Favorite Modular Building?

[Lion King]

I will say that Police Station is one of my favorite modular buildings because it’s my first modular building set. As a kid I had been wanting to get modular buidling after seeing Palace Cinerma. Police Station got me into modular buildings. 

I have another favorite building sets: Boutqiue Hotel, Parisian Restaurant, Natural History Museum.

I haven’t built Assembly Square and Corner Garage sets yet so I will update my favorite rank later. I don’t need to case my actual votes here. 

And I still refuse to choose one among those sets here. :) 

[Hive]

To my surprise, the votes actually line up pretty well with my own personal favorites (top 3 is Parisian Restaurant, Boutique Hotel and Assembly Square).

Crazy that there's no love for the Town Hall or Jazz Club though.

[RichardGoring]

On 11/6/2024 at 6:43 PM, Yoggington said:

For me it's a toss up between that and the Boutique Hotel. As @jus1973 mentioned, the build of Boutique is the big appeal - the way those angles work out scratches a funny part of my brain. But for pure looks, PR steals it for me as #1.

The build of Boutique Hotel had me laughing out loud with joy in a couple of places. It was so clever.

[Ardelon]

For me, it would be Parisian Restaurant, followed by the Natural History Museum. 

Not sure if the shared olive green color scheme has anything to do with it, but I would actually like the museum more if it had a tan color as its main color.

I don't own any modulars, so I am going purely by visual appeal and reviews.

[Hive]

I'd like to give the Book Shop a shout. Well, the book shop part of it at least. I think that one, as a stand alone, would be top 5. But the turqoise residential building drags the overall look somewhat down, sadly.

[LL1982]

The hotel because I own it, but for looks parisian comes very close or maybe closer after I get one. ;) 

I do have to say I would like to own the brickbank and detective office because I have the feeling the stories of it are great. Maybe that would alter my ranking. 

[vaoinas]

For me definitely the Brick Bank. It was my first and I love the features and overall bulky look of it.

Brick bank lacks a height though in my opinion, but I've added an extra floor to mine and it gives it much deserved grandiose feel. 

[Doddsino]

If I had to rank them from worst to best;

20. 10232: Palace Cinema - ugly...just plain ugly. I buy and build the modulars to fit with the other modulars and this sticks out like a sore thumb. I would have preferred a traditional multiplex that might require the set to be larger and more expensive, but I digress. Not only does it look gaudy on the outside, but inside the "theater" is a joke. I guess they only do private screenings to couples. I bought this set when it first came out and I never even opened it.

19. 10297: Boutique Hotel - has the same problem as the Palace Cinema...it looks like a set piece for Casablanca, not something you would normally see in a regular town. While I do think the set looks just fine, it wasn't something that I felt fit with my other sets, so I never bought it 

18. 10224: Town Hall - Despite this being lowly ranked, I do think this is a perfect set for what it represents. It's a set that I'm happy I bought and it fits nicely within the little town that it represents. However, it doesn't have anything going for it that makes me want to rank it any higher. 

17. 10326: Natural History Museum - This falls under the same category as the Town Hall, however I have yet to actually buy this set, so I can't really be justified to rank it any higher or lower, other than what I base off pictures.

16. 10312: Jazz Club - this looks great for what it is, but again I haven't had a chance to purchase it yet, so I can't rank it any higher.

15. 10211: Grand Emporium - this set would have been more suited had it not been a department store, but maybe just focus on being a clothing store. I don't live and die by the interiors, but this was immensely disappointing. I mean, did we really need a chandelier?They could have done a better job by allocating a better changing room instead of a hodge podge of three levels. It's not a bad set, but it left a lot to be desired. Instead of getting a cool clothing, or a cool toy store or a cool kitchenware store...we got 3 mini mediocre ones.

14. 10278: Police Station - this is yet another set that I own that I haven't put together yet! I need to clear some time! Anyways, this is something I'll bring up later, but I really really like the little hole in the wall businesses that Lego includes in these set. The doughnut shop is absolutely adorable, and I'm a fan of condensing size for most of these when space isn't vital. I don't know why, but I like the town to feel cramped, as it feels more lived in that way 

13. 10260: Downtown Diner - again I'll stress this by saying it is a great looking set. But it just doesn't fit in with everything else. Maybe if this was it's own thing and not part of the main modular line, I'd be more okay with it, but as it's built, it stands by itself. That said, I love the colors, I love the interiors.

12. 10264: Corner Garage - this is definitely middle of the road for me. It's hard to say that it's a bad looking set, and I do like the multiple interior set ups, but this is a scenario where I would have preferred the garage to not be sandwiched with other locations on top of it. Maybe allocate the right side to the garage and have the businesses on the left side. I know that would be hard to adjust for with a corner location, but I think it would have been better this way, maybe even have a garage waiting room with large windows, which is how I typically see them. As is, it's still fine set.

