Joe Macken, a Queens-born artist and truck driver who now lives in Clifton Park, first began working on the model in 2004, per the Museum of the City of New York<\/a>.<\/p>\n The model, built entirely by hand and made from \u201ceveryday materials\u201d like balsa wood, cardboard and glue, measures 50 feet by 27 feet.<\/p>\n Cindy Schultz\/The New York Times<\/p>\n The \u201cmonumental\u201d model is currently on display \u2014 in an exhibit titled \u201cHe Built This City: Joe Macken\u2019s Model” \u2014 in the Dinan Miller Gallery at the Museum of the City of New York.<\/p>\n Macken said that he initially just planned to make a model of Rockefeller Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was it,\u201d he said while speaking to ABC 7<\/a>. \u201cAnd then the next day I built another one. And then I built another one.\u201d<\/p>\n He went on to build all of Midtown, and then eventually all of Manhattan and the city’s surrounding boroughs. But he never thought anyone else would see the model, let alone put it on public display.<\/p>\n \u201cI was just gonna look at it. I don\u2019t know what I was gonna do. I had no plans. I mean I never imagined it being in a museum,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Never miss a story \u2014 sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter<\/a> to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer\u200b\u200b, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.<\/p>\n The finished model entails almost 1 million individual structures, all hand-carved<\/a>, which Macken usually keeps stacked in one-foot-by-one-foot squares in a local storage unit.<\/p>\n And he claimed he has no plans to stop building.<\/p>\n![\"Joe](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/47b022f16eb832982aa4979750cb6b80.jpeg\"\/)
Joe Macken’s replica of New York City <\/p>\n