YET another remnant of the 1964-1965 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park that is seemingly hidden in plain sight can be found on a park path north of Terrace on the Park and the Queens Zoo inside the park entrances on 111th Street. It’s a dome with triangle-shaped panels, currently home to the Queens Zoo’s Aviary, or the zoo’s bird preserve, that looks like something Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) might have come up with. That’s because Fuller himself designed it.
Originally known as the World’s Fair Pavilion (the Fair had plenty of those) it was used for public events and concerts and in 1965, the second year of the Fair, it housed a memorial to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who had passed away early in the year. The structure was then dismantled and stored away until 1968, when Parks czar Robert Moses established the Queens Zoo, which then required an aviary, and the Pavilion was ideal for it and subsequently reassembled. The structure was renovated in 2006 with new plantings of white pine, southern magnolia, holly and ninebark.
The Aviary is home to 20 species of birds, as well as some mammals such as porcupines. Nettings help keep out predators like hawks and cats.
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8/5/21
4 comments
Nice thank you~
Very visible on Google Earth, and at the approximate (former) location of the Fair’s antique car ride in the Transportation Area.
Because each triangle in the dome has no glass panes the graffiti thugs must be enraged that they cant write on it.
I was there for a class trip when I was in day camp in 1973. I can’t believe its still there.