I'm always happy to have any excuse to visit the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair! Unless they wanted to pull a tooth there, that's where I draw the line. Luckily, I have false teeth (that I ordered from an old Sears catalog), so there will be no extractions to worry about. The slides are date-stamped "October, 1965" - the Fair closed on October 17th. So this was a "last chance" visit.
"Meet me under the Tower of the Four Winds!". Hey, it's as good a place to meet as any, and you have to admit that the Tower is pretty cool. Plus the "It's a Small World" ride was part of the Pepsi Cola/UNICEF pavilion, and that's a "must see".
Lucky visitors might meet a beloved Disney character over at the Pepsi Pavilion. I've seen photos of Alice in Wonderland and the White Rabbit, Snow White and the Dwarfs, Mickey Mouse, and here is Goofy himself. Gawrsh!
The little girl from the previous photo has worked up a thirst, so the Schaeffer Center was just the place to go. She prefers a hoppy IPA. Under one of two air-filled plastic roofs is the circular restaurant. Under the other, an exhibit area displays a model of the original Schaefer brewery showing how beer was made over a century ago. Outside is a 100-foot curved bar and beer garden seating 300.
I hope you have enjoyed your visit to the New York World's Fair!
The "little Disneyland tour guide" from yesterday's post, needs that lady's purse from the second photo!
ReplyDeleteI just noticed how sometimes the Tower of the Four Winds is yellow in some pics, and white in others, like today's photo. Did they paint it at some point, or is the yellow just being washed out in some pictures?
Thanks for the "last chance" trip to the Fair, Major!
1) What a nice photo! Perfect lighting; blue sky; a few wispy clouds. The palm tree on the right makes it look like the Tower could actually be in Disneyland... like it should have been! The weather must've been a little nippy on this day in October; the folks are wearing cold-weather clothing.
ReplyDelete2) The little gal seems to be having mixed feelings about Goofy being so close. Part of her is happy; part of her wants to run away, screaming. I can't quite tell if that's a smile on her face, or if she's crying. I tried enlarging the pic to see if I could make out the guy's face inside the Goofy costume. But no. Perhaps I saw two dark eye sockets, but I think that was just wishful thinking.
3) I like that metal fence. It's not yer average 'cyclone' fence. The scallop shapes make it more decorative. And each panel has its own frame. The Disneyland chain-link fence would've looked much better if it was like this one here. Enjoy your hoppy brew, little gal.
Tokyo!, that plaid purse looks like one of the many plaid overnight bags that got mixed up in the move "What's Up, Doc?". And I thought the Tower was always white(?)
We get to see a couple of the less-viewed locations in today's Fair pics. Thanks, Major.
And I thought the Tower was always white(?)
ReplyDeleteJB, funny...and I always thought the Tower was yellow, or sort of a goldenrod color! If you do a search of GDB for "Tower of the Four Winds" you will see just as many photos that show it white as those that show it yellow. Here's one image:
https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v470/bananaphone5000/GORILLLAS/Tower.jpg
This is a very fine view of the Tower. I’ve always admired it as a sculpture, and especially with that eerie name, a name of mysterious destiny. It sounds like the Tower that Conan the Barbarian climbed just before beheading the giant snake and stealing the giant ruby in “Shadows Over Zamboula”. Someone somewhere should reconstruct two of them and paint one white and another yellow, perhaps flanking the Gateway to a Lost City.
ReplyDeleteI’m with JB, that’s an interesting fence behind our photo subject, who is cute as a bug. She looks too young to drink beer, but who am I to say?
I did not know there were walk-around characters at the NYWF, something new every day on GDB. Thank you Major!
JG
@ TM!-
ReplyDelete"I just noticed how sometimes the Tower of the Four Winds is yellow in some pics, and white in others".
My sources tell me it was originally yellow (kind of a Goldenrod) and for the 1965 Season it was re-painted White. That would explain the color 'discrepancy'. Also some of the smaller parts were damaged by a Winter storm, so those pieces went missing for the 1965 Season.
Thanks, Major.
TokyoMagic!, my personal goal is to wear all plaid, all the time. Plaid underwear? CHECK. The Tower of the Four Winds was yellow one season, and white the next! Or was it the other way around?
