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By APB Staff Writer
May 10, 2017: New York NY: The Big Apple got a little bit smaller for tourists, locals, adults, and kids of all ages on Monday with the official opening of Gulliver’s Gate in Times Square.
The approximately 50,000 square-foot exhibit space displays miniature models of some of Manhattan’s and the world’s most notable landmarks. Gulliver’s Gate springs from the imagination of CEO Eiran Gazit, and artist and a former Israeli soldier who has been enamoured with models since he was a child.
Named for the famous Jonathan Swift 18th-century novel which tells the story of a man shipwrecked on an island inhabited by tiny people, the instillation was created by over 600 artists in their respective homelands.
Among the iconic locales recreated include the Hoover Dam, Stonehedge, “Big Ben,” India’s Taj Mahal, Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, the pyramids of Egypt, the Panama Canal, and the Great Wall of China. An estimated 100,000 “people,” 10,000 cars, and 1,000 trains are built on a 1:87 scale at Gulliver’s Gate. Scenes from Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, Russia, and Asia are brought to life with ships that sail, planes that take off, and streaming waterways.
The New York City models, including and above ground and subterranean Grand Central Station, the Guggenheim Museum, Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Madison Square Garden, were created by Brooklyn Model Works.
An interactive part of exhibit includes a Cobra 3D scanner which allows visitors to make miniature versions of themselves which are turned into tiny models that can be taken home as souvenirs, or placed as “model citizens” among the Gulliver’s Gate models.
Gulliver’s Gate, located at 216 West 44th Street, is one of several new attractions debuting in the Times Square area in 2017 along with Opry City Stage – an entertainment complex devoted to country music and Southern culture, the NFL Experience Times Square which opens in November and will showcase pro football, and National Geographic Encounter: Ocean Odyssey launches, which makes its debut this fall.