Tour of The New York World’s Fair Site

This tour will take you through the fairgrounds for the historic New York City World’s Fairs of 1939-40 and 1964-65. We’ll visit iconic sites of both fairs, hearing about the architecture, design and history of the famous Unisphere, The New York State Pavilion and the temporary headquarters of the United Nations, now the Queens Museum.

You’ll hear about the origins of the park, which inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald when it was an eyesore ash heap, and how that was transformed into beautiful fairgrounds and then into a major city park. You’ll hear about the colorful history of the fairs’ exhibits and pavilions, which includes the infamous feud between artist Andy Warhol and controversial mega-developer Robert Moses. 



It’s best to take this tour during the day, when the Queens Museum is open, so that you can pop in at the end of the tour and see the New York City Panorama, which is an enormous scale model of all of New York City. Please check the museum’s hours beforehand, and allow enough time to take the subway and to see a few small exhibits in the museum at the end.

Featured audio segments sourced from the public domain.

UPDATE: Please note that in locations 5 and 6 of this tour, I describe a series of mosaics that are set into the pavement, when you are first entering the park (3 mosaics in location 5, and 3 mosaics in section 6). Sadly, the mosaics were not maintained, and had fallen into very bad condition. The Parks Department recently removed them, stating that they will be working on a way to display them more safely in the future.

I plan to update the tour if (and hopefully when) the mosaics are available to the public again.

The history of the mosaics is still very interesting, so it is worth listening to this section. You will hear the stories of what was once there and what the mosaics represented. Until they make a public appearance in the future, you can also find images of these wonderful mosaics online.