GoKawiilA Truck Driver Spent 20 Years Making This Astonishing Scale Model of Every Single Building in New York City The 1,350-square-foot model is now on display at the Museum of the City of New York, where visitors can use binoculars to see tiny replicas of all five boroughs Sonja Anderson - Daily Correspondent Get our newsletter! Get our newsletter!
In 2004, truck driver Joe Macken created a miniature replica of New York City’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza out of balsa wood. Although he had intended to stop there, he realized he was hooked.
“Then the next day, I built another one,” he tells CBS News’ Steve Hartman. “And then I built another one.”
Macken kept building for more than two decades. He worked his way through Manhattan and began work on the other boroughs. He made 320 sections—each representing about a square mile of New York—with wooden buildings, painted parks and tiny artificial trees. When he ran out of room at home, he rented a storage unit.
Macken ended up with a 1,350-square-foot model depicting New York City in its entirety. Last summer, his work went viral on TikTok. Many commenters said the model was destined for a museum, and they were right.
In February, Macken’s model went on display at the Museum of the City of New York in an exhibition called “He Built This City: Joe Macken’s Model.” Visitors can examine the model from all sides, using binoculars to get closer looks at specific neighborhoods. Elisabeth Sherman, the museum’s chief curator and deputy director, tells the Guardian’s Alaina Demopoulos about the first time the staff saw the handmade model.
“We were all standing around squealing, ‘Look, there’s our museum!’ ‘There’s the Met; there’s the Guggenheim,’” Sherman recalls. “It’s this great act of recognition, and then it’s also witnessing [Macken’s] creativity, how he made this complex architecture out of very humble materials.”
Macken makes a living driving a delivery truck in Clifton Park, New York, where he has lived with his family since 2003, according to the Times Union’s Paul Grondahl. Living more than 150 miles away, he missed New York City. “I wanted to keep it with me,” he tells the New York Times’ John Freeman Gill. “So I figured I’d better build it.”
Macken had been intrigued by models since first grade, when he went on a school field trip to the Queens Museum. There, he saw The Panorama of the City of New York, a 9,335-square-foot model of the city made for the 1964 World’s Fair.
Quick fact: The making of The Panorama of the City of New York More than 100 people spent three years constructing the model, which was made of materials including wood, plastic, paper, brass and foam.
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