LEGO Awesomeness, right here in the Granite State!

The LEGO® Millyard Project is the largest permanent LEGO® installation at minifigure scale in the world. It’s in the SEE Science Center, which also has a bunch of cool hands-on science exhibits.

The LEGO project represents Manchester’s Amoskeag Millyard as it might have looked circa 1900. This was the biggest display of LEGO’s I’ve ever seen in one place, except for the time Grammy and I took you guys to LEGOWORLD in Florida.

• Three million LEGO® bricks were used, all of them from sets available to the public. No pieces were custom made.   The Jefferson Mill, built in 1886, was built with an estimated five million real bricks.
• The LEGO project has approximately 8,000 minifigures. Amoskeag once employed as many as 17,000 people.
• This project was built in phases between October 2004 and November 2006. It took more than 10,000 ‘person’ hours to complete the project. Two years!  By comparison, the Amoskeag Company built all its mill buildings between 1838 and 1915.
• If all the LEGO® bricks used in this project were lined up end to end, they would reach from the SEE Science Center to the Museum of Science in Boston and back. At its peak, Amoskeag produced enough cloth to reach from Manchester NH to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania each day.
• After touring the LEGO project, we checked out the science exhibits.  My favorite involved testing our reflex speed vs. a professional NHL goalie. You liked a giant air drum and aimed it at me when I wasn’t looking.  I felt this unexpected burst of air on my body, and there you were, laughing your head off!

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