This photograph was taken from the Moon Dome at the Travel & Transportation Pavilion, looking across the roadway toward the main fairgrounds. On the left is the green-roofed Wisconsin Pavilion, best remembered for displaying the world’s largest piece of cheese — an incredible 17-ton block that became an instant fair legend. Today, this area has been converted into a parking lot for the Queens Museum.
Just to the right of the pedestrian bridge stands the Missouri Pavilion, while dominating the background is the unmistakable silhouette of the New York State Pavilion. The structure included three soaring towers: the tallest served as an observation platform, the mid-height tower housed a refreshment stand, and the smallest was reserved as a lounge for VIP guests.
The pavilion’s main structure was the Tent of Tomorrow, a massive 350-by-250-foot oval featuring the largest suspension roof ever built, made of brightly coloured translucent panels. Its floor held a spectacular 9,000-square-foot terrazzo map of New York State composed of more than 500 mosaic pieces — the largest map in the world at the time.
All three structures survived demolition after the fair, not by design but because dismantling them was deemed too expensive. The Tent of Tomorrow briefly served as a concert venue and a popular roller-skating rink before closing in 1974 due to structural issues; its roof was removed a few years later, leaving only the skeletal framework.
The observation towers remain standing but are in poor condition. Two discarded Sky Streak elevators now lie rusting at ground level. In 2019, a $24 million preservation grant was awarded to stabilize the towers and add architectural lighting to both them and the Tent of Tomorrow. The funding does not include rebuilding the elevators, so public access won’t be possible — at least for now.
