Inspiration comes from odd places at times. A couple of weeks ago as I was watching #BreakingNews about a horrible police situation in Philadelphia (in which 6 brave officers were wounded) I noticed the interesting architecture in the affected neighborhood. I managed to take a screen shot on my phone from the live local broadcast showing the neighborhood with officers taking cover behind every corner as the barricaded suspect continued to open fire. And, ta-da, I was inspired!

I had been looking for some ideas for some structures to stand against the wall in my Lego city, structures that weren’t the full depth of a 32×32 baseplate.  I liked the facade details of these rowhouses and started playing around with some ideas in Studio while I patiently waited on more Bricklink orders to arrive for the two MOCs I currently have under construction (see prior Blog post).

I started my design, as I often do, not on the ground level.  I started with the top level. I was interested in how the cornice and decorative parapets could be interpreted in Lego. So this is what I came up with initially.

A couple of observations – I really like the 1×2 brick with masonry profile, but the color offerings of that brick becomes very limiting when you are trying to pair it with curved, inverted curved and arched pieces. Also note the original roofing color was black, which I felt was more true the to actual buildings. Unfortunately, Lego doesn’t offer the 33 degree double inverted 3×3 slope part in Black – a part which was critical to the lower roof. So, I ended up changing all the roofing elements to Dark Bluish Grey (DBG). It still looks good, but from a color palette standpoint, I would have preferred to use Black for the roofing parts. You will also notice I originally wanted to use Dark Tan for the house on the left, but alas, a number of the necessary parts were only available in Tan, so Tan it is.

So once I was somewhat satisfied with some ideas for the top, I went back and started building the model from the ground up. Overall I envisioned these two Row Houses as being part of a larger block.  The Dark Red brick row house is on a corner, the Tan brick row house would have originally had another row house adjacent, but since has been demolished. This concept explains the variations in the roof profile on the lower roof and the upper cornice. When I actually build these models for my city, they will have a road baseplate in front which will provide room for a sidewalk  and streetscape in front of both units.

When working on the design from the ground up, I liked the variations in the facades you see in the original reference photo. Obviously different owners had made modifications to the units over the years, like enclosing the front porch to create extra living space. Also, as mentioned above, I intend to use these at the back of my city layout, against a wall. I didn’t see the need to provide any interior details (though I did add drapes) nor the need to have a finished rear of the buildings. Though I didn’t have a finished rear, I did enclose it with Light Bluish Grey panels – an OCD detail on my behalf.

Once I finished my first draft, I shared it on the Amazing Lego Modular Buildings page on Facebook for comments and ideas. I ended up with lots of great comments and a few ideas I incorporated into the “final” design. I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this design as well (see comment section below). For those who are interested, I will be producing Instructions for this model which I will make available for a small fee on this site in the near future.

I apologize if this blog post has been a little long and rambling. It resembles my design process – start in the middle and build your way to the top and the bottom. Then change it a few times until it is almost right… almost.

Build on, Todd@Belmontbricks.com.