Lego construction zone ahead

By Geri Corey
GOSHEN — What’s more fun than building with Legos as a child? Why, building with Legos as an adult, of course.
What started as playtime with her children grew into a challenging pastime for Liz Jansen of Florida, N.Y.
“Most adult Lego fans start out building with their children," she said. "Then as teens the kids shy away from Legos, but we don’t."
As her sons, Scott, Jay and Ben, gave up playing with Legos, several sets, like Castles and Pirates, remained in their boxes, unopened. She kept buying Legos even when the boys’ interest had dwindled.
“Then one day, I put four tables together and built the Castle and the Pirate sets," she said. "This was about 30 years ago. I took them apart soon after, but I was ready for more building."
What really snagged her — and other adults — into Lego construction were the module buildings, like retail shops, restaurants, and living quarters with second and third floors, along with the capability to furnish the buildings.
“These are buildings that little kids don’t do,” said Jansen, who now has an entire Lego town she built set up in a workshop in her yard.
But she’s not working alone. Jansen’s granddaughter Emily, 15, a sophomore at Goshen High School, sits right alongside her. They work side-by-side building houses and a variety of stores for their town, including a flower shop, jewelry store, veterinary clinic, book store, pharmacy with a doctor’s office, bakery, even a police station, a bank, a school and much more. Coming soon to town is an herb store, casino, toy store, Spanish café, pizza parlor, and a corner church.
The interiors are so detailed that if you take off the roofs off, you’ll expect to see little people walking around, eating at the kitchen table, playing the piano, or shopping at a store.
The village’s realistic details include bird feeders, greenhouses, fire escapes, flower boxes, lampposts, balconies, ceiling fans, and pianos, just to name a few. The buildings are fully furnished, all created with Lego bricks.
“I find building with Legos so interesting," Jansen said. "It’s like building a dollhouse, only more intricate. Every little piece has to be assembled."
Emily Jansen recalls being interested in Legos from a young age.
“I’d sit around a table with my two cousins," she said. "We’d each have a base plate and lots of Legos and create.”
Now she’s doing the modules as well as landmark pieces like the Eiffel Tower, Sydney Opera House, Statue of Liberty, Taj Mahal, and Arc de Triomphe. Emily travels each summer, and often picks a landmark from that summer’s country to build with her Lego bricks. All of her landmark creations are on display in the workshop.
Each Lego designer creates a module differently, and, according to Liz and Emily, each one designs differently. For instance, each toilet in each home is different. It all depends on how the pieces are put together, they said. It takes a lot of thought and eye-hand coordination to work interior designs in small spaces.
“The details are amazing,” said Jansen.

'Something for everyone'

A Legoland New York may be coming to Goshen. The proposed park has divided the community, with many people enthusiastic about the prospect of jobs and expanded recreational opportunities for children, and many others worried about traffic snarls and environmental degradation.
Jansen visited Legoland California, in Carlsbad, and pronounced it “fascinating.” All displays are made of Lego bricks, which include the New York Skyline, Victorian homes, cities with large skyscrapers, the Creole Queen paddleboat, fairy tale characters, dinosaurs, and nearly life sized animals — giraffes, elephants, monkeys, polar bears, all in natural settings.
“There’s something for everyone in a Legoland Park,” said Jansen. “I especially liked watching the ‘master builders’ at work there, learning from them. The buildings are complex.”
The future for these avid Lego brick builders is to create a suburb complete with a train station, coffee shop, hot dog stand, car dealership, hardware store, Italian restaurant, newsstand, flower stall, piano store, and a small villa. In fact, they’re already hard at work assembling the pieces. With all this growth in Florida, N.Y., it won’t be long before Liz’s husband, Jan, owner with his wife of the E.P. Jansen Nursery on Glenmere Avenue, will have to put an addition om the workshop.
“Creating with Lego bricks is an addiction,” says the 73-year-old grandmother, as Emily agreed. “But it’s a healthy addiction.”