People For the Pavilion

The New York State Pavilion

Remains of the ‘64 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows Park

Queens, New York City, USA.

"You can’t miss the towers topped by flying saucers, surrounded by 100-foot-high (30-meter-high) concrete pillars. This was the New York State Pavilion, where visitors rode elevators to an observation deck above an enormous suspended roof of translucent colored tiles. Today the structure is padlocked, rusted and cracked, with preservationists and critics fighting over its future."

But on April 22nd they opened the doors. I got to stand in a very long queue and wait for over three hours for my opportunity to wear one of 65 hard hats for ten minutes inside the pavilion. During which time I quickly shot off a great many exposures with my full frame SONY A7r and Zeiss 24-70mm FE lens.

This includes the 11 × 36MP vertical exposures seen here stitched together, cropped and tweaked in Photoshop.

I had an opportunity yesterday to visit the New York State Pavilion, which sits on the old grounds of the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair. Even after several decades of decay it’s still a magnificent structure.