House that Ron built

Ron Gage didn't want to merely craft a model of the Seneca Falls Historical Society, he wanted spectators to believe he had shrunk the building to 1/12 its size.

Gage, a Branchport-based craftsman, recently completed a 5-by-6 replica of the society house that will be awarded to the winner of a 200-ticket raffle in May 2008. The replica was built with 9,971 clay bricks, a skeleton of Russian birch plywood and curved styrene glass to represent the building's windows.

“It must have cost a fortune to build the house,” Gage said. “The people who built this must have been some master craftsmen.”