Joe Macken Spent 22 Years Building a Miniature New York by Hand

Joe Macken Spent 22 Years Building a Miniature New York by Hand

On a Sunday evening last summer, Joe Macken revealed to his daughter that he’d made significant progress on his miniature scale model of New York City, a robust project to which he’d devoted the previous two decades. “I was done with the city and just continuing on, building Westchester,” he said in a recent phone call. “She said, ‘Well, if you’re done with the city, why don’t you put it on TikTok?’” Macken had no social media apps. He downloade…

Joe Macken Spent 21 Years Hand-Assembling a Vast Model of New York City

Over the course of two decades, Queens resident Joe Macken meticulously 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 expansive scale construction is on view in He Built This City: Joe Macken’s Model at the Museum of the City of New York. Macken began working on the 50-by-27-foot model in 2004, first in Middle Village, Queens, before moving to Clifton …