(Or, everything I know about it anyway.)
I can't say that I actually owned a Block City set as a child. My favorite aunt bought a set in 1960 or so to keep my brothers, cousins and me from trying to pummel each other to death, which was our main mode of communication back then. I didn't know then, but I know now, that it was a "Villager" set that we had. Unfortunately, there were between four and about ten of us all trying to play with it at once. The inevitable happened. The last time I saw that set, it was in its box, in a drawer, in the cellar, and all six of its precious clear blocks were gone.
In 2003, I started searching for that wonderful old toy. I had no idea what it was called, but on Google-ing a description of it I came to Jackie's Architectural Pages, which are quite a blast. Now I knew what I was looking for, and decided to search eBay... and sure enough...
In 2007 I was extremely fortunate enough to hear from the daughter-in-law of the late Robert K. Gibbs, the owner of Tri-State Plastic Molding Company (Block City's parent company). Mr. Gibbs and his son began producing Block City in 1952. Tri-State Molding is no longer in existence, but two other companies founded by Mr. Gibbs are still in operation today: Gamco and Gibbs Die Casting. Bob Gibbs passed away in 1983; I hope he knew how much joy he brought us all then—and now!
Block City sets were made by Tri-State Plastic Molding Co. of Henderson, Kentucky USA. There were several differences between the very first sets and subsequent sets:
=
The blocks had round keys on the top instead of square. This held for
all the pieces; blocks both clear and white, lintels, etc. These
"roundies" have been known to show up from time to time in
later sets, but my earliest set (cannister E in the photo above)
consists entirely of roundies.
= The first Block City sets came in boxes (photo at left from a set owned by Ron Williams. Thanks!). Canisters came later. The canister itself was different; instead of opening by means of a string around the top of the canister, like a box of oatmeal, it opened like a map tube. (It may have been wrapped.) There are one or two holes in the top to let air out of the can as you close it.
= There are many differences in the instruction book. Like all the instruction books in my collection, there are no dates. But the cars shown here are late 40s, early 50s types. Notice that the marketing is "for children and adults."
= While the manual mentions that the sets come in various sizes, the sizes are not named, as they would be in older sets.
By at most the late 50s (if anybody out there has any solid dates, please tell me!) several things had changed. The sets acquired names, with bigger sets being given the names of (at the time) bigger cities. Here's the list of contents, in case you want to check that you have a complete set. The prices are circa 1960:
An
ad from 1954
79 Blocks
18 Half
Blocks
2 Door Lintels
2 Doors
11 Coping Strips
3 Side
Windows
2 Corner Windows
1 Corner Window Lintel
Roofing
material (green card stock)
The MIAMIAN (B-300), 152 Pieces, $2.95, canister A in the photo above:
95 Blocks
20 Half
Blocks
2 Door Lintels
2 Doors
11 Coping Strips
3 Side
Windows
2 Corner Windows
1 Corner Window Lintel
12 Gable
Blocks
9 Fence Pieces
1 Fence Gate
Roofing material (green
card stock)
The BEVERLEY HILLS (B-500), 306 Pieces, $4.95, canisters B and E in the photo above:
190 Blocks
40 Half
Blocks
4 Door Lintels
4 Doors
22 Coping Strips
6 Side
Windows
4 Corner Windows
2 Corner Window Lintel
24 Gable
Blocks
1 Garage Door
6 Fence Pieces
2 Fence Gate
Roofing
material (green card stock)
The CHICAGOAN (B-750), 472 Pieces, $7.50, canister C in the photo above:
310 Blocks
65 Half
Blocks
6 Door Lintels
6 Doors
33 Coping Strips
9 Side
Windows
6 Corner Windows
3 Corner Window Lintel
24 Gable
Blocks
1 Garage Door Lintel
1 Garage Door
6 Fence Pieces
2
Fence Gate
Roofing material (green card stock)
The NEW YORKER (B-1500) 950 Pieces, $15.00, canister D in the photo above:
660 Blocks
132 Half
Blocks
48 Gable Blocks
6 Door Lintels
6 Doors
11 Side
Windows
11 Window Lintels
6 Corner Windows
3 Corner
Lintels
2 Picture Windows
2 Picture Window Lintels
11 Trim
Strips (coping)
2 Garage Doors
2 Garage Door Lintels (identical
to picture window lintels)
12 Fence Pieces
4 Fence Gates
3
Stoops
4 Railings
9 Sidewalk Pieces
8 Small Awnings
8
Large Awnings
A special edition of the New Yorker set came in a clear styrene box. I've only ever seen one of these sets.
The
VILLAGER (B-1000) contained 550 pieces and came in a box rather than
a tube. There were several different versions. The Villager set that
I played with growing up came in a rectangular, compartmentalized
box, had white and (a very few) clear blocks and green doors,
windows, etc. Later Villager sets like the one above came in an
uncompartmentalized but trapezoidal box (pictured at left).
