Eiran Gazit has always liked miniatures. As a boy he built train and plane sets. “I had 200 model airplanes hanging above my bed,” he recalled. He never grew out of it.
On April 4 he will open his latest project to the public: a giant exhibit of the world built entirely in miniature, covering a 49,000-square-foot space in Times Square, at 216 W. 44th St.
Called Gulliver’s Gate, the $40 million attraction is Gazit’s brainchild—the culmination of a decade of dreaming and refining; three years of pitching and cajoling investors; two years of coordinating dozens of artists around the world; and several months of frenzied installation.
Gazit fashions himself as a master of ceremonies for a fantastical world, and is, at times, an apologist for it: “We’ve taken a lot of liberties.”
New Yorkers will spot them right away. Built by Brooklyn Model Works, the minimodel of the Big Apple focuses on lower Manhattan but includes Times Square, the Empire State Building and the Guggenheim Museum. A subterranean Grand Central Terminal runs the length of the exhibit. But the interactive model is teeming with life: taxicabs, street vendors, shoppers, ferries, moving trains.
“This is a magical, happy version of the world. It’s playful,” Gazit said. “We don’t have slums. We don’t have wars. We don’t have catastrophes.”
The son of an Israeli diplomat, Gazit had lived in Nigeria, Ghana and England by the time he was 10. He spent 14 years in the