Photo
Lisa Keston Danielpour, 51, of Beachwood, Ohio, remembers her grandfather treating her and her cousin to ice cream at the 1964 New York World's Fair.
Credit
Robert Keston
For the 50th anniversary of the opening of
the 1964 New York World’s Fair
, we asked readers to share
their memories and photographs from their visits to the fair. Here is an edited sampling of memories and photographs submitted by readers.
As I was only 4 years old when my family visited the World’s Fair, my memories are less than vivid. What I do recall was going through the “Small World” ride. It was terrifying! The music
was muffled, and I barely recall seeing anything. I’m sure I kept my eyes closed throughout the ride, and whenever I opened them, I caught glimpses of the scary moving objects. I could not get out
of that ride soon enough.
—
Amy Lee, 52, Manhattan
Read more…
Photo
Structures of the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair remain standing.
Credit
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
What was once an ash heap in Corona, Queens, became the site of the 1939 World’s Fair. Its avenues, in turn, provided the layout for
the 1964 World’s Fair
.
Despite Robert Moses’ intention of making Flushing Meadows-Corona Park a jewel of the city after the event, its evolution has been fitful. A few structures from the fair stand in good condition; others
have fallen into disrepair; and still others have been reinvented.
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Photo
The city is removing the old wooden groins from Beach 87th to Beach 91st in Rockaway, citing their danger to surfers.
Credit
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
They lurk just below the surface at high tide, ready to scrape or snarl an unsuspecting surfer. They have shattered boards, ripped open skin and wet suits, impaled unsuspecting bathers and caused at least one
death in recent years.
But these are not the famed gray creatures of the deep, although they have similar jagged edges. Instead, they are the long lines of wooden groins that extend from the shore into the surf at Rockaway Beach.
Resembling worn down telephone poles and known by locals as the “death sticks,” or simply “sticks,” they were installed decades ago to mimic the effect of rock jetties, prevent
beach erosion and, according to some local surfers, protect the shape of incoming waves.
Now, the two wooden groins from a main surfing spot between Beach 87th and Beach 91st Streets are being removed to make it safer for the growing number of surfers that the beach has attracted.
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Photo
Terminal 3 at Kennedy International Airport, which is to be torn down, was once known as the Worldport. But it has also been likened to a flying saucer.
Credit
David W. Dunlap/The New York Times
Now departing from Kennedy International Airport: the Pan Am flying saucer.
With its elliptical four-acre parasol roof — cantilevered so far out that it almost seemed to be floating over the tarmac — Terminal 3 has long been a distinctive remnant of early jet travel and
an emblem of Pan American World Airways, once considered the most glamorous American carrier (when “glamour” and “airline” could occupy the same sentence without irony). Pan Am
called it the Worldport. Almost everyone else thought of it as a flying saucer.
By extending the roof 114 feet out from the terminal, through a cable system that made the top of the building look like an ensemble of small suspension bridges, Pan Am’s architects sought to protect
passengers from the rain and snow. “It will eliminate the huddled dash through bad weather by extending the roof like a
huge oblong umbrella
over the aircraft parking space,” Richard Witkin wrote in The New York Times in 1957 as he described the plan.
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Photo
Stephen Arthur, left, and Manjari Doxey cleaned up at Fort Tilden on Sunday.
Credit
Michael Nagle for The New York Times
All along the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, where Hurricane Sandy had laid waste, workers and officials are
rushing to restore beaches
in time for Memorial Day weekend. But while Rockaway Beach and Jacob Riis Park are slated to reopen for swimming on Saturday, one of the peninsula’s most remote – and, lately, most beloved
– beaches will remain closed.
It is Fort Tilden, an expanse of sand west of Riis beach set among abandoned World War II-era fortifications, dilapidated barracks, winding paths through thickets of black pines and tall dunes topped with thick
tufts of beach grass and seaside goldenrod.
The storm destroyed the dunes and left detritus scattered across the beach, leading the National Park Service, which controls Fort Tilden, to announce in February that it
would not reopen this summer
at all.
But those who feel a strong connection to Fort Tilden were not giving up.
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Photo
Hundreds of men waited in line in Queens for as long as five days for a chance at a union elevator-mechanic job. From left, Edwin DeLeon, Andres Loaiza, Carlos Ramirez and Gerry Dubatowka turned the wait into a cookout.
Credit
Jessica Glazer
The men began arriving last Wednesday, first a trickle, then dozens. By Friday there were hundreds of them, along with a few women.
