Visitors to city hall will find a display built by a craftsman for his town.

By Mary O’KEEFE

At Tuesday’s Glendale City Council meeting, Councilmember Vartan Gharpetian spoke about the miniature houses decorating city hall and its courtyard. He asked if Chris Peplow was behind the decorations; City Manager Yasmin Beers said he was. 

“He has done a great job,” Gharpetian said. “He is an artist.” He added that each of the little houses had their own character. 

“He does it on his own time,” added Beers. “He does not do the work on city time.”

The city hall decorations have been getting more attention lately. Some worried that the city was spending too much money on the elaborate decorations; however, that is not the case. 

Peplow is a park service manager with Community Services & Parks and creating this scenario is what he likes to do in his spare time.

For those who have not traveled down to the City of Glendale offices, these decorations are worth the trip. This year åThe warm lights that shine from the windows of the miniature houses are inviting and make visitors feel like they are walking through a small winter wonderland town. Each cylinder planter in the courtyard is filled with little glimpses of this wonderful world that Peplow creates. 

For Peplow, the idea of a Winter Village came from his childhood. 

“My grandma had [a village display] on her mantle. As a kid I would stare at it for hours,” he said. 

Peplow’s hobby is woodworking. He loves to build and gets bored quickly, so he is always improving his ideas. For the first time, this year he added a mechanical aspect to his village – a ski lift with a red gondola climbing a mountain of snow. This is the part of the village that is inside the city hall lobby. 

“I wanted to do this for years, but it was extremely difficult,” he said. 

The city hall mountain village is surrounded by tall trees with snow-covered limbs. It even smells like a mountainside forest. 

“That’s smell scent machines,” he said. “This one is ‘Oh, Christmas’ and over here is ‘Sugar Cookie.’” 

So yes, it smells like someone in one of the homes is baking cookies. And all of this done on a budget of about $80 with the homes made of reclaimed wood left over from projects Peplow has done. 

“There are a surprising number of cast-off materials used for this,” he said. 

Peplow was in charge of building a Japanese bridge used at a tea house when the city hosted visitors from Japan. Instead of throwing away the little pieces of wood, they became an archway to the door of a miniature house. 

In Peplow’s hands, even recycled sawdust becomes the siding of a house. 

“A house [outside] has a roof of old brooms. I just cut up old brooms,” he said. 

This all started 14 years ago when Community Services & Parks was tasked with decorating for the holiday season. At that point, the department had very simple decorations, many reused from other places in the city. Then, about four years ago, Peplow applied his skill as a woodworker to the task of decorating and each year the display has grown. He said many hands volunteer to help with the set-up and painting and his partner-in-decorations now is Patty Betancourt, Glendale Community Service specialist. Betancourt does the painting while Peplow concentrates on building. 

Each year there is a new theme, and each year it is expanded. 

“Every little house is different because everyone has different interests,” he said. “I kind of have a little more fantasy added too.”

Across from the mountain ski lift are two castles, one with Rapunsel’s hair drifting from a high tower. The hair is actually from a wig his daughter had. So it would not be a surprise to find more castles in years to come. 

“I get carried away with this stuff,” Peplow said. 

To see Peplow’s creations, visit the City of Glendale at 613 E. Broadway.

To see more Chris Peplow’s “Winter Village,” click below

▶

JavaScript required to play this video.