From the Daily News:The city has let ice blanket a faux-marble road map from the 1964 World’s Fair multiple times this winter instead of dishing out $20,000 to protect the cartographic curiosity, Queens News has learned.
Preservationists fear frost will dislodge or fracture panels on the 9,000-square-foot map in the New York State Pavilion, a crumbling, yet iconic, relic of the fair in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
Even more galling to preservationists is that conservators devised a shelter plan for the map just last year — to bury its panels under fabric, sand and gravel, blocking water and sunlight that feeds crack-widening weeds. But the city still hasn’t carried it out.
10 comments:
Remove the map to another site where it could be preserved and useful - tear everything else down - it no longer resembles what it once was the pride of NYS.
Uh...how about restoring the pavillion...doofus ? !!!
This is one of the saddest places in Queens.
i bet this wouldn't happen if this was in brooklyn
I know this structure well.
The map:
All of Manhattan and most of Queens is completely gone. An I mean COMPLEATLY GONE and filled with parks dept concrete.
What left is water, upstate, Eastern Long Island?
The panels literally disintegrate when even the best try to lift them.
In my opinion the map is to far gone the city needs to get on with stabilization of the tent pyles and pyle caps before it’s too late.
Here what they wont tell ya:
The NYS Pavillion was build on ash mud that kind of "pickeled" the pyles. That structure can last another 50-100 years if stabilized. When the theatre in the park was expanded I saw the excavation dirt.
Wooden milk crates, glass, broom stick pieces from the ash dump of the 1920's was well preserved.
It was like looking into a time capsule and prooves my theory
Helen Marshall dont want to hear even a message of it. Marshall wants something to fail so she can get emergency demo funds from the governor to knock the structure down. This is possible since since it sits next to 2 state highways.
Around 10 years ago concrete fell from an observation deck and made a dust cloud that went all the way across the Grand central Parkway.
State Emergency $$ became available immediately to remove all the concrete from all the observation decks.
The vertical weight of those decks are suspended by cables from 5 cantervill arms, they hang !
I beleive this is what they will go after even if the engineers say the cables and fasteners are OK
The lies and outright misinformation fed to the public by politicians about this structure is disgusting and a crime in itself
-Joe
Personally I don't want a dime of my money spent on any of it. If the folks who want to preserve it want to spend their own cash I have no objections but in these fiscal times when jobs are being cut we need to stop spending money on anything that is not critical.
This structure is purposely being left to deteriorate.
The city wants it down map and all.
Possibly to upgrade the next door Theater in the Park.
I'll say this much. When I went to Seattle and saw the remains of the 1962 World's Fair there-they were in remarkable condition and a tourist attraction even 40 years later. The Eiffel Tower in Paris, as well, is a remnant from a World's Fair there from the late 1800's. Cruelly, this structure has been left to disintegrate, much like the RKO Keith on Northern Blvd. Are we likely to have another World's Fair there? Highly unlikely. So why shouldn't we try to preserve some of our past. In the 1960's, Grand Central was deemed to be torn down until Jackie Kennedy put a stop to its destruction. Look how grand it is today. If we are to be a green society, why not, like recycling, don't we try to reform this aging structure into a Green structure. The city has held competitions in green renovation of this structure. Why, then, if there is an award winning design out there, are we not implementing it?
Does anyone still remember that wonderful 1964 fair. America had hope then. I cannot imagine that the people of the 1960s would countenance the defeatism that reins today. America should re-discover their gonads.
The theme of the '64 World's Fair was "Peace Through Understanding".
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