“Lego® will Release Bookshop in 2020,” by S.M. O’Connor

Earlier this month, Lego A/S doing business as The LEGO® Group, quietly revealed LEGO® Creator Expert Bookshop (Set #10270) would be released worldwide on Wednesday, January 1, 2020 as part of the theme (product line) LEGO® Creator Expert Modular Buildings. [There have been notices through YouTube and Instagram, but there is no press release as of yet.] Intended for adults and teenagers sixteen-and-over, the 2,504-piece set is part of a growing collection of modular buildings that A.F.O.L.s (Adult Fan of LEGO®) can use to create a cityscape, an adult version of the LEGO® City theme. The Creator Expert subtheme of the LEGO® Creator theme also includes the 1967 Ford Mustang (Set #10265), Harley-Davidson® Fat Boy® (Set #10269), James Bond Aston Martin (Set #10262), and N.A.S.A. Apollo 11 Lunar Lander (Set #10266), released earlier this year.

Figure 1 Credit: The LEGO® Group Caption: The 2,504-piece LEGO® Creator Expert Bookshop (Set #10270) will be released worldwide on Wednesday, January 1, 2020. It consists of a bookshop and adjacent townhouse, a tree, a lamp-post, a toy plane, and five Minifigures™: a grandfather, grandmother, grandson, a bookshop owner, and her suitor. In this picture, the suitor is holding a copy of “Moby Brick.”

The set consists of a three-story bookshop (“Birch Books”) and an adjacent two-story modular townhouse. It comes with a buildable birch tree with autumnal foliage in a planter, a buildable lamp-post, a buildable toy prop plane, and five Minifigures™: a grandfather, grandmother, grandson, a bookshop owner, and a suitor for her. In addition, there are two animals: a blue bird and a chameleon. Architectural details include dormer windows with pediments on the second floor of the townhouse, a bay window on the first floor of the townhouse, a curving staircase on the first floor of the townhouse, and a Dutch gable on the third floor of the bookshop. An apartment for the bookshop owner occupies the third floor of her building. The set will have a list price in the U.S.A. of $179.99 and in the U.K. of £149.99. It will be sold exclusively at LEGO® Stores and online via www.Lego.com. This set would make a fine gift for any bibliophile, and might be especially appropriate for a bookshop owner or manager or possibly a librarian.

Figure 2 Credit: The LEGO® Group Caption: There is a ladder in the “basement” (really more of a crawlspace) of the townhouse. LEGO® Design Master Wes Talbot modeled the grandparents off his own father.

In the explanatory text of the aforementioned YouTube video, The LEGO® Group stated, “Recreate the charm of a backstreet bookshop that you might discover in any quant village or town with this LEGO® Creator Expert collectors’ toy. The 3-story bookshop and adjoining modular town house building is filled with fun building techniques and surprising details, including a display window, reading nook and an open-out design. Collectors will love to display this big 2,504-piece LEGO set proudly alongside their other modular buildings…The LEGO Creator Expert Modular Buildings series is a premium collection of advanced, interconnecting buildings featuring authentic designs from around the world. LEGO sets that bring passion to life LEGO Creator Expert building sets are for adults and teenagers with a passion. From authentic buildings and classic cars to other objects of desire, Creator Expert advanced LEGO sets offer a world of nostalgia, escapism, self-expression, pure enjoyment and surprise.”

$5.00 Per Month IN THE GARDEN CITY Subscription Plan

$50.00 Per Year IN THE GARDEN CITY Subscription Plan

Credit: The LEGO® Group Caption: LEGO® Design Master Wes Talbot and Graphic Designer Tore Harmark-Alexandersen talk about the forthcoming LEGO® Creator Bookshop (Set #10270).

Credit: JANGBRiCKS Caption: These are the host’s thoughts on the set based on photographs, not a matter of him building a preview set and showing it off.

Help Keep the Lights On

If you like this content, you can help keep more of it coming with a one-time donation.

$1.00

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.