Unisphere Flushing Meadows Corona Park
— — a world the fair forgot to take down.
Not only on a wall.
“A twelve-story stainless-steel earth on a fountain ring in the middle of Queens, built by US Steel for the 1964 World's Fair and never dismantled. The Unisphere rises 140 feet over the old fairgrounds, its continents welded in latitude-and-longitude relief. Joggers loop the basin in the morning, and on summer evenings the fountains come on and children stand in the spray under the equator.
Unisphere Flushing Meadows Corona Park, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Unisphere stands at the centre of Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, the 897-acre Queens parkland that hosted both the 1939 and 1964 New York World's Fairs. Built by the US Steel Corporation as the 1964 Fair's centerpiece, the sculpture is 140 feet tall and weighs approximately 700,000 pounds. Three orbital rings encircle the sphere, originally meant to mark satellite tracks. The City of New York designated the Unisphere an official landmark in 1995.
Calling it stone undersells it. The earth is welded stainless-steel plate over a steel frame, with the continents shaped in raised relief at scale to the oceans. US Steel chose Type 304 stainless for resistance to the wet salt air of the New York harbour basin. The original design called for the Cold War's three orbit lines to spell out the Fair's theme, Peace Through Understanding, in the curve of their rings around a single planet.
The Park is open daily from dawn until 1 a.m. and admission is free. The fountains around the Unisphere typically run from late spring through early autumn, weather permitting. The 7 train stops at Mets–Willets Point, a five-minute walk north of the sculpture; the Queens Museum, with its panoramic scale model of New York City, sits on the same plaza and pairs naturally with a visit.