A truck driver built a model of NYC with over 800,000 structures for fun. Now it’s a museum exhibit

NEW YORK (AP) — For more than two decades, truck driver Joe Macken spent his free time building a massive scale model of his native New York City out of balsa wood and foam board.

When he finished, his daughter convinced him to show off the sprawling basement creation — encompassing over 800,000 structures — on TikTok. The video clips almost immediately went viral.

Now Macken’s model is on display at the Museum of the City of New York, which reached out to him after seeing his TikTok videos gain more than 10 million views in one week. “He Built This City,” as the exhibit is called, opened in February along Manhattan’s museum row near Central Park. It runs through Oct. 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.”

Macken dreamed of building the model as a child

All five boroughs and parts of New Jersey and suburban Long Island are laid out in street-level detail across more than 300 large foam boards, interconnected like puzzle pieces. The entire model is 50 feet long (15 meters) and nearly 30 feet (9 meters) wide, with each inch on the model representing about 160 feet (49 meters).

The more than 800,000 structures are mostly made out of light balsa wood, 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.

Macken says the inspiration for the model goes back to an elementary 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 wasn’t until he was in his 40s that the Queens native actually set out to make it. At the time, 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.

Macken took 10 years building Midtown, then kept expanding

Using basic materials found at hobby shops, Macken started with the Rockefeller Center and its iconic 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,” Macken said. “People are gonna be looking at it.”

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 kid. But as he worked, 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.”

The model consumed much of Macken’s free time

Macken says nearly all his free time was spent on the model. He’d 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, 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 isn’t an exact snapshot of the modern metropolis. Out in miniature Queens, Macken recreated his favorite 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 replaced by a new span.

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

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

Visitors flock to museum for Macken’s model

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 neighborhood.

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.

Jonathan pointed out his father’s first address in America, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, near the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. The neighborhood 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, D.C. area resident said. “I don’t have it all exact.”

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

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

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Follow Philip Marcelo at https://x.com/philmarcelo