More details? Sure. And another picture below.
Since both buildings, Boyd's and Union Monitor, are corner buildings I will talk about both. Boyd's is a Woodland Scenics product and you can get gobs of info by studying it on their and other websites. IMO it is the weakest of a very strong product line of (now) six O-gauge built ups - it is a little smaller than and seems to try a littrle too hard to be cute -- but it is still quite nice. I repainted mine to age it more and downplan some of the cute and love it where it is.
I learned a lot about making high-quality layout buildings (high quality=they saitsify my eye for detail, etc) byreally studying the first three Woodland Scenics built ups. Why did they look better than my scratch builts and other built ups? Weathering (when done well) is only a small part of it. It's mostly tiny details, most attached to building or alongside it, that lead to that look of real-world completeness. WS built ups have utility service entrances, window AC units, window boxes with flowers, dustbins, dumpsters, blinds that are askew, display stands in front of hardware stores, roof utility equipment, and lots of tiny attached details that are there in the real world. Not a startling conclusion I realize, but I learned alot by really focusing and studying those WS built ups and then going beyond that to study real world photos of '50s buildings.
The Union Monitor building is my first attempt to match the "completeness" I want - WS built ups achieved that but frankly my other buildings only met my standard after I bought the three previous series of WS built ups, put them on my layout, and used what I learned looking at them to retrofit such details to my existing scratch and Lionel/MTH/ buildings.
The building itself is scratch built around a wooden frame built of 1/2 inch poplar. Three Ameritown building panels are used on the sides you see in the photos. One (the light blue Preston and Preston business) is a store front, the other two are building sides from kits: I buy Ameritown kits to get the panels (you get four per kit) for us like this, and sledom actually build the kit. The reverse sides you can't see are just styrene "brick face" sheet - either Evergreen or JTT - I can't remember which: this building was built for this site - those two sides cannot be seen from any angle.
The roof is scratch built - 1/4 model plywood removeable panel with JTT slate roof styrene for the mansard like roof border, cut and glued and filled and painted. The "tarpaper" roof within is black gorilla tape put down, then sprayed with flat clear.
The turret is PVC pipe. I first the built rectangular building complete, then carefully marked and cut off the corner where the turret is to just fit the front door section wide - not sure where those doors came from - I might have just cut them out of an Ameritown building front. Anyway, I bought a seclection of different diameters of PVC pipe, liked the look of the size I used, and cut and trimmed it to fit. Attached with screws to the woode frame and two-part epoxy putty. The roof is a small kitchen funnel - cut. the gold cap on it is an old tietack - looks good, eh?
Windows are all made from clear plastic I cut out of boxes and display packaging for stuff I buy, attached one to three at a time on the side with gorilla tape (it my look like dark duct tape, but believe me, it holds a lot better!). Blinds are light masking tape applied on their inside, curtains paper cut by hand and taked on their out of sight edges. Each "floor" inside has a corrogated cardboard interior about 1/1/2 inch deep, with blocks of scrap wood and such - not much detail, and some people, to give a sense of something inside. Some windows just have a picture taken from a magazine mounted about 1 inch behind the window.
The entire building is painted. The roof tiles are sprayed with a flat primer that is slate colored, the rest of the building is painted by brush with latex flats - I buy small sample bottles of interior wall paint at my hardware store - they come in dozens of different colors and go on well, cover a lot, and dry flat and smooth.
The photo below shows some of details I added to give that feeling of completeness and real worldness, circled. . . on the roof, a TV antenna, standpipes, AC units, roof access hatch, - the Union Monitor sign was just printed and put on wood - I could have done color (would for most buildings) but a newspaper's sign would be B&W, I thought. On the sides, a burglar alarm annuciator up high, where they normally are, attached pipe entrance down low (near the lady buying a newspaper from the vending machine) for the fire department - made from styrene, metal brass railing on the stairs (brass paperclips).
I love the exterior lights here - the zoom image highlighted in red circles at the top show detail. These are the studs or backing clips - whatever you call them - from tie tacks. I must have a dozen. I attach them to shiny paper clip wire and drill a hole in the plastic building wall to mount them, paint their lower portion a white-blue for the lamp, and I have a fancy shiny exterior light fixtures! I used a slightly different style for the three that are on the newspaper offices as opposed to the one over the entrance to Preston and Preston - probalby not a detail anyone will notice but . . .
My buildings are attached to foundations carefully trimmed to leave little gap or visible seam where the build sits. I then use a very thin bead of paintable caulking to seal completely and then paint it with a detail brush- nothing is quite as distracting from that feeling of completeness and accuracy and a big, dark crack between building and sidewalk, etc.
Woodland Scenics uses lots of stuff attached to the outside of the building in the sidewalk areas to "anchor it" in place visually and make it look real - this is a really good trick and one I emphasize - it works!!!! (Study all the W.S. built ups - they use this trick in spades. So, I made the newspaper vending machine from scratch (it actually has a pile of tiny newspapers inside it). The lady opening her purse to get change to feed it is a Woodland Scenics figure from one of their figure sets. Further up - at Preston and Preston, I use two of their benches with another figure. Out in front on the sidewalk (not shown in this photo but you can see it in the first posting) I have paperboys with their bikes (again, W.S.'s stuff) and bundles of newspapers just unloaded from the truck - it's a Corgi '48 Dodge NYTimes delivery truck repainted and relabeled and sort of completes a small scene there.
I plan to add a few more people near the entrance, etc. My LHS was a zoo yesterday and I just decided to wait to buy more figures, etc.
May I be bold enough to make a possible suggestion though? John Beresford Tipton III, looks awfully like Clark Kent, so might I suggest that placing a telephone box or two outside of the building might come in handy for him? 
