The NYC scale model that’s gone viral was built by a truck driver. Now it’s in a museum

FastCompany: For more than two decades, truck driver Joe Macken spent his free time building a massive scale model of his native New York City out of balsa wood and foam board. When he finished, his daughter convinced him to show off the sprawling basement creation—encompassing over 800,000 structures— on TikTok . The video clips almost immediately went viral. Now Macken’s model is on display at the Museum of the City of New York, which reached out to him after seeing his TikTok videos gain more than 10 million views in one week. “He Built This City,” as the exhibit is called, opened in February along Manhattan’s museum row near Central Park.

It runs through Oct. 12. “I never really thought about finishing it because I had so much fun building it,” he said on a recent visit to the exhibit. The museum’s chief curator, Elisabeth Sherman, said the model is a rare piece that appeals to both social media followers and traditional museum goers. “I think people always want to get their arms around this whole city, this city that is impossible to know, impossible to grasp, and this is a way to see it from a bird’s-eye view,” she said. “We rarely have anything these days that reaches everyone in that way.

We love that kind of energy it brings.” Macken dreamed of building the model as a child All five boroughs and parts of New Jersey and suburban Long Island are laid out in street-level detail across more than 300 large foam boards, interconnected like puzzle pieces. The entire model is 50 feet long (15 meters) and nearly 30 feet (9 meters) wide, with each inch on the model representing about 160 feet (49 meters).

The more than 800,000 structures are mostly made out of light balsa wood, from Manhattan’s towering skyscrapers to the humble single-family homes in Queens and landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty, Yankee Stadium and the Brooklyn Bridge. Macken says the inspiration for the model goes back to an elementary school trip to the Queens Museum to see the Panorama of the City of New York, the famed scale model built for the 1964-1965 World’s Fair, complete with an overhead, helicopter-style gondola ride. But it wasn’t until he was in his 40s that the Queens native actually set out to make it.

At the time, Macken and his young family had just moved north, from Long Island to the Albany area in upstate New York. “I think, subconsciously, I might have missed New York,” he said. Macken took 10 years building Midtown, then kept expanding Using basic materials found at hobby shops, Macken started with the Rockefeller Center and its iconic main tower, “30 Rock.” From there, he built out Midtown Manhattan, a process that took about a decade. The Empire State Building and its ornate Art Deco spire proved to be the most challenging part. “I wanted to make it perfect,” Macken said.

“People are gonna be looking at it.” Macken has no background in model building, architecture or design. He jokes that the closest experience he had was building Legos and Lincoln Logs as a kid. But as he worked, Macken became faster and more efficient. “I wish I would have done it 20 years earlier, knowing that I would have enjoyed it so much,” he said. “I can build one of the buildings in my sleep right now where it took me hours when I first started.” The model consumed much of Macken’s free time Macken says nearly all his free time was spent on the model.

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The article showcases a unique grassroots project that gained viral attention, illustrating the intersection of creativity and brand strategy, which is significant but not groundbreaking for industry professionals.