density saves life
make earth touched and untouched
wilderness lives alone
This post was submitted by Rex.
When the city was first getting ready for the Fair, they had to tear down houses and buildings that were in the way. My father drove us down to where the fair was going to be – what seemed to us kids to be one empty block after another. All we could see were basements – no houses or apartment buildings or businesses. In the vicinity of what is now the International Fountain was one basement with just a wooden chair in it.
I have often wondered who sat in that solitary chair pondering the exposed bare basements that surrounded them, and whether they had been reminiscing about the neighborhood swept away or imagining the vision of the future soon to well up around them.
This post was submitted by blairj.
April 21, 2011
In just one year, Seattle Center will begin the six-month celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair, The Next Fifty. To mark the countdown to 2012, a variety of events will take place on April 21, 2011.
World’s Fair Experience
Look to LivingSocial.com to find out about the one-day deal to experience the legacies of the Seattle World’s Fair for half the price.
Red Mountain Wine Tasting
Join the 20 winemakers of the Red Mountain AVA at the Space Needle from 6-8pm for a wine tasting to celebrate the upcoming 50th anniversary of the World’s Fair. Tickets ($45/ea) are available at Brown Paper Tickets.
Announcements
Wondering what The Next Fifty will look like in 2012? Check out our updated website and your local media to learn about early program ideas, partners, and other exciting announcements.
March 21 – April 21
Join us as we celebrate the grand opening of The Gift Shop at Seattle Center, located at the base of the Monorail. Each week, we will announce a new 20-30% discount on a product in the store. Keep your eye out for coupon codes on our Facebook and Twitter pages! All the proceeds from the gift shop support The Next Fifty, the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair.
My father is a folk singer and helped open at the Space Needle. He still performs. I think it would be an excellent idea to include some of the artists who were part of the original scene.
I’ve tried contacting the Foundation in the past regarding this (a couple of years ago) but never received a reply.
This post was submitted by Kristyn.
February 21 – March 20, 2011
Seattle Center Foundation is promoting the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair by holding a Twitter scavenger hunt for tickets to KeyArena, Pacific Science Center, and the Experience Music Project.
Winning tickets is easy: all you have to do is follow, find and win! Follow Seattle Center on Twitter (@SeattleCenter) so you can receive clues. Be the first to find the hidden token. Turn it in to the Customer Service Desk in Center House for verification, and you’ve won!
There are four chances to win tickets to your favorite attractions. Each week between 2/21 and 3/20, Seattle Center will tweet a clue hinting at the location of a unique coin. Stay on your toes, as clues can come at any time!
FOLLOW SEATTLE CENTER ON TWITTER!
Sponsors: KeyArena, EMP|SFM, and Pacific Science Center
Prizes: There are four prizes in total, furnished by our generous sponsors:
- (1) membership and exhibition passes to the EMP|SFM
- (12) box suite seats to Rat City Roller Girls on March 19, 2011 at KeyArena
- (12) box suite seats to Professional Bull Riding on April 29, 2011 at KeyArena
- (4) exhibition passes to Pacific Science Center
In 1962, my dad went to the World’s Fair in Seattle. He took the elevator to the top of the Space Needle for the first time and looked out over the city. He had brought a little camera and took a picture through the coin-operated telescope, which made the world look circular and curved at the edges. He sat in the bleachers at Memorial Collesum, and watched water-skiers in pyramid form being pulled by a motorboat around a huge lake that had been crafted especially for the event. The fair boasted a $1,000,000 silver coin collection, a JFK appearance and rides on the futuristic monorail. Even though my 14 year old dad did not have the chance to shake hands with the famous astronaut, John Glenn, the fair was undeniably a life changing experience. To this day, I still have not been to the top of the Space Needle, or if I have, I was too young to remember what it felt like to be so close to the sky. I hope that someday my dad and I will have the chance to take the elevator to the top together. We will look out over the city, take some pictures through the vintage telescope, and stand in awe at how small the world looks from so high up.
This post was submitted by shelby brakken.
