Among the most coveted sets by the Danish brickmaker are the early modular buildings. The Grand Emporium, dating to 2010, was the fifth modular released (if 2007’s much smaller and more basic Lego 10190 (also 15007) Market Street is included in the count, which some consider a modular yet was before the official launch of the series). At an original cost of $150, this 2,100 piece set (Lego 10211) demonstrated that there was continued demand for more complicated building sets aimed at older teens, or to be completely honest, adult fans of brick-building. Now nearly nine years on, it retails for around 300–400 USD used, or as much as 900 USD mint in a sealed box.

Luckily, King Bricks has released clones of nearly all of the modular buildings, making them affordable for those who had missed the original releases or who weren’t into bricks at that particular time in their life. I was just barely getting back into building bricks for myself in 2010, and in graduate school, so I didn’t pay much attention to everything that was out at the time. It was only a few years later, when the Parisian Cafe caught my wife’s eye, that I built a modular for the first time, and then with the discovery of the clones a few years later than I expanded my modular collection.

So, let’s take a look at 15005, the Grand Emporium. It is modeled after an early 1900’s department store much like you’d find in every major American or British city. The outside architectural style conjures images of Macy’s or Harrod’s in their glory days. The set includes 7 mini figures, none of which are especially unique. But that’s ok, not every figure has to be unique, right? We get a good selection of customers, an ice cream vendor, a child, a cashier, a window washer, and mannequins for the store windows.

The set itself, when I bought it last year (this may have changed with the advent of King bricks) was packed in two large inner boxes inside a very large, very colourful outer box. The inner boxes were quite random as to their contents, though. The bricks were not packed in stages, so one will probably want to open all the bags and do some amount of sorting before beginning. Luckily, many bags contain all the same part or a number of very similar parts (all the 2×2 tiles, for example, or all the 2×8 plates, etc.) so you can just open those bags as the parts are needed.

Like all modulars except for the first couple, the facade is just the beginning. The interior of the emporium is furnished, though much sparser than the newer modulars like the Assembly Square or Downtown Diner, which have quite detailed interior furnishings. Let’s look at each floor as we build out this rather attractive addition to our brick city:

The ground floor, as with many modulars, has a nice, smooth pavement for our city dwellers to walk to and fro. As this is a corner building, there’s even more pavement than usual. This gives us room for an ice cream cart, two large flower pots, a rubbish bin, a street lamp, and a red post box (perhaps this is a British street front, although British post boxes are famously shaped as pillars, whilst most early 1900’s American mailboxes I’ve seen are red and blue. Maybe it’s Danish? But most Danish post boxes are mounted on posts, that I’ve seen, at least. Maybe it’s fictional Cloneland after all?). We’re also going to build a lovely tiled pattern in the pavement in front of the shop’s revolving front door. Sometimes placing and pressing all these tiles onto a baseplate can cause a bit of finger numbness, when there’s dozens in a row. Pace yourself!

I have occasionally found some of the cloned baseplates to have a bit of bend to them, which luckily is dealt with when the weight of an entirely constructed building is bearing down on them. The base included with this set seems like one of the better ones I’ve received, with very little noticeable bend in it.

One enters the Grand Emporium through a revolving door, which works very nicely and moves very smoothly. Right above this door is a brick-build sign reading “SHOP”. Future modular buildings and other LEGO and knock-off sets would make great use of this technique and improve upon it, for making letters and numbers from bricks using clever studs-not-on-top methods.

The shop itself has a cashier with a vintage-looking till, a fitting room on the ground floor, along with a small clothing selection. You can use the fitting room to re-enact the inspiration for Cloneland’s favourite TV program, “Where’s my Pants?”. The front windows have a male and female mannequin showing off the latest formal styles.

At the rear corner of the ground floor is a very plain back door, which affords access to the alley way behind. All of the modulars have this rear door, which is of course very much realistic for any downtown building to have. A (non-functioning, but convincing looking) escalator whisks shoppers between floors (it must be bi-directional, since there’s only one). The top two floors have minimal furnishings, just like all of the older modulars, but they do have representative samples of merchandise from a housewares department and a toy department, showcasing merchandise such as a scooter, glassware, toy balls, and fancy China dishes. If someone felt inspired to do so, there’s plenty of room to add some shelves and other merchandise on any of the floors.

Arriving at the very top, on the roof, we have a skylight and a really cool billboard showing a gift parcel and a simulated mini-figure face. This adds some nice realism to the exterior of the Emporium, which also features some red and blue waving banners, some fine architectural details in the roof line and the ground floor display windows.

All in all, the (King) Grand Emporium is a pretty faithful reproduction of this long-discontinued Lego set, which itself is a faithful model of a department store of times gone by (I can remember as a child in the 1980’s several department stores like this, though by that time those downtown shops were definitely on life support), even if the interior more resembles a poorly stocked Sears store, circa 2013 (it’s just the nature of the old modulars, but if you go in knowing that, you should be all set!) If you’re looking to add a modular you missed out on, this is an economical way to do so. And since the set has been discontinued for many years, it’s really one of the only ways to do so, aside from buying one on the secondary market or buying all the pieces individually from third-party sources at a cost of multiple hundreds of dollars, most likely.

The quality of everything in this set was up to usual standards: the windows were wrapped in plastic so they were safe from scuffing and scratching during transport, the bricks and plates were all within expected tolerances, colours were all perfect and consistent, and mini-figures were accurately printed. Without any hesitation, I highly suggest adding the Grand Emporium to your Cloneland (Kingland?) town. Having built so many simple Lego town building sets as a lad in the early 80s, it’s a lot of fun expanding on that concept with these more complicated, more feature-rich, and far more detailed modular buildings. Most of the early 80s town sets were three-sided affairs, pretty much all rectangular in shape, with open backs for play inside. The modulars are called such because the levels lift off to allow play inside, but when fully assembled, they are perfect for display and look very sophisticated. If you haven’t yet been sold on the modular series, the 15005 Grand Emporium would be a fine place to start, available as inexpensively as it is.

Our friends at BuildingToyStore.com offer 15005 Grand Emporium for only USD 81.99 plus shipping. With about 2,200 bricks, the price is right. When you order from BuildingToyStore.com, and be sure to claim your 10 USD off coupon, as well as their new account bonus discount (on their site). Just go to BuildingToyStore.com using this link, create an account (which gets you a 10% discount), and use coupon code K7CXYREL. You may also find a coupon code on their site for an additional 5% discount.

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