A truck driver named Joe Macken has captured public attention with a massive scale model of New York City, displayed at the Museum of the City of New York. The model, made from balsa wood and foam board, includes over 800,000 individual structures and covers all five boroughs, as well as parts of New Jersey and suburban Long Island. The project, which took Macken two decades to complete, was inspired by a childhood visit to the Queens Museum, where he saw the Panorama of the City of New York, a famous scale model created for the 1964-1965 World’s Fair. Macken began the project in his 40s after moving from Long Island to upstate New York. He started with the Rockefeller Center and spent about a decade constructing Midtown Manhattan. The Empire State Building and its distinctive Art Deco spire were among the most challenging parts of the model. Despite having no formal training in model building, architecture, or design, Macken admitted he thought he might have enjoyed the project more if he had started it 20 years earlier. The model is 50 feet long and nearly 30 feet wide, with each inch representing about 160 feet in real life. It consumed much of Macken’s free time, and he often brought building materials on family trips or during breaks from driving a bus on weekends. The model includes historical elements, such as the old Kosciuszko Bridge and the original twin towers of the World Trade Center, offering a nostalgic look at the city’s past. The exhibit, titled "He Built This City," opened in February and will run through October 12. Visitors have been coming in large numbers to see the intricate model, using binoculars to examine familiar landmarks and neighborhoods. After the museum exhibit ends, Macken hopes to display the model elsewhere and is already working on adding more than 50 new buildings and expanding the model into New Jersey and Long Island.