A truck driver spent 20 years making a scale model of every building in NYC
smithsonianmag.com303 points by 1659447091 2 days ago
303 points by 1659447091 2 days ago
Joe Macken (the truck driver who built the model) and Ferdinand Cheval (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Cheval) were never alive at the same time. But if they had ever met, they would have found each other to be kindred spirits.
Awe-inspring. But one thing I don't get: he says he wants every building to be included, but the buildings in NYC are anything but permanent. Did he pick a particular timestamp for everything, or is it a mosaic of different epochs? Keeping the model up to date would be even more insane.
> he wants every building to be included, but the buildings in NYC are anything but permanent
I think he took creative liberties there. The Twin Towers and One World Trade Center are included; he started the project in ~2004
I might have to visit this exhibit next time I'm in NY. I hope their materials will answer the question of how he dealt with new construction, remodels, and demolitions over his 20 years!
i absolutely love the sentiment from this closing sentence:
> “One of the reasons Joe is so insistent that every single building is here is because he would never want someone to come and see it and not be able to find where they live and see their story,” Sherman tells Artnet.
Previous related discussion:
Trucker built a scale model of NYC over 21 years https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45261877 - 18 comments, 6 months ago
If you are interested in scale models of New York, there's a 1:1 scale model in Minecraft: https://youtu.be/ZouSJWXFBPk
Is there a way to visit this online, without having to download and install software locally?
Incredible effort… thanks for sharing this!
I’d love to learn more about the technical challenges. For example, how do they handle buildings that aren’t perfectly aligned to the cardinal axes?
Whoa. I admire the time and dedication to both models. However, I can't help but LOVE the minecraft model since it will live on. Now we just need to 3D print the minecraft model :D
There is a miniature of Prague from around 1830 by Antonín Langweil. He dedicated his all free time to finish it in a hope of making money for his daughters. Langweil never found a benefactor for his work and he died poor. Pretty tragic story.
https://www.muzeumprahy.cz/en/visit-langweils-model-of-pragu...
There's one of Madrid that also dates to 1830 that is insanely impressive, too:
https://www.madrid.es/UnidadesDescentralizadas/UDCMedios/not...
His last name sounds very close to the German word for boredom (Langeweile), that's kind of funny...
Looking at the level of detail, and the thoroughness, I wouldn't have expected it to even be possible to complete it in 20 years. How much time does this guy spend driving truck? Amazing accomplishment and display of dedication and creativity.
20 * 365.25 = 7305 days. Assuming their "near a million buildings" number tracks to somewhere around 950,000, he would have had to build 130 "structures" a day on average.
This is all round and not precise numbers, considering he had to have days where he couldn't build, I'm guessing on the number of structures, and he started in 2004 (22 years ago), accuracy is not possible. But still, even if we fudged it down to 100 structures a day: This is BONKERS.
The man has a prodigious skill at building simple models and painting them. I am incredibly impressed. And I am curious if he did it all alone or if he ever had help from friends/family, even just simple cutting of the balsa wood into simple templated shapes for him to later construct. (To be clear, even if he had help it takes nothing away from how impressive this is)
Maybe after a few thousand buildings, he built specialized tools to quickly build the templates in bulk. Still incredible.
Like what though? Every building is a little different and the fastest way I can think of is laser cutting or CNC which is still pretty slow. Unless he was whole hog CNCing entire city blocks that is. Though the article mentions “balsa wood cut with an X-Acto knife”. If that part is true, this is utterly incredible and I have no idea how he pulled off more than 100 buildings a day.
Looking at the pictures in the article, the level of detail is not particularly great in some parts. It seems like many building have very simple shape and color. With some modeling skill, I can imagine carving and painting 100s of these in a day. Although I can't imagine doing it for 20 years.
I would however like to know what his research was like. Was he just following Google Maps/Earth? They were released in 2005 and 2001 respectively and NY has had coverage from the get go.
"We overestimate what we can achieve in a day, and underestimate what we can achieve in a year."
This is kind of timely for me because very recently I had heard of the film "Synecdoche, New York", but in this film, the scale model is more life-size.
