One of the traits that make Universal Studios stand out is that they'll often recreate real
buildings and areas from around the world.
Old school Hollywood?
That one makes sense.
San Francisco?
Sure, why not?
The Guggenheim?
Uh, alright.
An old Walgreens?
Ok, now you're just getting weird.
Along with them, tucked back in the corner of the park, is the New York State Pavilion.
To many, they’re just the flying saucers from Men in Black, which is fitting for the
exterior of a Men in Black ride.
However, those towers are so much more than that.
They're an iconic piece of New York City, and today we're going to explore its history.
Back in the early 1960s, New York was preparing to host the 1964-1965 World’s Fair.
The fair was going to feature pavilions that represented different corporations, as well
as various nations.
This one, in particular, was also going to offer pavilions based on specific states in the US
The New York State Pavilion was designed by Philip Johnson under the commission of New
York Governor Nelson Rockefeller.
Johnson, at the time, was a modernist architect known for designing for the Museum of Modern
art and was also working on the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center.
Rockefeller wanted the New York State Pavilion to stand out and shine.
Partially because New York was the host city of the fair, and well also because 1964 was
going to be an election year and he intended to run for president.
It sure would look good if his state’s pavilion was the hit of the fair.
So Rockefeller gave Johnson one goal: Make sure the New York pavilion was the largest
and tallest in the entire fair.
The eleven million-dollar pavilion featured three main sections for guests of the fair
to explore.
First, there was the Theaterama, which was a 700 seat indoor theater.
For the price of 25 cents, guests could watch a 14 minute long Cinerama film that highlighted
various popular spots in the state.
The outside of the building was adorned with pop art commissioned by Johnson, featuring
artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kenny, and Andy Warhol.
Warhol had created a silkscreen piece that featured the mugshots of the 13 most wanted
men in New York State.
Johnson called it a “comment on the sociological factor in American life.”
Governor Rockefeller called it a problem.
Again, he had plans to run for president, so he wasn’t interested in millions of fair
guests visiting the pavilion just to be reminded of his state’s crime.
So he, along with fair planner Robert Moses, ordered the piece removed.
It was eventually covered with a tarp before being taken down.
Warhol began work on a replacement, which was going to be a silkscreen of twenty-five
photos of Robert Moses called “Robert Moses Twenty Five Times”.
To nobody's surprise, the idea was vetoed.
The second part of the pavilion was the Tent of Tomorrow and it was a big one.
It was a giant open-air space that was covered with the world’s largest suspension roof,
made up of 1,500 colored fiberglass panels.
It was held up by sixteen one-hundred-foot-tall support columns and a 2,000-ton steel framework.
To build the structure they actually assembled the entire roof on the ground and then lifted
it all using hydraulic jacks.
The area itself featured a snack bar, gift shops, a performance space, and a second level
that ran around the edge of the tent for various exhibits.
Perhaps the most remembered element of the Tent of Tomorrow though was the map.
In the center of the floor was a 130-foot by 166-foot Texaco road map of the state of
New York.
It was comprised of 567 terrazzo tiles and weighed 115 tons.
It was said to be 4000 times the size of a normal road map and proved to be a pretty
brilliant feature.
Of course, the fair saw guests from all around the world, but it being set in New York City
meant that plenty of folks from the state visited.
For many of them, there was a novelty to finding their hometown on this giant map or tracing
along different routes, maybe even the route they took to get to the fair.
It was kind of like playing around in Google Maps before there even was a Google Maps.
People enjoyed seeing where they lived, or in some cases, they didn’t enjoy not seeing where they lived.
The tent offered more musical performances than you could imagine.
By the opening day of the fair, over 500 groups had been booked to fill slots throughout the
12-hour days.
Whether you were from Queens and played down the block or had to drive in from Buffalo,
if you were a musical group in New York State you’d likely have a shot at playing at the pavilion.
Often the performances tied into another novelty that the pavilion offered, which was assigning
each county in New York their own set of days in which they were the highlight of the tent.
Last but not least, there were the three observation towers.
The shorter of the three stood at 85 feet tall, while the other two stood at 160 feet
and 226 feet, making it the tallest vantage point in the park.
Priced at one dollar for adults and twenty-five cents for children, guests were offered a
fantastic 360-degree view of the fair in the taller two towers.
