# Irish Village: keeping the court open

September 6, 2026. This is an early building study, not a finished reconstruction.

Irish Village now has fifteen separate building sections in place of its old area marker. You can enter between the two western towers and look into the open court behind the Parliament building. The theatre, chapel and exhibition hall have their own outlines.

The detailed insurance plan separates the theatre into sections labeled 16, 30, 58 and 70 feet high. It also gives heights for the Parliament building, exhibition hall and gateway towers. We used those labels to guide the first shapes. The chapel and several lower sections have clearly marked estimated heights. Roof profiles, decorative towers, colonnades and the connecting gateway arch are still missing. These plain blocks should not be mistaken for the buildings’ finished appearance. [Sanborn plan set, sheet 5 (M006)](https://data.library.wustl.edu/record/108214?ln=en)

The village’s promotional booklet describes Irish art and craftsmanship, including manuscript facsimiles, furniture, prints, and Cork and Waterford glass. Its illustration helps us understand the appearance the promoters wanted visitors to see. It is not a measured survey or an account from the people who worked here. We checked the original images of printed pages 24–25, rather than relying only on machine-read text. [On the Pike, Ireland section by Myles J. Murphy (B020)](https://archive.org/details/onpikethefirstco00unse/page/n25/mode/2up)

A museum photograph now appears beside the model. The Ireland sign and neighboring Under and Over the Sea entrance make the subject clear. The photograph shows the high connecting arch, stone-effect towers and lettering that are still missing from our simple model. Some embedded image labels conflict with the museum caption, so we have left the photographer unnamed and recorded a follow-up question for the museum. Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis. [Museum caption, NS 20900 / LPE 1811 (P036)](https://mohistory.org/legacy-exhibits/Fair/WF/HTML/Overview/popups/pike.html)

## What we checked

The source outlines were traced in pixels and fitted to our existing rough map outline. That keeps the broad arrangement, but the exact scale and location still need checking. The large original scans stay in the research files; they are not loaded into the explorer.

Automated checks look for buildings crossing each other or the existing paths, water and neighboring models. They also test that the visible roofs agree with collision and that the court and entrance stay open. We separately inspected an elevated browser view and a view through the gateway at walking height. Those checks catch different kinds of mistakes; neither establishes historical accuracy by itself.

## How AI helped, and what remains

GPT-6 Astra traced the building sections and wrote checks while the coordinating agent reviewed the original map and booklet, integrated the model and inspected it in the browser. Working in parallel helped us develop another part of the fair without abandoning source review. This is a record of the work, not a controlled comparison of models or a claim about hours saved.

The useful lesson is to preserve the open spaces and the map’s separate height labels before adding decoration. A more convincing roof cannot repair an incorrectly closed courtyard. Next we need dated exterior views, a better fit to the larger fairground map, and accounts from exhibitors and workers. The project’s broad completion estimate remains unchanged; fifteen simple sections are a beginning, not fifteen finished buildings.