As a kid, my favorite show was Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. My favorite part of the show was always the Neighborhood of Make Believe. While I loved how he used the Trolley to get there, I loved the models he used in the kitchen even more. I always wanted my own set.
Neighborhood of Make Believe Instructions
Download a zip file with all the plans
Grandpere Tig1er’s Eiffel Tower
King Friday’s Castle
Cornflake S. Pecially’s Rocking Chair Factory
X The Owl’s & Henrietta Pussycat’s Great Oak Tree
Lady Elaine Fairchilde’s Museum-Go-Round
The Platypus Family’s Mound
Daniel Striped Tiger’s Clock
Trolley (easier)
Trolley (harder)
Trolley’s Track
Background Wall
Printable Ground Pattern
Life-sized Trolley (the same size he uses in his living room.)
The Why and the How
I recently got into paper modeling, aka paper craft. You can download plans for just about any ship in Star Wars, Star Trek, Tron, Doctor Who or NASA. Want a 1966 Batmobile or a Golden Snitch? There are tons of other paper models out there. You download them for free, print them out and make them with an exacto knife and glue. It’s cheaper than plastic models, less smelly and you don’t have to paint them. So I went looking for models of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood of Make Believe. Nobody had made them.
So I looked into making them myself. After a little research, I found the best way was to design them in Google SketchUp (which is free) and then flatten them out using a piece of software called Pepakura (which is only $38.) Note, I found Google SketchUp 7.0 worked best with Pepakura.
So here is what they look like in Google SketchUp:
You can also:
- View them in a Google Earth plugin
- Download the Google SketchUp model
- Download the Google Earth model
Special thanks to Tim at the Neighborhood Archive. His site and his blog were very valuable resources. I highly recommend them to all Mister Rogers Fans.
Also a big shout out to anyone who posted their pictures from WQED’s Tour of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe on Flikr.