Trucker Built a Scale Model of NYC Over 21 Years

Posted4 months agoActive3 months ago

speckx

116 points

18 comments

gothamist.comOtherstory

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ArtHobbyNew York City

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A truck driver spent 21 years building a scale model of NYC, impressing the community with his dedication and attention to detail, and sparking discussions about the value and significance of such a massive project.

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Sep 16, 2025 at 9:20 AM EDT
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Discussion (18 comments)

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jrmg

4 months ago

1 reply

For those skimming the surface of this article as I almost did:

The pictures in the article, impressive enough, are just the Manhattan portions of his model. He has in fact modelled all of New York!

> Macken said it took him about 10 years to build Manhattan alone and 11 years for the rest of the boroughs.

The full, absolutely huge, model can be seen on his TikTok (linked at the end of the article): https://www.tiktok.com/@balsastyrofoam300/video/754180447598...

senkora

4 months ago

1 reply

All of NYC except for the southern part of Staten Island.

mhuffman

4 months ago

1 reply

We don't talk about the southern part of Staten Island

XajniN

3 months ago

C’mon, explain the joke.

aklemm

4 months ago

1 reply

Wow so it's down to the building level? I wonder how he did those and how accurate they are. Dimensions seems right on.

antonvs

4 months ago

1 reply

If you look at the video on his tiktok, the boroughs are divided into rectangles with clear shifts between the borders. For the boroughs at least, it seems like he repeated a style for a given rectangle and then switched to a different style for the next one. The result is more impressionistic, it doesn't seem to be accurate down to the building level.

It's possible his Manhattan is more accurate, I didn't try to check.

aklemm

4 months ago

Good point

johnny-g-tyler

4 months ago

3 replies

The article says there are 1 million buildings in NYC?

That seems high ... only 10 people per building?

epc

4 months ago

1 reply

One million buildings…that's residential, commercial office or retail, and other (factories, storage, etc).

metalman

4 months ago

yes, and somewhere there will be at least one very dry definition of what NYC considers a "building", but then again it might be contextual and turn out to be a deap dive into the mind twisting depths of beuorcratic moat's and silos, only for the very brave and commited

codyb

4 months ago

Tons of buildings aren't residential. And there's still lots of single family homes as you get out into Queens, Staten Island, up further in the Bronx and further out in Brooklyn sometimes too.

I wonder how many people are living in buildings with 100+ people as I am (estimate a couple thousand in my building from back of napkin math I think).

New York City's fairly vast when you take into account Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx. Manhattan's less than a tenth of the land area.

ceejayoz

4 months ago

People forget a lot of NYC looks like this:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/ch4rPVXcMoxsBLDK6

The biggest buildings tend to have a residential population of approximately zero.

mrits

4 months ago

1 reply

If this doesn't sell for more than the highest NFT what are we even doing

tptacek

4 months ago