Steinberg on Ocean Blvd.

I spent some time fiddling with placing Steinberg's along Ocean Blvd. One thing's clear: I need to outfit the store with some sort of interior given that huge expanse of glass on the facade.  

Returning to '54 and '62

Lawrence Ave & Markham Rd looking west; 1962

I've been studying the aerial photos of the Lawrence Ave and Markham Rd area quite closely since I posted those photos of the Steinberg site. Here are the full page scans of the area from Bonis' A History of Scarborough.

The red arrow points to the street I grew up on. Unfortunately my parent's house isn't in the photo, and is way down the street, off the photo's right edge. To get to Cedarbrae plaza, where Steinberg's was located, we would walk to the end of the street where the red arrow is, continue through the farmers field, which was by then abandoned, and then jaywalk across Lawrence Ave. 

Lawrence Ave & Markham Rd looking west; 1954

The blue arrows mark lines of interesting trees, most of which appear to have been chopped down by '62. If you look closely at the '62 picture you can see a few that were spared. In the '54 picture my street hadn't yet been built. I think construction on my parent's house didn't finish until '58, the year they moved in. 

These two pictures are astonishing. In '54 it appeared to be a pleasant rural area with what looks like many small working farms and fields. Just 8 years later it's a classic mid 20th century automobile-oriented suburb. Even so, for our family it was effectively what is today called a '15 minute neighbourhood', which the city of Ottawa defines as,

A 15-minute neighbourhood is a neighbourhood where you can walk to get to the grocery store, where you can easily walk to frequent transit, and where children can walk safely to school.

My mother didn't drive, so we walked to the grocery stores, as well as the other stores in Cedarbrae and Cedar Heights plazas, which might have sometimes taken 20 or 25 minutes. There were TTC bus stops which my father used to get to work. And I walked to school. Not to mention we walked to the library, bowling alley, pool, and skating rink. So, although it was designed to be automobile-oriented, at that time we used it as an ersatz 15-minute neighbourhood. If it only had streetcar service :-)

Steinberg's site then and then

Steinberg's site in 1962 - I've marked Steinberg's in the red box

Soon after the bicycle another new modern means of Transportation came to Scarborough, the electric railway. In 1898 the Toronto Railway Company laid its rails along the Kingston Road from Blantyre Avenue to the Hunt Club, and in 1901 the service was extended to the Halfway House. Then in 1904, work was begun on an extension of the line to West Hill, and was completed the following year by the successor of the Toronto Railway Company, The Toronto and York Radial Company; and more and more people of southern Scarborough began to travel to and from the city on the trolley cars.

Future site of Steinberg's circa1954

The above quote is from Robert R. Bonis' 1965 book, A History of Scarborough. Vince and I were chatting about old trolley routes in Scarborough, and I was interested to see if there was anything in that book about them. It turns out the book had a surprise: aerial photos of the Steinberg's site in 1962 and 1954. In both pictures the 'vertical' road to the right is Lawrence Avenue, and the 'horizontal' road along the bottom is Markham Road. In both images I only snipped the area around Steinberg's and Cedarbrae Plaza. In 1954 the area was rural farmland as far as the eye could see, but by 1962, just 8 years later, it was a vast suburb with more-or-less no remaining traces of its rural roots. The speed of development was amazing. And those trolleys? Long gone before either of those photos were taken.

Steinberg's is open for business

Open for business? Not really, but major construction is finished.

I had to make 2 more signs: one for the glass front wall, and another for the left side wall. Both were made using the same technique used on the right side wall sign. 

One thing I should note is that I've used logos from different periods in the company's corporate history. Also, there seems to be an involved story about the use of Steinberg and Steinberg's, and once again, I haven't been consistent. I've mixed and matched for this model. The main sign on the front glass wall is what I recall as the sign used on this store at Cedarbrae Plaza in the late '60s and early '70s, and it's based on one of the reference photos I showed in the series first post. The side wall side is cut from an image found on the internet which seemed suitable for the model's side walls. So the message is: don't take my use of signage as historically accurate and consistent.

Take care if you decide to have a go with the sign construction method I've used. Over there is a little discussed puncture wound caused by paying too much attention to the record player and not enough to the business at hand :-) so to speak.

But, once the blood flow was staunched, and work continued, the end results weren't too bad.

One thing I should have mentioned earlier in the series was that to give the box that forms the main structure better rigidity, I glued on the roof and cut openings in the floor. Later I'll add some sort of photos or graphics for the interior as well as some lights. 

The last step was to fill the front planter with some ground foam bushes from Woodland Scenics. White glue was painted in the planter, and applied to the bushes, to get the plantings to stay in place. I don't remember the prototype ever being this lush and bursting with plants. It was usually pretty sparse and grim with the main crop being cigarette butts. 

And that's that. This building wasn't located by a streetcar line, although there were a couple of TTC bus stops nearby along Lawrence Avenue. But, it's not looking too bad along Ocean Boulevard.

End wall sign for Steinberg's

It looks like the prototype had just 2 signs: one on the front glass wall facing the main parking lot, and one on the side wall facing the auxiliary parking. I don't recall the other sidewall having a sign because that wall was connected to the plaza. However, since my model is free-standing, it should have signs on both sidewalls. Now that I've figured out how to do one, the second shouldn't be too difficult.

I downloaded an image from the internet that looked fairly close to the partial picture I have of the end wall sign. The image was then sized, printed out, and glued to a piece of Bristol board. Each letter was then cut out and glued to some thin styrene support pieces. The letters are a little rough, but aren't too bad and I'm happy with the overall impression.  

