Phillips Block architectural pediment decoration

thingiverse

The three-story Richardsonian Romanesque commercial-style building is called the Law Exchange Block or Phillips Block and was built in 1891-1892. Designed by Dow for A.C. Phillips, it first was a mortgage company, then an insurance business. It was Soo Hotel from 1953-1975. Planners initially hoped lawyers would fill the building since it was across the street from the courthouse. This panel is one of several nearly identical, hand-carved copies that decorate the building at the corner of Sixth St. and Main Avenue. I've often walked by it and thought it would be a fun project to model. How I Designed This Back in October 2015 I took about 27 DNG photos of the panel from several angles. I made sure to heavily overlap the photos as a kind of mosaic in two passages so I'd have as much of the surface as possible. I imported the DNGs into Adobe Lightroom and made adjustments to get the best color details. I then exported the photos as TIFFs and imported them into Photoscan and processed them at the 'High' settings. After I exported the finished OBJ into Memento, I trimmed the edges and cleaned the model. Unfortunately, I had to lose much of the wonderful grain and tool work in the panel to make the model small enough to upload here. The bigger forms and details are still intact and it is a great example of late 19th-century stonemason handwork.