He built this city: Man spends decades on New York model with 800,000 structures

Central Park and the tall buildings of midtown Manhattan are seen on a large model of New York City, made by Joe Macken (Seth Wenig/AP)

A truck driver who spent two decades building a massive scale model of his native New York City was delighted when it went viral on TikTok.

Now, Joe Macken’s sprawling creation is on display at the Museum of the City of New York.

The immense model is 50 feet long and nearly 30 feet wide, covering all five boroughs, parts of New Jersey and suburban Long Island.

More than 800,000 balsa wood structures are laid out in street-level detail across more than 300 large foam boards like interconnecting puzzle pieces.

His daughter convinced him to show off the creation on TikTok and the video clips almost immediately went viral. The museum reached out to him after seeing the videos gain more than 10 million views in one week.

He Built This City, as the exhibit is called, runs at the museum until October 12.

“I never really thought about finishing it because I had so much fun building it,” he said on a recent visit to the exhibit.

The museum’s chief curator, Elisabeth Sherman, said the model is a rare piece that appeals to both social media followers and traditional museum-goers.

“I think people always want to get their arms around this whole city, this city that is impossible to know, impossible to grasp, and this is a way to see it from a bird’s-eye view,” she said. “We rarely have anything these days that reaches everyone in that way. We love that kind of energy it brings.”

The structures featured in the model range from Manhattan’s towering skyscrapers to the humble single-family homes in Queens and landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty, Yankee Stadium and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Mr Macken said the inspiration for the model goes back to a school trip to the Queens Museum to see the Panorama of the City of New York, the famed scale model built for the 1964-1965 World’s Fair, complete with an overhead, helicopter-style gondola ride.

But it was not until he was in his 40s that the Queens native actually set out to make it. At the time, Mr Macken and his young family had just moved north, from Long Island to the Albany area in upstate New York.

“I think, subconsciously, I might have missed New York,” he said.

Using basic materials found at hobby shops, Mr Macken started with the Rockefeller Centre and its famous main tower, 30 Rock.

From there, he built out Midtown Manhattan, a process that took about a decade. The Empire State Building and its ornate Art Deco spire proved to be the most challenging part.

“I wanted to make it perfect,” Mr Macken said. “People are gonna be looking at it.”

Mr Macken has no background in model building, architecture or design. He jokes that the closest experience he had was building Legos and Lincoln Logs as a child. But as he worked, Mr Macken became faster and more efficient.

“I wish I would have done it 20 years earlier, knowing that I would have enjoyed it so much,” he said. “I can build one of the buildings in my sleep right now where it took me hours when I first started.”

Mr Macken said nearly all of his free time was spent on the model. He would bring his materials on family trips to the New Jersey shore in the summer and during lulls driving a bus on weekends.

“It was just something that I couldn’t stop doing,” he said.

As the model neared completion, it became all-consuming, Mr Macken said.

“Before bed, I’d be so tired sometimes, and I wind up being there for four hours, falling asleep at the table,” he said. “It got bad. It was an obsession. It still is.”

The model is not an exact snapshot of the modern metropolis. Out in miniature Queens, Mr Macken recreated his favourite childhood diner, not the modern high rise that now stands there. He also kept the old Kosciuszko Bridge that connects Brooklyn and Queens, even though it was demolished in 2017.

And in lower Manhattan, the old twin towers of the World Trade Centre still stand sentry in Mr Macken’s miniature Gotham, albeit alongside One World Trade Centre and the other gleaming skyscrapers constructed after the 2001 terror attacks.

“I kept a lot of my own parts of the city,” Mr Macken said. “Just for me.”

On a recent weekday morning, a steady stream of visitors ambled into the first floor gallery. They strode up to the edge of the raised platform, seeking out a familiar landmark or an old neighbourhood.

Some took up the pairs of binoculars provided for better viewing, while most simply squinted and pointed into the distance.

Jonathan Skolnik positioned himself at the corner of the model nearest lower Manhattan and began tracing his family’s history across the five boroughs as his son, Tosha, listened intently.

Mr Skolnik pointed out his father’s first address in America, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, near the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. The neighbourhood where he was born in Queens. The cemetery where many family members were buried.

“I’m trying to do it all from memory,” the Washington DC area resident said. “I don’t have it all exact.”

After a lifetime toiling away in anonymity, Mr Macken hopes to display the model elsewhere when the museum exhibit ends.

In the meantime, he is looking forward to adding more than 50 new buildings and expanding the model into New Jersey and Long Island.