It's a way to see the whole city in just one room. The Panorama of the City of New York is one of the exhibits at the Queens Museum, which is drawing more crowds than ever after an expansion. NY1's Roger Clark paid a visit.

At first glance, it may look like the view from a helicopter above the five boroughs, but it's really a massive architectural scale model of the city.

"Everybody comes to the Queens Museum, sees this, and then goes out and tells three or four friends and they come in," said David Strauss, the deputy director of the museum.

It is the Panorama of the City of New York, built for the 1964 World's Fair. For the ninth time, the model is scene of a trivia contest run by Levy's Unique New York tour guides, including Matt Levy, who took a stroll with me — carefully — and gave me a taste of the questions, this one about the Verrazano Bridge.
 

Levy: How farther apart are the tops of the two towers than the bottom?

Roger: One mile.

Levy: Two feet.
 

Well, OK, I missed that one.

Levy says there is nothing like using the Panorama to quiz folks on the city. A portion of proceeds go to the City Reliquary Museum in Williamsburg.

The Queens Museum loves hosting it, bringing more folks to check out the place. Attendance has doubled since an expansion three years ago.

"New Yorkers love New York. People visiting New York are here for a reason," Strauss said. "And what better way to see the entire city at once?"

"We kind of joke about the fact that between, you know, the Panorama and the Unisphere outside, you come to the Queens Museum and you see the city and the world at the same time," Strauss continued.

It's a busy time at the Queens Museum. In April, there will be a Ramones Exhibit — of course the punk rock legends from Queens — and the museum's first-ever kick starter campaign is underway, raising funding for a project called Non-stop Metropolis, the Remix.

"The project is about New York City. It's about looking at the different layers of the city through a series of Atlases," Strauss said. "There are maps that look at the waterways, the hidden languages that are extinct elsewhere in the world that are still being spoke in New York."

To find out more about that and everything happening here, head to queensmuseum.org