Reno may be “the biggest little city in the world,” but it's got some serious competition from the miniature New York City that hobbyist Joseph Macken built in his upstate New York basement over two decades.

“I sat down in my basement, turned the camera on on my phone and just started talking about my first section, which was Downtown Manhattan,” the Clifton Park resident said on a recent Thursday about his viral TikToks on his roughly 50-by-30-foot scale model of the city. “It just took off.”

The intricate model features what Macken says are hundreds of thousands buildings, landmarks and geographic elements across the five boroughs and their surroundings, including bridges, airports, the Hudson and East rivers, New York Harbor, Central Park, One World Trade Center and the original Wo

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