GETS 2003 - Whyte Avenue Buildings

Nalug's display at the 2003 GETS show will include an expanded "Whyte Avenue" area this year. So, I've gotten busy and built some buildings to go into it. My goal was twofold. One was to clone the Old Strathcona firehall. The other was to produce buildings that are appropriate for the early 1900's era, along Whyte Avenue. Whyte Avenue is a section of 82 Ave, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada that has maintained a lot of its old-time charm, both because of happenstance, and because the city has made a deliberate choice to do that.

For these pictures, I've put my set of buildings all in a row, and photographed them as a set.

Group Shots #1

Firehall end

Brothel end

Top view

Group Shots #2

Back view

Eye view from brothel end

Eye view from firehall end

Individual Shots

Brothel

Blue store

White and brown stores

Firehall front

Closeups

Dress shop right window

Dress shop left window

Blue store entrance closeup

Brothel closeup

I was somewhat restricted when doing the firehall, in terms of the size I could build it. I started out with it about 5 studs wider, and several studs longer. This gave me better proportions for the front, and much better proportions for the left-hand (visible) side. But, I was told that to fit on our GETS 2003 show layout, it had to fit onto an extra-large grey baseplate. So, it got squished. This makes the windows on the left side in particular look wrong. Perhaps one day I'll rebuild it bigger again, and it will look better. I took quite a few pictures of details on the real thing, but there are parts I can't see because of other buildings in the area, and the lack of a higher vantage point. The stuff on the rear is pretty close to reality, although I don't know what some of it is for, like the little door above the regular door in the middle of the back.

Firehall Miscellaneous

Firehall rear

Roof of firehall

The real fire hall

Other Stuff

A building bee at my place used my bricks to build a retaining wall and slope around one end and partially around both ends of the transfer table, to hide the vertical gap.

My final piece this year was a small hill with pool.