My Observations about the structure of communities

Below is some data you may skip this and read below it.

Along the Delaware Lackawanna & Western in Northern NJ are the following communities.

MP 7.79 Newark Lot Size 25’ by 100’ Square miles 26.11 1955 Population 438,776
MP 11.46 Orange Lot Size 50’ by150’ Square miles 2.20 1955 Population 38,037
MP 17.84 Short Hills Lot Size 171’ by 117’ Square miles 5.21
MP 20.11 Summit Lot Size 60’ by 100’ Square miles 6.05 1955 Population 17,929

Population Density Population divided by Square Miles
Newark 16,805
Orange 17,290
Summit 2,963

The dimensions of some of my houses:
Radford 4071 width 22’ by 51’
Radford 5104 width 25’ 6” by 37’
Radford 5124 width 31’ 6” by 33’
Radford 9016 width 30’ 6” by 34’
Sears 181 width 22’ by 22’ 6”
Chelsa width 28’ by 38’
Gordon width 36’ by 37’

The sizes of houses are determined by the size of the property the architect thinks the house will be placed on. Working Class neighborhoods will have smaller lots then more affluent communities.

Also, older communities will conform more to a street grid pattern after Post World War 2 Newer communities will tend to have streets in a more circular pattern.

The significance of this.
Prior to 1960 in the United States on any given block the houses would be close to the same dimensions they might not be of the same type for example you might have Colonials, Ranch’s, Bungalows but they will tend to all be close to the same width’s and lengths. Not so much now with the development of the “Monster House” movement. This involves demolition of an existing house on a property and replacing it with a larger house. A zoning variance is usually need to do this in most cases this has not been a problem I think because the community will increase its tax revenue on the new house. While this is my opinion, I think that the Monster House movement is about the dollars I also think these houses are ugly and hideous in my opinion. Your takeaway should be that prior to 1955 American Communities will have a certain symmetry about them structures will tend to be similar in length and width a function of zoning in that community. This means if you know the dimensions of a house on a street and you go into a plan book and find a house similar to the one you wish to model if you use the known dimensions you won’t be far off. Commercial properties will not conform to this as multiple lots are purchased for such buildings. Next time your in an airplane check this out look at the town below near a major urban area see if it is a grid pattern look at the houses are the older? Circular patterns are they more modern?

This makes a lot of sense. In the town I grew up in, the monster-houses arrived just as I was moving away in 1999. A neighbor across the street took their ca. 1945 Cape Cod style house, a simple 3 bedroom affair, knocked it down and built a 16-room monster house. Just as you said here, a variance was needed to get permission to build the monster. Played out across Massachusetts, the more affluent (or effluent if you want to think of it that way) towns saw this same widespread movement. Towns such as Concord, Bedford, Lexington, and even lowly Woburn, saw working class neighborhoods leveled with monster houses taking their place. Replaced were the standard ranches, capes, garrisons, and even some ca. 1960's - 1970's split levels all the while displacing longtime residents due to higher property taxes they could no longer afford.

Where I live now, there are still working class neighborhoods just as you describe. They can be found in areas off of Main Street heading north and in the annexed town (1880's) of Bradford.

Streets off of Main Street heading north on the Haverhill side of the Merrimack River:

https://goo.gl/maps/AasrhCAbvRic11KC8

These houses were built in the 1880's through the 1920's then later in the 1940's-50's during the post war period. There are some exceptions with a few much older homes due to these being the "foundation" homes in the neighborhoods that were once farms that were carved up for housing. These houses are Sears and Brooks Skinner homes. There are the classic Craftsman, Sears Cape Cods, Colonial Revival, and so on up the streets.

Here's a view of Sheridan Street:

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.789...4!1sNIhgJEwr3VL_LENNldr-ZA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Hamilton Ave.
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.789...36.200615&pitch=0&thumbfov=100!7i13312!8i6656


Off of South Main Street in Bradford on the south side of the Merrimack River:

https://goo.gl/maps/b6jKbkNsxBTM3Azf7

Note these houses are in tight neighborhoods with most houses on 1/8 or 1/4 acre lots. Most of these homes, with a few exceptions are built between 1900-1930. They are mostly Colonial Revival with some gorgeous Craftsman homes as well. There's one on the corner of Revere Street and Lamoille Ave.

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.761...4!1sUAzokysmgyhzBsYYTOq66g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

A walk down Lamoille Ave reveals a row of Craftsman style homes and more Sears homes.

Here's a view of Revere and Haseltine, my piano teacher's house to be exact.
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.761...4!1spKS_rk-_83w4yu3C4cZ2cQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Her house was built around 1910. Her dad bought it new.

The history of these houses is rather simple. The city was once a large manufacturing center with the largest industry being shoes and leather goods with the city gaining the title as the Queen Heal City because of the large number of women's shoes being made here. All of this vaporized rather suddenly around 1972 when everything suddenly went under, or was off-shored.

The houses shown here belonged to the workers and management for the mills and factories. The Victorian houses, mostly two-families today, belonged to the management, while the smaller houses belonged to the clerks and workers.

The mill owners lived off of Mill Street, located not too far from where I live, and was named that due to the mill owners building there mansion up there.

