Over the course of two decades, Queens resident Joe Macken has painstakingly 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 large-scale construction can be seen He built this city: Joe Macken’s model at the Museum of the City of New York.
Macken began working on the 15-by-27-foot model in 2004, first in Middle Village, Queens, before moving to Clifton Park, New York. It consists of 340 individual sections, each constructed from everyday materials such as cardboard and glue, with many of the buildings constructed from balsa wood and detailed with pencil and paint. He completed the structure in 2025 and it is now in the long-term museum, where visitors can walk around it and are encouraged to use binoculars to find familiar buildings and neighborhoods.
You can also enjoy the “Panorama of New York City” at the Queens Museum, which was completed in 1964 and took a team of more than 100 people about three years to complete.
