A Queens Park's Past Shapes Its Future

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August 26, 2001, Section 11, Page 1Buy Reprints
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AMONG the soccer players criss-crossing the vast lawns in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, among the children squealing in the fountain sprays, among the skateboarders and tennis fans and theatergoers, there are ghosts.

They are all around the 1,255-acre park. Some are exuberantly visible. Others are woven subtly into the landscape. Most are as remote as a summer memory.

For these are the grounds of the World's Fairs of 1939-40 and 1964-65, events that still grip the popular imagination. One was America's final Deco-frosted fling with innocence before the world plunged into war. The other was a tailfin-tacky celebration of jet-age technological hubris that proved to be the unhappy final chapter to the city-building career of Robert Moses.

The fairs are more than history, though. Their infrastructure still exerts influence on the city's second-largest park (only Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx is larger), on the Queens cultural scene and on baseball, tennis and perhaps even the 2012 Olympics. And it is in for some changes.

Next month, work will begin on an expansion of the undulating Hall of Science from 1964. A luminous, angled horizontal 55,000-square-foot wing has been designed by the Polshek Partnership as part of a $68 million upgrade of the hall and the former United States Space Park. On Aug. 14, the Mercury and Gemini capsules and Atlas and Titan rockets were trucked to Akron, Ohio, for rehabilitation.

The New York City Building of 1939 will undergo its biggest transformation in decades when the ice rink moves out in 2003, allowing the Queens Museum of Art, which shares the structure, to occupy it fully. The architect of this space will be chosen in a juried competition held by the City Design and Construction Department, with Ralph Lerner, dean of the school of architecture at Princeton University, as adviser.

There are no plans, however, for the abandoned Tent of Tomorrow from the New York State Pavilion of 1964, designed by Philip Johnson and Richard Foster, nor for its mushroom-shaped towers nearby. Cables twanging eerily in high winds, a Sky-Streak elevator capsule is frozen in mid-ascent on the tallest shaft, leading to the observation deck 226 feet in the sky. (The middle tower served refreshments. The shortest was a dignitaries' lounge.)

Stark, roofless, elliptical and voluminous, the pavilion is a modern Colosseum, its columns towering over a thick pine grove. Like a great Roman ruin, the Tent of Tomorrow is paved with an extravagant inlaid floor, this one depicting the state of New York as a 1960's Texaco road map, half as long as a football field. Long Island alone is almost 50 feet in extent.

No reading glasses are needed, just thick-soled shoes to take you over its crumbling expanse. Plastic letters are set into the white, red, blue and green terrazzo: 2 inches for small towns like Fleischmanns, 4 inches for larger towns like Seneca Falls, 12 inches for cities like Albany. The map is peppered with five-inch Texaco star medallions.

But whole sections are covered in cement from the period in the 70's and 80's when the pavilion was used as a roller rink. The plastic roof panels were knocked down 25 years ago, exposing the map to the elements. After a rainfall, most of the state north of Lake George is under water. Dragonflies skim over Fort Ticonderoga.

Mr. Johnson was asked in the 90's by the writers Hilary Lewis and John O'Connor how he felt driving past the abandoned pavilion on the Grand Central Parkway. ''I like ruins,'' he said. ''It just has those cables -- no roof. It's a folly now. It's rather nice.''

And what is its fate?

''It's up in the air,'' said Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern, who recalled the Texaco map as his favorite feature of the 1964 fair. (He attended both.) ''It's too good to tear down but not good enough to spend $20 million on to restore. So it remains.''

Docomomo, an international architectural conservation group that concerns itself with modern buildings, hopes to win city landmark designation for the pavilion.

ONE part of the state pavilion complex has already been brought back to life. The circular Theaterama, which Mr. Johnson ornamented with the works of Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana and others, is today the 476-seat Queens Theater in the Park, renovated by the architect Alfredo De Vido. It is a ''wonderful success,'' said Borough President Claire Shulman of Queens, who brought her children almost every week to the 1964 fair, when she lived in Bayside. She also admits attending in 1939. As a little girl.

