Before going to the US Open "Stars of the Open" event on Wednesday evening, we visited a place that I had wanted to visit for a very long time. This was Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which were the former grounds of not one, but two major events. They were the 1939–1940 New York World's Fair, and a quarter of a century later, the 1964 - 65 New York World's Fair.
The park is conveniently located right next to the grounds of the US Open in Flushing Meadows, which itself is a hop, skip and a jump away from Citi Field, home of the New York Mets. I went to a Mets home game once, a long, long time ago, before Citi Field, when they still played at the old Shea Stadium, where the Beatles also once played some legendary shows back in the mid-sixties. But I have not yet gone to an event at the Citi Field.
Also, there are a bunch of museums in the area, as well as the Queens Botanical Gardens, which we did not have enough time (this time) to visit.
Next time.
Anyway, I had seen the place, more or less from afar, a few times. In fact, we may have even taken a brief visit to the Unisphere once. I seem to recall briefly visiting it during one of our US Open sessions back in 2002. Mostly, however, I just saw the grounds from afar, either from the US Open grounds (and the stadium) or from the highway when passing by, and catching a glimpse of the place. Now, it reminds me a bit of Expo Park in Los Angeles, another place where stadiums and museums and gardens are all gathered in one place (and which was one of my favorite aspects of the visit to Los Angeles).
This time around, we left in plenty of time - hours before the gates even opened for the US Open session we were set to attend - precisely because I wanted us to finally visit this place, literally right next to the main stadium (Arthur Ashe Stadium) of the US Open. Even after getting merguez for each of us, which proved to be a treat, and getting stuck in traffic jams (yes, plural) along the way, we still had plenty of time before the gates even opened. We would still have a couple of hours to visit the park. Glad it worked out that well, despite some of the unforeseen inconveniences along the way (again, the traffic was worse, and longer, than I had anticipated). Planning ahead and leaving well in advance proved to have been a smart choice.
The two main structures of the ground that I was familiar enough to identify were, of course, the Unisphere and the New York State Pavilion. Both of them are big enough that you can see them from some distance. One serious inconvenience that I should mention was the absence of restrooms. By the end of the long drive (the merguez place was very small, and did not have bathrooms available for customers), I was starting to need to go. And it seemed like a good idea to try and get that out of the way before our visit, and before it became an emergency. But after walking from the parking lot and passing the US Open grounds (where we caught a glimpse of tennis star Dominic Thiems, a former US Open champion himself, practicing on the side courts), we arrived at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and saw no signs of any bathrooms. The Museum seemed like a good bet, but it was closed, which seems a bit strange. Then we spotted a makeshift trailer, which indeed proved to be bathrooms.
Locked.
Really? Freaking idiots, I thought. It was a beautiful, perhaps slightly cooler than average day, with the sun shining brilliantly. A ton of people were there at the park, understandably. And they did not have bathrooms that were open, and no clear signs as to where bathrooms may be located? That is not to trash the place - far from it - but it is not a minor point, either. It's not like bathrooms are some kind of convenience or privilege. People need to use the facilities every now and then, and the location of those should be clearly marked throughout the park. And when there are some, they should be open for everyone to use, and not locked, frankly. This is basic stuff.
Anyway, I will get off that subject. Still, it felt like it was worth noting, because that felt like an entirely unnecessarily inconvenient and, frankly, just dumb.
Still, once we got past the whole bathroom issue, the park proved to be pleasant to visit, as expected. There are the remnants of exhibits from the two World's Fairs which this place hosted that make this park far more interesting than average. Already, I mentioned the Unisphere and the New York State Pavilion, but there are also interesting and unique statues on the grounds, as well as pools (which were empty at the time of our visit) which allowed the imagination to picture how these grounds would have looked with those pools filled with water. I could imagine this place at it's peak, having much attention spanning around the globe, and filled with other exhibits and, of course, packed with visitors. It was packed on this beautiful day, but mostly with casual visitors and people playing soccer and skateboarding and such, as you are likely to see in any other park.
Yet this offers a very different experience than most typical parks. There is certainly a lot of green space, but there are clear indicators of a sort of national mindset that once existed during the so-called "space age," when we still aspired to discovering our universe, when that kind of thing still fed out collective imaginations. Somehow, this place felt at once reminiscent of a bygone era, yet also with a touch of futuristic aspirations and hopes. It felt truly like something that was the product of it's time, meaning the 1950's and early 1960's, when the country still seemed to have a sense of direction and purpose, which I sometimes feel is something that we have since largely lost. Certainly, some of the ideas that were made real with the park and it's exhibits must have predated the assassination of John F. Kennedy and other political assassinations to come, as well as Vietnam, and many of the other more divisive and explosive aspects of the decade of the sixties which helped to allow a certain cynicism to enter into our national vernacular, and which, in my humble opinion, has spiraled out of control. Thus, this was very interesting stuff to behold.
The first time that I learned about this park, or these grounds of the New York's World Fair, was through my grandfather's stamp collection. This is a picture of that stamp, which was issued in 1964:
What jumped out at me in the illustration in this stamp was the Unisphere, which probably feels obvious. The Unisphere is and always has been to me, undeniably, the main attraction of this park. I just learned that this is the world's largest globe. Here is what the description
Commissioned to celebrate the beginning of the space age, the Unisphere was conceived and constructed as the theme symbol of the World's Fair. The theme of the World's Fair was "Peace Through Understanding", and the Unisphere represented the theme of global interdependence, being dedicated to "Man's Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe".
(Source: Unisphere Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisphere)
Fascinating stuff.
Yet, not everything survived. For some reason, some interesting things did not survive. Unfortunately, I did not get much of a chance to research the reasons for them not surviving, whether they were built only as temporary exhibits, as the Eiffel Tower in Paris was originally supposed to be, or if they were somehow destroyed, like much of the 1892-1893 Chicago World's Fair was when consumed by an enormous fire. But there was a "Republic of China pavilion," which looks like an old castle that you might find in China, and would have been a beautiful part of the park, had it survived. Also, there was a Space Park, which resembles an active rocket launch facility of that period, among others. Not sure why so many of those things are strictly temporary. The Chinese Pavilion, for example, seems to me like it could have remained as a really beautiful and unique part of this park, similar to the main structure at the Raymond D. Ray Asian Garden in Des Moines which we visited last summer, or the structures in the Chinese Garden in Montreal's Botanical Garden. Just a thought, but I sometimes wish that these costly exhibits would not so frequently be so unfortunately temporary.
During the research on this that I actually did (mostly Wikipedia, admittedly), one thing that I did discover was that this World's Fair was not as profitable as many hoped and, thus, served as a warning for other potential host cities of the future, including Seattle (for which the Space Needle was built) and Expo '67 in Montreal, which I know also most of the exhibits seemed to have been strictly temporary. It's too bad.
Anyway, we still enjoyed our visit. Below are some of the pictures which I took of our visit, and which seemed worth sharing here.
Enjoy.
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