Bellhop recreates Victoria hotel with thousands of Lego blocks

Long before he began working as a hotel bellman, Glenn Waddingham's first job was at a toy store.

"They didn’t pay me in money because I was too young," he says. "So they paid me in Lego, which was great."

After assembling about 100 Lego sets over his lifetime, Glenn was eager to use the bricks more creatively.

"I really wanted to do something that was more me," Glenn says.

So he started figuring out how to recreate the hotel he'd worked at for almost 25 years, the Chateau Victoria.

"If I knew it was going to be this big and complicated, I wouldn't have done it," Glenn says.

Instead of relying on instructions, Glenn had to design everything himself.

"I'm pretty methodical when I do things," Glenn says.

He took more than 1,100 reference photos from the road to the roof and everywhere in between, and placed more than 125 orders for discontinued Lego pieces sourced from around the world.

He used more than 62,000 Lego blocks – often in unconventional ways – to realize his goal.

Every night, Glenn would turn up the tunes and start building.

"I think the most wonderful part was having something to look forward to every day," Glenn says.

"You forget everything around you," he says of his hours-long Lego sessions. "You just become consumed with what you're doing."

Like Michelangelo, who felt he was revealing a figure that was already contained inside the stone he was carving, Glenn felt he was doing the same with Lego.

"It just seemed to be taking on its own shape," he says. "Which was really neat."

And what a shape it turned out to be, after 525 hours of work over the course of a year a half.

It's a showcase of Glenn's design and engineering skills, inhabited by more than 95 miniature figurines.

Along with playing in the pool and eating in the restaurant, the characters can be seen maintaining the elevators and washing the windows.

"There's different aspects that appeal to different people," Glenn says, pointing out details both technical and whimsical. "I think that makes it appealing to everybody."

And now that it's on display in the real hotel's lobby, people are invited to see how Glenn's characters were inspired by real staff members and real moments with guests.

Instead of being a bellman, the mini figurine representing Glenn is on the roof looking skyward through binoculars, perhaps inspiring us to view the world with wide-eyed wonder.

"When I was a kid, I tried to see how the clouds looked like animals or something," Glenn smiles. "There's a lot of little things you can notice in the day and enjoy."