World's Fair Lecture - Central Park Armory

G-san was really plugged into the 50th Anniversary celebrations of the 1964 World's Fair, and we ended up making three trips to Flushing Meadows Corona Park.  This lecture, however, was held more conveniently at the Central Park Armory.

My somewhat cryptic notes of the lecture include the following decipherable factoids:

• Bumps on the Unisphere help ease the wind load.
• Until two years ago, the caller ID on phones in the former World's Fair Administration Building identified them as "World Fair Administration" (I think he said these were pay phones, but I'm not 100% sure about that)

For some reason, I also jotted down "Column of Jerash" (a gift from King Hussein of Jordan, originally erected in 120 A.D. and "one of the few true antiquities publicly displayed in New York City’s parks") and "Lev Zetlin engineer" (who was responsible for the New York State Pavillion, among other things).  I have no idea what I meant by "Ebb vtl impact".

They had a few exhibits as well:

"Aries" by Paul Manship, 1964

The accompanying notes explained: "These two bronze animal zodiac figures were once part of Paul Manship's gilded bronze Armillary Sphere, created for the New York World's Fair of 1964-65.  The Armillary Sphere stood in a small circular pool between the Unisphere and the New York City Building. ... In the 1970s it was vandalized and these two pieces stolen, and in 1980 the remainder of the sculpture was taken in a brazen theft.  In 1990 Taurus and Aries were recovered from private collections."

"Taurus" by Paul Manship, 1964

Paul Manship apparently died in 1966, so he did not have the opportunity to see the vandalism and theft.

A horse from the carousel, on display in the stairwell

 I also liked this photo of the George Washington Sculpture from the 1939 World's Fair:

 

It was apparently 65 feet tall, including the base.  The statue was not built to last, however; it was "made of provisional plaster molded around a steel frame" and thus "could not be salvaged or  replicated, and like most of the Fair's statuary did not outlast the fair itself."