Design Title: Grand Victorian

Description:

- “Welcome To The Neighborhood!”

Step back in time with this beautiful Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion. Packed with delightful furniture and bursting with architectural details, this grand home is the perfect display model and conversation starter!

The Model:

Model Main Features:

- Two and a half detailed floors of living space, bursting with furniture, hidden secrets, and more. Remove the roof to access the tower room, attic, second floor, and ground floor.

- An octagonal tower, several ornate porches, inviting bay windows, and asymmetrical facade accented with ornamental details, all characteristic of the Queen Anne building style.

- Ascend the Grand Staircase to the second floor, where you will find a beautifully appointed master bedroom, tower room, and bathroom.

- Two beautiful bird topiaries on the grounds, tended to by the gardener. He might be cross with you if you mess with them though! He tends to be, as a rule, rather ill-mannered.

- Six removable sections for ease of access and play!

- Accessories Galore! From the heavily-laden Dining Room table, set with all the makings of tea (and an enormous Jello mold), to the kitchen where the Chef is preparing a delicious looking cake, to the beautiful shell shaped sink in the bathroom, every piece of furniture is a lovely mini build.

- 11 Minifigures, including Mr. & Mrs. Cushing, The Daughter (with cats) The Butler, The Parlor Maid, The Gardener, The Chef, Mrs Danvers the Housekeeper, Two Painters (Here to touch up the window trim), and The Attic Statue Lady.

This design is very heavily based on several Victorian houses scattered about the country, likely customized from pattern books developed by architect George Franklin Barber (1854 - 1915). Barber marketed his house designs through mail-order catalogs, and his plans were used in houses across all 50 US states and even internationally as far away as the Philippines and Japan.

This building pays tribute to four great Queen Anne Victorian houses in a similar style in particular:

- The C.R. Joy House, Keokuk, Iowa (1897) - Also known as the Grande Anne Bed & Breakfast (Sadly, this magnificent building was destroyed by fire in 2018).

- The Ferris Mansion, Rawlins, Wyoming (1899 - 1903) - A gorgeous 13 bedroom house, previously a bed and breakfast, currently on the market (I wish I could buy it, it’s gorgeous!).

- P.D. Gwaltney Jr. House, Smithfield, Virginia (~1900) - Now a private residence.

- William Houston Craig House, Noblesville, Indiana (1893) - This is the most altered of the Barber designs, and features elements of Romanesque Revival. Currently a business.

The limited palette is always a challenge with these entries. In the real life buildings that inspired this, the windows are all the same color. However, between the various types of parts, none of the window frames all matched up to the same color, except for red. So I had to settle for the dual window frames as a color scheme. I kept the olive and nougat walls of the house from the previous entry, as every color that was available for all the pieces caused me to need to find alternate colors for trim and windows, that were restricted (not all of the parts had the same color and the colors they did have looked outlandish). Similar to my other Victorian entry, the color scheme presented here is the best of what could be built with the limited palette and still look somewhat good. There are no alternative color schemes for this model in the BDP 10 palette that would look good.

A second challenge was the part count. I was trying to keep it as low as possible, which meant sacrificing a couple things that I wanted to include. I originally intended to fully tile the interior, but that would have put it over the 4k. So I had to settle for a few carpets and rugs to break up the floor area. Similarly, I wanted to include two bedrooms, but the increased part count forced me to reduce it to one grand bedroom with a bathroom. Enterprising builders with more parts than I can subdivide it into a bed and breakfast!

- A note, I wanted to create stickers that were similar to the lattice to put on the 1x3x2 windows on the third floor tower to make it more uniform in appearance, but PartDesigner would not cooperate with me, and so while those stickers are in the file, they aren’t in any of the renders. In addition, the palette didn’t include some pieces in black, so the domed roof on the porch and the upper window parts on the tower are green. But that just means, in-story, the minifies are in the middle of a renovation!

This charming, grand mansion pays homage to the many Victorian houses found in many towns and cities to this day. Similarly to the pattern books of old, builders can swap out elements with parts from their own collections, to change the colors and “materials” to better suit their tastes!

* Any background images are my own design, and are not taken from copyrighted material*

Dimensions:

Total Pieces: 3,990

Length: 14.5 in (36.8 cm)
Width: 15.5 in (64.9 cm)
Height: 17.2 in (36.8 cm)