For more than two decades, Joe Macken worked on a New York City that almost nobody outside his family knew existed. It was built not by an architect or professional model maker, but by a Queens native who spent his working life as a truck driver and his spare time turning balsa wood, cardboard and foam board into tiny buildings.
Then the private project escaped the basement. Videos of Macken’s miniature metropolis spread across social media, drawing millions of views and eventually bringing the extraordinary creation to the Museum of the City of New York. But the closer visitors look, the more they discover that this is not simply a tiny replica of New York. It is the city as Macken remembers it.
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A childhood memory that eventually became a 21-year project
Macken’s fascination with miniature New York began long before he started building his own version.
As a child, the Queens native visited the Queens Museum, where he saw the Panorama of the City of New York, the enormous model created for the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair. The experience stayed with him for decades.
It was not until 2004, after Macken had moved with his young family from Long Island to the Albany area, that he finally began creating his own miniature city.
The move away from New York appears to have made the city even more present in his mind.
“I think, subconsciously, I might have missed New York,” Macken said.
The project would eventually occupy more than 21 years of his life.
According to the Museum of the City of New York, Macken first worked on the model in Middle Village, Queens, before continuing it after moving to Clifton Park, New York.
What started as a personal hobby gradually became an undertaking on a scale that would be difficult to imagine even inside a professional studio.
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Building New York one tiny structure at a time
The finished model stretches roughly 50 feet across and represents all five boroughs. It also reaches beyond New York City into portions of New Jersey and Long Island.
The latest Associated Press report describes more than 800,000 structures in the model, from famous skyscrapers and bridges to ordinary residential buildings.
The Museum of the City of New York’s current exhibition page describes the installation as approximately 50 by 27 feet, made up of more than 340 individual sections. An earlier 2026 exhibition announcement from the museum gave slightly different measurements, describing a 50-by-30-foot model made from 350 sections.
The figures differ across the museum’s materials, but the scale of the project remains consistent: Macken created a huge, sectional miniature city through years of painstaking handwork.
| Detail | Verified information |
| Creator | Joe Macken |
| Background | Queens native and truck driver |
| Project began | 2004 |
| Construction period | More than 21 years |
| Model scale | Roughly 50 feet across |
| Areas represented | All five boroughs, plus portions of New Jersey and Long Island |
| Structures | More than 800,000, according to the latest AP report |
| Current museum description | Approximately 50 by 27 feet and more than 340 sections |
| Earlier 2026 museum description | 50 by 30 feet and 350 sections |
| Materials | Balsa wood, cardboard and glue, with foam board also used |
| Museum exhibition | He Built This City: Joe Macken’s Model |
| Exhibition opening | February 2026 |
Macken built the city from everyday materials, including balsa wood, cardboard and glue, while foam board was also part of the construction process.
And he did not begin by tackling some obscure corner of the city.
He started with 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
From there, the model expanded outward through Midtown Manhattan. Macken spent roughly a decade working on that section alone, reproducing buildings and architectural details before gradually moving into other parts of New York.
The Empire State Building proved particularly demanding because of its ornate Art Deco spire.
“I wanted to make it perfect,” Macken said. “People are gonna be looking at it.”
That attention to detail became one of the defining characteristics of the entire project.
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He had no architecture degree or professional model-making background
There was no formal architectural training behind Macken’s enormous undertaking.
He did not have a professional background in urban planning or model construction either. His earliest experience with miniature building was largely limited to childhood toys, including Legos and Lincoln Logs.
But after thousands of hours of repetition, his process changed dramatically.
Buildings that once took hours of painstaking work eventually became much easier for him to construct.
“I wish I would have done it 20 years earlier, knowing that I would have enjoyed it so much,” he said.
He also explained just how much his skills evolved during the project:
“I can build one of the buildings in my sleep right now where it took me hours when I first started.”
That progression can be seen throughout the model. It is not simply a technical architectural reproduction. It reflects the accumulated observations, memories and craftsmanship of one person who spent years learning how to recreate the city by hand.
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The miniature city became part of Macken’s everyday life
The project was far more than an occasional weekend hobby.
Macken worked on it whenever he could find the opportunity, including during family trips to the New Jersey shore. He also used quiet periods while driving a bus on weekends to work on pieces of the model.
Eventually, the amount of time he was spending on the miniature city became impossible to ignore.
“It was just something that I couldn’t stop doing,” he said.
Sometimes, he would begin working before going to bed, only to remain at the table for hours despite being exhausted.
“Before bed, I’d be so tired sometimes, and I wind up being there for four hours, falling asleep at the table,” he said.
Then came the bluntest description of all:
“It got bad. It was an obsession. It still is.”
That obsession may also explain why the finished city feels different from a conventional architectural model.
Macken was not simply reproducing streets and structures. He was deciding which pieces of New York deserved to survive inside his miniature version of the city.
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This isn’t a single version of modern New York
Look closely at Macken’s model and something unusual starts to emerge.
