Truck driver spent 21 years creating a massive model of New York City out of balsa wood: ‘It was quite the process’
NY Post
Is this NYC’s next top model?
Joe Macken has spent the past 21 years painstakingly erecting an intricate 3D replica of New York City by hand — using nothing but balsa wood, Elmer’s glue and a whole lot of ingenuity.
The finished product, unveiled recently in a viral TikTok video, features nearly a million buildings spanning all five boroughs — including the beleaguered Staten Island, and even parts of New Jersey, Westchester and Long Island.
“It was quite the process. I just kept building and building and building,” truck driver Macken, 63, told The Post of his sprawling pet project. “I never thought in a million years I would ever get done with the whole, entire thing.”
At 30 feet wide and 50 feet long, the diorama is so gargantuan that he keeps it in a storage unit near his house in Clifton Park, about 20 miles north of Albany.
It’s not just the scale that boggles the mind.
