Founder's Favorite – Villages: Dept. 56 and Other Buildings

All of us remember Brian for his love of O’Gauge Trains. However, some of my memories of Brian were of his very a Big collection of Dept 56 buildings. Before he moved from his previous larger home with his layout in his barn, he had over 200 Dept 56 buildings on his layout.  Photos below are of his previous layout in the barn.  

 

His primary collection of village buildings were from Dept 56 which were from Christmas in the City series and North Pole Series. He had the complete Christmas in City Series from Department 56 up to 2006.  Below are photos were of his North Pole and Christmas in City Layout.  

    


Brian started his Department 56 collection with Dickens Village Series in the late 1980’s. That series was made of porcelain unlike the popular Dept 56 Snow Village Series which was made of ceramic. Most of us only probably saw what was on Brian’s layout of his collection of his buildings, but he had displays through out his house on shelves in living room and kitchen area.  The below photos were in Brian's previous home in showing his Dickens Village Collection.  

   

In 2023, he created a couple more displays in his home. One include O’Gauge Forum engine and Santa Fe Passenger Cars within the below photo.



When Brian designed his Christmas in the City layout in his previous home, he was working in Chicago and traveled from his home in Maine. He laid out on paper the exact placement of each building, street block by street block, according to their measurements, so that he could figure out each buildings exact placement on the layout and where it fit best on his layout. Brian was very good at planning before he even constructed his layouts and displays.  Below is another wider view photo of his previous layout in the barn. 



Brian also had other village pieces from other series from Dept 56. On his previous layout in the barn, he had a very large water front. Within his collection of buildings, he had the Seasons Bay Village Series buildings from Department 56.  This is photo of that village series on his layout.



He mentioned in TM Books and Video in 2014, St. Mark’s Cathedral building was his favorite building within the Christmas in the City Collection. He created a separate display within in house for this building in 2023 which is shown in the below photo.  He also added more lighting to the 2 towers on this building to make it stand out more. I wish I asked him if he had other favorite buildings in his collection.

 

In 2019, I took some photos of Christmas village display at Menards and posted them here on forum. One of my photos, had the Menards Church Tower which was in Menards collection called Enchanted Forest. That grabbed Brian’s attention because of stained glass windows in the tower. He sent me email to see if I could get more photos of the building in the store. I went back to the store and provided him more close up photos of the church tower. I was surprised with his interest because I always thought of Brian being solely at Dept 56 Collector. However, he told me, he had place on his layout where he wanted to place the church tower. So, I helped him get it and shipped it to his home.  Below is photo of church tower on his layout.



Because Brian got the church tower from Menards, it sprung a interest in me to get it as well. I know several of you also purchased the Church Tower too after seeing it on Brian’s layout.  It was after that purchase and he made some purchases of Lemax buildings and accessories such lighted Lemax village tree shown below and Santa Clock Tower which he put on his North Pole side of his layout.



Brian also enhanced many of his buildings by adding additional lighting to them. He did a fabulous job of adding a Christmas Tree to the Radio City Music Hall shown in the photo below. Then all the enhancements to Grand Central Terminal made the grand attraction on his layout in my opinion.

 


In honor of Brian and Elizabeth with their creativity in their layout design and beautiful collection of village buildings, let us post photos of your favorite photos of buildings on Brian's layout or of your own favorite buildings on your layout.