A little off topic, but any time I see that word, it reminds me of the first time I read the word “synechdoche”, I wanted to know how to pronounce it and watched a very helpful YouTube video [0] three times before realizing someone had pulled a very funny prank from an earlier, less serious time on YouTube. I laughed and laughed.
I was wondering if the scale model would have a smaller scale model at the location of the original model...
Brilliant. Stay weird, humans.
A swiss architect did the same in the mid 19th century with Geneva, specifically to preserve an image of the city right before the entirety of the city walls were to be razed
pics: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Relief_Magnin
Any way to know how many buildings were demolished and a newer one built in its place over that 20 year period? Wonder what he used for a reference. Is the model representative of a single moment in time, or is there some clock drift?
Also for comparison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panorama_of_the_City_of_New_Yo...
1:1,200 scale vs 1:2,400 scale, or 9,335 square feet vs 1350 square feet.
Both are absolutely incredible. I find the growth in size numbers difficult to really comprehend even though the scale difference is an "easy" * 2. I wish I wasn't so so bad at visualizing things.
Wow. Imagine how much time would be saved with the new immersive view and 3D building modeling that wasn't available when he started in 2004.
Of course, saving time was clearly not the point of the project. It's awesome.
Synecdoche, New York. We all have our magna opera, but those types I really admire. A great form of therapy as well.
How amazing. Would love to see that in person.
We need people like this around
How long before we can build tiny controlled cars and little tiny "pole people" that wander around?
Micro-machines seem to be taking their time.
This is what humans should be doing with their lives, and not spending 8 hours/day staring at screens. I'm so serious.
Looks like you can buy tickets: https://35948.blackbaudhosting.com/35948/page.aspx?pid=196&t...
I should check it out, it would be fun to see my house recreated as a model.
I love projects like this; no delusions of trying to change the world, just doing it because the creator thinks it would be cool to do.
Why is it relevant what he does for a living? It's his passion and hobby that is interesting.
> Why is it relevant...
I'd say the point is "An Ordinary Guy did X". Vs. an engineering genius, or somebody with deep pockets, or a Hollywood special effects model builder, or 3D printer junkie, or whatever.
He is with certainty not ordinary, precisely because of the feat. So a “an ordinary guy did x” statement would be false.
The point is that he came to the table with "ordinary" talents, equipment, skills, financial resources, etc.
That he had to get extremely focused on the task, and devote years to it, is pretty well spelled out in the article's title.
Jesus christ this is pedantic. You do understand that not all statements can be universally distilled to true or false right? That there's nuance and opinion here right?
> “We were all standing around squealing, ‘Look, there’s our museum!’ ‘There’s the Met; there’s the Guggenheim,’” Sherman recalls. “It’s this great act of recognition, and then it’s also witnessing [Macken’s] creativity, how he made this complex architecture out of very humble materials.”
Blue collar, dedicated, skillful effort over decades immediately co-opted by nonsense-spewer.
co-opted? The last paragraph of the article suggests this was quite literally the artist's goal:
> “One of the reasons Joe is so insistent that every single building is here is because he would never want someone to come and see it and not be able to find where they live and see their story,” Sherman tells Artnet.
Its not like they broke into his shop and shared his model with the world before he could, it is currently an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York.
Nor is it nonsense to acknowledge how cool it is to recognize your own building or that he was able to accomplish the project without expensive materials. Spew is also quite the verb to use. What an all-around unpleasant comment.
> co-opted? The last paragraph of the article suggests this was quite literally the artist's goal:
Unless the person quite literally lives in that museum, I don't think "quite literally" is in any way accurate.
> Its not like they broke into his shop and shared his model with the world before he could, it is currently an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York.
I'm not saying they did. I'm saying what they said was a load of rubbish.
> I'm not saying they did. I'm saying what they said was a load of rubbish.
I disagree. Employees often take some form of "ownership" over their buildings, especially in long term and public education facing facilities like museums. It isn't difficult to understand why they said "there is our museum". Human language connotes ideas as often as it does specifics, and there is nothing rubbish about that.
