Pretty Village buildings and Washington, D. C. at the centre of layout innovation?

Repro of Pretty Village Hotel #5

I did a little digging through the Model Railroader archive to see if I could find anything about John Swartzell. I did, and it's quite interesting.

First, there's an article called History of Model Railroading in the Feb '37 issue that has this to say about Swartzell's layout:

The first model railroad that we know of, built as an operating entity according to present ideas, was the Baltimore & Ohio Junior of John Swartzell, Washington, D. C., the track layout and plan of which is shown on the next page. This road started in 1904 as a tinplate line, and the layout shown dates back as far as 1919. The photo above shows how complete it was in careful planning and execution. O gauge with 1/4" scale was used.

Yeap, and the plan does look like that Shorpy photo. But, more importantly, Swartzell's layout wasn't just any old layout, it was the first one to be what we today take to be a layout: a trackplan that seems realistic and allows for operation like an actual railroad set within a scenic context that also seems real in organization and modelling. Also, its construction dates back to 1919, so it pushes back the date of the first known layout quite a ways. The Jan '89 issue reiterated the importance of Swartzell's layout in the opening essay to Legendary layouts and the men who built them.

Interestingly, in that Feb '37 article no mention is made of Hugh Boutell and the HO layout he built in the '20s, although mention is made of Eric LaNal being an HO pioneer, although LaNal later noted Boutell as having the first HO layout in the US.

So, Swartzell had what was considered the first modern model train layout in the US, and Boutell had the first HO layout. Both were residents of Washington, D. C. at the time of these innovations. And both made use of Pretty Village toy buildings. Admittedly, they were used to fill out the non-railroad and domestic aspects of the layouts, but without them would the layouts have appeared as complete scenes? I'd argue maybe not. They fulfilled a role, albeit a minor one, to help boost those two layouts to iconic status. 

Unfortunately, in the Dec '37 issue, MR ran Mr Swartzell's obituary, noting that he died on 18 November 1937.