Things I Photograph: April 2008

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Flushing Meadows Corona Park, World's Fair

The Unisphere, commissioned to celebrate the beginning of the space age, was conceived and constructed as the Theme Symbol of the 1964/1965 New York World's Fair. The Theme of the World's Fair was "Peace Through Understanding" and the Unisphere represented the theme of global interdependence. It was dedicated to "Man's Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe."

On May 10, 1995, the Unisphere was given official landmark status by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. It is the only officially designated landmark in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. It is the "unofficial" symbol of the Borough of Queens, NY.

The rotting hulk of the now-roofless Tent of Tomorrow and the Observation Towers of the Pavilion of the 1964 World's Fair. Under the Tent of Tomorrow, a terrazzo map of NY State is a broken irreparable shambles. A grass-roots effort is underway to restore the building as an Air & Space Museum.

The New York City Building was built to house the New York City Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair, where it housed displays about municipal agencies. The building was centrally located, being directly adjacent to the great icons of the Fair, the Trylon and Perisphere, and it was one of the few buildings created for the Fair that were intended to be permanent. It is now the only surviving building from the 1939/40 Fair. After the World’s Fair, the building became a recreation center for the newly created Flushing Meadows Corona Park. The north side of the building, now the Queens Museum, housed a roller rink and the south side offered an ice rink, as it still does today.

This building was also home to the United Nations from 1946 through 1950, and the place where UNICEF was created.

Click here for further information on the history of the New York City Building.