Fred Hutchins, proprietor of Jan’s Hobby Shop, advised me to choose my words carefully. “It’s not a model,” he insisted as we examined his replica of the Navy cruiser USS Ticonderoga. “You’re looking at a real thing, in miniature.”

I thought it was an awfully fine distinction, but Hutchins’ point was that small things can be functional, like the working mini-Ticonderoga, which he crafted from scratch and sails in Central Park’s 72nd Street Boat Pond.¹

You could also apply the “small but functional” tag to Jan’s Hobby Shop itself, which manages to pack the gamut of hobby modeling into one tiny room on Lexington & 94th. I was the only visitor in the store when I swung by recently, but the corners are so tight that I couldn’t get out of my own way. That’s not a criticism. Among the most cramped storefronts in New York are some of the best.

Normally, a storekeeper faced with close confines will narrow his focus and try to exploit a niche that fits within his four walls. In this city, though, you’ll keep coming across places like Jan’s Hobby Shop, which refuse to reduce their all-encompassing purview. Instead, they cram. This creates a sense of adventure, as with Jan’s back aisle, where it seems one misstep will bury you in an avalanche of Chevy Impala kits.

You can miniaturize most whatever you want with the kits at Jan’s: an Aston Martin, the Spirit of St. Louis, a Civil War barracks, etc. Hutchins a passion for watercraft, noting one major advantage that R/C boats have over their twitchy, fragile airborne counterparts: “Boats are a lot of fun because if you hit the shore, just add a little bit of black paint, and it’s set to go again.”

Hutchins won’t try to force his preferences on customers. Hobbyists “don’t dabble,” he said. A model builder with a love of old motorcycles won’t be interested in anything but old motorcycles. It’s too much of an investment to try something other than what you know and love. “Unfortunately, the way [kits] are priced now,” Hutchins said, “it’s hard to do different things. A basic kit with finishing supplies will run up to $200 or so.” With such single-minded customers, Hutchins must be ready for every obscure taste that might walk in, hence the bursting shelves.

It’s not just what you build; there’s also the matter of how you build it. While most people build from kits, Hutchins has a fondness for “scratch builders” like himself, who design their own replicas from photographs of the original.

“You have to have a passion for your subject” to scratch-build, Hutchins said. I asked him how long it had taken to construct one of his U.S. Navy ships, and he shrugged. “Oh, this was a quick one, 15 months or so.”

The first kit I ever assembled was a “Jokermobile” from the Tim Burton Batman movie that was out at the time. It took me one evening, and I put the wheels on crooked, so the thing just squeaked when I tried to push it along the kitchen table. Fred Hutchins takes 15 months to build a precise miniature boat that slices through the water like the real thing.

If your skill set falls somewhere between those two examples, you’ll probably find something cool at Jan’s. That’s the beauty of a little store acting like a big one.

---

1. Hutchins presses his fleet into active duty every other Sunday, weather permitting. ↑