"The Queens Museum of Art houses the world's largest architectural model, which depicts all of the buildings in the entire city of New York. Entitled the Panorama of the City of New York, the model is built at a scale of 1:1200 (one inch = 100 feet) and covers 9335 square feet of exhibit space. It is the largest scale city model in the world," the Build Your Own New York says.

"The Panorama was originally built as a featured exhibit for the 1964 World's Fair. Over 100 craftsmen worked for nearly three years to build 830,000 tiny buildings from wood and plastic. They used insurance and plat maps, aerial photos, as well as direct observation, to build the most accurate representation of the city possible, including all five boroughs, and the entire length and breadth of the city (aside from a corner of Far Rockaway which would not quite fit the space).

"New York's master planner, Robert Moses, conceived the idea of a model as a tourist attraction for the 1964 fair, to be later used as a regional planning tool to show public works projects. Originally the Panorama was viewed from small cars which ran on tracks above the perimeter of the room. The ride was an imaginary helicopter tour, with famed travel writer Lowell Thomas providing an audio guide of the notable sights in each borough."

"It covers nearly 10,000 square feet and recreates in miniature 895,000 buildings. The Twin Towers were added in 1992, and they're still standing in the little city, the Roadside America reports.

"The Panorama occupies a good chunk of the Queens Museum of Art. It's the world's largest scale model, covering nearly 10,000 square feet, recreating in miniature 895,000 buildings. It took 100 workers more than three years to build.

"The Panorama was closed in 2005 so that its skyscrapers could be updated and its tens of thousands of tiny burned-out light bulbs replaced. A multimedia show has also been added, to better impress upon visitors the importance of what they will see.

The Panorama offers a New York City-centric view of the universe. Neighboring cities such as Yonkers, Newark, Hoboken, Fort Lee, and Jersey City are represented as black voids."

"The Panorama of the City of New York is the jewel in the crown of the collection of the Queens Museum and a locus of memory for visitors from all over the globe," the official website says.

"Conceived as a celebration of the City’s municipal infrastructure by urban mastermind and World’s Fair President Robert Moses for the 1964 Fair, the Panorama was built by a team of more than 100 people working for the great architectural model makers Raymond Lester & Associates over the course of three years.

"Comprising an area of 9,335 square feet and built to a scale of 1:1200 where one inch equals 100 feet, the Panorama is a metropolis in miniature. Each of the city’s 895,000 buildings constructed prior to 1992 and every street, park and some 100 bridges are represented and assembled onto 273 individual sections comprising the 320 square miles of New York City.

"In this miraculously scaled cityscape, the borough of Manhattan measures a seemingly vast 70 x 15 feet and the Empire State Building is a towering 15 inches tall while the Statue of Liberty is only 1-7/8 inches in height. Long Island and New Jersey peek onto the model as black shadowy masses to the east and west.

"The panorama was built by a team of more than 100 people working for the great architectural model makers Raymond Lester & Associates over the course of three years. These prolific artisans built an incredibly realistic model of all five boroughs in New York City at a scale of one inch to 100 feet. (To get a sense of the scale, the model’s version of the 1,454-foot Empire State Building measures just shy of 15 inches tall.) The entire panorama covers an area of 9,335 square feet," the Atlas Obscura reports.

"In 1992 the model was removed from the museum and brought up to date over the course of two years. Each of the 273 sections that make up the model was painstakingly updated using maps aerial photos, and in-person visits to ensure accuracy. More than 60,000 buildings were replaced over the course of this update.

"Though the original buildings were made and painted by hand, newer additions have been crafted from plastic or plexiglass.The model now contains 895,000 individual structures, including every building in the city as of 1992."