New York World's Fair, August 1964
It's a World's Fair extravaganza! Rather than dividing these seven scans into two posts (my usual M.O.), I decided to go nuts and share all of these remaining 120-format transparencies in one go.
First up is this view of the Solar Fountain, which was located to the east of the Unisphere, near the House of Japan (seen to the right). A central dome supports a 30-foot high column of water while a starburst circles around the dome. Wobbling jets of water surrounding the dome simulate the sun's gases. Gases, you say? In the distance (to the left) is the conical, wavy roof of "Sermons From Science", and the distant towers of the New York State pavilion.
Continuing eastward, you'd find the Tiparillo Band Pavilion. This is an outdoor dance floor and band shell jointly sponsored by the Fair, which provided the facilities, and the General Cigar Company, which provides music by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians every night except Mondays. The pavilion is used in the daytime for special performances by visiting national and local groups. Man, those folks on the benches look like they have tired feet (and tired "everything else")!
In this view, the Fountain of the Continents (where the giant Unisphere loomed) is just behind us; we're facing northeast along the Promenade, with the Pool of Reflection in the middle distance, with the sculpture "Star Thrower" just visible at the end of that pool. Beyond that, the Bell System pavilion. Overhead, the wonderful Sky Ride (it's way up there!), and the Republic of China pavilion is mostly out of frame to the left.
Next we see the Tower of Light; The world's most powerful searchlight beam rises from the center of this unusual building, whose exterior walls consist of 600 aluminum prisms fitted together to form an eye-catching pattern. Sponsored by investor-owned electric utility companies throughout the nation, the building is entered by a moving ramp that carries visitors over a reflecting pool and deposits them on a giant turntable. The turntable revolves past seven chambers, stopping at each chamber for a new episode of a musical presentation on the benefits of electricity.
Hmmm, here's something I can't quite place - perhaps one of you can? In the distance is a tent covering a merry-go-round. But I can't figure out where it was! I was thinking that the body of water to the left might be the Fountain of the Planets, but am not really sure. There was a a fancy merry-go-round over in the Belgian Village, but that was very different from the one seen here. It would make sense if this was somewhere over in the Amusement Zone, but the area in the photo looks so sparse compared to that densely-packed land.
One of the Fair's attractions that I would have wanted to see is the General Electric "Progressland" pavilion, featuring Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress, among other delights. Under a huge, gleaming dome suspended from spiraling pipes, the GE exhibit, called "Progressland," depicts the history of electricity, from its beginning to the mighty bang of nuclear fusion. The multipart show, produced by Walt Disney, uses a unique theater. Here the seated audience is carried past a number of stages; there are reflecting mirrors, startling visual and sound projections, and in the climax, neutron counters and other instruments to document graphically the demonstration of controlled thermonuclear fusion.
OK, I know this next picture should have been placed before or after photo #3, but you have to understand that I am very drunk. Here's the Republic of China pavilion: The opulent red and gold pavilion is a reproduction of a tradtional imperial palace - the first of its kind which has ever been erected in the Western hemisphere. Within the structure are exhibits of ancient and modern Chinese culture, and many rare and beautiful art objects: bronzes, porcelains, jades, silks and carvings in ivory, wood and stone.
I hope you have enjoyed this visit to the New York World's Fair!
10 comments:
1) Interesting fountain; a little bit of everything! And we also get a Moonberry peeking out from behind the "Sun". The boy closest to us has something in his hand. I think it's a lizard. He's going to throw it in the fountain and see if it can find its way out before drowning. Kids. (It's what I would do at that age!)
2) We can see the front end of one of those car-shaped strollers on the left. And another Moonberry! (Or maybe the same one).
3) Somebody really should take down that string of Christmas lights; it's August after all!
4) I really like the architecture of the Tower of Light pavilion. It's got "World's Fair" written all over it!
5) Hmm, one wonders why the photographer took this picture. Maybe he was an asphalt enthusiast, like that guy who focused on vast stretches of asphalt in those GDB Disneyland photos from years ago.
6) I think the lady in the wheelchair is singing "There's a great big beautiful tomorrowww!" after exiting the CoP. The father and son (slightly to the left of center) look like they are doing a 'fist bump'... in 1964! Gotta love the vast tracts of bare dirt scattered with vestigial weeds.
