When did the house first change on the inside?

[KSiteTV]

Looking at the first week of shows, Mister Rogers' house is laid out much differently; for example, Trolley goes under Picture Picture.

When did that change?

I notice that by the time we got to 0038 (with Queen Sara's first appearance), the house is as we know it is already present.

[mjb1124]

The short answer is that the change permanently went into effect during the fifth week of episodes (episodes 21-25).

The house layout change started with the episodes taped on 11/8/1967, which were episodes 22 and 23.   However, episodes did not tape in the order they aired, so the first episode that aired with the new layout was actually episode 9 (taped 1/4/68), followed by episode 16 (taped 12/14/67).   But the rest of the episodes before 21 still have the old layout.   Episode 21 itself is a curious case, as it appears to have been reshot after its initial airing - its tape date is a week after that of episode 130, and over 4 months after what was listed as its original airdate.   We'll probably never know why it was reshot, what was changed about it, or if the original version still had the old house layout.

More details here:  http://www.neighborhoodarchive.com/forum/index.php?topic=789.0

[KSiteTV]

Wow. Thank you very much! I don't think I had seen that previous thread; if I had, I didn't recall it. I'm always fascinated by the changes -- as a child I even had my mom change the paint color on my walls to match Mister Rogers' changes. Haha.

[MIKEBENNIDICT]

Also notice how the whole set was not as developed during the 1st 2 or 3 seasons.

Besides no backyard do didn't have a frontyard till Season 2 and no buildings across the street till the following year.


Don't know if it had to do with having a tight budget early on or WQED may have been in a different location.

[mitsguy2001]

Supposedly the studio moved to a different location at some point since the old location was near an airport and the noise required them to reshoot scenes.  I have no idea when exactly that happened.

[MIKEBENNIDICT]

Interesting you mentioned that because I read something like that years ago though the article said "Noise from a Pittsburgh traffic copter" often forcing retakes.

[mitsguy2001]

That's probably what I remember.  Do you remember what year it said that they moved?

[MIKEBENNIDICT]

I could have sworn the WQED website at one time mentioned on their website and it may have been a few years after MRN debuted.

You might wanna type up WQED or WQED history on the web and see if you can find anything.