Truck driver spends decades carving a scale model masterpiece of New York City

Clifton Park, New York — In the spring of 2004, a truck driver named Joe Macken descended his basement stairs in Clifton Park, New York, with a simple idea: to see if he could build something cool out of balsa wood.

He decided on a miniature replica of the RCA Building in New York City’s Rockefeller Center. He enjoyed the process so much that the next day, he built another building. And then he just kept going.

He says there was never a point that he felt he had gone too far. Not even when he built all of Rockefeller Center, all of Midtown, all of Manhattan, then all of New York City. 

Macken urban sprawled his way to a storage facility because his basement was too small to hold it all.

Each one of the squares in his miniature creation represents about 1 square mile of New York City.  And for more than two decades, they have just been piling up.

“I was just going to look at it,” Macken said of his plan for the miniature city. “I don’t know what I was going to do with it. I had no plans. I mean, I never imagined it being in a museum.”

For the first time, Macken’s “Little Apple” is going on display in the Big Apple, at the Museum of the City of New York in Manhattan.

The exhibit, which opens Feb. 12, includes all five boroughs, every site and stadium, and every bridge and building. It consists of almost 1 million structures carved by Macken.

Macken noted that through it all, he has been supported by his wife, Trish. He described it as “a miracle” that she has been so understanding of his obsession.

When informed by CBS News that her husband plans on doing this for several more decades, Trish joked, “Alright, he might not have shared those details with me.”

Macken never set out to create a masterpiece. Yet here a masterpiece lies before him, because greatness is really nothing more than a million tiny steps, and occasionally, a spouse to at least tolerate the journey.

“I’ll just keep going,” Macken said. “I’ll build all of New York state if I have to. It’ll never be finished, ever.”