The museum turned itself into a model. Other local landmarks coming soon

The Sault Ste. Marie Museum announced that it plans to release a 3-D model of its building earlier this month. It should be available for purchase by the 2020 holiday season. Its release will be the first of several city-based landmarks soon to be produced.

Those who purchase the model will get to build it themselves (similar to Lego or Mega Blocks) from 962 pieces. The final product will be 22.6 cm X 12.8 cm X 13.9 cm. The “collectors’ item” is now available for pre-order.

“Right now, we’re taking pre-order until the end of Sept. They should be in by Christmas time,” said chief curator William Hollingshead.

This will be the first of 10 city landmarks that will get the building block treatment.

He said the company, The Brickspace - Twin Soo Bricks is going to look into doing other historical pieces, which includes the cross at St. Basil.

Hollingshead said “As far as I know, we were one of the first people to do this and promote it heavily. The company that did the design got other requests across the province.”

Hollingsghead is the executive director and chief curator of the Sault Museum. He is a graduate from the ON College of Fine Arts and Design.

“My background was art history — the programming aspect of museums, leading tours, doing events,” he said. 

“That’s where I started and I moved up to administration.”

Hollingshead is also one of the minds behind the build-your-own Museum model.

“We basically partnered with a couple of different groups: Playwell Bricks and [Brickspace] to create a custom model of the Museum with 3-D building blocks. From there, we sourced out our pieces.”

The idea to create a model of the Museum came to him under quarantine.

“It was something we drew up over the pandemic as a way to engage with people and keep ourselves relevant,” said Hollingsead.

“It was [my idea] and [that of Twin Soo Bricks]. The company is run by one of my friends. We were chatting and we were like ‘why don’t we do a museum?’ and it went from there.”

The chief curator maintains that this is “a cool way to bring a piece of history home.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: The above story has been edited to clarify that the Sault Ste. Marie Museum worked with a company called The Brickspace - Twin Soo Bricks.