Ligonier Township restaurant showcases large-scale collection of Erector models

Build it, and they will come.

That’s proven true with a wide-ranging collection of vintage Erector set construction toys and kits on display at Ligonier Township’s Gray Goose restaurant.

Trains, blimps and Ferris wheels are just some of the scale model structures built by the late Michael Kent that line the walls of three upstairs rooms at his wife Michelle’s Route 30 establishment.

“It’s been a good draw,” Michelle Kent said of the display. “A lot of people bring their grandkids in to see it.

“I have older men who come in and say, ‘My gosh, this is taking me back to my childhood.’ They really appreciate it.”

Kent has lost count of the overwhelming number of Erector sets her husband collected. Many he assembled, and others are still unused in their original boxes — dating back as far as 1913, when they first were sold.

Three years ago, following his death in a 2018 all-terrain vehicle accident, she began gradually moving items from their Ligonier Township home to the restaurant.

“I thought, ‘I have all this stuff in my house, people should see it,’” she said.

Kent decided to showcase the collection at her restaurant when she was unable to donate it to a museum.

“Nobody wanted it because of the size of it,” she said.

A drawbridge created from Erector parts is among items she’s been unable to transfer to the restaurant because of their large scale.

A Ferris wheel that once dominated her kitchen now is the collection’s centerpiece at the restaurant, standing just shy of one room’s 15-foot ceiling.

Kent said, “We had to make it six inches smaller to get it in that room.”

Pointing to a blimp that catches the eye in another room, she said, “That was in my bedroom, hanging off the closet.”

“Everything he did, he did on a big scale,” Kent said of her husband’s hobby.

Considered a master model builder, he eventually constructed more than a half dozen Ferris wheels, spread throughout the couple’s home. A version measuring 101 inches in diameter held pride of place in his home office and workshop.

“He would make one in one room and then just go to another room,” said Michelle Kent. “If he was awake, he was doing something with (construction toys), unless it was nice out and he was out in the woods.

“He was so happy doing it, that was good enough for me. He built me a (model) merry-go-round one year for my birthday.”

Michael Kent, who also constructed elaborate model buildings using LEGO blocks, began his career at Westinghouse, where he designed nuclear reactors for submarines.

He fondly remembered playing with his father’s Erector set as a boy. So, when he and Michelle married in 1990, she found a set in an antique shop to present him as a wedding gift.

That was the starting point for his hobby of collecting Erector sets and a range of other items produced by the A.C. Gilbert Company of New Haven, Conn.

Those items include American Flyer model trains, Mysto Magic amateur magician sets as well as household appliances such as fans, hair dryers and milkshake mixers. Smaller items including brain-teaser puzzles and games are exhibited in glass cases on the restaurant’s main floor.

The collection also includes a large number of Gilbert’s science- and engineering-related kits meant to engage young hands and minds.

“Their thing was that children needed to be taught how to invent and do more hands-on things,” said Michelle Kent. Examining one of the kits on display, she observed, “It has a telescope, kaleidoscope and periscope.”

The restaurant exhibit includes Gilbert’s infamous 1950 Atomic Energy Lab kit, which some critics have dubbed “the most dangerous toy in the world.”

Physics teacher and STEM educator Sandy Fargus reported on the stemgeek.com website that samples of materials included in the kit merely “would have given a radiation dose similar to the one you might receive from the sun on a summer day.” She noted the kit was discontinued after just one year — likely due to poor sales, related to its then-exorbitant price of about $50.

Kent also displays a Gilbert item that was put to a more serious use in its day: an Anti-Aircraft Range Indicator Finder it produced in 1944 for the Navy. “It tells you what planes they were shooting at and how far away they were,” she said.

Erector sets were last produced in 1988, but they still are prized by collectors. Michael Kent belonged to the A.C. Gilbert Heritage Society, which has about 400 members and holds an annual national convention.

LEGO building blocks still are going strong, and Michelle Kent hopes someday to add some of her husband’s LEGO creations to the restaurant collection.

But, she said, “Some of them are 18 feet tall, and I don’t know how to move them.”