Here's a view of Saltonstall Road.

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.784...4!1sjM4QMvxYQwVmwlGJSnRCAQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

As you duly noted, their lots are substantially bigger with some having really huge lots. Today many of these houses are still single family homes that are owned by the families.

Arlington Street neighborhood.
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.7807429,-71.0710582,3a,75y,122.37h,88.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1szQjh5WOT_XszXyoj3HmxFw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

A fine example of a mill owner's house.
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.780...4!1safDfVvu_qEgoGGm3YUUNgQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

This one belongs to my dad's uncle's family. They once owned the Ornstein Heel and Shoe Company. The company closed in 1972 due to its inability to compete with imports. My uncle worked for his cousin as a cutter and had a house on Main Street.

Is that gentrification? It happens in cities, too. The poor are pushed out with nowhere to go because they can't afford the new housing. But can a developer really evict people from their houses to raze them and build more expensive houses? Doesn't seem fair, but money talks. Everything in the business world revolves around profit.

If cities issued building permits based upon the requirement that replacement housing, for the poor, would be built according to specs, then the result becomes positive.

Single family housing in Trainz suffers from version 2004 painting where pure white is used and no pure white existed until relatively recently. 1900 thru 1950 saw little effort to reduce aerosol pollutants thus white, and light colored house, quickly lost their luster. This was further exasperated by the lack of paints of the quality we have today. It was a somewhat dismal period in the East Coast industrial communities. Routes from the era should reflect the effects of railroad smoke and industrial discharges.

I have stumbled on two works that are of interest:

A Field Guide to American Houses by Virgina Savage McAlester. This book has photo's and shows how houses were placed on lots. Circular Streets actually emerged in the 1920s Auto Suburbs.
Attached Garages are interesting. I suspect that you did not see attached stables because no one wanted the horses stinking up the house my opinion. For modelers I reccomend this book.

Crabgrass Frontier by Kenneth T. Jackson. This is mainly a narrative history of suburban development and of less use for actually modeling a community.

There is a concept called the "Walking City" This is that certain neighborhoods developed around manufacturing plants for example in Buffalo, New York Mobil originally Standard Oil Company of New York SOCONY had a refinery near the Buffalo River. It turns out right across the street was a residential neighborhood. The plant workers lived by the plant walked to work with their lunch pails and then there were local stores nearby to buy provisions. For a lot of people this concept might be difficult to grasp. I can't think of a worse neighbor then an oil refinery they smell of rotten sulphur.

Anyhow many houses on a street were zoned to be a certain distance from that street so in the older neighborhoods you want conformity in that regard.

As I go through these books myself I am looking to build the most common houses. Again while it might not be possible to model a community exactly as it was it is definitely doable to model the feel of it. One of my books said attached garages were rare before 1931.

Sanborn Maps and Valuation Maps

[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Tahoma,Calibri,Geneva,sans-serif]https://www.trainzportal.com/mytrainz/view_media_post?media_post_id=157482

Enclosed is a sample of a Valuation Map has published by the Erie Lackawanna Railroad Historical Society. These maps give you a track layout and how the surrounding property lots are subdivided.
Your Local Library should have the Sanborn Maps for your area in their map room. Many Libraries participate in the online reference to Sanborn Maps if that is the case you can view them for various years throughout the United States

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HSSRAIL said:

Sanborn Maps and Valuation Maps

https://www.trainzportal.com/mytrainz/view_media_post?media_post_id=157482

Enclosed is a sample of a Valuation Map has published by the Erie Lackawanna Railroad Historical Society. These maps give you a track layout and how the surrounding property lots are subdivided.
Your Local Library should have the Sanborn Maps for your area in their map room. Many Libraries participate in the online reference to Sanborn Maps if that is the case you can view them for various years throughout the United States

Click to expand...

We used to be able to get these online, but now that's impossible due to some company profiting over the old maps. Massachusetts, however, has a GIS portal that lists the property values, lots sizes, and owners of all property in Massachusetts. There's also a bunch of older maps too and transportation maps available showing abandoned as well as extant lines. It would be nice if this was available nationwide.

RR/Transit maps:

http://maps.massgis.state.ma.us/map...fined|undefined|undefined|undefined|undefined

Property maps.
https://www.mass.gov/service-details/massachusetts-interactive-property-map

rwk said:

Is that gentrification? It happens in cities, too. The poor are pushed out with nowhere to go because they can't afford the new housing. But can a developer really evict people from their houses to raze them and build more expensive houses? Doesn't seem fair, but money talks. Everything in the business world revolves around profit.

Click to expand...

The people aren't evicted. What happens is someone sells their house to someone whose wealthy. The house being sold is a ca. 1940's Cape Cod style house with 3 bedrooms and sits on a simple 1/2 acre lot. In my old neighborhood, for example, that lot was a half-acre. The house sells for $250K at the time, inexpensive by today's standards especially for that area, but high for the elderly couple living there. They're selling because their property taxes have skyrocketed due to the similar thing happening around them. A tax base that used to $2,200 a year has tripled to $6,800 a year as happened to my parents in 1999.

