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| Some Gieringer models; Snippet from Model Builder Jan/Feb '38 |
The pandemic rolls on and continues to inflict a wide range of changes on society well beyond the horrible toll of human suffering and death. Even something as innocuous as Roadside America has fallen victim.
In November 2020 Roadside America in Pennsylvania closed its doors for good, and its owners announced they were auctioning off everything, miniatures and all. The owners had been looking for a buyer for a couple of years prior to its closing, but pandemic restrictions eventually finished it off, ending an 85 year run. Reports indicate the January 2021 auction was a great success, but a bittersweet one for the owners, who are relatives of Roadside America’s founder, Laurence Gieringer.
It’s weird how I found out about this. I was reading my way through a stack of Railroad Model Craftsmans from 1997, and in December’s Collector consist …column Keith Wills had an interesting story about Roadside America, its founder, and how after 50 years of wanting to visit the place he eventually did. After reading the column I was off to the internet to find out more about Roadside America, and that’s when I learnt of its recent closing.
But what really grabbed me in that column was the story of how Mr. Gieringer got interested in miniature buildings and layouts. It seemed that he followed the path from folk art miniature builder to serious hobbyist. It was the discussion of Mr. Gieringer’s roots that helped make this clear to me. Here’s what Wills has to say,
Laurence Gieringer started creating model buildings as a boy by carving and cutting wood. As carpenter and painter, his skills gave him freedom to develop his hobby further, often inspired by actual buildings in the area where he lived. Not having formal training, he settled on three-eights inch scale in which to make them.
Laurence built everything from wood, found and given, particularly important during the Depression. If one were to upend a building, one might see pieces of old yardsticks and other found materials. He was given a shipment of furniture considered unsalable, and the wood in it ended cut up into miniature buildings. He handmade parts en masse, spending time turning out roofing shingles, framed windows and railings for future use. His approach to modelling was decades in advance of his time. When most hobbyists in scale or tinplate were content to have lithographed cardboard, wood-braced buildings on their layouts, Gieringer was constructing his with lapped siding, individually shingled roofs, framed windows; not printed, and laboriously made faux stained glass. Many of his buildings have interiors and reveal an attention to detail missing from that era, not to be found until recent decades.
Mr. Gieringer’s memorial at findagrave.com seems to confirm Wills’ thoughts,
Laurence T. Gieringer (13 Jun 1893 - 13 Jan 1963)
At the turn of the century, near Reading, Pennsylvania, Laurence Gieringer, age 5, often looked out of his bedroom window at night, gazing toward nearby Neversink Mountain. Crowning the mountain was the Highland Hotel with lights that twinkled and beckoned. To little Laurence, the glittering white building looked like something from a fairy tale, small enough to pick up and carry home. One day, the boy decided to do just that. Leaving the safety of his backyard, he set off through the woods to find the mountain top and the "toy" building. The inevitable happened. Laurence became bewildered, then completely lost. After a frightening night alone in the woods, he was found by anxious searchers the next morning. Despite this experience, the boy was to retain his interest in "toy" houses for the rest of his life.
Going to work at age 16, Laurence, after a start in the printing trade, became a carpenter and painter, work which he felt gave more scope to his particular talents. Always he continued to work on his hobby of making model buildings. Skillfully, he whittled at blocks of wood, fashioning them to his dream of a miniature village … a church … bridges … a horse-drawn carriage … stables … farmhouses. He knew nothing of drawing to scale, yet arbitrarily established a size of 3/8" to the foot, which he adhered to in all his modeling.
And Mr. Gieringer’s granddaughter, Dolores Heinsohn, also backs this up in an interview with Penn Live / Patriot-News on how he got started on his life’s work,
“In 1903, when he was about nine years old, him and his brother were chased out of the house, as young boys, because they were underfoot in the kitchen - they were stealing the dough that my great grandmother was baking,” Dolores said. “They climbed up on top of the mountain at Mount Penn, near the [Reading Pagoda]. And they looked over the city of Reading. And they hatched this idea of building miniature buildings.”
As he grew older and honed his skills, Gieringer began to craft everything to scale — 3/8th of an inch to one foot - and continued making models as a hobby on his off hours. It was a hobby that Gieringer would continue for all of his life, Dolores said, and one that he made public following his victory in a Christmas contest published in the Reading Eagle in 1935.
Wills also mentions in his column that Mr. Gieringer published a number of articles in Lionel’s Model Builder magazine in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Several were about how to construct model buildings. This caught my attention. It looks like Mr. Gieringer is the only person I’ve found so far who clearly got started by practicing that old miniature buildings hobby - I dare say folk art - and migrated to the more modern hobby of model railroading, bringing the full force of the skills he had developed and offering them as examples to follow in the pages of a popular model railroading magazine. If you’re a longtime reader here you know I think E. L. Moore also took the folk art to model railroading path, but I don’t have as strong a link, other than his early practice was more characteristic of the folk art sensibility than model railroading. This is all speculation on my part, and with speculation being a foundational principle of the internet, all my ramblings need to be taken with a grain-of-salt :-)
Anyway, Vince did some great work and found a list of Mr. Gieringer’s Model Builder publications (As always though, I take responsibility for the content here, so if you have any issues with or questions about the list, please let me know):
1938
Jan / Feb: 35 Year Old City
1941
Oct: World’s Largest Model Railroad
1945
Jan: How to Make Trees, Part 1
Feb: How to Make Trees, Part 2
Mar: How to Make Foot Bridges
Oct: Down by the Old Grist Mill
Nov: Modern Store Block
Dec: Model Foundry
1946
Jan: Rock Work
Apr: Electric Shop
Sep: Gas Station
Oct: Vacation Whistle Stop
Nov: Down on the Farm
Dec: Old Red Barn
1947
Jan: Chicken on Dutch Rye
Feb: Cart & Wagon Wheels
Mar: Wagon and Chassis
Sep: Express and Huckster Wagons
It isn’t an extensive publication list, but the models he shows, and the techniques he discusses, are high quality, as Keith Wills mentioned.
As far as I can tell, Mr. Gieringer didn’t publish in Model Railroader or Railroad Model Craftsman, but ads in MR indicate he did publish some articles in Toy Trains magazine, which I haven’t yet seen.
It’s another piece in the puzzle about model railroading's roots. The search continues!
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