Storybook Buildings, Authors Unknown

A Vast, Private Collection of Tiny Folk-Art Structures

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Few know exactly what to call the collection of Americana that fills Steven Burke and Randy Campbell’s Greek Revival compound.

Mr. Burke, 66, prefers the term American folk art buildings. Those less enamored of the form have been known to refer to the little structures derisively as hobby art.

“Neither common nor rare, they have never taken shape as a category of American artifact,” Mr. Burke conceded.

Whatever your view of their intrinsic value (or lack thereof), it’s hard not to have an emotional reaction when confronted with the 1,200 or so small buildings on display here: the little churches with their soaring steeples, the quaint storefronts, the homespun bowling alleys, Art Deco theaters, Ferris wheels and farmhouses, all of them handmade and many dating to the late 19th century.

“Everybody likes this stuff,” Mr. Burke said.

Some are expertly done, others crudely executed out of repurposed materials like old food tins or uncooked macaroni. Some are meticulous replicas of national monuments; others are creative renderings of familiar building types, like the drugstore whose signage reads “Prescriptions Carefully Confounded.”

Anne-Imelda Radice, executive director of the American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan, said she “flipped” when she first saw the collection, in the book "American Folk Art Buildings,” which Mr. Burke self-published last year.

“It’s like the history of American architecture,” she said, adding that she hopes one day the collection will be exhibited publicly. “People will go crazy over it.”

Oddly enough, it is easier to explain what the collection isn’t than what it is.

There are no dollhouses, birdhouses or architectural models here. All of these structures are purely decorative.

And while you may see a Bauhaus-style residence or a California bungalow, you won’t find any log cabins or outhouses. Both are banned for aesthetic reasons.

Some of the structures may have been built to go with toy train sets, Mr. Burke said, and a few were handmade copies of a mass-produced Lionel building that sold for $3.50 in the 1930s.

But for the vast majority of the collection, there is no record of provenance or anything else – including who made it and when. And there isn’t much information out there on why Americans were impelled to build these little structures, Mr. Burke said. In his book, he speculates based on what little evidence he’s been able to glean that most of the builders were probably male, middle-aged or older, and concentrated on the East Coast and in the Midwest, particularly in states with a history of fine craftsmanship, like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The lack of documentation may explain why this sort of folk art has failed to capture the imagination of collectors, unlike other forms — rare weather vanes, for example, or store signage — that can fetch huge sums at auction. One upside, though, is that collecting it has been relatively easy. Mr. Burke said he picked up some of the modest buildings for less than $5 each and has spent several thousand dollars, at the most, for a particularly distinctive structure. On average, “they were in the $500 range,” he said.

“I bought hundreds on eBay and never had one person bidding against me,” he said, exaggerating slightly. “It’s inexplicable.”

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