Lego mills detail 03

Lego mills detail 03, originally uploaded by afka_bob.

Lego model of Amoskeag Mills at the See Science Center, Manchester, New Hampshire.

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The LEGO® Millyard Project located at SEE Science Center is the largest permanent LEGO® installation at minifigure scale in the world. It represents Manchester's Amoskeag Millyard as it might have looked when it was the largest textile manufacturer in the world: it was commonly recognized as such by 1915. The Amoskeag mill complex spanned over a mile on the east side of the Merrimack River and half a mile on the west side. This model represents a portion of the East side, along with part of Manchester, the city that the Amoskeag company helped to build. This project marked the first time the LEGO® Company has worked on a creative display of this scale with outside partners. These partners included: the SEE Science Center, FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), CLD Consulting Engineers, and NELUG (the New England LEGO® Users Group). The City of Manchester also sponsored this project. The project was built at a scale of approximately 55:1, called minifigure scale, which means to match the proportions of the LEGO® minifigure people.

FAST FACTS
· This project was built with approximately three million LEGO® bricks. The Jefferson mill, built in 1886, was built with an estimated five million bricks.

· The 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. The Amoskeag Company built all of the mill buildings between 1838 and 1915.

· All of the LEGO® bricks used here were once in sets available to the public.

· 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.

Read more at NewHampshire.com