The Legacy of the Playmobil Victorian Mansion
For '90s girls, class=Victorian pleasures.
The Playmobil Victorian dollhouse was a status symbol for millennial girls — not because it reflected anything about our real lives, but because it offered a portal to the so-called “olden times.” If you were the lucky owner of one, it meant you had taste — the kind of taste a seven-year-old associates with miniature fainting couches and heavy drapery. (I, sadly, did not have a Playmobil dollhouse. However I did have an antique hoop-rolling game, a Hanukkah request.)
That Playmobil chose Victorian architecture is actually quite clever. During America’s Victorian building boom (1860 to 1900), technological advances made once-bespoke architectural details — brackets, doors, windows, decorative detailing — available to the masses. Pattern books and mail-order catalogs allowed builders and architects to mix and match elements, cobbling together their own version of “fancy.” Virginia McAlester, the godmother of American architectural history, called it an era of “architectural experimentation” in her Field Guide to American Houses. Translation: If you had some cash and a catalog, you could play architect.
That’s exactly what the Playmobil dollhouse offered: a plug-and-play version of luxury. Sure, you couldn’t design its footprint, but you did have to assemble it, piece by painstaking piece.
The Playmobil dollhouse is a classic example of Second Empire Victorian architecture with its mansard roof, dormers on the top floor, bracketed cornices, and cresting (wrought iron ornamentation) along the roof line.
The interior is actually quite subdued for Victorian homes of the era, but all the markings of “upper class” are there: palms, a grandfather clock, servants. Although I do have to point out the historical inaccuracy of having the parents’ master suite in the attic; that space would likely be reserved for kids as the Victorians were extremists in “design parenting.”
