Opinion

Time to preserve icons of 1964 World’s Fair

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the 1964 New York World’s Fair. How many of the Fair’s iconic elements will still be there for the 60th?

I was amazed, several years ago, when my work took me to Flushing Meadows Corona Park, site of the Fair, for the first time in decades. As I approached the walkway from the Willets Point subway station to the park entrance, I suddenly was three years old again, awash in a memory I didn’t know I had: We’d just gotten off one of the special blue-and-white Fair trains, kids in Hertz-provided strollers made to look like Corvettes, everyone making their way toward the Fair, inexpressible anticipation in the air . . .

More recently, working inside the park, I came upon what looked like a duck pond surrounded by an iron fence — and then recalled standing by that fence in the dark as a kid, waiting for the fireworks to begin. This was the Fountain of the Planets, a wonder of its time, where crowds were awed by nightly pyrotechnics combined with breathtaking water displays.

And why shouldn’t those memories stick? There never had been anything like the Fair, or the country that produced it. America was at the peak of her post-World War II prosperity and power — still reeling from the loss of President John Kennedy, but not yet beaten down by the murders of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, chaos in the streets and the endless war.

The Fair was a showcase for that prosperity and power, and for the bursting American optimism that accompanied them. The Fair’s message: All of history had been a long struggle to reach today, and the road ahead was clear.

You had only to ride through General Motors’ Futurama exhibit to see what awaited — “a future of limitless promise,” as the narrator told us; life made richer and happier by ever more amazing technology; man reaching out to the stars. In the dark, as in a dream, you saw animated figures building science-fiction cities, cultivating the seas and exploring the moon.

Many of the great corporations, thriving then, were at the Fair — Ford, Chrysler, Kodak, Sinclair, General Electric, DuPont — each with a spectacle that seemed like imagination itself. Disney’s “It’s a Small World” ride embodied the Fair’s motto of “Peace Through Understanding.”

Then there was the Vatican’s exhibit, in which people stood on moving walkways and were brought slowly past Michelangelo’s Pieta. And the New York State Pavilion, with its three space-age towers and huge mosaic map of the Empire State. And the Unisphere, largest model of the Earth ever created. And . . .

Fifty years since the Fair opened, you can still feel the electricity as you walk the park, on the same paths fairgoers strolled. Yet too many of the treasures from that magic time have been left to deteriorate.

The iconic Unisphere is well-loved and well-kept. But the Fountain of the Planets has fallen into disrepair, its high-tech glamour gone, its beauty and significance obscured by years of indifference.

Worse yet, the New York State Pavilion — which looms over the Queens highways and comprises, with the Unisphere, the most recognizable symbol of the borough — has been neglected for decades, allowed to fade to a shadow of its futuristic splendor.

But good things are happening. Recent studies found the Pavilion, which is city-owned, sound enough to save, and projected a variety of plans for doing so — from a $43 million “stabilization” to leave it an empty hulk to a $52 million rehab as a tourist attraction.

A passionate civic group, People for the Pavilion, has ignited new interest in the structure. And Queens Borough President Melinda Katz and the city Parks Department say they’re firmly behind preservation.

Katz has formed a task force to explore options for the project, and intends to seek $45 million in city or state funding — and it’s hard to see private grants being turned away.

Imagine the park as it could be, a recreational oasis with some of its World’s Fair swagger restored. Markers everywhere to show visitors the site’s history. Concerts on a summer night at a refurbished Fountain of the Planets, its dancing lights and waters transfixing viewers as they once did, the Unisphere glowing in the background.

And the Pavilion, young again, its glass-pod elevators running up the side of the tallest tower, carrying the people of today to the best view in Queens, and to a time in America when so much seemed possible.

George Molé writes about urban issues and blogs at FintoFile.com.