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Buildings of Hazzard


HossC

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Regular visitors may have noticed that I haven't posted much artwork here lately. Hopefully this should explain why.

The artwork below started out as a re-creation of the Hazzard Theater sign for the Signs of Hazzard thread, but grew into a monster project encompassing a whole block of Hazzard Square. After completing the theater sign I added some background and got carried away. I've tried to be as accurate as possible, with some details only clearly visble in a single episode. I also had to allow for the fact that some of the details change constantly, so what you see here may not exist together exactly like this in any single episode. I originally wanted to put more detail into varying the brickwork, but 'Seth M Berley's', for example, has somewhere in the region of 5000 bricks, so I settled for uniformity instead. For clarity (and to make my life easier) I have not attempted any interiors. I know that some episodes show gold lettering on the upper windows of some buildings, but I couldn't get any screengrabs where this text was readable. I can add them if anyone knows what they say.

HSquare4.jpg

Here they are at a larger size:

HSquare1.jpg

HSquare2.jpg

HSquare3.jpg

I do plan to do more of these, but may do something else in-between just for variety.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

So the wall above my desk, between a bookcase and a doorway, has been a big blank space for a couple of years. Well check it out now:

DSCF6603a.jpg

It's hard to tell the scale just from the pic but it's really pretty big. The row of buildings is over 5' long (62" to be exact, the shortest building being exactly 1' high), printed out on 16 sheets. Now I can look up and see Hazzard Square every day :)

Big thanks to Hoss for creating the images in the first place, and for kindly sending the files along. Let me tell you, when you scale them up this big you can really see the detail that went into them. One of the doors even has tiny office hours written on it!

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Hoss, that's awesome! You continue to blow our doors off with your talent. ldhenson, great idea there too!

I'm wondering if I could print these out and do something similar with a wall display, with a shelf and one of my General Lee die-cast cars. If I did it to scale it would look pretty cool, like the General being parked in town.

Or instead of parked, show the General Lee on two wheels. Anyway it'd be fun!

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  • 4 months later...
  • 1 month later...

Well, it's been a while since I've added to this thread. When Mark B. joined HazzardNet recently and started posting pictures of his 1:25 scale model of Cooter's we started discussing details of the building. I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to draw it. It was great to have someone to bounce ideas off, and I'd especially like to thank Mark for clarifying the detailing of the ironwork on top of Cooter's. Just like when I did Hazzard Theatre, I got carried away and ending up doing Rhuebottom's and O'Connor Paint Supply as well.

The appearance is mainly modeled on the way the buildings looked in season 1 when they were quite clean, but other details have been added from later seasons where I liked them better eg. twin gas pumps, the green soda box and the roofed section between Cooter's and Rhuebottom's. The tree is not designed by me - it's a piece of clipart that I modified to suit. In later seasons the 'Hazzard Garage' and 'Office' signs were moved lower and the license plates moved to beside the office door. Rhuebottom's became tatty quite early on, the main sign changed in later seasons, and the awnings on both Rhuebottom's and O'Connor's changed as well. I didn't bother modeling Carol's Jewelry (including the bushes) because it only appears in one episode. I didn't have any screengrabs that show the height of the pole supporting O'Connor's, so I guessed (I'm sure the whole thing is visible at some point). I've spelt Rhuebottom's two different ways because that's the way it appears in the show!. There are some screengrabs of this era in the Hazzard Square thread.

CootersRhuebottoms_Final.jpg

Here's a couple of enlarged views:

Cooters_Final.jpg

Rhuebottoms_Final.jpg

Finally, here's a close-up to show some of the detail. The '5' on the Maryland license plate matches one of the other plates inside Cooter's door, but doesn't seem to match the typeface of any real plates. I'm guessing these were props made for the show.

CootersCloseup_Final.jpg

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Just to follow up my comment about the license plate typefaces, here's a picture of a couple of the plates from the show. The first is from inside Cooter's door. I've placed it next to a genuine Louisiana 'Pelican' plate. The '5' is obviously different, and the '6' and '9' are slightly different as well. Additionally, the word 'Louisiana' slopes slightly upwards and the holes are in different places.

