| 1962Seattle | |
|---|---|
 Century 21 Exposition logo | |
| Overview | |
| BIE-class | Universal exposition |
| Category | Second category General Exposition |
| Name | Century 21 Exposition |
| Motto | Living in the Space Age |
| Building(s) | Space Needle andWashington State Pavilion |
| Area | 74 acres (30 hectares) |
| Invention(s) | Bubbleator,Friendship 7 |
| Visitors | 9,609,969 |
| Organized by | Edward E. Carlson |
| Participant(s) | |
| Countries | 24 |
| Location | |
| Country | United States |
| City | Seattle |
| Venue | Broad Street |
| Coordinates | 47°37′17″N122°21′03″W / 47.62139°N 122.35083°W /47.62139; -122.35083 |
| Timeline | |
| Bidding | 1955 |
| Opening | April 21, 1962 |
| Closure | October 21, 1962 |
| Universal expositions | |
| Previous | Expo 58 inBrussels |
| Next | Expo 67 inMontreal |
TheCentury 21 Exposition (also known as theSeattle World's Fair) was aworld's fair held April 21, 1962, to October 21, 1962, inSeattle, Washington, United States.[1][2] Nearly 10 million people attended the fair during its six-month run.[3]
As planned, the exposition left behind a fairground and numerous public buildings and public works; some credit it with revitalizing Seattle's economic and cultural life (seeHistory of Seattle (1940–present)).[4] The fair saw the construction of theSpace Needle andAlweg monorail, as well as several sports venues (Washington State Coliseum, nowClimate Pledge Arena) and performing arts buildings (the Playhouse, now theCornish Playhouse), most of which have since been replaced or heavily remodeled. Unlike some other world's fairs of its era, Century 21 made a profit.[3]
The site, slightly expanded since the fair, is now called theSeattle Center; the United States Science Pavilion is nowPacific Science Center. Another notable Seattle Center building, theMuseum of Pop Culture (earlier called EMP Museum), was built nearly 40 years later and designed to fit in with the fairground atmosphere.
Seattle mayorAllan Pomeroy is credited with bringing the World's Fair to the city. He recruited community and business leaders, as well as running a petition campaign, in the early 1950s to convince the city council to approve an $8.5 million bond issue to build the opera house and sports center needed to attract the fair. Eventually the council approved a $7.5 million bond issue with the state ofWashington matching that amount.[5] Planning officials agreed to proposals by prominent scientists to showcase the scientific achievements of the United States of America. About 75 percent of the fair buildings were constructed to be permanent.[6]
The fair was originally conceived at aWashington Athletic Club luncheon in 1955 to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1909Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition, but it soon became clear that that date was too ambitious. With theSpace Race underway andBoeing having "put Seattle on the map"[7] as "an aerospace city",[8] a major theme of the fair was to show that "the United States was not really 'behind' the Soviet Union in the realms of science and space". As a result, the themes of space, science, and the future completely trumped the earlier conception of a "Festival of the [American] West".[7]
In June 1960, theBureau International des Expositions (BIE) certified Century 21 as a world's fair.[9] Project manager Ewen Dingwall went to Moscow to request Soviet participation, but was turned down. Neither the People's Republic of China, Vietnam nor North Korea were invited.[9]
As it happened, theCold War had an additional effect on the fair. PresidentJohn F. Kennedy was supposed to attend the closing ceremony of the fair on October 21, 1962. He bowed out, pleading a "heavy cold"; it later became public that he was dealing with theCuban Missile Crisis.[10]
The fair's vision of the future displayed a technologically based optimism that did not anticipate any dramatic social change, one rooted in the 1950s rather than in the cultural tides that would emerge in the 1960s. Affluence, automation, consumerism, and American power would grow; social equity would simply take care of itself on a rising tide of abundance; the human race would master nature through technology rather than view it in terms of ecology.[7] In contrast, 12 years later—even in far more conservativeSpokane, Washington—Expo '74 took environmentalism as its central theme. The theme of Spokane's Expo '74 was "Celebrating Tomorrow's Fresh New Environment.".[11]
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Once the fair idea was conceived, several sites were considered. Among the sites considered within Seattle wereDuwamish Head inWest Seattle;Fort Lawton (nowDiscovery Park) in theMagnolia neighborhood; andFirst Hill—even closer toDowntown than the site finally selected, but far more densely developed. Two sites south of the city proper were considered—Midway, nearDes Moines, and the Army Depot inAuburn—as was a site east of the city on the south shore ofLake Sammamish.[9]
