Moving Jerusalem to New York City’s Times Square

Yoni Shapira, affable, 64 years old and a ninth-generation Jerusalemite, flashes a friendly smile as he calmly describes his intention to disassemble the city of Jerusalem, take it apart building by building and piece by piece, ship it in containers to New York City and put it back together again in Times Square. He is still smiling as he mentions that he also plans to do this to the city of Mecca, and to the Pyramids of Egypt. “It's going to be the next big thing in Times Square,” he says, still smiling. Shapira neither is insane nor is he talking about dismantling and shipping the actual places, but, rather, intricately designed and constructed 3D models, which will be part of a new miniature theme park called Gulliver's Gate. When the park opens on April 4, the viewers will each assume the role of a proverbial Gulliver, visiting a vast Lilliputian world in which, say the project managers, “model trains crisscross mountainsides. Planes soar off runways. Cars traverse busy highways. Intricately constructed ships pass through the Panama Canal. And an Egyptian pharaoh is laid to rest by the rippling Nile.” Gulliver's Gate will encompass a total space of 4,452 square meters, presenting a miniature world at the scale of 1:87. Known as HO scale, this is a standard for the model railways and cars that many of us had when we were kids. (photo credit: YONI SHAPIRA) It will be located in what was the New York Times Building, just off 42nd Street, on the second floor, where the newspaper was printed. And it promises to take its visitors to a wide and wondrous little world. “There are six different subcontracting groups building displays for Gulliver's Gate,” Shapira explains. “In Buenos Aires there is a group building South America, including the Panama Canal; a group in Brooklyn building North America, including Manhattan; a group in Italy building England and Europe; a group in St. Petersburg building Russia; a group in Shanghai building Asia; and we here in Israel are building the Middle East.” The “we here in Israel” are LHS – Landmark Heritage Services, responsible for the conceptualization and design of the Middle East portion of Gulliver's Gate, and Mathov Design Ltd., in charge of the construction. Shapira is director of LHS and project manager of the Mid- dle East exhibit. A licensed tour guide since 1978 and one of the founders of Mini Israel, the now famous theme park opened in 2002 near Latrun, Shapira describes himself as more of a “content person” than an engineer. “Back in 1992,” he says, “when Eiran Gazit approached me with his idea for Mini Israel, I was the content director and the marketing director. As a result, I learned how to turn available space into a visual message. I'm looking not from the production side but from the viewer's point of view, the experience I want to give him, and the message I want to give him. And in the case of Jerusalem also an emotional 'kishke' or gut feeling. I want people coming to Jerusalem at Gulliver's Gate to feel like they are coming home. If he's Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, if he's Evangelical or Mormon or Jewish, Jerusalem has something to give him.” Among all of the groups preparing displays for Gulliver's Gate, perhaps none has had a task more potentially fraught than the Israeli group, building a miniature Jerusalem. While the American group, for example, can build its miniature Manhattan without anyone questioning whose Manhattan they are going to build and display, Jerusalem poses political, social and religious problems not experienced by any of the other groups sending their displays to Gulliver's Gate. Shapira acknowledges this and says, “We experienced the political sensitivity of Jerusalem when we presented in the year 2000 a show of 70 models from Mini Israel – before Mini Israel was finished – in Holland at a miniature theme park there. There was a lot of flak from the Palestinians about why we had the Dome of the Rock and so on. We handled it, and we had an amazing response from the crowd. (photo credit: YONI SHAPIRA) “In our display here of Jerusalem as the city of the three monotheistic religions, the Old City has two major Jewish sites, the Kotel [Western Wall] and the Hurva Synagogue; two major Muslim sites, al-Aksa and the Dome of the Rock; and two major Christian sites, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Lutheran Church. “Then we go into the rest of the city. We're talking about the diversity of architecture, culture, the diversity of scenes, of peoplehood, the nightlife, the hi-tech, the modernity, futuristic things like the Pyramid Building, only now under construction. We have the light rail, we have the future heavy rail bridge with the underground station. We have haredi people, we have the cafes of Mamilla, the shuk of Mahaneh Yehuda. We also have the landmark 19th-century architecture of the Italians, the Christians, the Russians, the Germans. We have the windmill in Mishkenot Sha'ananim on the one hand, and Nahlaot on the other. So we are giving a very pluralistic, open, dynamic look at what Jerusalem is. “And one of the unique 'wows' that we will have is every 20 minutes within Gulliver's Gate, after 20 minutes of daylight, there will be four or five minutes of nighttime, at which lights will come out, starting with the Calatrava Bridge, going through the Pyramid Bridge, going through all of Jaffa Road to the Old City. The walls of the Old City will be lit, focusing on the three major sites, and then the light show. Then we'll have the sounds – church bells, the call of a muezzin, prayers at the Western Wall, and so on.” The concepts for the Middle East exhibit, including the pyramids, Mecca and Jerusalem, were finalized last February, and the physical work began then, at the studios of Mathov Design Ltd. in Lod. Other subcontractors came in to work on things like the electronics, lighting and the computerized show control. A state-of-the-art project, the construction of the models was accomplished not with traditional carpentry but, rather, with 3D printing. “The traditional way of doing it with hammers, nails and all kinds of materials like we did with Mini Israel would have been too time-consuming. Three-dimensional printing is the new technology,” Shapira says. “The most tedious and time-consuming work involves turning the actual buildings into models. They're ancient buildings, and we don't have the plans. So we use photography and transfer it to a 3D program. At that point, once it's on the computer in 3D, it goes to the 3D printer. Because it's limited in size of printing, the printer takes every building and cuts it into several pieces. Then it assembles the pieces with color coordination to create a 3D puzzle of the building. And then the artists come in to do the painting, the finishing, all the little things to turn it into what looks like a real building. And then go in all the lighting effects, the special effects and all the computer controls.” After being disassembled and moved out of Mathov's studios in Lod, Jerusalem will be shipped to New York, scheduled to arrive in mid-January. Mecca and the Pyramids will arrive a couple of weeks later. Shapira and a team will fly to New York and reassemble the Middle East in the former New York Times Building. As for how long the theme park will operate and how successful it is likely to be, Shapira is confident. “We've got a 15-year lease,” he says. “And if Madame Tussauds wax museum around the corner, with their 60-year-old technology, is still attracting over 1.33 million people a year, then Gulliver's Gate has a chance to do better.”

Moving Jerusalem to New York City’s Times Square

Gulliver’s Gate will encompass a total space of 4,452 square meters, presenting a miniature world at the scale of 1:87.

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Moving Jerusalem to New York City’s Times Square

Gulliver’s Gate will encompass a total space of 4,452 square meters, presenting a miniature world at the scale of 1:87.

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