Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/629850
seemed to predominate throughout the advertising for stage magicians, melodramas, circuses, alcoholic beverages and patent medicines. I decided to base my palette for the show on these bright tints and mysteriously dark shades. Costume designer Amy Andrews Harrell and cinematographer Stephen St. John loved the idea and signed on to use the chromolithographs as the starting point of the series' look and feel. Opposite page, top: The library room ward, shot in the same house in Richmond, VA. Bottom, left to right: The basement kitchen set was built next door in an abandoned hospital; the real basement of the house was too small, and anyway, it flooded and was kinda nasty. A basement storeroom. This page, top: Emma Green's bedroom was a complete redress of a museum house in Petersburg. Inset center, and bottom: Two views of the interior of the basement kitchen, dressed and ready for camera. A mansion in Richmond had a few large rooms and many smaller ones that would become the hotel turned hospital. The building had three floors and a basement area. I decided to give each floor a different color as a sort of road map, so that the audience would know what part of the hospital/hotel they were in. The production had carte blanche in terms of the work that could be done, and we started by painting each area in the chosen colors, then made stencils to add Victorian wallpaper patterns to the painted walls. The first floor had the largest rooms and would be divided into wards for the wounded soldiers. I gave the rooms hotel names: Ballroom, library and dining room. The second floor would be the officers' quarters, dispensary and operating room all serviced by gaslight. On the third floor were the servants' quarters. I felt that we should move out of the world of gaslight there and into the world of candlelight. The real Mr. Green had been a canny character, careful with his money; I "I was retired and had 'downsized' to a lovely spot in the mountains of North Carolina when I had the chance to read the first of six beautifully written scripts. I knew I had to design this show."