Although there've been some tedious sub-assemblies to this project, as each has finished I've gotten a good vibe off the model as it has developed. 

Pyramid power

It took a bit of doing, but the decorative pyramid roof is done.

There are 9 little pyramids, and each was cut from a piece of acid-free 3x5 card.

I drew a template for a pyramid side using what I could remember of high school geometry, and used it to lay out a pyramid such that, when cut out, it could be folded and glued into the final shape. As well, holes were punched into two sides to accept a pair of those thin verticals from the window wall. Turns out I screwed up punching those holes on the first batch and had to make a second set with correctly placed holes. Yes, I can hear some of you saying, an automated paper cutter would have done this job in a flash. Indeed.

But, after all that, here's the roof before installation. The pyramids are held on to the substrate with combination of transfer tape and Weld Bond.

It took a couple of attempts, but eventually, with enough careful prodding and persuading, as well as a little hole adjustment, all those verticals fit into the corresponding roof holes. Glue was applied to the tops of the white posts to hold them to the roof substrate. Once everything was in place, I put my ancient steel level on top to hold the whole thing together while the glued dried. 

Up next: signs, plants, and some little details.

Cross braces, end walls, and a planter

The title says just about everything that needs to be said: end walls were added to the main glass window wall, cross braces were glued to the main support posts and the white wall, and a planter that runs the entire length of the model was attached to the bottom of the window wall. The next job is the most complex part of this project: installing the upside-down pyramid roof that's above the main window wall. I'm going to need a lot of coffee to get through it :-) Back in October I thought I could build this model in a couple of weeks. I was crazy. This is one of the most challenging projects I've attempted. The MCM facade on this thing is just crazy. Yikes! I've used the word crazy twice. I hope that's not an omen. Stay tuned.

Steinberg's facade

The 'glass' front wall is now attached to the building. That simple sentence obscures a rather involved construction process. I should have taken some in-process photos, but I was so focused on the work that it didn't cross my mind. 

As soon as the glue was solid enough to flip the building to its normal position I had a strong feeling that it looked right even though I can see a lot of flubs and evilness that must be corrected. But, I was glad to have that feeling. I hope I have the same when the upside-down pyramid roof is installed. 

Steinberg store box

The previous post didn't clearly show the box that makes up the basic structure of the store, so I thought I'd post a couple of more informative pictures.

I decided to try modelling the wall surfaces by attaching various types of papers. The front wall is 140 lb Arches coarse watercolour paper, the sides are built up from construction paper, and the back wall is standard brick paper.

The colours and textures are all speculation on my part. The front wall should be a multi-coloured brick with maybe 60% white bricks in the mix, but I couldn't replicate that to my satisfaction, so I just I just modelled it as a textured white surface. Likewise, the side walls appear to have been panelled as shown, but I can't find a colour reference, so I went with something that seemed ok. 

On the model the main features are the glass facade, its MCM roof, and the retro Steinberg signs, so I think it's ok for the surfacing of the supporting walls to be a secondary concern.

Steinberg's return

With the lower Ocean Blvd module back on the layout, I've moved the parts for the Steinberg supermarket back to the layout table.

So far I've glued finish papers to the basic structure (a little hard to see in the photo I must admit), attached the main support columns to the glass front (which is a piece of 0.010" clear plastic), and have started on the decorative roof that rests on those columns (it's that long cardboard piece at the bottom of the photo). That roof is an iconic mid-20th century design with its upside-down pyramids at the top of the columns. I did a bit of experimenting to figure out how to make those pyramids. In the end I figured they'll each be folded from a suitably drawn cardboard template.

I had hopes that I could build this model in a week or two of spare time. I've failed on that one already :-) One of my impossible model building related resolutions for the new year will be to figure out how I can build model buildings much faster than is my custom. I have a lot I want to build, and improved speed would be great.

Starting Steinberg

I thought I'd make a start on the easy part of the Steinberg supermarket and begin the facade later.

The box is built from 5mm thick, acid-free foamboard held together with Weldbond glue. The floor is cut from a scrap of matte board. The slightly shorter inner wall is for supporting a removable roof. 

I consider this project to be Moorian in that I'm drawing inspiration from a place I frequented when quite young that's left a positive impression. It isn't the use of balsa to build models of places from 1900 that puts something in the Moorian tradition, but expressing what you must express with fairly readily available materials.

Steinberg Stylized

I've been thinking about Toronto's mid-century grocery stores, and the one that figures most predominately in my mind is the Steinberg at Cedarbrae Mall in Scarborough. It's where my parents did our grocery shopping on Friday evenings, and although long gone, its elegant shape lives on in my memory.

No, no streetcar ever stopped at this place. It was a purely automobile oriented suburban mall, but that facade could easily front a long street serviced by streetcars like Ocean Boulevard on my layout.

The only pictures I could find on the internet were these two. Fifty years ago I never thought one day I'd be contemplating an HO scale model, so I don't have any photos of my own :-) I don't recall the iconography on the leftmost black-and-white image, but I do recall that in the colour image.

I spent a long time studying those pictures, and then did some drawings of an approximation of the facade. Of the two in the top image, the lower one is a little too compressed, which makes the building a little too stubby. The top one seems to capture the overall shape a bit better. Although, it'll be a long model at 535mm. I want to see if I can build this thing fast, and not my usual weeks that stretch into months.