Departed Summer 2024
Spruce Tower
a Center City apartment building · Web app · Shipped
[image: Photorealistic Blender render of the Spruce Tower gym — two treadmills facing tall white windows with sunlight streaming in, a patch of bright green artificial turf on the floor catching the light]
Departure
Math exam Friday morning, home by noon, Alex in the passenger seat, family CRV pointed at Philadelphia by evening. The client was Spruce Tower — a tall historic brown-brick apartment building on a Center City corner with a gold line-art logo and no real web presence. Two deliverables, one trip: a React marketing site for sprucetower.com and a set of photorealistic Blender renders of the building's gym for the amenities page. Four days on the ground, $200 on the way out.
Approach
- React
- Tailwind
- Blender
- DreamHost
- JavaScript
Four days on site, $200 fixed, two disciplines (Blender renders + React site) for one client.
Field log
Day 1 — drive up
Math exam at 8 AM, dropped the textbook at home, picked up Alex, CRV pointed northeast. "light years" by John Summit on CarPlay, guardrail and rolling farmland past the windshield for hours, then Philadelphia City Hall framed dead-center as the city closed in.
[image: Photo from inside the family Honda CR-V on the highway up to Philly — the dashboard infotainment screen on Apple CarPlay playing 'light years' by John Summit, scenic green farmland and rolling hills out the windshield under a blue sky with puffy white clouds]
CarPlay, John Summit, farmland out the windshield. Day 1 — meet the building
Got the keys, walked the block. Spruce Tower is a tall historic brown-brick apartment building on a Center City corner — many windows, ornate cornice, gold line-art building silhouette on a dark grey logo card. The brief was the brand: keep it serif, keep it gold, photograph the brick.
[image: Photo of Spruce Tower from the sidewalk — a tall historic brown brick apartment building with many windows on a Center City Philadelphia street corner, alongside the dark grey logo card with a stylized gold line-art building silhouette and 'SPRUCE TOWER' in serif type]
The building and the mark. Day 2 — gym in Blender
Measured the amenities room in the morning, pushed it into a grey untextured Blender viewport the rest of the day. Two treadmills against the windows, dumbbell rack along the wall, weight bench, mirror. No textures, no lights — just geometry that matched the room.
[image: Screenshot of the Blender viewport — a grey untextured 3D block-out of the Spruce Tower apartment gym, showing two treadmill volumes against the window wall, a dumbbell rack along the side wall, a weight bench, and a mirror, all in flat default-grey shading]
Day 2: just the geometry. Day 3 — photoreal renders
Lit the scene. Bright daylight through the windows, two hero angles: the bench with the dumbbell rack and mirror behind it, then the treadmills facing the windows with a patch of green turf catching the sun. Both clean enough to drop straight onto a page.
[image: Photorealistic Blender render of the gym — a black weight bench in the foreground, a full rack of chrome dumbbells behind it, a wall mirror reflecting the room, bright daylight pouring in from off-frame windows]
Hero one — bench, dumbbells, mirror. [image: Photorealistic Blender render of the gym from a second angle — two treadmills lined up facing tall white windows with sunlight streaming through, a strip of bright green artificial turf on the floor between them]
Hero two — treadmills, windows, turf. Day 4 — React homepage
React + Tailwind. Homepage hero looking straight up the brick from the street, serif title overlay: "WELCOME TO SPRUCE TOWER APARTMENTS. HISTORIC CHARM MEETS MODERN LIVING IN CENTER CITY." Brand carried — gold accents, dark slate type, the renders dropped into the amenities section below.
[image: Browser mockup of sprucetower.com — the homepage hero is a photo of the brick Spruce Tower building shot looking up from the street, with a serif overlay reading 'WELCOME TO SPRUCE TOWER APARTMENTS. HISTORIC CHARM MEETS MODERN LIVING IN CENTER CITY.' over a subtle dark gradient]
sprucetower.com — the homepage hero. Day 4 — interactive Center City map
Built a togglable map of the surrounding blocks for the leasing pitch — pins for Restaurants, Coffee, Bars, Parking, and Hospitals, each filterable from a row of category chips. The point: prove the neighborhood without making anyone leave the page.
[image: Browser mockup of the sprucetower.com interactive map — a Center City Philadelphia map centered on the building, color-coded pins for Restaurants, Coffee, Bars, Parking, and Hospitals, with a row of toggleable category chips above and a side panel listing nearby spots]
Neighborhood, on the page. Ship — DNS and drive home
Pushed the React build to DreamHost, pointed sprucetower.com at it, handed over the renders. $200 in. Drove home with a live URL on my phone.
From the gallery
[image: Stock photo of a black Honda CR-V — the family car that made the Philly run]
[image: Spruce Tower logo card — dark grey rectangle with a stylized gold line-art building silhouette and 'SPRUCE TOWER' in a serif typeface]
[image: Close-up of the sprucetower.com interactive map — Coffee chip active, brown pins clustered around the building, side panel listing nearby cafés with walk times]
What I came back with
$200 contract, 4 days, site + gym renders shipped
Lesson from the terrain
Two disciplines for one client in four days bought what a single deliverable wouldn't have — the marketing site needed a hero, the hero needed interiors of a gym that hadn't been photographed yet, and Blender filled the gap before a camera could. Small check, but the framing wasn't: a road trip with a friend turned into seed capital, and the next contract was easier to ask for because this one had a live URL attached to it.
Cross-links
This fed into / from