The shorter of the three was private and reserved for VIPs and invited guests.
The entire three-piece pavilion was dedicated by Governor Rockefeller when the fair began
and he hailed it as a fair within a fair.
The New York Times called the pavilion the “architectural delight of Flushing Meadow”,
and for good reason.
There was a wide variety of designs at the 1964 World’s Fair, but none were as bold
and unique as the New York State Pavilion.
It was kind of a circus tent but not really, and there were these futuristic-looking towers,
and the theater was covered with all this novel art.
It was attention-grabbing.
Unfortunately, while the buildings themselves were critically well received and features
like the terrazzo map were enjoyed, the pavilion as a whole was regarded by many as kind of boring.
The views from the towers were great, and the map was fun to check out, but just five
minutes in any direction you could go experience a ride designed by Walt Disney Productions.
At the end of the day, how much is a floor map going to hold up next to a little slice of Disneyland?
Still, while the entertainment at the pavilion wasn’t anything to write home about, the
structures themselves would end up becoming iconic representations of the fair, perhaps
even more so than the fair’s Unisphere.
It would be one of the few structures built for the fair chosen to remain standing after
it ended, even though there wasn’t a specific use planned for the pavilion.
Allegedly there were ideas at one point to transport the terrazzo map up to the state
capitol, Albany, and then plans at another point to move it to the World Trade Center.
However neither actually happened.
The Tent of Tomorrow was converted into a skating rink for a short time in the 70s,
informally going by the name “The New York Skate Pavilion”, but it was eventually shut
down due to the slow state of disrepair that the building fell into.
The 70s and 80s weren’t great for New York City, and so with plenty of other problems
at the top of the list, the pavilion never really got the care and upkeep it needed.
Eventually, pieces of the colored ceiling started to fall off, and so the city just
went ahead and knocked them all out.
Those falling pieces, in turn, caused some significant damage to the terrazzo map, which
was then further exposed to the elements.
Despite the increased wear and tear on the building, its unique design and eventual place
in New York’s history earned it some attention in pop culture.
1978’s reimagining of The Wizard of Oz, The Wiz, used the location for a sequence
towards the beginning of the film.
It’s where Dorothy, played by Diana Ross, first ends up in Oz.
In 2008 it appeared in Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto IV.
The game was set in a caricature of New York City called Liberty City, and their version
of the park, called Meadows Park, had their own Liberty State Pavilion Towers.
In 2010 the pavilion showed up at the beginning and end of Marvel’s Iron Man 2, in perhaps
its most fitting role.
The film takes place during a World’s Fair-esque event called Stark Expo and the main presentations
at the expo are held inside a larger version of the Tent of Tomorrow.
As a side note, Stark Expo also shows up in the first Captain America film, but that Expo
is more closely aligned with the 1939 New York World’s Fair, so there’s no New York
State Pavilion.
Though there is a version of the Unisphere, which wasn’t built until 1964
but whatever, it’s a movie.
And of course, I can’t talk about the pavilion in film without mentioning its most famous
appearance, which is in 1997’s Men in Black.
Agent Jay: So these are real flying saucers and the whole World’s Fair was just a cover-up for that landing?
Agent Kay: Why else would we hold it in Queens?
Beyond being a punchline for Queens, the observation towers play a pivotal role in the film’s
plot and their revelation as spaceships would cement their status for an entire generation
as “those flying saucers from Men in Black”.
And that’s what makes them perfect for the ride’s facade.
Beyond just being connected to the film, the towers are tall and unique and grab people’s
attention, which is exactly what you want in a theme park.
As for the real pavilion, it’s gone through various stages of restoration and use over the years.
The theater now operates under the name of the “Queens Theater” and even had a new
lobby built for it.
The Texico map has been saved as best as it can be, with some tiles removed so they could
be safely preserved, and some of it covered from the elements.
The other parts still aren’t used, but most recently some of it has been repainted to
visually restore it and help drum up public interest in total restoration.
Back in 2019, 24 million dollars was set aside to further restore the structure, updating
the lighting, suspension cables, and electrical system.
Perhaps one day the New York State Pavilion will see a complete transformation that opens
it up to the public again.
Until then, however, they’ll remain standing as an icon of Queens and as a reminder of
one of the most memorable World’s Fairs, and also as those flying saucers from Men in Black.
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