The Georgia plates (above and below) also seems to have been made for the show. The nearest real plate I can find is one from 1969, but that has '19' and '69' at either end of 'Peach State'. The real text is white not gold, and again the typeface differs slightly from the genuine plate (the plate below is from the wall of the Boar's Nest, but is the same as the one outside Cooter's apart from the number).

Old license plates are freely available at fairly cheap prices, so is there a legal reason why they created prop plates, or is this just the normal way they do it for TV shows/movies?.

DukesPlates.jpg

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Given that DOH was very much an 'in house' studio production, the odds are very high that those plates were culled from the Warner Bros. prop department. Given that the evidince you show points to them being fake anyway, I'd bet that's where they came from. My personal experience with prop plates is that they are most often vacuformed plastic and not always 'exactly' like real ones in design- not for any particular reason, but because the makers only bother to get things 'close enough' for film.

M

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Khee Khee! I've learned to never argue with the Supreme Superior Commander but if we go around calling Hoss Meadowmufn things could get a might confusing around here....especially at the annual Christmas party if Brian drinks too much egg nog and starts getting everybody mixed up again.

That would get confusing, wouldn't it? I guess we need to come up with another genius moniker for Hoss then.

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speaking of Hazzard buildings...i know there is a thread or two about the original Duke farm in GA. But, has anyone counted or have a guess to how many different farms they used in the series? I know there is an "exterior" set they used on a few epsiodes, but it seems to me that as the series went on -- I'm currently watching the show on CMT -- the true exterior of the Duke's farm changed almost every season. The farm in the last season (porch and exterior) looks like the Duke's got a capital improvement loan from JD to spruce the place up!!

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Hoss, these new folks don't know you that well.....

"genius" doesn't descibe you....

you're much smarter than that.....

in fact you're so smart they should invent a new word that describes someone smarter than a genius....

since you're so smart we'll let you invent the word.

At least everyone spelt it correctly, unlike this recent post on FailBook (that's not our Brian is it?):

funny-facebook-fails-genius-he-is.jpg

If I visit the US, should I borrow the line supposedly said by Oscar Wilde at Customs Control in New York in 1882?:

"I have nothing to declare but my genius." :)

Joking aside, thanks for the comments.

speaking of Hazzard buildings...i know there is a thread or two about the original Duke farm in GA. But, has anyone counted or have a guess to how many different farms they used in the series? I know there is an "exterior" set they used on a few epsiodes, but it seems to me that as the series went on -- I'm currently watching the show on CMT -- the true exterior of the Duke's farm changed almost every season. The farm in the last season (porch and exterior) looks like the Duke's got a capital improvement loan from JD to spruce the place up!!

You've probably read the thread about the demolition of the original Duke Farm in GA earlier this year (I know Roger bought a few pieces). For the California shows there were at least three or four different locations used as they moved between ranches. The Boar's Nest also moved around a similar amount.

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As long as we are gathered here at the Mutual Admiration Society for HossC, let me throw in my 2 shillings; I congradulate HossC for recongizing that the visuals and settings of DOH consist of more than just The General Lee (Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the GL!) and that these sets deserve at least a fraction of the detailed attention that the cars get.

Mark

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  • 3 weeks later...

Here are three of the buildings down the road between the bank and the drug store. After finishing Cooter's truck recently, I decided it was time to finish this one too. The barber's shopfront was done a while back, as was the sign for Rick's. I just needed some screengrabs of the upper floor.

Many of the buildings in Hazzard Square change appearance, and these are no exception. Both the barber's and Rick's have awnings in some episodes, and both lose at least some of their window signage as time goes on. I've included the ladder on the side of Rick's, although this is only present when the plot demands it. The building on the right that I've portrayed as Victors Bail Bonds is pretty tatty when first seen. It gets rebuilt in later seasons, but I decided to clean up the original. Because the top and right hand side are rarely seen, they are virtually blank.

AlleyShops.jpg

Here's a close-up of the barber's ...

AlleyShops2.jpg

... and Rick's Pool Room And Lounge ...

AlleyShops3.jpg

... and finally Victors Bail Bonds. There was a brighly colored, but unreadable sign in the window in one of the grabs I had, so I copied the 'For Sale' sign that appeared in the same building in later seasons.

AlleyShops4.jpg

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