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Master LEGO Builder: Nick Tatar '96

Nick Tatar hadn’t touched a LEGO® for a long time until his sons, six-year-old Ben and three-year-old Sam, came along. With the kids as incentive, Nick, of Washington and Lee’s Class of 1996, has become an adult builder and fan of the toy bricks.

To say he is a “builder” doesn’t say enough, really. He is a master builder whose LEGO creations have gained international attention. Nick, who is married to Ramey Harris Tatar, of the Class of 1998, does have a day job as assistant dean of student life at Olin College, in Needham, Mass. He got his start in college administration by serving for six years as head of W&L’s Outing Club.

His prowess with LEGO is well documented. Here are just a few of his creations:

The LEGO cuckoo clock below, with moving features that you can see in this short video, was featured in Brother Brick, the largest online LEGO blog in the world:

Below is a custom project that Nick did for the LEGO store at the Natick Mall in Natick, Mass.

Nick also helped the town of Needham celebrate its 300th birthday with a LEGO version of the town hall. You can read about the creation (pictured below) in this story from the Needham Times, which explains how carefully Nick did his homework to get all the details just right. The project required 15,000 LEGO bricks and took three months to complete. The photo below is by Keith E. Jacobson from the Wicked Local; additional photos accompany the story.

And just for fun, Nick takes a lot of his projects to the local library and to his sons’ school. The photo below was taken at Newman Elementary School, where Ben attends.

To view some of Nick’s other projects, have a look at his gallery. And for more on Nick and how he built his career one LEGO at a time, see a future issue of the W&L alumni magazine.

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