I put all the receipts into a shoebox and never added them up. I can give you a few estimates however:
1. Fisher Building: $2,500+
2. David Stott: $ 1,500+
3. Penobscot: $ 2,000+
(I know, you are all thinking that I am crazy!)

I have also earned some of this money back by selling excess Lego through my store on bricklink.com and by helping to build a commissioned Lego sculpture.

My advice would be to be on the lookout for clearance sales. To get started on the Fisher Building, I purchased 133 basic 500 peice buckets at (several) Meijers when they had a clearance at $7.26 each. There have been fewer sales lately so Bricklink or eBay is probably your best bet if you want to get started accumulating parts now. If you want to build a large structure, you might want to do a white building for your first skyscraper as it is the cheapest (reasonably) realistic color. Of the three buildings above, the David Stott used many fewer parts but was almost expensive since the dark organge color costs about three times as much as white.

^ Do you ever win cash prizes or anything for your buildings?

oh my!!

if you like it, then its worth it

Wow...I didn't know there were so many Lego skyscraper-builders here!

DecoJim...I've seen your amazing work on Brickshelf...Your Detroit buildings are incredible. Your David Scott building inspired me to start build an Art Deco building similar in size a year ago. Unfortunately it sits partially completed because the primary color for my building - tan - is hard to come by these days.

jsr - I've seen your stuff on Brickshelf too and they're pretty amazing too! Keep up the awesome work!

I've got my own Lego city too. (I need to take a picture of the city as a whole. I only have pictures of the individual buildings.)

Here's some of my buildings:

First - the 8'6" Chrysler Building:

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Er...with_spire.jpg

Here's a building I designed...inspired by several Dubai buildings:

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Er...r/modern05.jpg

Another building I designed...Inspired by Realm in Buckhead:

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Er..._stc_tower.jpg

And a few more "generic" looking buildings I made:

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Er...etower1_01.jpg http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Er...yscraper_1.jpg

And some storefronts:
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Er...torefronts.jpg

Sorry for the large images...It's midnight and don't feel like resizing them. :P

here's my lego sears tower.



made it about 15 years ago and spray painted it. next to it is a card board bank of china i made about 10 years ago and then a fuzzy eiffel tower i got in paris a couple of months ago. i also have a fuzzy tower of the americas (san antonio) too.

Your Chrysler is pretty impressive; its the best one I have seen. It looks to be about 1/2 the scale of the Lego Chrysler building at Legoland. When I first saw this on brickshelf, I was slightly annoyed that it was taller than my own tallest building at the time. Damn that spire!

The 2nd of your "generic" buildings looks like a short version of the Farmers Trust Co. Building in lower Manhattan.

(also thanks for the compliment)

-Jim

i would like to thank everyone who has posted on this thread. so thanks once again

Can I get in on the thread?
 

Hi folks,
I've been meaning to write for a while now. Wanted to share some pics of my own Lego skyline. I'm a neighbor & friend of DecoJim and we've been comparing our Detroits and stories about finding the pieces we need.

Where he's concentrating on detail, I'm going for breadth. I have about 150 buildings done now. My Detroit made its public debut at BrickBash last year. Couldn't attend this year, unfortunately.

My scale is one stud = 20 feet, so I've had to be as precise as I could, though I've had to architecturally paraphrase in some cases. Hopefully once I complete all the buildings within the freeways that define downtown, I'll go back and rebuild to better match color. If you've ever seen a map of downtown Detroit, you'll know what a mess of odd-shaped blocks much of it is. That's where I'm having a hard time making buildings fit the angles I need.

Enough blab for now. I'd have posted some pics, but I can't get them attached for some reason. Help!

Mike

^To get images to work is a few simple steps. first, upload them to an on-line image host (or your ISP). Then link to the on-line image thusly: {img}http://www.host.com/imagefilename.jpg{/img} replacing {} with [].

hell yes motervilleboy you can get in on the thread

Yes, please do post your models. I'm always interested in seeing what other people have done with their Legos and how they've come up with methods of doing angles especially.

It sounds like your model is similar to mine in scale. For me, one stud equals 20 feet as well.

You can see my model of Downtown Austin in my Brickshelf gallery. It's linked in my sigline below under "City of Legos".

This thread has been quiet for some time.

I do not know why Mike has not posted his micro-scale Detroit but he may have gotten busy; I sent him a couple of emails....

Anyway, I just have completed another building that I will be adding to my minifig-scale Detroit skyline at the NMRA 2007 National Train Show (July 28-30 at Cobo Conference Center, Detroit).

The Griswold Building - Detroit, Michigan.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1195/...7ecbda25c9.jpg
Flickr Link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/decojim...7594424482997/ (more photos)

The architect of the Griswold Building was Albert Kahn who designed over 1,000 buildings including skyscrapers, mansions, and modern auto-factories.

-Jim

:worship: I'm not worthy.. god you guys rule....

ERSH i need those store fronts for city i'm working on for my kids lego train... I love it!

Woah! I thought that was a real building until I saw the lego men and cars at the bottom! :tup:

wow, i m beyond impressed!! it must be very expensive to build these masterpieces. how much would building something like this cost? how do u determine how many blocks u need? is there some kind of computer softwear u can use to draw this up first?

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1195/...7ecbda25c9.jpg


from one of the links i found this pic. it looks like some type of computer drafting that tells u exactly what kind/how many blocks u need??

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/sr.../citicorp5.jpg

Very well done, deco jim. I hope to see your work in person sometime.

As to the cost, see my prior response to a similar question (post #61 of this thread).

There are a couple of software programs (LCAD - Lego CAD and LDraw - Lego Draw) that do allow one to completely design a project and to calculate all parts needed. I do not use these, since I get enough of computers with my programming job and checking email, ssp, brickshelf, flickr, etc. I estimate the parts I need by building a sample section of the facade and then I multiply the parts needed for that by the ratio (size of entire buidling : size of sample facade). Sometimes I order too many parts but they will often get used in the next project.

-Jim

Thanks! Since I do not have enough space in my house to display these models properly as a city, probably the best way to see them would be to attend the NMRA 2007 National Train Show at Cobo Conference Center in Detroit* on July 27-29 (no, I am not getting paid by NMRA). The buildings I have made will be part of a massive multi-Lego train club layout. An area of 11,000 sq.ft. has been allocated for the Lego display (about 1/3 of that will be actual train layout, the rest is space for visitors). Just the Michigan Lego Train Club layout will measure 30x40 feet. It will be the first time that all of my Detroit skyscraper models will be displayed at the same time.

* The NMRA NTS is held in a different city each year so it could be decades before it comes back to Detroit.

You need to take like 200-500 pictures while you are there :D we wanna see everything :)