Alexandra Charitan

Sep 12

Sep 12 Unisphere: Fountains

I've been captivated by all things World's Fair-related since I first visited Flushing Meadows-Corona park three years ago. There isn't much left from the fair, but the main sites—the NY State Pavilion, Queens Museum, Panorama of the City of New York and the Unisphere—are some of my favorite things in the city. I've visited them all many times since I moved here, and I've taken many friends on mini tours (very often their first time in the park or even in Queens).

For a few years my Worlds Fair "white whale" was seeing the Unisphere fountains. The fountains were a part of the original design—to create the illusion that the globe was floating—but are no longer turned on consistently. We briefly saw them on during a 50th anniversary World's Fair celebration, but were disappointed when they were switched off 20 minutes after we arrived. I vowed to catch them on again, and during the recent US Open, I knew I'd have a good chance.

The US Open takes place in a stadium right next door to the Queens Museum and the Unisphere. After confirming via Instagram that the fountains were indeed turned on, I headed there on Saturday hoping to spend some quality time partying like it was 1964 in the mist of the fountains. In the summer it's frustratingly difficult to get a preview of the fountains from the 7 train and with the trees in full bloom, you can barely see them at all until you emerge from the pathway into the open plaza.

The suspense was intense, but luckily they were on, and stayed on for my entire visit. I don't know how effectively they obscure the base, but they sure are impressive to see in person. Even the Unisphere still manages to amaze me no matter how many times I see it (night and day, winter, spring or summer). The presence of the fountains does manage to somehow make me wish even more than I normally do that I could travel back in time to see the Fair in all of its glory.

I slowly keep visiting pieces of both Queens World Fairs —now scattered in parking lots and parks across the country—but I can't help but wish I could know what it was like when it was whole, risen from the ashes of the former Corona Ash Dumps; a magical place that gave us the Mustang, It's a Small World and the Belgian Waffle; a place that couldn't exist in the Internet Age; a place with a 12-story steel globe at its center, whose fountains still manage to inspire awe in this still-relatively-new New Yorker, more than 50 years later.