If It's Tuesday This Must Be Belgium

So right now we're packing up the car and getting ready to leave for a week's vacation: Colonial Williamsburg and Busch Gardens (we're history buffs, and coaster enthusiasts--it's perfect).

We're going to stop en route in Richmond to see the Belgian Pavilion from The Fair. The pavilion, as many of you probably already know, was dismantled after The Fair and re-assembled on the campus of Virginia Union University. The original plan was to send it all back to Belgium, but the War interfered with that!

Left: the current configuration of the Belgium Building; Right: the original layout (model photo from the New York Public Library

I can't tell you how excited I am to be finally able to see the pavilion! Some time ago I actually met the architect that was heading up a renovation of the building. He offered to give me a private hard-hat tour, but, alas, I was not able to take him up on that.

While we're down there, we're also planning to zip on over to Newport News to see the Alexander Stirling Calder statue of Leif Erikson that stood outside the Iceland exhibit at The Fair. It's a genuine Fair survivor, a larger copy of an original (1930) still standing in Reykjavik.

Of course, I'll be sure to post new photos as soon as I can!

City of New York II: The Blob That Ate Queens!

This UNSPEAKABLE HORROR was actually (ACTUALLY!) the winning design for the renovation of the Queens Museum of Art (formerly The City of New York building) a decade ago! 

Someone somewhere said it looked like the building had been bombed during the London Blitz. I think it looks rather more like a giant oozing slime has overtaken the building and dissolved everything it its path! 

Amazingly, the architect still lists this as a "project" at his site. I don't want to name names or besmirch anyone's reputation, but you can read about this "project" here. (WARNING: graphic image.)

THANK GOD the museum had the good sense (to say nothing of taste!) to scrap this plan and start afresh!   

How Original Is Original?

The Boathouse during its 2011 "restoration"

At the far southern end of Flushing Meadows Corona Park, along the edge of Fountain Lake in what was formerly the Amusement Section of The Fair, sits the Boat House, frequently cited as the second of only two original Fair structures still standing in their original locations. This status seems to be universal in its acceptance by historians and Fair enthusiasts alike.

But I'm not so sure about this. Compare today's Boathouse with photographs taken in 1939: the differences are striking. Most notably what looks like a limestone facade with classical elements has been replaced with brick. Anyone looking at two photographs side by side doesn't need me to elaborate on the differences. But this begs the question: how much of the original structure is actually still standing? How original does original have to be to actually be original? Let me know what you think.

1939 photos from the
New York Public Library

City of New York

Most everyone who knows anything at all about the 1939-40 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows knows that only two buildings from The Fair remain in situ.

The first and most important of these is the New York City Building, the only building from The Fair intended to be permanent. Designed by Aymar Embury II, it served as home to the UN from 1946-50 and more recently housed an ice skating rink, now departed, in order to allow expansion by the building's other tenant, The Queens Museum of Art.

This 1939 View of the New York City Building Remains Largely Unchanged Today

This expansion will be completed by the end of next year. In the meantime visitors can view a model of the renovations. The building's future once looked rather precarious, but the current project seems to be a reasonable compromise between the Museum's present needs and a healthy respect for the past. 

We shall see. At least the Museum had the good sense to scrap the bizarrely Solomonic proposal of splitting the building in two down the center!

The New York City Building's Cornerstone

Come Back To The Fair

I only became interested in The 1939 New York World's Fair after my Dad died, which is longer ago than seems possible. In search of tangible mementos, talismans as it were, I dug into a beat-up old footlocker that had sat undisturbed for a very long time in my parents' (now just my mother's) basement. Inside were a few Fair souvenirs, nothing out-of-the-ordinary or especially valuable, but charming, nonetheless, particularly since my grandmother (my father's mother) had carefully and thoughtfully saved, for instance, even the cardboard shipping box that the Fair tray and coaster set had been mailed in.

At the Kodak exhibit: (left) my Uncle Buddy's 
girlfriend Stella and my grandmother; (right) my Dad

Over the years I've added to that collection, and I suppose I'll share the pieces here eventually. I haven't any one-of-a-kind items that you won't see anywhere else on the internet, just the usual and expected plates and pins, spoons and glassware, and the like.

From collecting I moved on to experiencing; I rode the 7 Train out to Flushing, dragging along good-natured and willing friends on frigid winter days to see the site where The Fair had stood, to see if I could feel The Fair. I tried to imagine what it was like to stand beneath the Trylon and Perisphere, which apparently would have dwarfed the Unisphere (symbol of the 1964-65 World's Fair) which occupies their former site. (Luckily for enthusiasts of the '64-'65 Fair, a visit to Flushing Meadows affords a much more evocative experience.)

Plenty has been written about the history and design of the Fair that was; my focus has been on the Fair that still is, however little that may be. A wonderful piece some years ago by David Dunlap in The New York Times gave an overview of what remains of The Fair (and also of the '64-'65 re-incarnation), which alas, is not much. But my own research has uncovered even more than Mr. Dunlap's excellent article, and I have been very pleased and very surprised to discover many remnants of The Fair that can still be seen and visited and enjoyed today.

Of all the souvenirs and mementos I have from The Fair, the most precious to me, the one I wouldn't part with even for all the money in the world, is my Dad's ticket book. It bears his 8-year-old's signature, and still has 15 unused tickets inside. It's my ticket back to The Fair; I invite you to come along.

Farewell to The Fair

 

 
This October will see the 72nd anniversary of the closing of what was arguably the world’s greatest World’s Fair. The New York World’s Fair of 1939-40 closed its gates forever on October 27, 1940. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be taking a tour ‘round the globe to discover just what remains from this auspicious and historic event when the World came to New York.

You may be surprised by what we find!