Commissioned for the World’s Fair of 1964-1965 as the iconic symbol of the fair, the Unisphere is located in Flushing Meadows Park. The Unisphere was meant to be a significant representation of the “space age” that was during the end of the twentieth century and the understanding of cultures through a mass interaction of people. Although many memories of the World’s Fairs have passed, the Unisphere still stands as an important structure for the residents of Queens.
Parks’ Commissioner Robert Moses was in charge of creating the New York World’s Fair and to do so, he ordered Gilmore Clarke, the architect of Battery Park, Bryant Park, Astoria Park (and many other park spaces in New York City!), to design the Unisphere. Even though the structure was a representation of global unity, it also demonstrated the technical savvy and corporate might Americans had by transforming the “Valley of the Ashes” into an international community space.
Unisphere photographs submitted to The New York Times by various readers.
The Unisphere weighs in at 700,000 pounds, which is 350 tons of stainless steel molded into a scaled globe that highlights mountain ranges with elevated metal placed on the continents. The globe is also 12 stories or 140 feet tall. Almost half a century ago, the park drew in more than 51 million people to the fair in two years – a globalized event that changed the lives of many. Today, many soccer fields and open grass areas cover the places where the retro-looking exhibits that explained cultures of the generation used to be.
The 1939 World’s Fair is also significant in history because it was in this fair that the idea of a time capsule was coined. Each World’s Fair in New York created their own capsule – 1939 and 1965 – that going to be opened five thousand years from their burial date. That means that we have to wait and see until 6939 to check out what they placed inside! No worries though, that’s only 4,924 years left. A lot of concern with the time capsules, which were buried under the Fair’s site by the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co., is the environmental changes that might happen in such a time span. Many believe that the earth might be submerged in water in 6939 and no one would be able to retrieve the capsules. However for those who are impatient, some of the items in the 1939 capsule are newsreels, seeds, a pack of cigarettes and a message from Albert Einstein and in the 1965 capsule is an electric toothbrush, freeze-dried food, and a Beatles album.
