Brick By Brick: LEGO displays not just for kids

Published 6:29 am Thursday, February 5, 2026

Dive into the wonder of LEGO at Historic City Hall where more than 35 creations are on display on the second floor until March 14 created by local LEGO enthusiasts.

The community-created exhibit features a wide range of LEGO configurations, including an entire cityscape, the Burton Coliseum, a medieval village and art masterpieces. An awards ceremony took place on Jan. 28, National LEGO Day. This is the first year Historic City Hall has hosted a LEGO exhibit, but with the success of the exhibit, officials said they plan to bring it back.

“Displays were submitted by multiple community members ranging from young-aged children to older adults, so it kind of fully represents the life cycle of LEGO and how it stays with you and inspires creativity in everybody from a young age all the way up to later in life,” Payton Lundmark, director of cultural affairs said.

Lundmark said the idea came from a staff member at Historic City Hall who has a love for LEGO. Lundmark said a lot of people enjoy building LEGOs throughout their lives, and Historic City Hall loves involving its community members and making them feel at home.

Historic City Hall is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Admission is free.

“We’ve done a few community-created exhibits, for example the Selfie Popup in December, and so we love involving our community members and making them feel like they have a place here,” Lundmark said.

The exhibit is made up of box builds and custom creations.

“People have really enjoyed coming in and seeing it,” she said. “It’s very nostalgic, for some people LEGO is something that sticks with you through childhood and so it reminds them of that and for some people it’s a hobby that’s stuck with them.”

The winner of the Best in Show went to Alex Reeser for his Orion Outpost 2 build. It is a LEGO Space with LED lighting along with a landing pad, solar panel farms and spaceships.

“This is a fun exhibit to come and explore your creativity,” Lundmark said. “There’s an inner kid in all of us and sometimes we lose sight of that and I think that it’s important to keep bringing ourselves back to how imaginative we used to be as children and that’s what LEGO can do for people now.”

Emily Porche submitted 10 builds to the LEGO exhibit. Porche said she found out about the exhibit by one of her friends tagging her on one of Historic City Hall’s social media pages announcing the exhibit.

“I’ve been doing LEGO for around two years now,” Porche said. “I got a set for Christmas a couple of years ago and I absolutely fell in love with it — it was more for me therapeutic, it was a time where I can just turn my brain off and zone out and do something creatively and that’s why I’ve been doing LEGO ever since.”

A majority of her displays she already created or was already working on prior to finding out about the exhibit, but the two she did not have was a Burton Coliseum replica and a QR code in LEGO form that can be scanned and is linked to Porche’s online art portfolio.

Porche said the hardest display was the Burton Coliseum piece. When she saw one of the categories was local landmarks, she knew she had to do the coliseum because she has been working there for 13 years as event manager.

The Burton Coliseum is a 360-degree display, whereas the other displays are not. The coliseum build took roughly three months to build, Porche said.

“I saw they had local landmark and I felt like it was kind of serendipitous for me to build Burton Coliseum,” she said. “At first it started as a joke for me and my coworkers but then I thought, ‘You know, I can probably really do it.’ Then it became a challenge for myself to actually do it.”

“I know the coliseum like the back of my hand and so I knew what it needed to look like in LEGO form, but I wasn’t very certain on how to build it, so I found other sets that had a dome roof to look at because I knew I needed a dome roof.”

Porche said a lot of times people’s way of thinking of LEGO is the old-school rectangular brick, but it has morphed into numerous pieces that have curves, angles and circles making the possibilities infinite.

Porche said her favorite build at the exhibit is her custom-built LSU Tiger Paw. Porche said her family are huge Tigers fans. She made a three-dimensional tiger paw using pieces that are from the ’70s.

“I think it’s so cool how I used pieces that were made for a 1970s box set but I can still use it, and it still works on every future LEGO set that I build,” she said.

Porche said she began using LEGO as an adult but wishes she would have begun in childhood. She said LEGO is a form of tinkering but you are being creative to build whatever is in your brain and it hits various avenues of creativity.

Porche said all ages can enjoy the LEGO exhibit. She said each piece has a different style based on the passion of each individual.

“Stereotypically, when you think of the word “art” you think of drawing or painting or maybe sculptures,” she said. “This is a form of sculpting but you’re using legendary plastic pieces that will be forever used with each other.”