Hopper Building

This is a front view that most closely matches the original painting by Hopper.

Here is the version of the painting I used as a template for the model. While I think I've come pretty close, there are two major discrepancies. The most noticeable is the angle of the barber pole. Mine is perfectly vertical while Hopper's leans to the left. I chose not to match this. More subtle is Hopper's angling of one sign hanging from the facade. There are two signs on the left side, one above the leftmost entrance door and another to the left of the third window. Their shadows are of similar length, meaning they both protrude a similar distance from the building. But while Hopper shows us the face of the lower sign, the upper sign appears either very short or edge-on. It's impossible for me to match this.

Due to Hopper's impressionistic choices, I had to create a lot of the detail that's only suggested in the painting.

Mail slots and door bells are probably too up-scale for the second floor apartments in such a down-scale building but I wanted some detail in the ground floor entrance way.

The Whitney Museum admits that Hopper's signs are "illegible". This lack of detail required more creativity on my part.

The awning was one of the more difficult modeling jobs I've done, needing multiple re-splining iterations. The "Patti Powell" flyer in the barber's window was the result of a web search for "vintage flyers".

I'm especially proud of the FTD sign on the florist's door. It started as a web image (see inset) of an old rusty metal sign on the side of a delivery truck which I refurbished in PSPro.

Of all the poorly defined details in the painting, the front of the bar is the worst offender, especially the front wall to the right of the entrance way which is just smudges. I decided a nice piece of commercial artwork would be appropriate. That was also a by-product of my web searches for vintage sign prototypes.

The Hopper Building on my back lot.

A slightly more expansive view of the buildings along the street.