A review of Toy Buildings 1880-1980 by Patty Cooper & Dian Zillner

This book was published by Schiffer Publications in 2000, and you might ask why buy a book from the early days of the internet when what’s inside has likely been obsolesced by what’s available on today’s internet? Well, first off, I don’t think the information on the internet is complete, and is no doubt not without errors and inaccuracies of its own. Also, I think books bring structure and thoroughness to a subject that is often beyond the internet's capability. And, I like getting pre-internet and non-internet perspectives on things, not to mention I found a good copy for a low price :-) 

As the title says, it’s filled with photos and information on toy buildings that were sold in the US from 1880 to 1980. It doesn’t cover doll houses, construction sets, or most kits of buildings available for model railroads. I had hoped it would cover Kenner’s Girder & Panel construction sets, as I had one as a child in the ‘60s, but no such luck. Pre-assembled toys sold as children’s toys is more or less it. However, that in itself is a lot, and the book provides a good overview of the field. There are many interesting items covered in its pages, but I’ll mention just one collection that I found particularly interesting: Chapter I, The Village, Town, and City, and in particular, The New Pretty Village play sets.

Pages 10 &11: Cardboard village play sets

Starting in 1897 the McLoughlin Brothers company, a New York publishing company founded in 1858, sold a series of build-them-yourself cardboard miniature building sets under the name The New Pretty Village. These were sets of lithographed cardboard model buildings, sold flat-packed in boxes measuring 8.5” x 11.5” x 1”, that could be easily assembled by children. Folding and interlocking were basically all that was needed to be done to quickly build up a little village. The miniature buildings are quite charming, but take a look at the box art the sets came in. What we see being advertised are layouts; layouts made from McLoughlin buildings of course, but layouts nevertheless. 

Box art for the Engine House Set

The Engine House set in the series was released in 1900, and I found this image of its box art on the internet. I should note that 'engine house' in this case means that the set includes a fire engine house, not an engine house for a railway locomotive. Also, the same box art, or variations on it, were used for the other sets in the series.

You can see the layout is front and centre. It looks like it has been set up on a dining room table, although the faint background painting suggests the table’s location could be somewhere between a dining room and parlour. The layout seems rather sophisticated and embodies a few good design principles that even many of today's model railroad layouts have problems adhering to: the buildings are well made and quite detailed, their positioning seems logical, negative space is skillfully sized and apportioned, and we see several judiciously placed accessories like boats and wagons along with plenty of trees and shrubs. Overall, nothing seems crammed together or out-of-place, and everything looks rather natural. The box’s artist knew a thing or two about layout design as well as making the set as compelling as possible. I suspect an actual layout, arranged by actual children, would look far different. It’s clearly an adult’s view of how a layout should appear, which I guess is to be expected as an adult was likely the one who paid for these things.

As well, there are a few other things I think need noting, or at least numbering as I've done in the photo. 1, In the back of the layout there appears to be a locomotive pulling a boxcar. It isn’t the layout’s focus, which appears to be the hint of a lake, complete with a boathouse, in the front corner pointing directly at the viewer. 2, Those are pieces of buildings waiting to be folded up into structures. The models were comprised of foldable two-wall pieces, instead of the 4 used in the strip method, so they’d fit in the set’s relatively small box. 3, Even in the late 19th century kittens demanded attention regardless of whether you were trying to build a layout :-)

I rather admire that box top layout, but I wonder if formal layouts like this one were something cooked up by marketeers to sell all the things needed to outfit them, or if those same marketeers were just trying to take advantage of something children and adults were already familiar with. I'm thinking the history of non-model railway layouts is intertwined with that of miniature buildings and the rise of railway oriented layouts.