There were a lot of changes here. The blocks were now almond or ivory instead of white and doors, windows and copings were either brown or light blue. The shape of the windows was now different; they were double-hung rather than divided light (this was seen in earlier tube-packed sets as well). There were no clear blocks, but there were half-high regular and gable blocks, apparently from the molds used for Brick Town, below.
At
some point (and I don't have any dates, sorry), Block City sets were
also sold in buckets. The smaller bucket has in the photo contained
180 pieces and has (somewhere around here) a yellow lid. The partial
price tag still on it says that this particular one was sold at
Circus World for three dollars and some unknown amount of change. The
medium sized set has 360 pieces and a red lid, and the large 680
pieces and a blue lid. Alas, I no longer have the lids.
Again there are some small changes, this time the addition of red (and possibly green in other sets?) half-sized bricks as shown. There were also red door-lintels in these sets. The drawings on the buckets show the newer type windows, but there were only older windows in them when I got them.
Also available were "Auxiliary Parts," cans of extra blocks and half-blocks (without doors, windows and such), and windows and other parts separately. Originally there were three: a set of 96 blocks; a set of extra doors, coping and windows, and a set of roofing, garage doors and fence. Later on, only two Auxilliary Sets were available. Set No. 1 (canister F) contained 240 blocks. Set No 2 contained 91 pieces including picture windows, double window lintels, kitchen windows, etc. According to the catalog I've got, which dates to about 1960, it sold for $2.95.
Tri-State also produced other building sets.
BRICK
TOWN featured smaller half-high bricks in brick red (naturally), with
windows, doors, copings, etc. in white instead of the commonly found
red or less-common green. Like Block City, it was supposed to be
O-Scale (for use with Lionel and similar trains). Block City and
Brick Town blocks/bricks can be used together and all fit perfectly.
Brick Town is much rarer, though; it took me four years to finally
find a set!
PRESCHOOL BUILDILNG BLOCKS were twice the size of Block City blocks and meant for use by kids who otherwise prefer to swallow things. A canister contained full and half blocks of green, blue, yellow and red. There were no doors or windows, etc. Like Block City and Brick Town, the parts fit together very precisely.
At some point, distribution of the blocks passed from Tri-State Moulding (later Tri-State Molding) to Plastic Block City Inc. of Chicago, Illinois. I know from an ad I've seen that they were in Chicago in 1954 and (presumably through) 1959, but that's all I know. I’ve seen a set labeled “B-1500, the Oak Meadow,” probably a tip of the hat to the moving-to-Suburbia phenomenon that was all the rage at the time. Being a native Brooklynite, I prefer the old name...
The Villager box in the photo above, like all my sets, has no date on it anywhere to be found, but can be dated to 1963 or later due to the fact that a Zip Code has replaced the postal zone numbers found in earlier sets. The address shows a further difference: distribution is once again in Kentucky, this time from Hopkinsville, about 108 km from Henderson. Two new sets were added: B-300 “Suburban” and B-800 “Rolling Hills”
According to the manual that came with the sets, one block (1 inch long) equals a wall 8 inches thick, 16 inches long and 8 inches high. The actual scale is 1:32, rather bigger than the typical O scale of 1:48. In my experience, though, the scale is not consistent throughout the pieces.
The different sets came with various amounts of objects: white full and half blocks, a smaller (though variable) amount of clear full and half blocks), gable blocks, straight and corner lintels, and special pieces which fit over doors. There were also white garage doors in the larger sets, as well as white picket fencing.
Sets came with "front" doors with round tops, "side/back" doors with square tops, regular and corner windows (the corner windows came in two pieces). As one went up in set number, you got more elaborate windows and doors, such as the picture window shown at right. There were also coping strips you could use to finish off the tops of your walls. The New Yorker came with plastic stoops, stoop railings and awnings.
The
"Holy Grail" of Block City set collectors is the set that
comes in a styrene case. In seven years of searching I've only seen
one of these, and I'm very grateful to Ron Williams for sending me
these pictures of his set. One of these days.....
Block City went out of production in the 1970s, a few years, if I remember correctly, after the introduction of Legos. Those of us who had the good fortune to play with both knew that Block City was by far the better toy; the blocks fit well and with a reassuring snap; buildings could be picked up by just about any part and carried around without fear of them falling apart (though a few bricks would fall). The bricks being all the same color, constructions made from them did not jar the eye. Lego sets were cheaper than Block City sets at the time, and the blocks themselves came in bright colors. Both of these probably facts probably weighted heavily into parents' ideas of what their children would prefer and consequently bought for them. Also, Legos were touted as being an "imported, educational" toy, big buzzwords back then.
Too bad...
By the way, this is probably a good place to point you to some sets that look like Block City but aren't: Auburn Bricks and Sta-Lox Bricks. Auburn Bricks were colored bricks with white windows with slight differences from Block City blocks; Sta-Lox look like a direct copy; the parts are identical to Block City. In both cases, the parts are not interchangeable with Block City parts because they are slightly smaller, as if someone had used Block City blocks to make copycat molds. Don't be fooled!
Last Update 19 October 2010