''Year by year, we have improved the quality of the park,'' Ms. Shulman said, citing the $35 million pool and ice rink now under construction to designs by Kevin Hom & Andrew Goldman Architects, the new esplanade along Flushing Bay, the Queens Wildlife Conservation Center and the Queens Botanical Garden, among others. She said more than $100 million has been invested in the park in recent years.

And it had to be, since Flushing Meadows was left somewhat orphaned after the second fair, which drew 52 million visitors, about 18 million fewer than Moses, its president, had predicted in 1962. ''It is a source of regret to us,'' Moses said in 1965, ''that the fair cannot complete this great park so that nothing further will be required.''

What Moses did leave behind, however, was an extraordinary template. The park is laid out along the axial and radiating pathways of the fairs, a landscape designed by Gilmore D. Clarke, who was also responsible for the Unisphere, the giant globe that was the trademark of the second fair.

On the main axis are the Fountains of the Fairs, which were restored last year. Beyond them is the Fountain of the Planets, which would be transformed into a 400-meter slalom canoeing course under a proposal by NYC 2012, the organization promoting New York's Olympic bid.

NYC 2012 also proposes to remove the peninsula between Meadow and Willow Lakes, which were created for the 1939 fair in the bed of the Flushing River. They would be joined in a 2,000-meter rowing and canoeing course under a new Jewel Avenue bridge. The design is by Weiss/Manfredi Architects and the Olin Partnership.

It was on the shores of Meadow Lake that one of the last vestiges of the 1939 fair -- the Gertrude Ederle Amphitheater, better known as Billy Rose's Aquacade -- was demolished five years ago. Although preservationists protested, Mr. Stern said the building was worn out and full of asbestos.

Stone bas reliefs and other decorative features salvaged from the Ederle building will be reused in a food pavilion that the Parks Department is building as part of a $12 million lakefront renovation.

Elsewhere on the lake, the 1939 boathouse survives. But the Parachute Jump from the fair was taken to Coney Island so long ago that it seems native to Brooklyn.

Another displaced survivor of 1939 is the equestrian statue of King Jagiello, north of the 79th Street Transverse in Central Park, from the Polish pavilion.

Numerous elements of the 1964 fair were also dispersed: the Mormon Church Pavilion to Plainview, N.Y., to serve as a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; the Spanish pavilion to St. Louis, where it became the lobby of the Marriott Pavilion hotel; and the Johnson's Wax Pavilion to S. C. Johnson headquarters in Racine, Wis., where it is now the Golden Rondelle Theater. The Coca-Cola carillon can still be heard at Stone Mountain Park in Georgia.

Several pavilions that disappeared are commemorated at Flushing Meadows Corona Park. A statue of George Washington in Masonic apron recalls the Masonic Brotherhood Center. A 1,900-year-old column from the Temple of Artemis in Gerasa, given by King Hussein of Jordan, marks the location of the Jordanian pavilion.

A monumental stone bench, called the Exedra, stands on the site of the Vatican Pavilion, where Michelangelo's Pietà was exhibited, outdrawing everything but the General Motors Futurama. These days, the Exedra attracts devotional visitors.

Not far away, where the Westinghouse Pavilion once stood, is a granite cylinder above the time capsules buried in 1938 and 1965 with instructions that they not be opened for 5,000 years. It is not clear from the inscription, however, whether future archaeologists are invited to dig them up in the year 6938, or must wait until 6965.

The timeline of most fair features was far shorter, though some were built to last.

The Port Authority Heliport, set on four colossal T-shaped legs, is now Terrace on the Park, a banquet and catering hall. A penthouse ballroom occupies the flight deck. Another ballroom is in the old Top of the Fair restaurant. The circular Drinks Around the World cocktail lounge is used for storage. Terrace on the Park is in the middle of a $12 million renovation, said its general manager, Mark Gelfand.