7) It's actually kind of amazing to see a China pavilion at the '64 Fair. We didn't really have relations with them until Nixon went to China in '72.
Really nice set of '64 World's Fair photos, Major. Thanks.
THAT Swiss Skyride is WAY TOO HIGH!!!!
My grandparents went to the fair in 1964 and 1965 and they said eveyone who saw The Carousel of Progress hummed the tune the rest of the day. When I was little I had lots of NY Worlds Fair souvenirs given to me by my grandparents and my uncles so growing up long after the fair I was familiar with the buildings and images and music … but didn’t understand exactly what it was … it had a It’s A Small World .. so did Disneyland …. There’s one in Florida too … maybe there were “small world”
Rides all over the world …??? Eventually I understood its history and connection. To Disneyland . Incidentally in getting my degree in Environmental Design with an emphasis in architecture , my theses was on WORLDS FAIR & EXPOSITION design & planning .
I think I may have found that carousel, although it appears to be in a different location as I can’t make its position in your photo in relation to the surrounding bodies of water match up in this 1 Jun, 1964 image. To find it, look for the red and white striped roof in the lower right of the linked image, to the left of the Bell System Pavilion. My working theory is if that indeed is the same carousel, it would have been easy to move as needed, or perhaps there was more than one to provide children’s entertainment in more than just the Amusement Zone.
”The opulent red and gold pavilion is a reproduction of a tradtional imperial palace - the first of its kind which has ever been erected in the Western hemisphere.” Yes, except for that one in St Louis 60 years earlier. That hyperbolic copywriter must have gone on to work for Disney.
The description of what was on display inside the 1964 iteration is similar to what stood out to me inside the People’s Republic of China’s pavilion at the 1982 Knoxville World’s Fair, although the exterior was far more modest. Even with a reserved entry time we still waited over an hour in line to get inside. The biggest draw was a few bricks (19 of them) from the Great Wall and a couple of recently-excavated terra cotta warriors.
JB, the Republic of China is on Taiwan, where the unconquered remnants of Chiang Kai Shek’s government and armed forces evacuated to at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. In 1964, not only did the US have full diplomatic relations with the ROC (something our agreements with the People’s Republic of China has forbidden since 1979), we also had US military assets stationed there. Thanks for pointing out the Moonberry - it gives me an excuse to say “drupelet.”
Mike, my parents visited the fair soon after it opened. I grew up listening to their stories and looking at a few loose B&W photos that lived in an end table drawer in our family room when I was little. Not sure when I made the Disneyland connection, but I think it was before I turned 8. Their experiences along with my dad’s visit to the 1962 Seattle Fair and repeated visits to the site of the St Louis Fair piqued my interest in World’s Fairs and had a lot to do with my parents organizing our 1982 family vacation around the Knoxville Fair.
Thanks, Major!
Sounds like the Solar Fountain got ahold of some of Walt’s chili, nudge, nudge.
Would a gentleman offer a band shell to a lady?
The pseudo legendary names of the site features in photo 3 sound like they were coined by the Horta (the Star Trek creature, not the architect).
The Tower of Light show sounds like the Carousel of Progress, so there were two turntable rides celebrating electricity? An idea whose time has come!
Chuck, thanks for locating the other carousel. I found some nice memorabilia of the 1962 Fair this past week, haven’t read it yet.
That Progressland Pavilion is certainly quite a design, I wish I could have seen it. The lawns here have taken a beating too, popular fair.
Thanks Major, lots of new things here!
JG
I remember it was late and we had been at the Fair all day and my mom was dragging me and my brothers out to go home, and we passed by Guy Lombardo and his band. I wanted to stop and listen but my mom wanted to leave. I thought they sounded pretty good!
Dennis, Levittown, Long Island-
Carousel Theaters were by no means a new thing at the NYW FAIR - the French and Austrians used them in the 1700’s ……however , I think Disney’s version may have been the first to have the audience rotate to the next scene …. As opposed to the stage rotating to the next scene. Besides the Carousel of Progress /America Sings and Meet The World , the first half of the original JOURNEY INTO IMAGINATION ( when Dream Finder introduces Figment) used a carousel theater mechanism for the Omni-movers . Professor Marvel’s Managerie of Wonders for Discovery Bay would have used a carousel theater .
