.
As a child I lived in this house for 12 years and fell in love with it. As an adult I felt compelled to make a dollhouse replica of it. I was urged by nearly everyone I knew to make a dollhouse of it.
As a child I lived in this house for 12 years and fell in love with it. As an adult I felt compelled to make a dollhouse replica of it. I was urged by nearly everyone I knew to make a dollhouse of it.
The main difficulty was its size. If I used the traditional 1" scale the finished dollhouse would be at least 5 feet by 5 feet not even including any landscaping and stand probably 5 feet tall at the chimney tops. Few people have space for a dollhouse that large. I certainly don't.
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The next issue was its layout. There are no known architectural plans of the place, so I had to draw my own from memory and guesswork because unfortunately I didn't run around the house with a tape measure in my hand when I lived there.
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The real basement is full of nooks and crannies and dark hideaways. The first and second floors each have six rooms, three along each side of a front and back hallway with appropriate staircases, whether used by the 'Upstairs' family or the 'Downstairs' staff. The attic has four usable dormer rooms and three storage rooms under the corner roof ridges.
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Six fireplaces are all on one side of the house in three of the first floor rooms and three of the second floor rooms. Pot Belly or Ben Franklin stoves helped heat any room without a fireplace.
To make my house accurately resemble the real place meant I must also be committed to recreating all the elaborate woodwork, doors, windows and those six fireplaces---each one different.
To make my house accurately resemble the real place meant I must also be committed to recreating all the elaborate woodwork, doors, windows and those six fireplaces---each one different.
I made use of my 3/8" scale conversion chart developed for my Painted Lady to bring the house down to a manageable size. It now measures 30" by 27" including landscaping and is 27" tall. Finally I incorporated all the graphics and pixels I could coax out of my computer's programming to reproduce all the elaborate exterior and interior of the dollhouse.
This image represents the angle of the actual house when it was viewed from the patio of another brick Victorian Italianate style house located higher up on a nearby ridge of land. The owners of the two houses were business partners.
As a child living in the Riverview Mansion I never paid much attention to the furnishings or the quantity there was. I had a bed to sleep in, a sofa to sit on, a table to eat at. What more did I need? What more did the house need? In reality the Victorian Age of society thought every bit of space should have something to show off their wealth and knowledge as collectors.
There aren't any known photos of what the original furnishings looked like or were comprised of, so I had to use my imagination once again to decorate the dollhouse. I know I haven't nearly done justice to the place. |
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All of the furniture and accessory items are made of wood with computer graphic images glued on to give the detail. As you can see there are countless beds, tables, chairs, sofas, cabinets, bookcases, china cupboards along with every other imaginable item of accessory I could think of that the Victorians might have and that I could reproduce in 3/8" scale.
While creating all the furniture and accessories I found out just how much was required to properly furnish a house this size. So for photographic purposes I divided all of it into categories as these images will show.