THE geodesic dome of the World's Fair Pavilion, designed by Eggers & Higgins, which was used in the second season as a memorial to Winston Churchill, was moved a half mile and is now the zoo aviary.

The Administration Building, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, serves as the Parks Department's Olmsted Center, headquarters of the capital projects division. Moses's own office is Training Room N.

The Passarelle Building stands at the end of the boardwalk from the No. 7 subway and Long Island Rail Road stations, and its sawtooth canopy still welcomes travelers to the old fairgrounds. At the north corner of the park, the fair's Post Office is now a Parks Department storehouse.

Rebuilt in 1978, the Singer Bowl is now the Louis Armstrong Stadium of the United States Tennis Association's National Tennis Center, whose centerpiece, the Arthur Ashe Stadium, stands roughly on the site of the United States Pavilion, which was razed in 1976. And, of course, the William A. Shea Municipal Stadium endures.

Less obvious remnants include the Garden of Meditation, with granite markers alluding to Biblical verses; granite entrance pylons; and benches with boomerang-shaped, Jetson-style legs.

The Unisphere, the 120-foot-diameter, 700,000-pound latticework globe that was U.S. Steel's tribute to ''peace through mutual understanding'' -- and to its own stainless product -- was restored in 1994 and designated a city landmark in 1995.

Within sight is ''Rocket Thrower'' by Donald De Lue, the fair's best-known remaining sculpture. (The Vatican wanted the Pietà back.) There are also works by José de Rivera, Marshall M. Fredericks and Theodore Roszak. Both fairs are commemorated in contemporary paving installations by Matt Mullican, near the Unisphere, and Michael Golden, at the Passarelle Building.

For sheer ambition, no souvenir of the 1964 fair beats the Panorama of the City of New York, an architectural model by Lester Associates of the city's 835,000 buildings, at a scale of one inch to 100 feet, which has been periodically updated.

The Panorama is housed in the New York City Building of 1939, designed by Aymar Embury II. After World War II, it served as the temporary home of the United Nations General Assembly. It was reused in 1964 and 1965 as the city pavilion, with Dick Button's Ice-Travaganza, and became the Queens Museum in 1972.

After the ice rink moves into its new home in 2003, the museum will expand to 100,000 square feet, doubling in size. What it is seeking through the competition is a ''dynamic alternative to the 'white cube' '' of traditional gallery space.

Commissioner Kenneth Holden of the Design and Construction Department said the point of a competition was ''quite frankly, to excite people and put this agency on the design map.'' Having expected 200 responses, he said, the agency recorded 347 registrants from around the world. Out of this pool, the jury will select five competitors, to be announced next month.

An enormous challenge faced the Polshek Partnership in designing an addition to the Hall of Science, with its great chamber of profoundly blue stained glass, originally a Martin Marietta exhibit on docking with an orbiting space station. The architect, Wallace K. Harrison, also designed the Trylon and Perisphere symbols of the first fair, which stood on the site of the Unisphere.

Although the building is fascinating, it has ''an anonymity of scale, detail and identity,'' said Todd H. Schliemann, a partner in the Polshek office. ''They asked us to try to create an identity that would open up the hall, demystify the science, inspire people to ask questions about science and to come in.''

The addition will be clad in translucent fiberglass panels. ''You'll have this soft glow from all directions,'' said Dr. Alan J. Friedman, the museum director. At one end will be a three-dimensional optical installation by James Carpenter Design Associates.

It will also have an oval exhibition hall to complement the form of an auditorium added five years ago by Beyer Blinder Belle.

Outside the hall, the rockets and capsules of the former Space Park were dismantled this month and taken off to Ohio by the Thomarios contracting concern, as part of a renovation by Buck/Cane Architects.

Besides a much-needed external burnishing, the rockets will return with inner steel frames that will allow them to stand upright without guy wires. ''They'll look closer to the way they looked before a launch, which is our objective,'' Dr. Friedman said. ''They're not important lying on their sides as museum exhibits. They are important standing on their own against the sky.''