ReplyDeleteJB, I love finding good photos of the Tower, it’s one of my favorite features from that World’s Fair, and that’s saying something. I was in New York in October years ago and it was hot and muggy, but I’m sure that was an anomaly. I can’t blame the girl for being a bit apprehensive about Goofy, those characters made me nervous when I was a kid. I think the actor looked out through the mouth, believe it or not. Yes, that fence is rather nice, much better than inexpensive chain link, I wonder if it was used elsewhere after the Fair? See my comment to TM about the tower.
TokyoMagic!, I always get it mixed up, but I think the tower was white the first season, and yellow the next.
JG, one of my old photos of the Tower of the Four Winds wound up in a book about Rolly Crump, credited to a guy who just took the jpeg off of my blog. I spoke to him about it, and he literally believed that once he took it, it was a part of “his collection”. What can you do? I don’t know much about Conan the Barbarian, other than seeing some Frazetta paintings; I was reading books about economics when I was 14. Because I’m a genius, see?? We’ve seen a number of the Disney characters at the Fair on GDB, but it is easy to forget, I know.
Nanook, ah, OK, so it was yellow and then white. I saw Chris Crump (Rolly’s son) at an event earlier in the year, and he’d made an absolutely beautiful little model of the Tower. I wish I’d been able to really stop and study it, but it was hard to get close to it. Still, it really was a work of art.
THE TOWER OF THE FOUR WINDS is “yellow” . It also appears yellow in the original Rolly Crump model and the color callout illustration that is painted directly on an architectural print. The full-size test set up in California filmed with Walt and Rolly before being shipped to New York also shows the tower being yellow. I think that depending on the weather , visibility and film quality it may appear white. Color distortion is very very common in film. A good example is photographs of the DL RR MAIN STREET STATION: it majority of pictures print and slide the window trim and window trim brackets on the roof almost always appear white when the are two indeed yellow . They always have been with the exception of a short period of time in 1987-1988.
ReplyDeleteI doubt The Tower of The Four Winds would have ever returned to Disneyland … even if the shipping costs had been favorable… Neither Walt or Rolly were particularly pleased with its final outcome. The structural engineers made the graceful supports be built as much as 4 times thicker than designed. The wind Mobiles also didn’t work as well as planed but imagineers were concerned with Californian’s extreme Santa Ana Winds would destroy those wind ornaments like the banners that were once on the original Disneyland entry marquee .
That’s why Walt had Mary Blair and Rolly design the it’s a small world facade we know today … Walt didn’t want the tower of the four winds in Disneyland. White or yellow.
Tokyo!, yellow or white? Hmmm, "is a puzzlement". Thanks to Nanook, Major, and Mike for solving the puzzlement.
ReplyDeleteMajor, yes, through the mouth. That's the part I zoomed in on, without any luck.
Thanks to Nanook, Major, and Mike for solving the puzzlement.
ReplyDeleteJB, yes...thanks to all, for the information!
But I forgot to mention that I saw one photo of it, where it was painted fire engine red. KIDDING!
Mike, like Nanook, I have read that the Tower was yellow for the first season, and then it was repainted white for the 1965 season (perhaps the harsh NY winter had given the Tower a beating). There are enough photos of it with the white paint that I think we can safely say that it isn’t a trick of light or an artifact of a particular film stock. The Chrysler pavilion was entirely repainted for the 1965 season, going from mostly white to hot pinks and oranges! I agree with you that lighting can make a huge difference in many cases. I think it’s so odd that Walt apparently wasn’t entirely happy with the Tower of the Four Winds, since it was featured so prominently in TV shows and other media. I understand that Rolly hated the beefed-up supports, but even so, it was so fun and whimsical. Artists are often most critical of their own work! You make a good point about the Santa Ana winds and what they might have done to those whirligigs on a particularly blustery day. Imagine a piece of metal tearing off and flying into a crowd. No good.
ReplyDeleteJB, these slides were kind of dark to begin with, I lightened them as much as I dared, otherwise they go weirdly gray. But I think we’ve seen other photos in which you can kind of see the CM!
TokyoMagic!, I think you were sniffin’ glue! Elmer's Glue, that is.
Always nice to visit the NYWF on a Saturday. I was actually on the fairgrounds last Sunday for a screening of Modern Ruin, a documentary on the NY State Pavilion. It's nice to see some restoration work on the pavilion underway. Maybe I'll get to go up to the top of the towers one day.
ReplyDelete