Advertised as the "Billion-Dollar Fair," the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair transformed a sleepy park in the borough of Queens into a fantasy world enjoyed by more than 51 million visitors from around the world. While many countries and states exhibited at the fair, the most memorable pavilions were built by the giants of American industry. Their exhibits took guests backward and forward in time, all the while extolling how marvelous everyday life would be through the use of their products. Many of the techniques used in these shows set the standard for future fairs and theme parks, and the pavilions that housed them remain the most elaborate structures ever built for an American fair. The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair showcases the beauty of this international spectacular through rare color photographs, published here for the first time.

Motivated by potentially turning Flushing Meadows, literally a land of refuse, into his greatest public park, Robert Moses—New York's "Master Builder"—brought the World's Fair to the Big Apple for 1964 and '65. Though considered a financial failure, the 1964-65 World' s Fair was a Sixties flashpoint in areas from politics to pop culture, technology to urban planning, and civil rights to violent crime. In an epic narrative, the New York Times bestseller Tomorrow-Land shows the astonishing pivots taken by New York City, America, and the world during the Fair. It fetched Disney's empire from California and Michelangelo's La Pieta from Europe; and displayed flickers of innovation from Ford, GM, and NASA—from undersea and outerspace colonies to personal computers. It housed the controversial work of Warhol (until Governor Rockefeller had it removed); and lured Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Meanwhile, the Fair—and its house band, Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians—sat in the musical shadows of the Beatles and Bob Dylan, who changed rock-and-roll right there in Queens. And as Southern civil rights efforts turned deadly, and violent protests also occurred in and around the Fair, Harlem-based Malcolm X predicted a frightening future of inner-city racial conflict. World's Fairs have always been collisions of eras, cultures, nations, technologies, ideas, and art. But the trippy, turbulent, Technicolor, Disney, corporate, and often misguided 1964-65 Fair was truly exceptional.

The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair showcases the beauty of this international spectacular through rare color photographs, published here for the first time. Advertised as the "Billion-Dollar Fair," the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair transformed a sleepy park in the borough of Queens into a fantasy world enjoyed by more than 51 million visitors from around the world. While many countries and states exhibited at the fair, the most memorable pavilions were built by the giants of American industry. Their exhibits took guests backward and forward in time, all the while extolling how marvelous everyday life would be through the use of their products. Many of the techniques used in these shows set the standard for future fairs and theme parks, and the pavilions that housed them remain the most elaborate structures ever built for an American fair.

When the gates of the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair swung open on April 24, 1964, the first of more than 51 million lucky visitors entered, ready to witness the cutting edge of worldwide technology and progress. Faced with a disappointing lack of foreign participants due to political contention, the fair instead showcased the best of American industry and science. While multimillion-dollar pavilions predicted colonies on the moon and hotels under the ocean, other forecasts, such as the promises of computer technology, have surpassed even the most optimistic predictions of the fair. The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair: Creation and Legacy uses rare, previously unpublished photographs to examine the creation of the fair and the legacies left behind for future generations.

Disney's World's Fair For the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, the Disney company designed four paviliions, which later they reimagined for Disneyland. In this first volume of a definitive series, historian Andrew Kiste presents the story of the first of these pavilions: Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. Two score and fifteen years ago, Walt Disney took an opportunity to bring his unique style of entertainment to the 1964-65 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadow. Initially using the fair as an opportunity to determine the level of interest in his theme-park attractions with the "more sophisticated tastes" of those east of the Mississippi River, he quickly realized the opportunity that partnering with the fair would give him in raising funds for new technology to be used at Disneyland in California. After visiting Walt in California, Robert Moses, the president of the New York World's Fair Corporation, was fascinated with WED Enterprises' new audio-animatronic figure of Abraham Lincoln, demanding it be included in his fair. WED quickly established a relationship with the State of Illinois to develop an attraction for its World's Fair pavilion. However, the use of an animatronic Lincoln, only one hundred years after his death, was fraught with controversy, technological setbacks, and procrastination by the Illinois Commission on the New York World's Fair. Andrew Kiste examines the never-before-told story of the relationship between Walt Disney, WED Enterprises, and the State of Illinois, as together they developed "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" for the Illinois Pavilion at the New York World's Fair of 1964-1965. Drawn extensively from archival documents discovered in the Illinois State Archives, as well as first-hand interviews with employees of the Illinois "Land of Lincoln" Pavilion at the Fair, Kiste brings the fascinating story of Disney's development of attractions for the Fair to life for the first time.

After enduring 10 harrowing years of the Great Depression, visitors to the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair found welcome relief in the fair's optimistic presentation of the "World of Tomorrow." Pavilions from America's largest corporations and dozens of countries were spread across a 1,216-acre site, showcasing the latest industrial marvels and predictions for the future intermingled with cultural displays from around the world. Well known for its theme structures, the Trylon and Perisphere, the fair was an intriguing mixture of technology, science, architecture, showmanship, and politics. Proclaimed by many as the most memorable world's fair ever held, it predicted wonderful times were ahead for the world even as the clouds of war were gathering. Through vintage photographs, most never published before, The 1939-1940 New York World's Fair recaptures those days when the eyes of the world were on New York and on the future.

From April 1964 to October 1965, some 52 million people from around the world flocked to the New York World’s Fair, an experience that lives on in the memory of many individuals and in America’s collective consciousness. Taking a perceptive look back at “the last of the great world’s fairs,” Samuel offers a vivid portrait of this seminal event and of the cultural climate that surrounded it. He also counters critics’ assessments of the fair as the “ugly duckling” of global expositions. Opening five months after President Kennedy’s assassination, the fair allowed millions to celebrate international fellowship while the conflict in Vietnam came to a boil. This event was perhaps the last time so many from so far could gather to praise harmony while ignoring cruel realities on such a gargantuan scale. This world’s fair glorified the postwar American dream of limitless optimism even as a counterculture of sex, drugs, and rock `n` roll came into being. It could rightly be called the last gasp of that dream: The End of the Innocence. Samuel’s work charts the fair from inception in 1959 to demolition in 1966 and provides a broad overview of the social and cultural dynamics that led to the birth of the event. It also traces thematic aspects of the fair, with its focus on science, technology, and the world of the future. Accessible, entertaining, and informative, the book is richly illustrated with contemporary photographs.