Truck driver Joe Macken spent more than two decades making a model of New York City in his spare time. It contains more than 800,000 structures, from Manhattan skyscrapers to houses in Queens. His work is now on display at the Museum of the City of New York, in the city where he grew up. The exhibition, He Built This City: Joe Macken’s Model, runs until 12 October 2026.
The model covers all five of New York’s boroughs, as well as parts of New Jersey and Long Island. Visitors can look for the Statue of Liberty, Yankee Stadium and the Brooklyn Bridge among its streets. It measures about 15 metres long and just over eight metres wide, with more than 340 sections fitted together to form the city. The museum provides binoculars so visitors can examine buildings that are difficult to see from the edge of the display.
@balsastyrofoam300 Miniature model of New York City, carved out of balsa wood,21 years to build, almost 1 million buildings, 50ft, long,30ft. wide.
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Anyone searching for a precise picture of present-day New York may notice something unusual. In Queens, Macken included a diner he remembered from childhood, although a newer building now stands on the site. He also kept the old Kosciuszko Bridge, which was replaced in 2017. In Lower Manhattan, the Twin Towers stand beside One World Trade Center, built after the attacks of 11 September 2001. “I kept a lot of my own parts of the city,” said Macken. The model shows places as he remembers them alongside places visitors would recognise today.
The idea began when Macken was a child. On a school trip to the Queens Museum, he saw its Panorama of the City of New York, another large model of the city. He did not begin his own version until he was in his 40s, after moving with his family from Long Island to the Albany area of New York state. Macken told the Associated Press that he thought he might have missed the city. He started with the tower at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, a landmark in Midtown Manhattan.
Making Midtown alone took around ten years. The Empire State Building was especially difficult because Macken wanted to get the detail of its tower right. He had no formal training in architecture, design or model making, and used materials such as balsa wood and cardboard. The project followed him beyond his worktable: he took supplies on family holidays and built during breaks from his weekend bus-driving job. As he gained experience, he found he could make buildings far more quickly than when he started.
For years, the model remained a project at home. When Macken finished it, his daughter persuaded him to share videos of it on TikTok. According to the Associated Press, those videos attracted more than 10 million views in one week, and the museum contacted him after seeing them. The exhibition opened in February 2026, bringing his handmade New York before visitors in New York for the first time. Macken has said that he enjoyed building it so much that he had never spent much time thinking about finishing it.
@balsastyrofoam300 Jersey City New Jersey
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At the museum, visitors have been looking for more than famous sights. Some search for streets and neighbourhoods they once knew, using the model to follow their own memories across the city. One visitor, Jonathan Skolnik, pointed out places connected to his family, including his father’s first address in America and the neighbourhood in Queens where Skolnik was born. Macken is already thinking about additions of his own. He hopes to add more than 50 buildings and extend the model further into New Jersey and Long Island.
