A New York taxi and a London bus stop give LEGO shoppers a part to play
The opening displays at Fifth Avenue and Leicester Square left space for an extra character beside Captain America or William Shakespeare.
A passenger seat on Fifth Avenue
In LEGO’s opening photograph of its Fifth Avenue flagship, Captain America has taken the roof of a yellow cab. His shield rests against the checker stripe above the windows. Below him, through an open window, a red passenger seat is visible. The person who completes this particular New York street scene can walk in from the sidewalk.
The taxi was one of the models LEGO introduced when its Fifth Avenue store opened in June 2021. A brick skyline supplied the distant view, while the cab brought the city down to the visitor’s height. Its livery does a surprising amount of the work. Cover the superhero with your hand and the checker stripe, door emblem and expanse of yellow still tell you what kind of ride has pulled up.
Shakespeare waits for the bus
When Leicester Square reopened in August 2022, London got a different invitation to pose. William Shakespeare stood waiting for a red double-decker constructed from 270,884 bricks. A visitor could join the playwright at the stop. Elsewhere, the driver’s seat of James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 offered the distinctly less ordinary prospect of taking the wheel.
Shakespeare waiting for public transport is a small joke that survives the enormous scale of the installation. An isolated statue would ask the visitor to identify a famous face. A Shakespeare who appears to have somewhere to go gives the person next to him a part to play, even if all they do is check an imaginary timetable.
Where the two stores meet
The resemblance between the flagships is easiest to see away from the vehicles. Each opening featured a Tree of Discovery with windows in its multicolored trunk. New York’s tree hid miniature scenes and viewers inside. It rewarded someone prepared to stop, step closer and look through a small aperture, a striking request from a sculpture built with some 880,000 elements.
The vehicles reverse that relationship. At the tree a visitor peers into a world made at brick scale. At the cab and the London bus stop, the builders have brought the scene up to ours. Put the opening photographs side by side and the difference between the cities comes down to a familiar passenger’s decision. In New York, climb in. In London, take your place in the queue.
Reporting checked November 10, 2026. Plans and programs can change; follow the linked organizations for current information.