I can remember my father taking me down there and watching the concrete being poured into the base of the Space Needle. Seem to recall it took several days to fill the hole that is half as deep and the needle is tall…….
This post was submitted by kent W Kronlof.
Bubbleator, Seattle World’s Fair, And A Marriage Proposal
I was young enough to gawk openly at the 607-foot high structure, which looked to me like a flying saucer with legs but what Seattle was calling its Space Needle.
Nineteen years old, I’d come to Seattle with my boyfriend Frank, to see the Century 21 Exposition. It was the summer of l962.
“Want to go there first?” Frank looked up at the Space Needle. (By his bunny-frozen-in-the-glare-of-headlights expression, I knew he wasn’t too thrilled about the ascent.)
“First let’s get a Belgian waffle,” he said a little desperately. “I may not have an appetite after I come back down.”
We took our plates of waffles piled high with whipped cream and strawberries over to the International Fountain and sat down.
Between bites of waffle, he told me he wanted to transfer to the University of Washington and study political science. (He had a year in Eastern Washington State College at the time.)
“I want to write play about heroic women,” I told him. My dream was to become a playwright. Seattle had an 800-foot playhouse right there on the fairgrounds. “Perhaps someday I might have a play here…,” my voice trailed off into the fountain’s noisy spray.
We threw our soggy paper plates into one of the many trash receptacles around the grounds, and joined the long line of people waiting for the elevator to the Space Needle.
On the way up to the observation deck, Frank told me that his grandfather was a bobby in the queen’s service, and after college, he might join the police force.
The elevator coming to a jerky halt, we disembarked and I made a beeline to the curved window, where I could look out at the panorama below me.
The sky was robin’s egg blue and the snow capped volcanic cone of Mount Rainier loomed majestically in the distance.
“Good thing we’re too high for flying insects,” Frank joked as he timidly peeked over the side, “Or you’d have a mouthful.”
After the Space Needle, we visited the science pavilion and then headed for the food circus for more empty calories.
Full of junk food and dreams, we boarded the oddly shaped Bubbleator into a maze of cubes containing pictures of space and the atom.
“First floor,” chants the pilot, “threats and thresholds, frustration and fulfillments, challenge and opportunities.”
As we stepped out into the second floor, I thought the pilot could well have been describing our future—for somewhere between the souvenir shop and drinking fountain, Frank asked me to marry him.
On July 1 we celebrate 49 years of marriage. He became a police officer and rose to the rank of Criminal Division Chief for the King County Sheriff’s Department. I wrote my plays, and saw many of them on Seattle stages. (A play that won grand prize at the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Conference was staged in a little theatre right at the foot of the Seattle Space needle!)
For me, and possibly the other 9.5 million people who passed through the entrance gates in l962, it was truly a fair to remember.
This post was submitted by joroxy.
I would like to once again walk through the “World of Tomorrow” exhibit that was in the Washington State Pavilion during the fair. It was a multi-media presentation that addressed concerns like overpopulation, pollution, energy and food production. This really could be under the categories of Global Health, Science/Technology, & Sustainability.
The sound track, which started off with a child asking questions and an adult responding, moved from speaker to speaker as different pictures on the walls lit up and then went dark. Each group of people was led along by the sequence of pictures and the moving narrative that described the challenges mankind would face in the future and how we might be able to meet those challenges.
In 1963, after the Seattle World’s Fair was over, I was dismayed to hear that the cluster of metallic cubes that housed the World of Tomorrow had been removed so that the pavilion could be rebuilt into a sports venue, and that the exhibit no longer existed. My mother told me, “This is ‘tomorrow’ – now we have to go make those things happen.”
