Another Hopper Contender

Another Hopper?  

Edward Hopper, that is, and once again there's another look-alike that might take its inspiration from Hopper's painting, or perhaps Disneyland Paris.  You be the judge:

Hopper's original, House by the Railroad

Noch's Geisterhaus

Phantom Manor at Disneyland Paris

Allowing that Hopper's house is most likley a pastiche of Second Empire architectural styles and not an exact duplicate of an actual place, we are freed from any chains - ghostly or otherwise - and able to interpret both the painting and these potentially derivative works without prejudice.  Noch's offering appears to be a very close copy of the Phantom Manor, minus the chimneys - an odd omission.

To my eye the Phantom Manor appears more like Hopper's house.  The smaller windows on the Mansard roof in the DL Paris structure are no doubt there to offer a sense of forced perspective, to give the mansion a bit more height and enhance the foreboding feeling, and the porches on the side simply to make the structure busier and more visually interesting.

Disney Imagineers were reportedly inspired by a school building in Carson City, Nevada when they designed the Phantom Manor.  I've seen the Nevada structure in person and in my opinion, no, it's not a match.  There are some similarities, but if it was the inspiration they strayed far from the source in the final product.   

Some out in the world wide web claim the Disney designers were influenced by the Bates Mansion from Psycho.  I doubt that also, and attribute this effect to the public consciousness of that iconic structure; scary house = haunted mansion, similar silhouette, etc.  But if there's any truth in that rumor then Phantom Manor owes its lineage at least in part to Hopper, as his paintings were an inspiration for Hitchcock and his team.

 

 

About that shed...

Last summer I posted about mocking up structures for my NMRBO24 diorama entry.  For reasons I won't elaborate on here I never finished that diorama but I did finish the little shed.  The prototype inspiration was a dilapidated structure down the road in Hopland, California, seen here:

 Now the in-progress shots:

 

Finally the finished structure, complete with hand-painted sign of my own design:

Trademarked logos were not allowed on the diorama entries for the NMRBO contest, so I freelanced a pickle company.  This is a nod to my paternal grandmother, Pearl Rosenbaum Gallimore.  She made pickles, and is reported to have enjoyed drinking the juice from the jar when the pickles were gone.  I don't doubt she did.