{"id":378877,"date":"2025-11-14T18:14:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T18:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/378877\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T18:14:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T18:14:13","slug":"the-tiktok-famous-scale-model-of-nyc-is-going-on-display-how-to-see-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/378877\/","title":{"rendered":"The TikTok Famous Scale Model of NYC is Going on Display: How to See it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whether you\u2019re a street photographer, a subway performer or just the kind of person who once turned a barge into a floating edible garden<\/a>, New York has always inspired obsessive creativity. But few labors of love rival what one truck driver quietly built, night after night, in his upstate home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In February, the Museum of the City of New York<\/a> will debut “He Built This City: Joe Macken\u2019s Model<\/a>,” the first New York City exhibition of the monumental, TikTok-famous scale model of the five boroughs. Queens native Joe Macken, 63, crafted the 50-by-30-foot creation across 350 panels over the course of more than two decades.<\/p>\n

Macken started the project in 2004 at his home in Clifton Park, New York, armed with an X-Acto knife, balsa wood, Styrofoam and Elmer\u2019s glue. Since then, he\u2019s carved nearly a million tiny buildings to scale. (Every inch of the model represents 160 feet, meaning the Empire State Building clocks in at just under 8 inches.) Macken started with Rockefeller Center before working block by block through the boroughs. One neighborhood he didn\u2019t need a map for? His original stomping grounds of Middle Village, Queens. \u201cI knew every block,\u201d he told CBS New York<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After Macken\u2019s daughter nudged him to share the model on TikTok this spring, it went overwhelmingly viral: his first clip hit more than 10 million views. This summer, he reassembled the city for the first time<\/a> at Cobleskill Fairgrounds upstate, where visitors, predictably, lost their minds. Soon after, the city came calling.<\/p>\n

According to MCNY\u2019s new chief curator, Elisabeth Sherman, the model represents something museums don\u2019t often get to share: a deeply personal New York. While the Queens Museum\u2019s famous Panorama<\/a> is remarkable, she says, Macken\u2019s work is a single man\u2019s interpretation\u00a0of the city, built from childhood memories and decades of lived experience. (In his miniature skyline, for instance, the Twin Towers are still standing.)<\/p>\n

\u201cJoe\u2019s model reflects the wonder and complexity of this city through the eyes of someone who has lived it, loved it and painstakingly rebuilt it,\u201d MCNY director Stephanie Hill Wilchfort said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Macken told\u00a0Gothamist<\/a> that he plans to drive the model downstate himself in a rented U-Haul, stacking outerborough panels first and Manhattan\u2019s skyscrapers on top. He\u2019s not too worried: only one piece, the Throgs Neck Bridge, snapped en route to its first showing and he fixed it easily.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter 21 years of work on my New York City model, I am very excited for the opportunity to display it at the Museum of the City of New York,\u201d Macken said in a statement. \u201cThis is the moment I\u2019ve been waiting for, after so much hard work, dedication and enjoyment throughout the process of creating the model.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until opening day, he\u2019s staying busy carving New Jersey. Of course he is.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whether you\u2019re a street photographer, a subway performer or just the kind of person who once turned a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":378878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,10336,405,403,30302,5226,5225,5228,5227,1072,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-378877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-categories-things-to-do","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-news-weird-wonderful","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-things-to-do","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115549416484814127","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}