1964 - 2004
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04 WORLD’S FAIR ‘64 08 VISION OF THE FUTURE 12 STATE PAVILION 15 TENT OF TOMORROW
The grounds of the 1964 New York World’s Fair were a blur of perpetual motion: Gondolas dangled above the crowds from the Swiss Sky Ride, a monorail glided in the Lake Amusement area, Greyhound Escorters ferried fatigued visitors, helicopters landed on the Port Authority’s helipad and a giant tire Ferris wheel spun.
FIFTY YEARS AGO THE
WORLD WAS IN QUEENS
A
ll paths once led to the Unisphere, a magnet for the masses.As the symbolic center of the 1964 New York World’s Fair, in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, the 140-foot-tall globe drew 51 million people to its fountains in 12 bustling months over two years. Visitors came there on honeymoons or first dates. Some found their way in through well-worn holes in the fence, or rode the subway alone for the first time. Others came to work, or came to protest.Fifty years ago on April 22, the first fairgoers arrived to see the future. Little did they know, then, how one trip to the fair — or dozens — would affect their own lives. Only the 700,000-pound, stainless-steel globe stands untarnished by time and enhanced by memory. For thousands, the fair was more than a souvenir photo, a novel taste of Bel-
taste of Belgian waffles or an endless soundtrack of Disney’s “It’s a Small World.” The fair may have offered a sanitized view of the world. But its true legacy was that it evoked real emotion on a personal scale. These are the seemingly fleeting moments — a lingering gaze, a shout at a demonstration, a flirting wink, a blink of imagination and a flick of a pen — that endure today. Walt Disney’s “It’s a Small World.” The “Carousel of Progress.” Billy Graham’s religious film “Man in the 5th Dimension.” Full-scale models of the engines of a Saturn V rocket. Wisconsin’s “World’s Largest Cheese. A US Royal tire-shaped Ferris wheel. A recreated medieval Belgian lage. DuPont’s musical review “ The Wonderful World of Chemistry.” Intricate miniature dioramas of a possible world in the near-future, Futurama II, presented by General Motors. The
fair showed visitors a “spectacle that embodied the innovative, lunacy, hope, and fear of the Sixties,” according to Tomorrow-Land: The 1964-65 World’s Fair and the Transformation of America Hardcover, a new book New York City journalist Joseph Tirella. Perhaps the world all seems closer today, with the ease of international travel and the Internet. There’s no need for a foreign government to exhibit exotic wares in a funky cheese-shaped pavilion. In 1964-65, the world was more naive, more forward-thinking, rather than future-fearing. Here architects built a world The Jetsons (which debuted in ‘62) might have encountered: disk-shaped rooms perched on white pillars, curving white bands arching above a Ford automobile display, and an egg on stilts, where IBM gave most visitors their first one-on-one interaction with computers. Inspired by
the most modern of building materials, things like fiberglass, stainless steel, and reinforced concrete, designers produced an environment ripe for a consumer tech show, one where the General Electric Carousel of Progress, the US Royal tire-shaped Ferris wheel, and Wisconsin’s display of the World’s Largest Cheese could delight Baby Boomers, then children, and offer optimism at a time when socio-political springs—including the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War—were repressed and ready to pop. The fair’s theme, “Peace Through Understanding,” became a lens in which to exhibit “Man’s Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe,” a motto represented in exhibits on color TVs and Picturephones, in 12-story stainless-steel Unispheres, and, of course, in the It’s a Small World ride, which made its debut at the fair. In the decades that passed, the themes
of the fair came to define environs of the fair came to define the aesthetic of the period as a whole, one entrenched in an eclectic and optimistic blend of the atomic power and Googie architecture. The fair was a reflecting pool for the years between 1957 and ‘67, when the Cold War simmered, the Space Age bloomed, and popularized air flight made everything more reachable. Photos: First day of the fair with the arrival of almost 50.000 people. (Queens Museum Collection,NY.)
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Fairgoers got a glimpse of what their favorite TV shows looked like in color.
F E O R S U T N U O I F S I E V TH
The Bell Telephone System pavilion introduced the Picturephone. Visitors could make a telephone call to a nearby booth and see the people talking to them as well as hear them.
T
he New York State Pavilion is an historic structure originally built for the 1964/1965 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Since the day the Fair ended on October 17, 1965, the Pavilion has been left to decay. Despite many public-led efforts over the years, the Pavilion has languished unused, and with no long-term plan for its preservation or use. If not acted on, this unique and impressive historic structure is at serious danger of permanent ruin.The New York State Pavilion was designed to showcase all of the varied attractions that the state had to offer, from natural scenery and wildlife to achievements in the fine and performing arts. The Tent of Tomorrow, Astro-View Towers, and Theaterama each housed their own specific exhibits or attractions. Additionally, the Pavilion acted as a civic hub where residents of the state could voice concerns to representative congressmen. The staggering attendance at the New York State Pavilion is a testament to its popularity: by the end of the second season of the fair in 1965, an estimated 6,000,000 fairgoers had passed through the Pavilion’s gates and walked upon its famous map floor. The main floor was a hub for activities such as fashion shows and free entertainment by thousands of non-professionals groups. A “kiddy ride” and a small zoo were included to cater to younger guests. The Tent housed a traditional art show with fifty works by New York artists dating from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. By far, the most recognizable element of the New York State Pavilion were its three Astro-View observation towers, purportedly inspired by the buildings of Krypton in the Superman comics. The tallest observation tower stands at 226 feet high and contains two observation platforms, providing unique views of the Manhattan skyline. These observation decks offered fairgoers an exciting panorama of the fairgrounds and surrounding area. A visitor would travel to the top by taking a 20-second ride in the glass “Sky Streak” capsule. Over the years, as the structure was abandoned, its role as an integral part of New York’s visual identity has grown. Many of the more than 54,000,000 attendees of the fair have vivid memories of the New York State Pavilion. It served as the centerpiece of a significant moment in New York City’s history. and remained over the subsequent decades as an important visual reminder of this event. Many New Yorkers have grown up in its shadow, creating their own memories and personal connections to the massive structure. The structure means as much to those who attended to the Fair as to those who have known it only in its neglected years.
The observation towers from the NY State Pavillion, 1964
T EN
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Fifty years after the 1964 World’s Fair opened, the New York State Pavilion, one of the last architectural vestiges of the fair, was named a “National Treasure” on Tuesday by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The pavilion, which consists of a cluster of curved towers reminiscent of the television cartoon “The Jetsons,” has deteriorated over the decades, and the structures are permanently closed, their surfaces marred by rust. The New York City parks department has been studying options for the site’s restoration, and the designation by the National Trust, a nonprofit, could help raise money for that effort.
New York Pavillion during construction and finished, 1964
Fifty years ago, the gates to the 1964 New York World’s Fair opened for the first time. Before they closed for good in October 1965, 51 million people streamed through the fairgrounds. While some of the futuristic visions on display — underwater hotels, moon colonies and jet-pack rocketmen — remain the stuff of science - fiction fantasy, the 1964 World’s Fair left its imprint on the world in which we live a half-century later in six ways.