DOWNTOWN : Youths’ Vision Built--Piece by Piece

In the eyes of local elementary schoolchildren, the ideal Los Angeles cityscape would consist of landmarks like City Hall, the Coliseum, the Watts Towers, a Chinatown gateway and the Hollywood sign.

And in the eyes of some French artists, it would all be built with Erector sets.

These two visions have come together in an unusual sculpture now on permanent display in front of the Los Angeles Children’s Museum, 310 N. Main St.

The 16-by-24-foot sculpture, fashioned out of metal Erector set pieces, was a gift to the city from Meccano, the French manufacturer of Erector sets, in celebration of the toy’s 80th anniversary.

But the work also served as a community project that involved students from 68th Street Elementary School in South-Central and Hillside Elementary School in Montecito Heights.

Using the schoolchildren’s designs, Meccano artists and engineers built a cityscape of eight landmarks and a school bus that has photographs of some of the students in the windows.

A towering City Hall building is the centerpiece, flanked by the Coliseum peristyle, a glittering Watts Tower, the ornate Chinatown gateway, the Aztec pyramid at Plaza de la Raza and the round Capitol Records building in Hollywood.

Nestled in a wooden mountain range behind these buildings are the Hollywood sign and the Griffith Park Observatory. The school bus with children’s smiling faces is in the foreground, as if in transit through the city.

Erector engineers spent more than 10,000 hours on the sculpture, using 51,776 Erector pieces, many painted yellow and blue, and 70,000 nuts and bolts, according to Meccano.

The students involved all participate in the LA’s BEST program, which provides free after-school activities like field trips, arts and crafts and sports as well as educational tutoring to 4,000 children at 19 elementary schools citywide.

When Meccano contacted city officials last spring with their idea for a project involving local children, then-Mayor Tom Bradley suggested the students in the nonprofit LA’s BEST.

Erector officials’ original idea was to build a large Erector-set bridge somewhere in the city to represent the bridging of Los Angeles’ diverse cultures and ethnicities.

“But after we sat down with the kids, we decided differently,” said Ruth Sarfaty, spokeswoman for Erector.

The youngsters chose the various landmarks and drew pictures to give the artists specific design ideas. Meccano also donated Erector kits to the students.

For some, it was their first experience with the toy.

“We tried to make a space shuttle and it was a little bit hard, just putting the screws on,” said Nancy Hernandez, 10. “It was a little bit of work.”

The 68th Street School sixth-grader said she suggested the Hollywood sign for the cityscape, “because Hollywood is kind of fun and famous.”

Wearing yellow plastic “hard hats,” Nancy and about a dozen schoolmates helped unveil the sculpture at a recent noontime ceremony in front of the Children’s Museum.

Ten-year-old Nancy Salazar, another sixth-grader at 68th Street, expressed the thrill of seeing the end result of her drawings: “I was excited!”