11. 10190: Market Street - hard to judge this as it was done very early on with very few specialized pieces. Any time I build this, I have to customize it so that the window won't be blocked. The lack of interiors is again something I can't fault it for, but for what it is, it looks very nice as an addition to the first 2 modulars.

10. 10251: Brick Bank - I would have ranked this far lower had it not been for one thing....the little laundromat. I love it! While the bank itself is fine, I find it too spacious and elaborate. Banks should be cramped with those little maze things that annoy you because the person standing behind you is coughing up a lung. I also never cared for the color selection for the building, something about the gray, white and green doesn't look right to me.

9. 10350 Tudor Corner - this looks pretty good so far. Maybe I'm being too ambitious with ranking it this high based off of what we have seen, but I'm very optimistic. 

8. 10255: Assembly Square - the thing I like about this set is the focus on the overall layout of the set versus what the set actually is. Seriously, I doubt that many people were asking for a floral shop, but I appreciate using a set like this to add that in there, along with the others. Again, I think the layout is what I enjoy about this set above everything else. It's easy to really look at every set as a building, but this set allows for the breakup of countless buildings on top of one another, if you were to snap all the modulars together. Along with Market Street, it's one of the two sets that allows for you to "travel through".

7. 10243: Parisian Restaurant - this rides the line with being a little too unique for what I like in the modulars, but I think it's not uncommon to see at least one fancy restaurant in most places. While I do like the exterior a lot, this set has some of the best interior layouts of the entire series. The courtyard is a nice touch to make sure the seating doesn't seem mundane.

6. 10218: Pet Shop - less is more with me. I don't like frills, I like my town to feel normal and lived in. I think the pet shop is a perfect example of that. It's got a very basic design, but I think it still creates an inviting atmosphere. I don't know if this set sold poorly, because I used to see this set more than all the others whenever I would visit a Lego store. One minor gripe I have, and this goes back to what I said before about being "normal and lived in"...is that I consider my little town to have that routine feel to it...the kind you'd see in a montage of the opening of a movie; the paperboy is always delivering the paper, the store owner is flipping the "Closed" to "Opening" sign, etc. So why do you have a guy who is painting a wall? Is his job to paint the wall every day? The wall will never be painted! Seriously, if I wanted to add these little eccentricities to my town, I'll do so...I'd prefer if Lego themselves wouldn't.

5. 10197: Fire Brigade - early on, this was a contender for my favorite modular. While I still like it, I think there's some minor tweaks I would change, but overall it still is a nice looking building. That said, I never understood why they had you build the ladder when one already existed, and looked better than the rickety one you have to build. Side note, the little cat in this set disappeared and I couldn't find it. Several years later, I visited my sister halfway across the country and noticed my niece had it in her things. She didn't own anything Lego and had stolen it when she was visiting. I promptly stole it back.

4. 10270: Bookshop - much like the Pet Shop, this feels just so cozy. I love the color scheme, I love the interiors and while I would have preferred a library, a book store still works. Simple, yet effective. The one thing that annoys me is the birch tree. I actually love the tree, but why in the world would you do it so the leaves were changing? That sets it off the rest of the foliage in the town, which makes it look like there's something wrong with the tree.

3. 10185: Green Grocer - another set that I considered my favorite for a while. For such an early set, it's actually amazing at how well it still holds up. I mentioned this with Market Street, but Lego did a great job of putting out those early sets that compliment one another, and this one stood as the one that connected the other two early modulars together, especially with such a beautiful color scheme. The addition of the interiors helped as well, mostly in the storefront, but that little extra attention to detail is what I knew would ensure the modulars would continue to happen.

2. 10246: Detective's Office - it's interesting what happens when you add those textured bricks to the mix, it just creates such a wonderful little set, one that if I never got into modulars, I probably would have still bought. This set does ride the line of being somewhat of a gimmick the same was Palace Cinema and the Downtown Diner are...but overall it just looks like an old "run down" building you'd see in the city. This set has a unique blend to the build with the offset middle and the alleyway. As it's own, it feels like a little piece of 40's noir, but added to the other modulars, it stands a test to the seedy underbelly of the little town you have going on.

1. 10182: Cafe Corner - seriously I had to put this at number one. It is *the* set that broke a decade long absence from Lego. I did hesitate on buying it when it came out, but I eventually caved and I am happy I did. When I was a kid, Town was by far my least favorite theme...all the buildings were one dimensional, it looks like I was putting on a stage play. I wanted a fully 3 dimensional world, and that was something I was able to do better with Space, Pirates and Castle. I remember seeing the 3739 Blacksmith set that folded open and wished that was something they did with Town buildings. And while that never was a thing, I think the modulars are a better representation of that. Sure Cafe Corner doesn't have any interiors, but it didn't bother me that they were missing. It's a beautiful set as, and the crown jewel to the little town it encompasses. It's simple, yet eloquent. It represents everything that I knew Lego was capable of, back when I was a child.

Edited December 8, 2024 by Doddsino