Joe Macken Spent 21 Years Hand-Assembling a Vast Model of New York City

Over the course of two decades, Queens resident Joe Macken meticulously built an entire city from the ground up. In fact, he built New York City—the whole thing—one building, house, and bridge at a time. Now, his expansive scale construction is on view in He Built This City: Joe Macken’s Model at the Museum of the City of New York.

Macken began working on the 50-by-27-foot model in 2004, first in Middle Village, Queens, before moving to Clifton Park, New York. It comprises 340 individual sections, each built from everyday materials like cardboard and glue, with many of the buildings constructed of balsa wood and detailed with pencil and paint. He completed the structure in 2025, and it’s now on long-term view at the museum, where visitors can walk around it and are encouraged to use binoculars to find familiar buildings and neighborhoods.

Photo by David Lurvey. All images courtesy of the artist and the Museum of the City of New York, shared with permission

You may also enjoy the “Panorama of the City of New York” at the Queens Museum, which was completed in 1964 and took a team of more than 100 people about three years to complete.

Photo by Filip Wolak