For over two decades, truck driver Joe Macken devoted his spare time to constructing an enormous scale model of his native New York City, fashioned from balsa wood and foam board.

Upon completion, his daughter persuaded him to showcase the sprawling basement creation — comprising upwards of 800,000 structures — on TikTok.

The video clips went viral almost instantaneously.

Macken’s model is presently exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York, which approached him upon witnessing his TikTok videos amass over 10 million views within a single week.

“He Built This City,” the title bestowed upon the exhibition, debuted in February along Manhattan’s museum row, in proximity to Central Park.

It remains on view until 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.

Elisabeth Sherman, the museum’s chief curator, remarked that the model is a rare piece that holds appeal for both social media devotees and conventional museum patrons.

“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.”

All five boroughs, together with portions of New Jersey and suburban Long Island, are delineated in street-level detail across more than 300 large foam boards, interconnected much like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

The model as a whole measures 50 feet (15 meters) in length and nearly 30 feet (9 meters) in width, with every inch of it corresponding to roughly 160 feet (49 meters).

The more than 800,000 structures — from Manhattan's towering skyscrapers to the modest single-family homes of Queens, as well as landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty, Yankee Stadium and the Brooklyn Bridge — are mostly made of light balsa wood.

Macken says the inspiration for the model dates back to an elementary school trip to the Queens Museum, where he saw the Panorama of the City of New York, the famous scale model built for the 1964–1965 World's Fair, complete with an overhead, helicopter-style gondola ride.

Yet it was not until he had reached his 40s that this Queens native genuinely embarked upon his bid to make it.

At that juncture, Macken and his young family had only just relocated northward, from Long Island to the Albany area in upstate New York.

"I suppose, on some subconscious level, I may have been missing New York," he said.

Employing rudimentary materials sourced from hobby shops, Macken commenced with the Rockefeller Center and its iconic main tower, “30 Rock.”

From that point onward, he undertook the development of Midtown Manhattan, an endeavor spanning roughly a decade.

The Empire State Building, with its elaborately ornamented Art Deco spire, would prove to be the most formidable undertaking of all.

"I was determined to render it flawless," Macken said.

"People will be scrutinising it."

Macken possesses no background whatsoever in model building, architecture or design.

He jokes that the closest experience he had was constructing Legos and Lincoln Logs as a child.

Yet as he worked, Macken became increasingly fast and efficient.

"I wish I had 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, whereas it took me hours when I first started."

Macken recounts that virtually all of his leisure hours were devoted to the model.

He would transport his materials along on family excursions to the New Jersey shore during the summer, as well as during respites while driving a bus on weekends.

"It was simply something I could not refrain from doing," he said.

As the model drew nearer to completion, it became all-consuming, Macken said.

"Before bed, exhaustion would sometimes overwhelm me to the point that I'd wind up remaining there for four hours, succumbing to sleep at the table," he said.

"It got bad. It was an obsession. It still is."

The model does not constitute an exact snapshot of the modern metropolis.

In his miniature Queens, Macken recreated his favourite childhood diner, rather than the modern high-rise that now occupies that site.

He likewise retained the old Kosciuszko Bridge connecting Brooklyn and Queens, notwithstanding its demolition in 2017 and its replacement by a new span.

And in lower Manhattan, the old twin towers of the World Trade Center still stand sentry in Macken’s miniature Gotham, alongside One World Trade Center and the other gleaming skyscrapers built after the 2001 terror attacks.

"I retained a great many of my own parts of the city," Macken said.

"Just for me."

On a recent weekday morning, a steady procession of visitors drifted into the first-floor gallery.

They advanced to the brink of the elevated platform, searching for a familiar landmark or a former neighborhood.

Some availed themselves of the binoculars provided to enhance their view, while most merely squinted and pointed into the distance.

Jonathan Skolnik positioned himself at the corner of the model closest to lower Manhattan and began tracing his family's history across the five boroughs, while his son, Tosha, listened intently.

Jonathan indicated his father’s first address in America, situated on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, near the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge.

The neighborhood in Queens where he was born.

The cemetery in which numerous family members were interred.

"I'm endeavoring to reconstruct it entirely from recollection," remarked the Washington, D.C. area resident.

"I don't have it entirely precise."

After a lifetime spent toiling in anonymity, Macken hopes to put the model on display elsewhere when the museum exhibit ends on Columbus Day.

In the interim, he is eagerly anticipating the addition of over 50 new buildings and the expansion of the model into New Jersey and Long Island.

Philip Marcelo can be followed on X at https://x.com/philmarcelo