Elgin Park was a perpetual miniature imaginary village created by artist and photographer Michael Paul Smith in 2008.

It was a 1:24-scale recreation of everyday scenes from mid-20th-century America, ranging from the 1920s to the mid-1960s, based loosely on Sewickley, Pennsylvania, where Smith lived for the first seventeen years of his life.

[1] Smith, who was "founder, chief architect and mayor" of Elgin Park,[2] photographed with his digital camera, using forced perspective, meticulously arranged scenes from the village and shared them online.

[5] His experience as a mail carrier helped make his imaginary town as close to real as something non-existent can be.

"[6] Smith's desire for authenticity meant he would put baking soda on car tires for a winter scene, or create a tiny puddle beneath an old-fashioned Divco milk float to demonstrate that blocks of ice inside it were melting as the truck sat idly at the curb.

"Elgin Park is not an exact re-creation of Sewickley," he told The New York Times in 2010, "but it does capture the mood of my memories.

"[2] For his twelfth birthday, Smith's father gave him an Aluminum Model Toys three-in-one plastic kit.

[2] Moving to downtown Boston, Smith started a wallpaper and painting company, before making models for KlingStubbins architectural firm.