Very nice, Fred. You did a fantastic job of capturing the look of both buildings and the surrounding walks and drives.
There are many things to like. For instance, the brickwork does not look uniform between the buildings, the walks and pavement have realistic colors and textures, and there are varied styles and sizes of windows. The way the grass is all straggly on the slope is a nice touch.
Mike
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Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. James Baldwin
Those "bolts" have a name, which for the life of me I can not remember. Basically, steel rods that run through the building to help support the walls. Although I opted out of adding them to the opposite wall.
Hello Fred. Nice work. I believe they are called tie rods / or bars. And quite often have a star or fancy shaped end on the outside of the wall.
That's a really nice detail part you've added, to give the wall some more character.
I am still working on this project, but it's been slow going so far. Next to the phone company is the Kingsdown Mattress factory.
It's huge and I only have about 10" to place it in. Of course I was planning on condensing it anyway but I don't see how I could convincingly do that. So, I've decided to do this building instead.
It's also part of Kingsdown and at one time there was a covered walkway between the two buildings on the second floor. I don't know when they removed it. In looking at the two buildings this one looks to be much older. I'm wondering if it's not the original. Neither building, I don't believe, is being used much anymore, maybe offices. They built a new outlet just outside of town a few years ago. I've been unable to find much in the way of history on the factory. So I'm going with my gut.
Nice detail with the star tie rod ends, Terrell. I did the same thing on a building on my layout to add a bit of interest to a plain, but visible wall.
In the process of doing that I discovered things previously unaware of about them that you might find interesting too:
They mainly were used in two different ways:
One way was to tie opposite walls of a masonry building together to help support them. Some of those stars (and other shapes) were connected to a rod or a cable that spanned the building to a matching end on the opposite wall. Others just had a short rod that tied into the girders or wooden joists of the building instead of spanning all the way to the opposite wall. The stars in the above photo "connect" that way to the floor joists for the building's second floor.
Another use for tie rods and ends was to help stabilize masonry walls or buildings with structural faults. In that situation the rods likely would be placed where needed and not run in nice straight horizontal lines. And if not readily visible to passers by, those might just as well have been scrap pieces of steel rateher than decorative sahpes.
One big problem with tie rods connected to beams was in a fire. The anchored tie rod end often pulled the wall down with it when the beam it connected to burned through and collapsed. Later beams were set loosely into pockets on the inside of a wal. If a beam collapsed in a fire it fell out of the pocket but left the wall intact.
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