What’s better than a miniature Christmas village? One that looks just like your hometown.
Lindsay Schlichting, 36, of White Bear Lake, is offering, for the first time, three “ginger cottages” made to look exactly like the Fillebrown House, White Bear Town Hall and the White Bear Train Depot.
The replicas, sold downtown through The Medicine Chest gift shop and pharmacy, are what she hopes will be the first of several editions in a collection.
“It’s not just for people that live in White Bear, it’s people that maybe used to live here or graduated from here and they can kind of take a piece of history with them,” she said. “We’re all very excited about it.”
LIGHT BULB MOMENT
Schlichting, the store manager and 20-year employee, hit on the idea in 2018 while at the Minneapolis Mart, a wholesale showroom facility where small businesses can peruse and order products to sell. She came across TRC Designs Inc., a company in Manquin, Va., that builds customized wooden creations, some of which are buildings for Christmas villages.
The company was offering to make a custom sign for one of its Christmas village buildings, but Schlichting wondered if they could customize the whole building. They said they could, but it would cost more, depending on the level of detail.
HISTORICAL ACCURACY
Schlichting consulted with Sara Hanson, executive director of the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society. Together they came up with a few criteria: not too complicated, since every gable and every window added to the expense; something recognizable to the community, and something existing that they could photograph from all sides.
They chose existing buildings rather than long-lost historical sites, because many of those are known only by a single photograph taken from the front. A 3D designer would need to see the whole house to make it authentic.
The train depot on Fourth Street sits on White Bear’s only remaining north-south railroad track and is a recognizable building to residents. It was constructed in 1935 of repurposed bricks from the roundhouse building that once stood two blocks to the south.
The 134-year-old town hall had recently been moved and restored and was still fresh on resident’s minds, making it an obvious choice.
The town hall and depot were pretty simple, but the Fillebrown House, an 1879 lakeside cottage at the corner of Lake and Morehead avenues, had a lot of extras, such as a brick chimney that is rounded at the top,
“The Fillebrown House was questionable,” Hanson said. “They did a really nice job finding that balance, not getting too crazy.”
BUILDING WITH LASERS
Once the choices were made, Schlichting took photos of the buildings and submitted them to Glenn Crider, owner and president of TRC Designs.
He’s been designing since 2010 and credits laser technology with making the hand-crafted replicas affordable.
The Fillebrown House, for example, would have taken 20 hours to cut out by jigsaw to make just one replica before the turn of the century.
Now, he uses computer programs to scale the projects based on the size of an average six-foot, eight-inch door. The program scales it to 1/87th of the size, making the door about one inch tall on the replica.
The company has 13 $23,000 laser machines, which use the computer drawings to cut the wood into layers. Those layers are run through another machine that prints colors onto the wood. Once the art is done, cutting, painting and assembling of one house can take 20 minutes, making it easy to produce several that look exactly alike.
“The results are just striking,” Crider said. “You can literally take one of these little buildings in your hand and stand in front of the actual building and you can’t tell the difference.”
HIDDEN SECRETS INSIDE
The “ginger cottage” division of his company added a “Where’s Waldo” element that really intrigued customers and caused his business to go from one guy in a garage to a 15,000 square-foot production center with clients such as Cracker Barrel, Colonial Williamsburg Historic Area and Coca-Cola.
The outside of the replica is only half the fun. TRC Designs hides “secrets” inside the buildings for people to find, such as a tiny gingerbread man, the model for their logo.
Schlichting was able to pick a few secrets of her own, such as stockings on a fireplace mantel, a train schedule and a voting sign. Once an LED light is placed in the base of the building and turned on, there’s much to discover inside.
GIVING BACK TO HISTORY
The White Bear Lake building replicas range in price from $30 to $50 and are limited editions. Schlichting already has the next building in mind, but declines to tell what it is, keeping it under wraps until next Christmas.
For each replica sold, the store will donate $5 to the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society. Schlichting said people are showing an interest, including one customer, and former resident who relocated to Wisconsin, who bought all three.
“I’ve lived here almost my entire life,” Schlichting said. “I think this is the perfect thing to do in White Bear because we have a lot of history in this town and we have a lot of people who appreciate it. I like being able to support the historical society at the same time.”