The site finally selected for the Century 21 Exposition had originally been contemplated for a civic center. The idea of using it for the world's fair came later and brought in federal money for the United States Science Pavilion (now Pacific Science Center) and state money for the Washington State Coliseum (later Seattle Center Coliseum; renamed KeyArena in 1993 after the city sold naming rights to KeyCorp, the company doing business as KeyBank; renamedClimate Pledge Arena in 2021 after naming rights were sold to Amazon.com, Inc).[2][12][13][14] Some of the land had been donated to the city by James Osborne in 1881 and byDavid and Louisa Denny in 1889.[15] Two lots at Third Avenue N. and John Street were purchased fromSt. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church, who had been planning to build a new church building there; the church used the proceeds to purchase land in theMontlake neighborhood.[16] The Warren Avenue School, a public elementary school with several programs for physically handicapped students, was torn down, its programs dispersed, and provided most of the site of the Coliseum (now Climate Pledge Arena).[17] Near the school, some of the city's oldest houses, apartments, and commercial buildings were torn down; they had been run down to the point of being known as the "Warren Avenue slum".[18] The old Fire Station No. 4 was also sacrificed.[19]
As early as the 1909Bogue plan, this part of LowerQueen Anne had been considered for a civic center. The Civic Auditorium (later the Opera House, nowMcCaw Hall), the ice arena (laterMercer Arena), and the Civic Field (rebuilt in 1946 as theHigh School Memorial Stadium),[20][21] all built in 1927 had been placed there based on that plan, as was anarmory (the Food Circus during the fair, later Center House).[13]
The fair planners also sought two other properties near the southwest corner of the grounds. They failed completely to make any inroads with the Seattle Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church, who had recently built Sacred Heart Church there; they did a bit better with theFreemasons' Nile Temple, which they were able to use for the duration of the fair and which then returned to its previous use.[22] It served as the site of the Century 21 Club. This membership organization, formed especially for the fair, charged $250 for membership and offered lounge, dining room, and other club facilities, as well as a gate pass for the duration of the fair. The city ended up leasing the property after the fair and in 1977 bought it from the Masons. The building was eventually incorporated into a theater complex including theSeattle Children's Theatre.[23]
Paul Thiry was the fair's chief architect; he also designed the Coliseum building. Among the other architects of the fair, Seattle-bornMinoru Yamasaki received one of his first major commissions to build the United States Science Pavilion. Yamasaki would later design New York'sWorld Trade Center.[24][25]Victor Steinbrueck andJohn Graham, Jr. designed the Space Needle.Hideki Shimizu andKazuyuki Matsushita designed the originalInternational Fountain.[19] Despite the plan to build a permanent civic center, more than half the structures built for the fair were torn down more or less immediately after it ended.[2] One attempt to conserve installations from Century 21 was the creation of a replica "welcoming pole," a number of which originally stood tall over the southern entrance to the fair. This replica stood outside the Washington State Capital Museum until 1990, when it was taken down.[26]
The grounds of the fair were divided into:
Source:[27]
Besides themonorail, which survives as of 2023[update], the fair also featured a Skyride that ran 1,400 feet (430 m) across the grounds from the Gayway to the International Mall. The bucket-like three-person cars were suspended from cables that rose as high as 60 feet (18 m) off the ground.[28] The Skyride was moved to thePuyallup Fairgrounds in 1980.[29]
The World of Science centered on the United States Science Exhibit. It also included aNASA Exhibit that included models and mockups of varioussatellites, as well as theProject Mercury capsule that had carriedAlan Shepard into space.[30] These exhibits were the federal government's major contribution to the fair.[8][13]
The United States Science Exhibit began withCharles Eames' 10-minute short filmThe House of Science, followed by an exhibit on the development of science, ranging from mathematics and astronomy to atomic science and genetics. The Spacearium held up to 750 people at a time for a simulated voyage first through theSolar System and then through theMilky Way Galaxy and beyond. Further exhibits presented thescientific method and the "horizons of science". This last looked at "Science and the individual", "Control of man's physical surroundings", "Science and the problem ofworld population", and "Man's concept of his place in an increasingly technological world".[30]
The Washington State Coliseum, financed by the state of Washington, was one of Thiry's own architectural contributions to the fairgrounds. His original conception had been staging the entire fair under a single giant air-conditioned tent-like structure, "a city of its own", but there were neither the budgets nor the tight agreements on concept to realize that vision. In the end, he got exactly enough of a budget to design and build a 160,000-square-foot (15,000 m2) building suitable to hold a variety of exhibition spaces and equally suitable for later conversion to a sports arena and convention facility.[13]
