Flushing Meadows Corona Park

The Unisphere, located at the center of a radial path system behind the New York City Building (now Queens Museum), was designed for the 1964-65 World’s Fair by Parks Architect Gilmore D. Clarke (1892–1982). The 35-ton, 120-foot-high steel globe, said to be the world’s largest, is circled by three rings and set in a fountain. The piece was constructed in 1961 by U.S. Steel and celebrates the dawn of the Space Age, one of the themes of the 1964-65 World’s Fair. The three rings circling the globe represent the first NASA satellites to orbit the earth.

“On windy days the tips of India and Vietnam lift off their mountings,” Parks officials noted in 1989 before the Unisphere was conserved in 1994, part of a 15-year, $80 million project to restore Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. The structure was cleaned and reinforced, the area around the structure was relandscaped and the number of spray jets in the fountain doubled, from 48 to 96. In 1995 the Unisphere was designated an official City landmark and today remains a familiar feature of the New York skyline.