This small 3 bedroom cape with a recently renovated interior is not "good enough" for the new owners. The house is leveled and in its place is a house that more than overshadows anything around. The new house is valued at $750,000 and its value drives up the neighborhood value, causing more people to leave because their taxes go up yet again. The unfortunate part is the people that are driven away are the longtime residents. These people moved in 50 years before in many cases. Their houses were paid for, and most are retired and now on pensions and other fixed incomes. Due to the skyrocketing property taxes, they can no longer afford to keep their homes and have to sell out.

In Andover, where I lived, my parents bought their house in 1971 for $26,000 and sold it for $250K in 1999. The house was a ca. 1874 farmhouse on 3/4 acre lot, one of the largest lots on the street, and the 2nd house built on the street. Being as old as it was, it still needed a lot of renovations and then some. By 1999, the property taxes had tripled and they could no longer afford to stay there. The same property just sold for $1.5 million a few years ago! Today the tax rate is out of sight with the taxes on most properties in that town around $12K to 18K per year. Every time I drive through the town on my way to an appointment, I see more and more houses for sale. I guess people can't afford to live there anymore.

On the west side of town in West Andover, the lots are bigger due to the open space on what was once farmland. These houses were big and expensive to begin with, and in the 1990's the huge McMansions started showing up. The lots there are 2 acres minimum and the houses took up, figuratively, 1-7/8th's acres of the 2 acre lots. When I say this, I'm not kidding. It's truly disgusting seeing these huge houses on tiny parcels of land, which in reality they are not small lots, it's just the houses are huge.

March 26th

Also keep in mind when looking at a house that it may have received renovations overtime. For example converting a porch into a sunroom. Or adding Porch screens or adding wings sometimes people try adding story's. Sometimes they don't consult an engineer and there are cases where people have added an extra story to a house and it collapsed. Other renovations are replacement of siding, windows and doors. So it may be someone has uploaded the house you live in to the download station but it is not recognized because your house was remodelled.

Another resource for seeing how an area used to look is :

[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Tahoma,Calibri,Geneva,sans-serif]https://www.historicaerials.com/

The resolution is not good enough to say exactly what kind of structure is present but it is useful in giving the general character of the area. Most communities have historical associations which have pictures of the town in the past.

There is Arcadia Publishing at www.arcadiapublishing.com which has published for kindle and in print Community Studies.

Also wealthy people even in the past frequently hired an architect and their houses were not built from plan books. Although it might be possible to find something close in a plan book to the house you wish to model.

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I have a number of sets of those books and know the author of the North Adams set. They're a great resource for information. I gave the Haverhill and Bradford set to my piano teacher. She was born in 1920 and recognized many of the buildings and areas which have sadly gone through urban destruction, I mean urban renewal.

White Paint

Page 1,505 Audells Carpenter & Builders Guide No 4 1939

The mixed paints are mixed by the manufacturer, and as a good vehicle is expensive, the buyer is taking a chance on getting paint with a poor subsitute for the vehcile resulting in a poor job which will not last. Accordingly Mix your own paint.

Outside Painting--On the best jobs no ready mixed paint will be used. Get the best white lead ground in 8% oil. A gallon of paint will cover from 400-600 feet of surface. Page 1516

It was recommended that houses be washed periodically to lengthen the life of a paint job.

Insofar as White Houses being to White I myself have a dilemma. Prior to the auto age people tended to take pride in the outside appearance of their homes. In working class neighborhoods under the six day week twelve hour day probably not so much. Most of the White paint jobs were more like a cream color which actually hides dirt. Insofar as houses near like the Bethlehem Steel Company's Lackawanna Plant in Buffalo which had 10 Blast furnaces I don't think anybody painted their house white mainly dark colors. I tend to paint my houses with the impression that they were kept up washed and painted every 8 to 10 years. Even houses near railroad lines should theoretically not be dirty as the railroads had smoke ordinances and they were not supposed to make black smoke from their steam engines. Neighbors were known to complain to the company if the wash hanging outside got dirty. Your thoughts

Here's some websites you might find useful for making buildings. These all have plans from which you can take measurements.

http://historicaldesigns.com/index.php?action=index

http://antiquehomestyle.com/index.htm

https://houseplansandmore.com/index.aspx

http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/index.htm

May I ask a simple question? Why do so many structures in Trainz towns have pink roofs? On a lot of routes it's typical to see 50% of homes in a town have a pink roof. I know there are pinkish tile roofs in some areas, but the world is not 50% pink roofs. Curious. (or - why so many assets with pink roofs?)

1611mac said:

May I ask a simple question? Why do so many structures in Trainz towns have pink roofs? On a lot of routes it's typical to see 50% of homes in a town have a pink roof. I know there are pinkish tile roofs in some areas, but the world is not 50% pink roofs. Curious. (or - why so many assets with pink roofs?)

Click to expand...

Probably because they use a texture to represent the tiled roofs?

Yes, I understand that but my point is that as you travel around the country (USA) in general very few roofs are tile. I have no issue with pink roofs in the appropriate areas but I see large quantities of pink roofs everyone. It makes me feel like the towns are "storybook" towns and not towns in the USA.