Arlo, Boston’s newly crowned Mini Master Model Builder, spent about two months crafting a replica of the Tea Party scene for LEGO’s first global competition.
His creation, which features underwater and above-water scenes, will be sent to the LEGO House in Billund, Denmark, to vie against 27 other young regional winners from Shanghai to Arizona.
The Global Mini Master Model Builder will be announced in the fall.
“I‘m very excited,” Arlo said in a recent Zoom interview from his home in Dover, N.H., his shaggy blonde hair falling over his forehead. “This means a lot to me because I’ve been building LEGOs for a long time.”
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Arlo throws up a peace sign in front of his Boston Tea Party LEGO construction.Lindsay Humphreys
A sixth grader at Dover Middle School, Arlo started playing with LEGOs when he was a toddler andhas completed more than 100 LEGO sets.
Still, he never considered entering a LEGO competition until a late February visit to the LEGO Discovery Center Bostonin Somerville.
He had decided to make a hand out of LEGOs, not just any hand but “a celestial hand emerging from the depths of our ocean,” when an employee approached him.
Impressed by his work,the employee told Arlo he should enter the regional Boston Mini Master Model Builder contest.
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Arlo didn’t know what it was but accepted the challenge.
“So I was like, OK, yeah sure, I’ll enter into the tournament,” he recalled. “And I entered in, and I won.”
Kaleb Thome, the LEGO master builder at the Somerville LEGO center, said he saw Arlo’s hand depiction within a couple of weeks of the deadline for the Boston competition.
“He was one of the last ones to submit,” said Thome, 26. “I immediately knew this might be the one.”
The hand was a “very mature concept,” Thome said, but was “executed really well.” As artists know well, hands are a challenge to portray, Thome said.
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“It’s this hand coming up from the ocean,” Thome said. “I was like, dude, that’s a sick concept.”
Arlo and Kaleb Thome pose with his winning LEGO creation. Kaleb Thome
For Arlo, the hand was not a painstaking endeavor; it was simply another opportunity to “create anything,” the reason he was drawn to the building blocks in the first place.
“I think the fact that I could do anything,“ his imagination would allow,Arlo said, explaining his initial interest as a toddler.
When Thome, the judge for the Boston contest, selected Arlo on March 14 over some 50 other applicants across New England, Arlo was shocked.
“I couldn’t tell if they were kidding or not,” he said. “But I was definitely excited, no matter what.”
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The win made Arlo Boston’s Mini Master Model Builder and catapulted him into LEGO’s first global competition.
His work had just begun.
From late March to May 31, Arlo spent one to two days a week working in the Somerville LEGO facility on his greatest creation — the Boston Tea Party.His mom or dad would typically drive him down from New Hampshire around noon on Saturday, and Arlo would stay in his workshop until closing.
His Boston Tea Party includes sea creatures, a scene from Spongebob’s Bikini Bottom, and people throwing tea into the harbor. It’s about 10 inches by 20 inches (1 x 2 base plates in LEGO math) and even has a character named Arlo in a red shirt.
Arlo meticulously placed every piece, and Thome said its scale was “the most impressive thing.”
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“How much brick and plate he was able to put down,” Thome said. “He really set out some big expectations and goals for himself, and I think he achieved them.”
Besides size, the main rule for global competition is that the building represent the city or region the builder is from.
Arlo, a lover of history LEGO sets, jumped at the opportunity.
“The fact that sometimes they can be like small, little scenes cut into history,” Arlo said of historical LEGO sets. ”So you basically have your own history book without even having to read.”
Arlo said he spent a long time coming up his idea, deciding between Paul Revere’s ride and the Boston Tea Party, he eventually landed on the Harbor scene because of its size. Once he had the idea, he started and didn’t stop.
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“If I have an idea, I’m gonna just put it down,” Arlo said. “Once that’s done, I’ll just continue. So I’ll legitimately just build.”
His project will be sent to Denmark after June 30 for the LEGO masters to decide its fate. Until then, it will be on display in Somerville.
The honor of Boston’s Mini Master Builder has required some sacrifices. Arlo didn’t play lacrosse this spring to focus on the LEGO project and has been busy at school, with lot of homework in his favorite subject, science. But his mom, Lindsay Humphreys said it’s been worth it.
“It required the commitment, but knowing that it was such a big deal and probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, for sure, we were supportive of it,” Humphreys said.
Outside of LEGOs, Arlo enjoys video games and playing with his dog Bruno, a beagle and pug mix called a “puggle.”
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But LEGOs are his guiding passion.
He wants to be a LEGO master like Thome one day. His dream car, a Volkswagen bus, is from his favorite LEGO set.
Will he get the car one day?
“Maybe if he can get a job and work towards it,” Arlo’s mom said, drawing a grinfrom Arlo.
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Ava Berger can be reached at ava.berger@globe.com. Follow her @Ava_Berger_.
BOSTON (WHDH) – A 20-year-old man is dead, and an 81-year-old man will face criminal charges following a wrong-way crash on Interstate 93 in Boston late Saturday night, officials said.
Troopers responding to a reported multi-vehicle crash on Route 93 northbound before Exit 15A around 11:45 p.m. determined a driver in a 2004 Cadillac Escalade got on the highway in the wrong direction and nearly struck two vehicles — a Honda Odyssey and an Audi A4 — causing both to swerve and crash into each other, according to state police.
The occupants of the Honda Odyssey, a family of four, were transported to a Boston-area hospital for evaluation.