The city does not exist at one specific point in time.
Instead, different eras of New York coexist.
In Queens, Macken recreated a diner from his childhood rather than replacing it with the modern building that stands at that location today. He also included the former Kosciuszko Bridge, despite the original structure being demolished in 2017.
Lower Manhattan offers an even more striking example.
The original World Trade Center towers remain part of Macken’s miniature New York. But they appear alongside One World Trade Center and buildings constructed after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
That means the model is neither strictly historical nor completely contemporary.
It is Macken’s personal version of New York.
“I kept a lot of my own parts of the city,” Macken said. “Just for me.”
That sentence gets to the heart of what makes the model different.
The project preserves buildings that exist today, structures that no longer exist and places Macken personally remembers. Rather than freezing New York on one particular date, he created a city in which his own memories could exist alongside its present-day landscape.
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TikTok changed everything
For years, Macken’s enormous creation remained largely private.
Then his daughter encouraged him to put the model on TikTok.
The response was far bigger than the family could have expected.
According to the Associated Press report, videos of the miniature city collectively received more than 10 million views in one week.
That sudden online attention changed the trajectory of a project that had spent years hidden away from the public.
The videos eventually caught the attention of the Museum of the City of New York.
The museum developed He Built This City: Joe Macken’s Model, giving the miniature metropolis its first public presentation in New York City. The exhibition opened in February 2026 and is currently on view at the museum.
The museum presents the installation as Macken’s personal architectural portrait of New York, highlighting both the physical scale of the model and the individual perspective behind it.
A project that had once been a private undertaking was suddenly something strangers could walk around, study and search.
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Visitors can look for their own New York
One of the most fascinating parts of seeing Macken’s model in person is its sheer size.
The city is large enough that the museum provides binoculars, allowing visitors to examine details that can be difficult to see from the edge of the installation.
People have used the miniature landscape to locate recognisable landmarks, neighbourhoods and buildings connected to their own lives.
For at least one visitor, the experience became a way of tracing family history through the city, using the model to locate places associated with relatives and different stages of their family’s lives.
That response mirrors the museum’s own interpretation of Macken’s work.
Chief curator Elisabeth Sherman described the model as a way for people to take in a city that is otherwise almost impossible to understand as a whole.
“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,” Sherman said.
And that is where the miniature city becomes more than an extraordinary construction project.
It gives visitors a way to recognise New York at a scale where the whole metropolis can finally be surveyed — while still leaving enough tiny details for people to find their own connections.
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Joe Macken isn’t finished building New York
Even after more than two decades of work and the model’s arrival at a major New York museum, Macken does not appear ready to call the project finished.
He hopes the model will eventually be displayed at other venues after its current museum presentation ends.
He is also planning to add more than 50 buildings and extend the miniature city farther into New Jersey and Long Island.
So, despite its enormous size, the model remains a work in progress.
Macken began building it after leaving Long Island and moving with his young family to the Albany area in 2004. What followed was more than 21 years of construction, experimentation and increasingly refined miniature craftsmanship.
He started with 30 Rockefeller Plaza and eventually created a city spanning all five boroughs, with parts of New Jersey and Long Island included as well. Along the way, he preserved buildings from his memories, landmarks that disappeared and structures representing the New York that exists today.
The result is a city that belongs simultaneously to the past and present.
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Conclusion
Joe Macken’s miniature New York may have started as a deeply personal hobby, but its journey has taken it far beyond the basement where so much of it was built.
Constructed by a Queens native and truck driver with no professional architecture or model-making background, the enormous handmade city now contains more than 800,000 structures according to the latest AP report and represents all five boroughs, along with portions of New Jersey and Long Island.
Its journey to the Museum of the City of New York began with years of private work, continued through millions of social-media views and ultimately became a public exhibition in February 2026.
Yet the most memorable part may be what Macken chose not to erase.
The old diner. The former Kosciuszko Bridge. The original World Trade Center towers beside One World Trade Center.
This is not simply New York reduced in size. It is New York filtered through one person’s memories.
And with Macken planning more than 50 additional buildings and further expansion into New Jersey and Long Island, his miniature version of the city may still have plenty of growing left to do.
Disclaimer
This article has been prepared based on thorough research of the sources provided with the original material, including the Museum of the City of New York’s exhibition materials and programme information, the Associated Press report, Artnet News and Hyperallergic. The article reflects the information available from those sources and preserves the distinctions and discrepancies identified in the supplied material. In particular, Museum of the City of New York materials provide different figures for the model’s dimensions and number of sections; those differences have been retained rather than presented as one definitive measurement.
Sources
- Museum of the City of New York — He Built This City: Joe Macken’s Model
- Museum of the City of New York — Exhibition Press Release
- Museum of the City of New York — 2026 Exhibition Program
- Associated Press — Joe Macken’s New York City model exhibition report
- Artnet News — Joe Macken’s miniature New York model
- Hyperallergic — Joe Macken’s handmade New York model
- Instagram @monopolmagazin
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