Man Sees the World in Miniature
By Veronica MacDonald Ditko
When Franklin Lakes resident Tony Armenante looks back on his 85 years of life, he wishes he had been a builder. Trained as a chemical engineer, Armenante is finally making his wish come true through building models, which he designs from scratch.
“I’m a frustrated engineer who always liked building,” said Armenante. “It keeps my fingers nimble and my mind nimble.”
It all started with a kit to build a tiny three-story brownstone for his granddaughter, a gift he received when he retired from his father’s textile business, Paterson Bleachery Inc., in 2002. He made the brownstone look like her actual house, with lights and everything.
From there, he started drawing up plans for other models in his head. He keeps all his models on a 1:12 scale. For example, what would be a foot in reality would be just one inch in a model.
“I should have been a contractor,” said Armenante. “I love construction. And I just continue building.”
Armenante had some experience in home construction. He owned his first home in Hawthorne in the 1950s where he learned about electrical work after changing the house’s two-wire system. From there, he and his wife Fay built a house in Ridgewood on Hempstead Road, and then moved on to build one in Franklin Lakes on Oneida Trail.
Armenante enjoys the challenges of model building. “It’s very mind boggling,” he said. “It’s a constant effort to make things.” For instance, he is currently working on making a Medieval armory for his son.
“My son wanted something ghoulish,” explains Armenante. It includes things like tiny fireplace with a pig spit and torches. There are also turrets, or towers, that required Armenante to think about how the miniature people would get to the top. He created ladders and stairs to make it more realistic.
He buys miniature items such as furniture and plates from Circus Circus in Pompton Plains, or he shops online. For a tiny apartment he built to look like his grandson’s, he could not find a miniature Buddha statue like his grandson had on his fireplace mantle, so he carved one himself from wood.
Armenante and his wife Fay often visit real-sized model homes to study the construction. “It’s something you can see and change immediately without experimentation,” he said.
The hardest part of building small models from scratch is painting, says Armenante. Sometimes he has to wait to paint certain parts because other parts will need to be built, inserted, or wired with electricity. “You’ve got to plan the work accurately,” he said. “It requires lots of thinking, which is good.”
Armenante had made many models for his children and grandchildren and realized that he had never made anything for Fay. So not long ago, he created a small art gallery with lights and framed pictures with their favorite pieces of art around the home. 
There is a glass roof over the top Armenante designed as well.
Armenante confesses he’s a bit obsessed with modeling. “My daughter calls me ‘Egor.’ I’m in the cellar all the time working on some model,” he said.
It seems artistic endeavors run in the family: his father was a painter, his daughter an aboriginal art sculptor, his grandson a designer of mechanical animals. He also keeps his mind sharp by trying to solve wooden Vietnamese puzzles in his free time.
Armenante is also an active member of Activities Unlimited, a group of retired professionals that is 350 members strong. The average age of the group is 77 and they hold dances and other events.
“I used to ski, play tennis and ping pong, but now I’ll settle for working on models,” jokes Armenante.
Veronica MacDonald Ditko is originally from the Jersey Shore, but married and settled in northern New Jersey. Her journalism career started a decade ago after studying Psychology and Anthropology in Massachusetts. She has written for several newspapers and magazines including The Daily Hampshire Gazette, The Springfield Union News and Sunday Republican, Happi, Chemical Week, The Hawthorne Press, The Jewish Standard, Suite101.com and more.