Cranbrook School’s Model Club, March 1952. From left: Faculty Advisor Richard Gregg, David Higbie, Don Young, David Morris, President Richard Gielow, Adams McHenry, Don Hart, Pete Dawkins, Dahmen Brown, and Jerry Phillips. Harvy Croze, photographer. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

This week’s Photo Friday shows the Cranbrook Model Club of 1952—a well-dressed group of Cranbrook School boys and their faculty advisor, Richard Gregg, who met to further their interest and skills at model making. Models, of course, interested Cranbrook’s founder George Booth and are integral to the architectural design process, so its fitting that Cranbrook School had a Model Club.

Model making as a middle-class hobby boomed after World War II, when boys and their fathers were encouraged to take up productive and wholesome pursuits in their leisure time. The broad affordability and availability of plastic model kits meant hobbyists didn’t have to have special tools or carving skills to produce a model—anyone could assemble a kit! Looking closely at the photograph of the Model Club (you can zoom in on the photo here), I believe these are airplanes assembled from such kits.

Cranbrook School art class with instructor Richard “Dick” Gregg sculpting a bust, 1952. Harvy Croze, photographer. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

The model club’s advisor was Richard Gregg, a 1951 Academy of Art graduate. Born in Kalamazoo, Gregg studied sculpture at the Academy. While a student, he worked on various sets for productions by St. Dunstan’s Theater. Following his studies, he taught art at Cranbrook School for Boys during the 1951-1952 school year. After he left Cranbrook, his love of art and art education continued; Gregg went on to work in museums as a design instructor, a curator, and a director at various places across the Midwest and East Coast.

I don’t know that much about the Cranbrook Model Club, but on this hot, blue-skied Friday, I thought it was a nice moment for a photo of something as leisurely and enjoyable as model airplanes!

– Kevin Adkisson, Collections Fellow, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research