A miniature replica of the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site in Indianapolis sits completed inside the workshop of Greenwood resident Jimmy Landers. Landers spent nearly a year working on the model, featuring 48,000 hand-laid bricks, 5,000 slate shingles and cast architectural flourishes to match Harrison’s historic house.
RYAN TRARES | DAILY JOURNAL
The marvel is in the detail.
Every hand-laid brick-red blocks, every curly-cue roofing brackets, every carved porch post speaks to the passion Jimmy Landers has for authenticity and for his art.
Tiny shutters are installed behind miniature panes of glass. Porch lights and chandeliers glow with real electricity. Bits of checkerboard tile serve as an entrance way.
Landers’ most recent creation is an intricate model of the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site, the Indianapolis home where the 23th President of the United States lived before and after leaving Washington D.C. Work on the structure took nearly a year, as the Greenwood resident individually laid 48,000 bricks, put on 5,000 slate shingles, attached ornate Italianate architectural flourishes and wired it with electricity.
“I paid a lot of attention to the details on this, with it being a historical piece,” he said.
With the project complete, Landers is hoping to get the piece into the hands of a historical institution to put on display.
“I want everyone to see it,” he said.
A master of miniatures, Landers has crafted incredibly lifelike models for years, ranging from a Victorian doll house to a 1909 general store to a 1891 Tudor home, with a wrap-around veranda.
His entrance into the world of miniatures world started in 2006. A longtime regional manager for an international environmental corporation, the Greenwood resident had retired and was looking for new adventures and projects to fill his time.
His wife had a longstanding hobby of collecting dollhouses, and she asked him to create one for her. Construction came along slowly, but after a year, it was finished, and Landers moved on to his next project.
Since that time, Landers has expanded his focus into different architectural styles for more than 25 finished pieces. His Helmerich House was a Victorian with a wide and spacious front porch, second-story balcony and incredibly ornate rooms complete with era-appropriate furnishings. The house features eight custom-designed, coal-burning lighted fireplaces, each installed into a marble or granite hearth.
The most stunning aspect is the foyer, with its cherry wood paneling and staircase, working chandeliers with hand-blown glass globes and a stained-glass panel above.
His two-story Linville library features a curved metal staircase, more than 4,000 mini books on display and a vaulted stained-glass skylight. An 1800s hardware store contains miniature bags of floor, pottery, canned goods and everything else people would have needed around the turn of the 20th century.
Landers has earned a reputation around the world as a master of miniatures, earning coverage in hobbyist magazines and local publications over the years. One of his miniatures is on display inside the Johnson County Museum of History.
A stroke suffered in November 2021 impacted Landers’ speech, but he has retained his talent for working with miniatures. Through most of 2022, he completed a 1830 Colonial mansion.
Last year, Landers was offered the opportunity to create a reproduction of the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site. Organizers from the Museum of Miniature Houses in Carmel, who were familiar with Landers’ work, contacted him about working on a centerpiece project for their new addition.
“They asked me if I’d build it, and I said I could,” he said.
The Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site is the former home of Harrison, as well as his family, before and after becoming president. The restored National Historic Landmark shares the legacy of Indiana’s only President and First Lady Caroline Harrison through nearly 11,000 curated artifacts.
This was the first Italianate structure he had worked on.
“Victorian and Colonial — that was pretty much the areas I were most comfortable with,” he said.
Landers started work on the Benjamin Harrison house in May 2023. He ordered specially made miniature bricks from Stacey’s Miniature Masonry, a company in England he had worked with in the past. Tens of thousands of the pieces had to be laid individually to make the house.
All of the dimensions of the home are true to the actual presidential site. The columned, wrap-around porch features 400 hand-lathed balusters, and is decorated with red, white and blue bunting. Tiny light fixtures and uplighting on the exterior replicate the appearance of the Harrison house in real life. A friend 3D-printed a tiny historical marker to replicate the sign mounted outside the house in Indianapolis.
Nearly 5,000 pieces of trim had to be painted and glued to the structure.
“It’s an unbelievable amount of trim work I had to do,” he said. “It was incredibly time consuming.”
Work continued throughout the summer and the fall. Unfortunately, plans for the Museum of Miniature Houses’ expansion fell apart, leaving Landers without a place to display the replica. He’s been reaching out hoping to arrange a place that has the room to show it.
While in discussions with others on where the house will go, Landers is planning out his next project — William Henry Harrison’s Grouseland, the home of Indiana’s first territorial governor and the grandfather of Benjamin Harrison.
“It seems like these to go together,” Landers said.