It would be fun to walk through that multi-media presentation again to see how close it was to what we have experienced over the ensuing half century. No need to have the Bubbleator lift groups of 100 people up into a cluster of cubes suspended over huge pools of water – just a flat walk-through would work. I think that KIRO 710 radio might have the soundtrack (at least I know they did a few years ago). And someone once suggested that the Washington State Historical Society might have the photographs that were used. And I believe that the World of Tomorrow might have actually been the France exhibit for the fair, even though it was in the Washington State Pavilion – so maybe France has some record of it. To get into the proper frame of mind before entering the exhibit it would help to have some 1962 music playing, and some examples of 1962 arts and culture (& perhaps a few restored cars). Then, after walking through it, people would be thrust into – you got it – “Tommorow”, the actual 21st Century!
This post was submitted by blairj.
What happened to me at the World’s Fair is a part of who I am. I was six years old when the fair opened. From our front porch in Fremont we could see just the top of the Space Needle poking up above Queen Anne, looking like a flying saucer that had landed on top of the hill. Being so close, we went to the fair every few weeks. And being so young, it made a strong impression on my awareness of the world around me.
I remember my brothers and me eavesdropping on conversations in foreign languages, trying to guess what they were talking about. We looked at printed signs and tried to figure out what languages they might be written in. Arts and crafts from around the world became familiar styles to us.
But the strongest effect the fair had on me was to develop an interest in science and technology. In the Washington State Pavilion a cluster of metallic cubes hung from the roof. Underneath was a large shallow pool of water, with three walkways leading to a central platform. Each walkway had a long line of people waiting to board a glass sphere that would lift them up into the cluster of metallic cubes. We waited for an eternity in one of these lines for our turn to experience the World of Tomorrow. Finally, we made it to the center, and were ushered into the glass sphere. An operator wearing a metallic suit closed the door on our group and started the ascent. As we approached the top it grew darker and darker inside the sphere, until it came to a stop in total darkness. Then the doors opened onto a floor of glowing stars. A recorded girl’s voice asked, “Can we walk on them?” A reassuring man’s voice followed, inviting us to step out onto the stars and learn about life in the future. Pictures appeared on the walls, and the voices came from speakers further along in the corridor. The crowd followed this travelling audio/visual presentation as it moved along. It talked about wonderful new technologies that would make life easier in the future. It also talked about difficulties that would have to be overcome, such as over-population, pollution and depletion of resources. Eventually this electrical pied piper led the group back down into the daylight, and back into the world of 1962.
My brothers and I went through the World of Tomorrow several times during the fair. We soon realized that if we walked a little too slowly the group would get ahead of us, and we could stand there giggling in the darkness for a few minutes until the next Bubbleator load of people came along.
There were other fascinating things to see and fun things to do at the fair. I still remember the smell of molten plastic as I waited for a coin-operated injection molding machine to create my very own miniature Space Needle or World’s Fair emblem before my very eyes. People were astonished that they could get coffee or hot chocolate from a vending machine that would actually brew each drink to order. In the Gayway amusement area, the “Cakewalk” was anything but that, with various moving steps and walkways designed to trip those daring enough to attempt it, topped by a slide on a burlap bag down a shoot to the exit at the back. There was the “Illusion” in the US Science Pavilion, where it would look like you were walking uphill, but were really going downhill, followed by a trip through space lying on the floor of the Spacearium, looking up at the domed screen above. In the “Home of the Future” a video phone showed a woman talking on the other end of the line, and rotating parabolic shaped skylights were intended to follow the sun in winter, and turn away from it in summer.
But the World of Tomorrow exhibit was my favorite out of all these dazzling things. After the fair I was devastated to learn that the structure of the Washington State Pavilion would be kept, but that the cubes forming my favorite exhibit were coming down to make way for a sports arena. I told my mom that they should have kept the World of Tomorrow exhibit. She replied, “It’s not 1962 anymore, this is the ‘Tomorrow’ of that exhibit. Now we have to go make those things happen.”
I have often wondered what happened to those pictures and voices of the World of Tomorrow exhibit. Are they archived somewhere? Or are there at least a transcript and a list of photographs? It would be fun to walk through that presentation again, now that we are actually living in Century 21, to see what came to pass and what didn’t, what was wishful thinking and what was forward thinking.
This post was submitted by blairj.
Me with Elvis at Seattle Center!
This post was submitted by lavanza1013.
