LYNN — On the upper floor of Todd Gieg’s studio on Prescott Road sits an intricately designed and crafted masterpiece 14 years in the making — a 56-square-foot diorama of Lynn, Revere, and East Boston in 1895.
Once a professional photographer, Gieg now spends roughly six hours a day meticulously crafting, painting, and arranging miniature representations of the region’s historic buildings, beaches, roadways, billboards, trees, and people in a lifelike and massive representation of the Boston, Revere Beach, and Lynn Railroad and the towns it traversed in the late 19th century.
As he moved through his cluttered workshop displaying each piece of his diorama, Gieg described some of the human figurines — many of whom are named after his friends and family members— the way one would describe real friends. He said he spent days researching each of the historic landmarks he depicted in the art piece, such as the Point of Pines Hotel, to ensure his work was done with the highest level of historical accuracy possible.
“There are just many aspects of these towns that were not documented photographically, so I don’t know what they looked like. I’m basically trying to keep the spirit of the times and depict everything as accurately as I can,” Gieg said.
“One of the great things about modeling is that it makes you look at the world… It’s absolutely addictive.”
Todd Gieg
Gieg, now 71, described the project as a “race against time.” He began work on the model in 2010 after learning about the Boston, Revere Beach, and Lynn Railroad Company, which operated along Revere Beach from 1875 until 1940.
“I did a poll of people up and down the coast, and 90% of them had never heard of it, even though at its peak, it was the most heavily traveled railroad in the country,” Gieg said. “There are certain areas of the country that are modeled to death, like the mining and lumber industries out West, but very few models of the East Coast.”
A series of four-foot-tall modules, the Lynn portion of Gieg’s masterpiece, have been displayed at the Lynn Museum since the fall of 2019. With the diorama’s entirety too large to fit in the museum, the Lynn portion will be moved back into Gieg’s studio in the next few weeks.
Being roughly halfway through his project, Gieg is currently looking for the proper place with which to display it upon its completion. Since neither the Lynn Museum nor the Revere Historical Society have the space to house the massive diorama, Gieg said he would like the piece to be preserved in a place where the public can appreciate it.
His dream, Gieg said, is for the diorama to be memorialized at a set of abandoned twin tunnels behind Marginal Street in East Boston.
“Those tunnels are still there. The problem is that developers want to come in and fill them in so they can build on top of it,” Gieg said. “My fantasy would be for the East Boston Historical Society to take over those tunnels… I can’t imagine anything more remarkable than to walk into this tunnel and then find a model of the entire railroad inside of it.”
Lynn Museum/LynnArts Executive Director Doneeca Thurston said that although the piece is simply too large to display, the museum will miss the loss of Gieg’s diorama. She described it as a “one-of-its-kind” model that depicts a lesser-known era of the region.
“It’s bittersweet for us — it’s been wonderful to have the diorama. It’s just an impressive piece of history and an impressive model… Being from Lynn and growing up in Lynn, looking at that landscape and an era of 1895 has been illuminating, just in terms of how the city has changed since that time period and the story it tells,” Thurston said. “It’s such a historic achievement.”