Shortly after the initial crash, the wrong-way driver, later identified as Antone Carvalho, of Somerset, collided head-on with a Chevrolet Cruze.
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The driver of the Chevrolet Cruze, a man in his 20s from Haverhill, died from his injuries. His name has not been released.
Carvalho will be issued a summons to appear in court at a later date.
This is a developing news story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest details.
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BOSTON (WHDH) – It’s the fall of 1974 in South Boston, and four generations of the Moran family are rushing to church for baby Lila’s baptism. The moment is filled with great anticipation, and one of the most memorable images frozen in time in Constantine Manos’s “Where’s Boston” series.
Now, more than 50 years later, that photograph has taken on a new meaning.
The Boston Athenaeum has revived the landmark exhibition first shown during Boston’s Bicentennial celebration in 1976. To mark America’s 250th anniversary, the library has paired Manos’s photographs with 12 newly recorded oral histories, giving the people captured in the images a chance to tell the stories behind them.
“These images show one moment in time, but when you talk to someone and ask them to reflect on it, you learn so much more about them and their larger family history,” said Boston Athenaeum curator Lauren Graves. “Then somehow that history, too, ends up relating to a larger Boston history.”
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In their oral history, George and Carolyn Moran reflected on the social upheaval surrounding Boston’s bussing crisis, when court-ordered school integration sparked intense racial conflict across the city.
While the baptism photograph captures a day of celebration, the Moran family said it also stirs memories of another pivotal moment: their decision to leave the South Boston neighborhood they had long called home.
“Around the corner came a huge swarm of people being chased by police on horseback with clubs,” George Moran said. “Apparently earlier that day there had been a stabbing around the corner of South Boston High School, and the town was in total turmoil over that incident.”
Fearing for their children’s safety as tensions escalated, the two Boston Public Schools teachers made the difficult decision to move their family to Brookline.
“We were very careful in making our decision because we did have a strong allegiance to the schools and to education,” Carolyn Moran said. “I would say our concerns about the education of our daughters was our primary reason for making the move.”
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Courtesy Boston Athenaeum
Many of Manos’s seemingly innocuous photographs reveal the city’s deeply segregated spaces that shaped Boston a half-century ago. An Italian religious process in the North End, young Black men unwinding at Franklin park, and a father looking lovingly at his son at a Chassidic center in Brookline each offer a glimpse into communities that rarely intersected.
But even amid turmoil and division, Manos found beauty in life’s small moments—a bride leaving a church on her wedding day, a young man absorbed in a game of chess, and a father flying a kite with his son.
Courtesy Boston Athenaeum
“The exhibit shows some of the terrible times of protest, but it also shows the moments of joy,” Carolyn Moran said. “They’re all juxtaposed, and that’s life—these difficult times as well as beautiful times.”
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As the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary, curators hope the exhibition encourages visitors to reflect on not just how far the city has come, but also the work that still needs to be done in the coming decades.
“We thought this was a unique moment to look back at the Bicentennial, to look back 50 years and think about this recent past,” Graves said. “What do we want for Boston today? What do we want for the future? And what do we want for the future of the country itself?”
Visitors are also invited to become part of the exhibition by filling out comment cards reflecting on where Boston is today.
The Boston Athenaeum says it is still identifying people featured in Manos’s photographs and plans to continue expanding the exhibition’s online oral history collection.
“Where’s Boston” is open until December 12.
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The 24-year-old forward had a career-high 68 points (27 goals, 41 assists) in 2024-25 with the Sabres before getting traded to Utah in June, 2025. Peterka posted 47 points (25 goals, 22 assists) through 82 games in his first year with the Mammoth.
“He’s got an elite shot. Probably gives us another look on the elbows in a power play situation. His power play minutes dipped a little bit last year; his 5-on-5 production has been really good, plays both wings, can probably play with a couple different types of centers,” Sweeney said.
Peterka had a similar assessment for himself.
“I think a pretty fast game, likes to score goals,” he said. “Just overall, exciting player that loves to make plays.”
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Sweeney also sees a versatility in Peterka’s game that can benefit his new teammates up and down the lineup.
“I think he fits into a good group age-wise because he’s able to have played in the league with all the experience he’s had, the success he’s had, so he can ride shotgun with David because he has had scoring,” Sweeney said. “He can go down and drive a line, which he has done.”
The prospect of him playing with someone like David Pastrnak is something that excites both Sweeney and Peterka.
“That would be pretty sick, not going to lie,” Peterka said. “If you have that caliber of a player, I think everyone wants to play with him. From the past, playing against him, even watching him, was always super special. I would be super honored, for sure.”
While Peterka has already played four full seasons in the NHL, he still has his whole career in front of him. He joins a young new wave of Bruins players – alongside the likes of Reichel, Fraser Minten, Marat Khusnutdinov and James Hagens – who will carve the future identity of the team. The ceiling is high for Peterka.
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“In JJ’s case, he has had success. We have to come in and put him in the right situations so he continues to score at the level we think he can. Morgan [Geekie] is a great example,” Sweeney said. “Did we think he was going to score 39 goals when we first acquired him? No. But that’s always the hope – that a player will take advantage of a new opportunity and playing with different types of players than what they were in their other environment.”
Peterka is ready for the challenge and to prove that he has another gear to his game to help the Bruins win.
“I think it’s always nice to have a fresh start. I think especially after the year I had last year where I wasn’t really happy with the performance I put on the ice,” Peterka said. “For me, I feel like it’s a fresh start. And for a team like Boston, it couldn’t be any better.”