Memorial Union staff members gathered on July 30 to commemorate the hard work and dedication of their custodial staff by adding them to the MU’s LEGO display.

According to MU Building Director Kellen Hendrickson, each custodian received their own LEGO figurine which were modeled by students working at the MU to resemble the custodians.

“It’s me,” custodian Mark Hallas said when first seeing his figurine. “It’s like a little mini me.”

The addition of the custodians to the MU LEGO display also commemorates the 21 years that the MU has had a full-time hired custodial staff.

“The MU was actually the first building at OSU to have a full-time (custodial) staff. Before that, we would contract custodial work from outside companies,” Hendrickson said.

 Hallas was the first of an original seven custodians hired by the MU.

“I worked at the MU for an outside company for four and a half years before I was hired on by the university,” Hallas said. 

Hallas said that student helpers were also an integral part of the day-to-day running of the MU.

“We have maintenance students, cleaning students, etc. It’s all part of a whole,” Hallas said.

Built around 2017 by Gabe Merrell, the director of access and deputy ADA coordinator for the Office of Equal Opportunity and Access, the LEGO MU features several figurines dedicated to people that have been important to the MU and around campus.

“I can’t remember her name at the moment, but this (figurine) is dedicated to a student who loved ‘Toy Story,’” Hendrickson said, pointing out a figurine dressed as Buzz Lightyear.

Hendrickson said that, for the custodians’ figurines, they started putting the names of people on the backs of the figurines so people would know who they actually represent. 

Merrell said that he was inspired to build the LEGO MU because he studied architecture through high school and college and has always had a love of beautiful, historic buildings; he enjoys finding ways to make them as accessible as possible.

“When my oldest kid was young and started to get into building with LEGO, they wanted me to build them big buildings for all of their minifigs. I thought, why not build a real building, and started down the path of trying to figure out scales and if LEGO even had all the right pieces to make the MU as accurate as possible,” Merrell said.

Merrell said that, because the MU is one of the most iconic buildings at OSU, he thought it would be the right building to create.

“I knew getting the arches and columns correct in size and number would be the biggest challenge to making it visually correct, so I started mocking up pieces of the façade to figure out if it was even possible,” Merrell said.

According to Merrell, he acquired the bricks for the LEGO MU from various used LEGO stores around the Willamette Valley and from the website BrickLink.

“At the time, Corvallis had a great used LEGO store where I was a regular. I had no idea there was such a strong market for used LEGO or how easy it is to place orders for hundreds of the same used pieces online,” Merrell said.

Merrell said that he played with the design for the LEGO MU for four to five months before finally deciding to make it. He estimated that it took him over 200 hours to finish the set, mostly for designing and building. 

“There are good digital programs out there for designing LEGO models that will give exact piece counts, and I used them some, but beyond the façades most of the roofs, ramps, stairs, and connections between the wings were trial and error with the used pieces I could find, so I don’t have an exact number of pieces used,” Merrell said.

According to Merrell, he hadn’t thought of the possibility of the set being a permanent piece in the MU, but after he finished it, he knew he had to share it with MU faculty.

“I took it to one of (the MU faculty’s) meetings and they immediately knew it needed to be displayed. They’ve done a great job at building a case and displaying it,” Merrell said.

Merrell said that he would be remiss not to mention that, in his job focusing on accessibility in OSU’s facilities, he really wanted to get the MU accurate from that standpoint.

“I worked hard on the quad-facing porch to figure out how to at least approximate good ramps in addition to stairs – not an easy feat in LEGO. That took a lot of trial and error,” Merrell said.

Hallas said that when he leaves the MU, thanks to his figurine, he will be a part of it forever.