As I start to build the first small coal town on my new railroad I've come across an unexpected problem. Other than the traditional color white, I'm not quite sure what other colors to paint my houses. I looking for color ideas for company homes and depressed coal mine era houses from the early part of the 1900's any suggestions or even better, show me some of your houses from this era. I'd like to stay as prototypical as possible, but want some color and intrest as well.
Thanks in advance Don
From what I've read a white house with green shutters was very common. The green paint was made by mixing red, black and yellow paint, so it was more of an olive.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Don,
It is time to visit an art museum. Check out:
Edward Hopper: Pennsylvania Coal Town. 1947
You may find a number of good landscapes of mining towns among Hopper's works as he was drawn to the landscape as seen from the windows of a passenger train.
Have fun,
Kevin
My resources on this subject include: Extracting Appalachia by Geoffrey L. Buckley; Coal Towns by Crandall A. Shifflett; Coal Camps, Tipples and Mines by Ed Wolfe; and several railfanning trips into deep SW Virginia when I lived in Roanoke. My resources are centered on Southern Appalachia, and coal towns up in Pennsylvania or elsewhere may have been different.
Admittedly, most all of the photography is b&w, but the overwhelming majority of coal town photos appear to depict white houses. As company-owned housing, the residents would not be inclined to change much to what the company provided, and the company's interests included limiting costs. Most of these houses were initially white, they seldom got repainted, and due to their locale they soon developed a light grey cast from the soot and grime of the environment. Housing by the Consolidation Coal Company (as shown in Buckley's book) did have a darker colored trim on the door and window frames as well as the cornerposts, but most photos depict solid white. Trim was to a minimum on these homes... no "gingerbread" and no shutters in the photos I worked from. The town of Derby, VA (built 1922-23) operated by the Stonega Company, had all of the miner's homes sided with that "fake brick", sometimes called "depression brick" that was sort of an asphalt shingle material - window trim was white. This was one of the last coal towns built by Stonega. Other towns owned by Stonega appeared to have all white frame homes.
When the coal company stopped operating the "town", many of these homes were sold and are now privately owned. In that time frame, and if you go to such towns now, there is a wide range of color that has been selected by the individual owner. When they were company towns, they were far more similar other than occasional planter-boxes on the porch railings or such as that.
My "miner's cabins" are Campbell farmhouses. I took a sample sheet of scribed wood for my color test, then painted sections of each type of grey paint that I had (and labeling each). Some of the "military" flat greys were also included in the sample. With the side-by-side comparison, I selected Model Master Flat Gull Gray and then the entire house receives a dark wash (very thinned grimey black), insuring that some streaking appears under the window sills and other drip points. I tried to create the image of a home where coal dust and locomotive soot were regularly part of the atmosphere, and which then washed down the shingles and siding in the rain. I also made sure that the porch flooring shows wear and more grime where the traffic is at the doors. The level of weathering you select may depend on how long these company houses were in use in your selected era.
In sum: I think basic white with weathering, very similar houses, add some variance by having things such as rocking chairs on the porch, the lady with the broom, or a dog under the porch. Good luck.
Bill