They set up their tents and mattresses on the sidewalk in Long Island City, Queens, unpacked their Coronas and cards – and settled in to wait as long as five days and nights for a slender chance at a
union job as an elevator mechanic.
On Monday morning,
Local 3
of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers would hand out applications for its training program. Those in line – there were
more than 800 by sun-up Monday — were hoping for a chance at job security, higher salaries and other benefits.
Andres Loaiza, 25, had his eye on a position that includes minimal physical labor.
“I want to get to that point where I would troubleshoot and not kill my back anymore,” said Mr. Loaiza, who currently does nonunion electrical and mechanical elevator work. And the union, he added,
looking years down the road, would provide college funding for his son, who is now 4.
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Photo
Sandra Arnold, a student at the School of Professional and Continuing Studies at Fordham University, has created the Burial Database Project of Enslaved African Americans, a Web portal.
Credit
Karsten Moran for The New York Times
They have been bulldozed over by shopping centers, crept over by weeds and forgotten by time. Across the country, from Lower Manhattan to the Deep South, are unmarked slave burial sites, often discovered only
by chance or by ignominious circumstance as when construction crews accidentally exhume bodies when building a shopping mall.
Compounding the problem of preserving and locating slave graveyards, there is no comprehensive list of where they are and who lies within them. The situation troubled Sandra Arnold, 50, a history student at
the School of Professional and Continuing Studies at Fordham University, who traces her ancestry to slaves in Tennessee.
“The fact that they lie in these unmarked abandoned sites,” Ms. Arnold said, “it’s almost like that they are kind of vanishing from the American consciousness.”
Last month, Fordham introduced Ms. Arnold’s proposed solution, the
Burial Database Project of Enslaved African Americans
, a Web portal that invites
visitors to input information about the whereabouts and residents of slave graveyards across the country. The goal is to create a user-generated database of these sites all over the United States.
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Slide Show
It’s a mystery at first. The youngsters on the computers in the children’s center adjoining the
Queens Central Library
appear to be squatting
on floor cushions, but their legs are nowhere to be seen. In a moment, it grows clear. They’re seated at shallow wells scooped into the floor so there’s no danger of falling off their chairs.
Photo
Children's Library Discovery Center.
Credit
David W. Dunlap/The New York Times
It’s one of many signs that the 47-year-old Queens Central Library in Jamaica is being transformed into a more appealing space that tries to accommodate the many ways in which patrons, including the smallest
ones, now use libraries.
In 2011, the adjoining Children’s Library Discovery Center opened at Merrick Boulevard and 90th Avenue. This is a new building by Juergen Riehm of
1100 Architect
and the
Lee H. Skolnick Architecture and Design Partnership
.
Today, the transformation is occurring at the two-story central building itself. In January, the mayoral
Design Commission
approved
the latest phase, which includes eliminating the dark recessed entryway by building a new glass wall almost flush to the building line. Designed by the architecture firm
Gensler
,
this change will increase floor space in the front lobby, which is to get a new customer service desk. The library is also to get a new cafe, a gift shop and a teenage center. The computer center has grown
to about 100 stations, 70 for the general public and 30 for training and instructional use. There are new job information and consumer health reference areas; an expanded media center, where DVDs and other
playable media can be found; and a quiet room. (It’s come to this.)
Read more…
Photo
Jaime Montalvo Jr.'s alter ego Soraya Sobreidad whips up fiercely healthy Puerto Rican cuisine in a public-access cooking show filmed in Mr. Montalvo's apartment in Queens.
Credit
Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Television cooking shows, with their globe-trotting superstar chefs, are no longer humble small-studio affairs. But there is one program, glamorous in its own way, that gleefully bucks the trend. It is taped
in a cramped apartment kitchen in Jackson Heights, Queens, and appears on public access. Its star is a trim, sassy drag queen named
Soraya Sobreidad
who
preaches the gospel of healthful Puerto Rican cuisine.
At a taping the other day for “Soraya Sobreidad’s ‘FIERCE’ Cooking Show,” Ms. Sobreidad, who had woken that morning as Jaime Montalvo Jr., 53, a loan specialist with a goatee
and graying hair, strutted about the frame in high heels and a zebra-stripe jacket.
“This is the supersexy, superfabulous and superdesirable Soraya Sobreidad,” she said to the camera, brushing a stray strand of hair (black, the day’s wig color) away from her face. “Welcome
to my kitchen. Welcome to my show.”
With that, the diva began demonstrating a recipe for gluten-free empanadas.
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