Swiss Sky Ride – New York World’s Fair 1964

This aerial gondola ride was built by Swiss manufacturer Von Roll and featured two sets of cables to handle the high visitor traffic. The view here shows the north station, with the Singer Bowl directly behind it. During the fair, the Bowl hosted concerts, sporting events, and large public shows and could seat around 15,000 people. It was later taken over by the U.S. Tennis Association and renamed Louis Armstrong Stadium before being demolished in 2016 and replaced with a new stadium bearing the same name. In the distance stands Shea Stadium, which was demolished in 2008.

After the fair ended, the Sky Ride was sold—along with the similar system from the defunct Freedomland amusement park in the Bronx—to a private buyer. The equipment sat in storage for several years before being acquired by Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey. In 1974 a new Sky Ride opened there, using the towers from Freedomland paired with the cars and drive system from the World’s Fair. Even a number of the fair’s original trash cans were reused.

The ride continued to operate for decades, becoming one of the park’s most charming and historically significant attractions. In late 2024, however, the Sky Ride closed permanently, ending one of the last functioning chapters of the fair’s mechanical legacy. Although the gondola cars had been replaced in the 1990s, the original World’s Fair drive system and tension base remained in service until the final season.

Von Roll’s Type 101 gondola systems were once a common sight in parks and resorts around the world, with more than one hundred built between the 1950s and 1980s. Only a small handful—around sixteen—remain in operation today.