Winter has always been a season for indoor hobbies, and that will be especially true this year. While Hagley Library’s Digital Archive contains a wide variety of materials documenting the hobbies and busywork of yesteryear, Henrietta Wolf’s miniature city of Congenial, USA is maybe the cutest.
This image is sourced from a January, 1980 issue of Avon Products' company magazine Avon and You. The article it was featured in covered the various hobbies that retired Avon employees had adopted in their newfound spare time. Henrietta’s miniature city occupied an entire three-room apartment across from the one in which she and her husband lived. It featured a working railroad system, a Bee Gees tape and strobe light, and “hundreds of little people" made out of “pipe cleaners and beads” in “all colors—black, white, green, purple—so there’s no racial discrimination at all.”