More Local News <\/a><\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m crazy. It was just a passion,\u201d Macken said. \u201cI started back in 2004, just carving little pieces of wood and I loved it so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Macken said he spent a decade building Manhattan in the basement of his home and more than 11 years on the other four boroughs.<\/p>\n
With more than 8 million followers on TikTok, Macken\u2019s work gained international attention over the summer. The Museum of the City of New York thought it would be a perfect fit for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cJoe had made it in 320 different sections, each square stacked one on top of each other in a storage unit. We had to bring it down to the city very carefully and we had to put it on a platform,\u201d museum CEO Jerry Gallagher said.<\/p>\n
The exhibit opened this weekend with crowds double their usual size, according to Gallagher.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want people to see what you can accomplish if you just be consistent and have a passion for something,\u201d Macken said.<\/p>\n
He told PIX11 News that his next project may be all of New York State.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to PIX11. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (PIX11) \u2014 One man single-handedly recreated New York City\u2019s five boroughs and all that goes with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":593416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,256240,256239,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-593415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-balsa-wood","tag-joe-macken","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116078838046653520","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593415","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=593415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}