Reno may be \u201cthe biggest little city in the world,\u201d but it’s got some serious competition from the miniature New York City that hobbyist Joseph Macken built in his upstate New York basement over two decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cI sat down in my basement, turned the camera on on my phone and just started talking about my first section, which was Downtown Manhattan,\u201d the Clifton Park resident said on a recent Thursday about his viral TikToks<\/a> on his roughly 50-by-30-foot scale model of the city. \u201cIt just took off.\u201d<\/p>\n The intricate model features what Macken says are hundreds of thousands buildings, landmarks and geographic elements across the five boroughs and their surroundings, including bridges, airports, the Hudson and East rivers, New York Harbor, Central Park, One World Trade Center and the original World Trade Center<\/a>, the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building. The work consists of 350 handmade sections that are pieced together and can be taken apart and moved.<\/p>\n Macken\u2019s videos, which he began posting on TikTok this spring at his children\u2019s urging, have garnered well over 20 million views and myriad praise in recent months. In them, he discusses his creative process and takes viewers on helicopter-like tours of his hometown.<\/p>\n A close up of Macken’s model Manhattan<\/p>\n Joseph Macken<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re about maybe 2,000 feet off the ground, looking down on all the houses and all the neighborhoods,\u201d he says in a video posted earlier this week<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is genuinely unreal,\u201d one commenter responded.<\/p>\n \u201cDon’t sell it for under $10 million,\u201d another noted.<\/p>\n \u201cA museum needs to display this ASAP,\u201d YouTube\u2019s official account commented<\/a> on one of Macken\u2019s clips in July.<\/p>\n Macken, a 63-year-old truck driver who grew up in Middle Village and has no formal carpentry or engineering training, said he dreamed of replicating the Queens Museum\u2019s famous \u201cPanorama\u201d<\/a> after an elementary school trip when he was a kid. He embarked on the endeavor in 2004, armed with little more than balsa wood, Elmer\u2019s glue and Styrofoam. His first building was \u201cthe RCA building at Rockefeller Center,\u201d he said, referring to 30 Rock, which was formerly named for its longtime tenant, the Radio Corporation of America.<\/p>\n Macken said it took him about 10 years to build Manhattan<\/a> alone and 11 years for the rest<\/a> of the boroughs<\/a>. He completed his opus in April, and said he\u2019s confident every building in the city is represented. (Gothamist could not independently verify this claim; the city has more than 1 million buildings, according to the Department of Buildings.)<\/p>\n A residential complex and surrounding buildings in Macken’s mini NYC<\/p>\n Joseph Macken<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aI jumped outta my chair and I cheered,\u201d Macken said of the moment he finished the last building, a house on Staten Island.<\/p>\n The project had outgrown Macken\u2019s basement, but he\u2019d built it so it could be broken down into panels<\/a> and taken to a storage unit. He said it would have stayed there and collected dust if his kids had not encouraged him to get on TikTok and start sharing videos of the model.<\/p>\n Then, in early August, someone he delivered to on his truck route suggested he set up the model at a local event they were sponsoring. So Macken\u2019s mini New York went up at the Cobleskill Fairgrounds near Albany<\/a>, and can be seen there through Friday. It\u2019s the first public display of the completed work.<\/p>\n Macken with his model Manhattan laid out<\/p>\n Joseph Macken<\/p>\n Macken is now working on a mini Minneapolis<\/a>: \u201c\u2018Mary Tyler Moore<\/a>\u2019 was one of my favorite shows growing up,\u201d he said, adding that he plans to eventually do Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Chicago as well.<\/p>\n Some fans said they drove from as far as Baltimore to see the mini NYC in person.<\/p>\n \u201cPictures do not do justice. This was a masterpiece to witness in person today and well worth the three-and-a-half-hour drive,\u201d one TikTok user commented<\/a>.<\/p>\n Macken said he\u2019s still figuring out what he\u2019ll do next with the model, but he\u2019s in talks with the Museum of the City of New York in Manhattan about an exhibit there. A museum spokesperson confirmed this, praising his \u201cingenuity, creativity and skill.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aI don’t wanna put it back in storage,\u201d Macken said. \u201cThat’s for damn sure.\u201d<\/p>\n