Landmarked Pavilion Deteriorates

Photo Vinny DuPre Despite being declared a landmark by the New York State Board for Historic Preservation, remnants of the New York State Pavilion, consisting of an elliptical rotunda, now roofless, and the accompanying three towers, relics from the 1964-65 World's Fair, continue to deteriorate. The New York State Pavilion, constructed as an exhibition site at the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows- Corona Park and largely left to decompose after the fair closed in 1965, has been declared a landmark by the New York State Board for Historic Preservation. In addition, the board nominated the pavilion as a national landmark. Because of the designation and the nomination, the city of New York, the owner of the pavilion, should be able to gain grants that could be spent repairing it.

The pavilion consists of an elliptical rotunda known originally as The Tent of Tomorrow, three observation towers and a theater, known originally as Theaterama but now as Queens Theatre in the Park (QTIP). QTIP may be part of the BHP's landmark designation, but two extensive renovations in the past 20 years have left it in relatively good shape. In contrast, the old "tent" and the three towers are just this side of dilapidation. What it would take to restore them to structural soundness is a question that mere favorable designation cannot answer.

The designation pleased Greg Godfrey of the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park World's Fair Association, who had recently complained that the city Department of Parks and Recreation should have moved for designation also. Both Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe and John Krawchuk, the Parks Department director of historic preservation, have favored designation and restoration, but Krawchuk said a city procedure, while possible, would take a long time. Standing in firm opposition to these figures is Queens Borough President Helen Marshall. Ten months ago, in reply to preservationists' plans to save and restore tent and towers, Marshall said they were so far gone they should simply be torn down.

The New York State Pavilion was not supposed to last longer than two years. The 1964 World's Fair was built in large part on the same grounds as the World's Fair of 1939. The earlier fair's locality was created during the early and mid-1930s out of the huge Corona ash heaps and swampland. The man behind this creation was Robert Moses, parks commissioner when the idea of a world's fair was first proposed in about 1933. Moses envisioned a temporary fairgrounds that would then become one of the city's grandest parks. He had hundreds of acres of ash, trash and marshes filled with dirt and covered over just enough to make a fairgrounds feasible. On it were built structures that were meant to stand only temporarily. The fair lasted for two seasons in 1939 and 1940. After it closed, nearly all the structures, some of which had become familiar throughout the world, were torn down. (One of the few permanent structures, the New York City Building, is now the Queens Museum of Art.) In preparation for the 1964-65 fair, Moses, on that occasion president of the enterprise and still looking forward to the parkland that was to succeed it, had all exhibitors sign a lease containing the specification that all exhibition buildings would be torn down within six months of the fair's closing in October 1965.

The New York State Pavilion was one of the doomed structures, despite having a grand design by one of the world's leading architects. Philip Johnson didn't seem to have the Empire State or anywhere else on earth in mind when he created the tent and the towers, which had the futuristic look imagined by speculative illustrators during an era when the architect, then in his late 50s, was younger. Inevitably some commentators mocked it, but the public seemed impressed. The Tent of Tomorrow was elliptical, stood 350 by 250 feet and was about 12 stories in height. Sixteen concrete columns, each as high as the tent itself, surrounded it like sentinels. It was topped by what was called the world's largest suspension roof, containing fiberglass panels that resembled stained glass. On the floor was the pavilion's tribute to New York: a road map of the state, done in terrazzo. The three towers stood about 75, 150 and 225 feet high, allowing observers to see the entire fair around them.

The pavilion and the rest of the fair were assumed to have the impermanence of sand sculpture and would disappear by the end of 1965, as the artifacts of the earlier one had vanished by the end of 1940. But there were forces that resisted such fatalism, no doubt including a few who remembered the lovely Trylon and Perisphere that symbolized the 1939-40 fair and wished they had not been demolished so remorselessly. Mayor Robert F. Wagner appointed a commission, which in summer 1965 drew up a list of fair buildings the commissioners wanted preserved. The New York State Pavilion was one of them.

For the first decade after the fair, the pavilion was maintained and regularly inspected, while being used for rock concerts and as a roller skating rink. The rink was closed after its owner and park authorities wrangled over maintenance responsibilities and the owner left.

Then the local economic collapse of the mid- 1970s made maintenance and inspections too costly to continue; and besides, the place was empty. The long decline began. Being victim to wind and vandals, the pavilion's roof and then its roadmap floor fell apart or were ripped up.

The maintenance crew returned, but only to remove the fiberglass roof panels, which had become a safety hazard.

In the late 1990s a preservationist group warned that the pavilion and all its parts were in imminent peril of collapse. The group's anxiety was based on the belief that the ground beneath the pavilion, formerly swampland and into which innumerable piles had to be driven to establish sufficient support for the structure's tonnage, was shifting dangerously. The physical integrity of the pavilion was deteriorating so severely that the whole thing could collapse abruptly, the group warned.

A decade later the pavilion still stands, but the rust is deeper and the coats of paint looser and shabbier. It has been so long since the elevators to the towers were functional that dreams of restoration and re-use are beyond implausible. Questions arise as to whether the preservationist group's concerns about the stability of the underlying sediment are wholly unfounded or entirely justified.

This is the ruin that has been blessed by state landmark authorities, with the sanctions of the city and the nation perhaps to follow. Such designations must be accompanied by sufficient funding to ensure at least the superficial preservation of the tent and the towers, but what else can be done, and at what expense, can't be determined right now.

The state's landmark designation came at the same time Borough President Marshall won a primary election that all but guarantees her a third term in office until 2013. The day might come when, with Marshall still in office and Theatre in the Park assured of a future, the state board's decision will constitute a hollow honor and the tent and the towers will at last be considered impossible to save and must be pulled down.