Springville man turns home into a magical 'Harry Potter' school

SPRINGVILLE — On the outside, it looks like a historic two-story home. On the inside, it's undergoing a magical transformation.

The home's owner, Benjamin Lee-Roche, has always been intrigued by the past.

Speaking at his cluttered kitchen table, he holds up an antique bottle.

"They find the old pioneer houses, and they dig up the old outhouses," he said, while putting droplets of food coloring in the bottles. "This is the kind of thing they find."

When he's not helping decorate sets for films, you might say the way Lee-Roche spends his free time is a bit of an obsession. Right now, he's turning his antique bottles into something else.

"I am making potion bottles," he said.

When you set foot on his property, you're crossing a threshold into another world.

"It started with a haunted house," Lee-Roche said. "I really like Halloween and Christmas, so Harry Potter's a perfect fit for me."

Fascinated by the production design of the Potter films, he said transforming his home is the logical extension of that.

"You look at what I'm doing, and think, 'Oh, he's obsessed," Lee-Roche said.

"One of the things that really attracted me to the Harry Potter stories is how it merges so many different aesthetics, like Victorian or Medieval, and really, it's a credit to the production designers of the movies," he said.

Lee-Roche finds and sells items inspired by that magical world, partially through shopping at antique stores. But some of what he sells he's made with his own two hands.

In an old-fashioned tent in his backyard, which he's dubbed "Master Mortimer's Magical Mercantile," Lee-Roche holds up a piece of shaped wood.

"I get these at Michael's, the shell casing I get from my roommate, and then together, it's like a little quill holder," he said.

In the tent, surrounded by masks, lanterns and an alligator's head, Lee-Roche isn't just one man.

"I play two characters who are twins," he said. "One's in charge of the mercantile store, the other's in charge of the haunted house — the boarding house. Mortimer and Benjamin Blackburn."

As in, the Blackburn Academy of the Magical Arts. Lee-Roche is building a miniature Hogwarts right in the middle of Utah County.

"It's meant to satiate the need of people wanting to immerse themselves in that type of environment without having to go to L.A. or Florida," Lee-Roche said.

He's constructing a magical university for kids, complete with a potion class, set up with pots and makeshift tables in the backyard.

"There'll be various sensational but safe reactions that you would normally see like in a chemistry class," Lee-Roche said.

He's got a greenhouse in the works, for herbology classes.

"Most what happens in the movie is they re-pot plants, and that's probably what we'll do."

Up a winding staircase inside, Lee-Roche plans on having a local comedian give instructions in examining crystal balls.

"See futures as well as read tea leaves," he said.

There's even a bit of a zoo with animals you'd find in the pages of a Potter book.

"She's Voldemort's pet," said Lee-Roche while cradling a snake.

So, is Lee-Roche obsessed?

"What I'm obsessed with is trying to awaken imagination in kids," he said. "It's my opinion that the school system as well as civilization in general — whether it's intentional or not — sucks the creativity out of kids."

Lee-Roche is using the idea of magic to fill what he sees as a void in the way kids are taught.

"Like they have the permission to wonder and to imagine," he said.

Lee-Roche is a man who's intrigued by the past, using it to help build the future.

"I feel like if I can find a way to help awaken and inspire that desire inside of people, then I will have been well served in whatever it is I'm doing," he said.

To see what the Blackburn Academy of the Magical Arts has to offer, you can visit them on Facebook.

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