Architecture

New York City, The Big Apple

The whole New York skyline tucked inside a big black apple, love it or hate it.

Brick Rated Score

3.7/5

Set 21066 · 2026

Pieces1,465

Minifigsn/a

Year2026

Set number21066

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The verdict

This is the LEGO® set that will split a room in half, and I mean that as a compliment.

The skyline sitting silhouetted against a night sky, framed by a giant stylized apple, is either the freshest thing Architecture has done in years or a gimmick that swallows the buildings, depending on who you ask. I landed on charmed, because the composition really does read like a piece of art on a shelf. If you want faithful, to-scale skyscrapers you can name brick by brick, this is not that, and you should know it going in.

Best for: New York lovers who want a graphic display piece over an accurate skyline model

The full review

What it is

New York gets a lot of LEGO love, but this one takes a swing nobody was expecting. Instead of a straight skyline strip like the old 21028 city set, the whole scene lives inside a large black apple shape, that classic Big Apple nickname turned into the actual frame of the model. Behind the buildings you build a night sky out of dark blue plates, dot it with small printed round tiles for distant stars, and set a crescent moon up in the corner. Then the landmarks go in as silhouettes against all that. You get the Empire State Building, One World Trade Center, the Guggenheim, the Met, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, and Central Park rolled in at the end, plus little yellow taxi cabs, a hidden Easter egg, and the printed 'New York, New York' tile as the finishing touch. It follows January's Paris City of Love set, so this is clearly a new artier direction for the whole Architecture line, and reviewers kept describing it as LEGO Art and LEGO Architecture having a baby.

The catch

Here is where I have to be straight with you, because this set is genuinely divisive and the complaints are fair. The apple frame is the whole gamble. Some builders love how graphic and bold it looks, and others feel it completely overshadows the buildings, which are supposed to be the point of an Architecture set. One reviewer flatly called the backdrop horrible and said it ruins the set, and that opinion is out there loud and clear, so you should look hard at the photos before you commit. The value question is the other sticking point. At 139.99 dollars for 1,465 pieces, a fair number of people felt it was steep, with one memorable line about how they would have bought it as a 70 dollar postcard but a 140 dollar apple was a no. And if you came to Architecture for accurate scale, the kind of model where every setback on a tower is faithfully reproduced, this is not that. It gives the suggestion of shape and form rather than the real proportions, and longtime fans of the theme have grumbled that the series is losing what made it special.

Who it's for

So who is this actually for. If you love New York and you want something graphic and a little bold to hang your eye on, something that reads as a designed object rather than a scale model, I think you will really enjoy it and it displays beautifully. If you are the type who wants to point at the Chrysler Building and say that is exactly right, or you are counting pieces against dollars, this one will frustrate you and you are better off waiting for a sale or looking at an older skyline set. It won me over on charm and composition, but it is a set you should choose with your eyes open, because it is not trying to be the New York model people expected.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

The build goes in clear stages and it is a relaxing one rather than a technical puzzle. You start with the apple frame and the night sky, laying down dark blue plates and scattering the little printed round tiles that stand in for stars, which is a calm, repetitive stretch closer to painting than engineering. Then the fun picks up as the landmarks go in one at a time, the Empire State and One World Trade as vertical accents, the Brooklyn Bridge stretched across, the Guggenheim and the Met, and finally Central Park and the taxis dropped into the foreground. Nothing here is going to challenge an experienced builder, so if you live for clever techniques this will feel gentle, but the payoff is watching a real composition come together piece by piece.

On parts, the story is more about prints than rare molds. The printed star tiles, the crescent moon, the tiny yellow taxi cabs, and that 'New York, New York' tile are the pieces people single out, and there is a little Easter egg tucked in for you to find. The silhouette style leans heavily on common plates and small tiles in dark blue and black, so this is not a set you buy to raid for exotic elements. That also feeds the value grumble, because 1,465 pieces at 140 dollars works out to a chunky per-piece price when so many of those pieces are ordinary small tiles doing background duty. You are paying for the look and the design idea more than for a treasure chest of parts.

Fun facts

01It is only the second set in a new artier run of Architecture city skylines, following January 2026's Paris City of Love, both of which drop faithful scale in favor of a graphic, almost poster-like take.
02The model literally turns New York's Big Apple nickname into the build itself, using a giant stylized black apple as the frame that holds the entire skyline scene.
03The night sky is more than decoration, it includes a crescent moon in the corner and small printed round tiles standing in for distant stars behind the buildings.
04Reviewers who saw it early kept describing it as what you would get if LEGO Art and LEGO Architecture had a baby, which tells you exactly how far it strays from the old skyline strips.