JB, the boy is holding a Tiparillo! Kids are tough in NY. I love those car-shaped strollers and if I won the lottery I would build an adult-sized one and have my robots push me around in one. I just drove past a house last night that still has all of its Christmas lights up (all over the yard) and commented that I liked the way it looked! The Tower of Light reminds me of Tony Baxter’s apparent obsession with crystalline shapes a decade or so later. I agree, the photo with the merry-go-round is poorly composed, but I like that I still can’t quite figure out where it was taken! The wheelchair lady does seem to be demonstrative, sort of like Ethel Merman. The father and son are sharing a Tiparillo. And please, I don’t want to be reading about anybody “having relations” on my family blog!
Mike Cozart, the Progressland pavilion had the wonderful Carousel of Progress, but it also had so much more, there’s no wonder it was one of the most-visited pavilions at the Fair. I think the Vatican pavilion was also near the top, and I have to admit that the opportunity to see Michelangelo’s “Pieta” would have been hard to resist. I’m pretty sure I didn’t really know about the World’s Fair until I was plenty old enough to understand what it was, nobody in my family went to it!
Chuck, first of all, thank you for deleting those other comments with the bad words in them! Also, thank you for that aerial photo - I’m also positive I looked at a similar black and white aerial view, but did not notice the striped roof. It has to be the same merry-go-round! As for the Republic of China pavilion, the one in NY had a soft-serve machine inside, which made it unique (the first of its kind!) compared to the one in St. Louis. I’m not sure I knew that you went to the World’s Fair in Knoxville, that’s pretty cool! I only went to the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. I first learned the word “drupelet” from a Kurt Vonnegut book, though I can’t remember which one. Maybe “Breakfast of Champions”? I feel like I probably learned about the NYWF in a backwards manner; finding out that Mr. Lincoln, the “Primeval World” dinosaurs, the Carousel of Progress, and the transport system from the Peoplemover all had their origins at the Fair. As a kid I remember reading about “Expo 74” in Spokane when I was in school and wishing I could go, but we lived in Pennsylvania, and Spokane seemed impossibly far away.
JG, I hope Walt’s chili did not induce solar gases! I wonder if you can still by Tiparillos? If so I’ll bring a bunch to our next get-together and we can all smoke them. For fun! I have not ever mind-melded with a Horta, so I don’t know their language very well. UNLIKE YOU! So many Fair shows have minimal (or NO) photos of what they looked like, I really have no concept of what the Tower of Light show was like, which is a bummer. I wonder if people threw themselves down on the grass at the Fair, like I’ve seen them do at Disneyland (at least, when Disneyland had real grass)? It was probably a case of shortcuts taken.
dennis, I’m assuming that the Fair would be much less crowded as closing approached, kind of like Disneyland does - it would be amazing to see any of the wonderful pavilions lit up at night, without thousands of other guests around!
Mike Cozart, I do remember reading that the “stroke of genius” for the Carousel of Progress was having the audience rotate around the stage rather than vice-versa. It is a pretty audacious concept! From what I’ve heard, the building turned on what was basically railroad track and wheels - it’s been a long time since I experienced the Carousel Theatre, but remember the turning was very smooth.
Chuck, thanks for the correction. I assumed it was mainland "China". Taiwan; now it makes sense! You are now free to leave your 'punishment corner', and I'll take your place. ;-)
"The Republic of the Peoples Republic of the Republic of China"... Confusing! (Reminds me of the "Peoples Front of Judea" silliness in Monty Pythons "Life of Brian".)
Major, there are two houses on our street that have permanent strings of lights up on their eaves. They're the newer LED lights that you can program. They change the color of the lights to match the holiday, season, team colors, etc.. And yes, it does look nice; brings a little more color into our lives, especially on those long, cold, winter nights.
And as far as mentioning "relations", I've already placed myself in Chuck's 'punishment corner'.
I think the red and whit striped thing in the pic Chuck linked is the bandstand from the Rheingold pavilion
Though I can't really place the picture, either. Maybe it was something they added late in the season in the amusement area. I know there were problems with funding several of the attractions and hasty replacements were made in both seasons.
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