The Story of “The City” — My LEGO City Journey

My LEGO City, or “The City” (we literally had a sign that said that) was born in 2010 when I was in 5th grade.

In our LEGO room, we had always just played on the floor. We built tanks and planes to fight each other, made houses, and played with our minifigs. But one day, we decided to take everything off the shelves and try to assemble it into something that would use as many of our sets as possible.

I still remember the entire floor being covered in sets. We played with everything for the weekend, but when it was time to pack it up, we put away the sets that didn’t fit with the theme and kept the rest as our city. We took our air hockey table, put a piece of plywood over it, laid a tablecloth on top, and arranged the buildings and cars.

The Early Days

By that Christmas, we had added all the sets from the advent calendar to the mix, including an old-fashioned Santa minifigure and a bunch of cotton from Walmart to look like snow. Within another year, we set up a full train loop and added some custom houses.

Over time, we started adding 3’ x 6’ tables to the ends. The train loop expanded to cover all three tables, featuring terrain made from large road pieces from the old LEGO City docks set. I also started drafting designs for where each building and, most importantly, the train tracks would go.

By three years in, we had the first official “city” part of The City:
A baseplate-and-a-half-long strip of road flanked by multi-colored two- and three-story buildings on either side. And in front of it? The sign that read “The City”, along with the symbol it still has today, a lone red caboose, inspired by the cabooses often found outside train museums.

The Annual Tradition

Over time, The City became a yearly tradition, often debuting at our Christmas Eve party each year. We’d break it down on January 1st and rework it throughout the year, supported by a growing collection of parts and trains, now including the Emerald Night, Maersk, and a LEGO City passenger train.

At each party, we’d arrange the minifigs like a scavenger hunt: each one aiming a gun or looking through binoculars at another, until you’d find the one hidden minifigure. And there was always exactly one minifig breaking the fourth wall by looking directly at the audience.

Moving House, Moving The City

In 2013, we moved to a new house, which meant the LEGO room changed from a wide-open sunroom to a space inside the garage. But now we had a rectangular layout and could even add things to the walls.

After a long back-and-forth with our mom (who thought the treadmill belonged in the LEGO room), we finally won, and The City expanded to cover about 75% of the 12’ x 16’ space.

Things were sparse at first, but we gradually expanded. We added an urban section, a freight yard, a construction site, and even a rock concert stage that could hold an iPad for the backdrop, with an iPod above doing the strobe effects.

We also moved The Christmas Village into the living room for its own dedicated holiday display.

And 2013 ended on a high note, with a 10-story skyscraper, featuring a Star Wars LEGO clock piece and the number “10” built into the windows to celebrate 10 years since I got my first LEGO set for my 5th birthday.

Growing Up, But Keeping The Dream Alive

As high school and college kicked in, life got busier. Some years, we didn’t even have a full city, but we usually kept something small set up, even if it meant I had to miss parts of the party.

But in 2017, one of my engineering dreams for The City finally came true:
We added lighting!

We threaded fairy lights through LEGO poles, under sidewalks, and around trees. Lights passed through the roofs of buildings, bringing the whole city to life at night.

The Big Shift: 2022

In 2022, everything leveled up again.

We received a generous donation of 30 baseplates from a friend, which allowed us to finally work toward something we had only seen in million-stud LEGO video games — a city where the entire ground was studs.

Most of the buildings and layout you’ll see in the photos below were inspired by churches, train stations, airports, and urban planning I’d seen around the world and wanted to recreate in LEGO.

For the record:
That entire 4x3 baseplate area was completely built in 7 days.

But even with that rush build, I still have big hopes for the future of The City:

• Custom trains

• Real-life cathedral builds

• A working tram system

• Lights in every building

• Farms, forests, and more

The City Abroad (Briefly!)

Just as a fun side note:
The City even made brief (though smaller) appearances in Clarksville, Tennessee and Aachen, Germany while I was living there.

The current version of The City is back in Florida, with prep already started for our next move. (You can catch a glimpse of that in the second-to-last photo below.)

As a PS, The City also made a brief but shrunken visit to Clarksville, Tennessee and Aachen, Germany when I lived there. Its current development is in Florida and you can see the prep for our most recent move in the second to last photo.

Happy Building!

This has been such a big part of my life, and while I might not always have the time to work on it as much as I’d like, The City is still growing, piece by piece.

Thanks for reading, and happy building!
– Alex