During the festival, the building hosted several exhibits. Nearly half of its surface area was occupied by the state's own circular exhibit "Century 21—The Threshold and the Threat", also known as the "World of Tomorrow" exhibit, billed as a "21-minute tour of the future". The building also housed exhibits by France,Pan American World Airways (Pan Am),General Motors (GM), theAmerican Library Association (ALA), andRCA, as well as a Washington state tourist center.[31]
In "The Threshold and the Threat", visitors rode a "Bubbleator" into the "world of tomorrow". Music "from another world" and a shifting pattern of lights accompanied them on a 40-second upward journey to a starry space bathed in golden light. Then they were faced briefly with an image of a desperate family in afallout shelter, which vanished and was replaced by a series of images reflecting the sweep of history, starting with theAcropolis and ending with an image ofMarilyn Monroe.[31]
Next, visitors were beckoned into a cluster of cubes containing a model of a "city of the future" (which a few landmarks clearly indicated as Seattle) and its suburban and rural surroundings, seen first by day and later by night. The next cluster of cubes zoomed in on a vision of a high-tech, future home in a sylvan setting (and a commutergyrocopter); a series of projections contrasted this "best of the future" to "the worst of the present" (over-uniform suburbs, a dreary urban housing project).[31]
The exhibit continued with a vision of future transportation (centered on amonorail and high-speed "air cars" on an electrically controlled highway). There was also an "office of the future", a climate-controlled "farm factory", an automated offshorekelp andplankton harvesting farm, a vision of the schools of the future with "electronic storehouses of knowledge", and a vision of the many recreations that technology would free humans to pursue.[31]
Finally, the tour ended with a symbolic sculptural tree and the reappearance of the family in the fallout shelter and the sound of a ticking clock, a brief silence, an extract fromPresident Kennedy's Inaugural Address, followed by a further "symphony of music and color".[31]
Under the same roof, the ALA exhibited a "library of the future" (centered on aUnivac computer). GM exhibited its vision for highways and vehicles of the future (the latter including theFirebird III). Pan Am exhibited a giant globe that emphasized the notion that we had come to be able to think of distances between major world cities in hours and minutes rather than in terms of chancy voyages over great distances. RCA (which produced "The Threshold and the Threat") exhibited television, radio, and stereo technology, as well as its involvement in space. The French government had an exhibit with its own take on technological progress. Finally, a Washington state tourist center provided information for fair-goers wishing to tour the state.[32]
The World of Commerce and Industry was divided into domestic and foreign areas. The former was sited mainly south of American Way (the continuation of Thomas Street through the grounds), an area it shared with the World of Science.[33] It included the Space Needle and what is now the Broad Street Green and Mural Amphitheater.[15] The Hall of Industry and some smaller buildings were immediately north of American Way.[34] The latter included 15 governmental exhibitors and surrounded the World of Tomorrow and extended to the north edge of the fair.[35]
Among the features of Domestic Commerce and Industry, the massive Interiors, Fashion, and Commerce Building spread for 500 feet (150 m)—nearly the entire Broad Street side of the grounds—with exhibits ranging from 32 separate furniture companies to theEncyclopædia Britannica.[36]Vogue produced four fashion shows daily alongside a perfumed pool.[9] TheFord Motor Company, in its pavilion, presented a simulated space flight and its vision for the car of the future, theFord Seattle-ite XXI. The Electric Power Pavilion included a 40 feet (12 m)-high fountain made to look like ahydroelectric dam, with the entrance to the pavilion through a tunnel in said "dam". The Forest Products Pavilion was surrounded by a grove of trees of various species, and included an all-wood theater and aSociety of American Foresters exhibit.[37]Standard Oil of California celebrated, among other things, the fact that the world's first service station opened in Seattle in 1907.[36] The fair'sBell Telephone (nowAT&T Inc.) exhibit was featured in a short film called "Century 21 Calling...",[38] which was later shown onMystery Science Theater 3000.[39] There were also several religious pavilions.[36] Near the center of all this was Seattle artistPaul Horiuchi's massive mosaic mural, the region's largest work of art at the time, which now forms the backdrop of Seattle Center's Mural Amphitheater.[36]
Foreign exhibits included a science and technology exhibit by Great Britain, while Mexico and Peru focused on handicrafts, and Japan and India attempted to show both of these sides of their national cultures. TheTaiwan and South Korea pavilions showed their rapid industrialization to the world and the benefits of capitalism over communism during the time of cold war era. Other pavilions included one featuring Brazilian tea and coffee; a European Communities Pavilion from the then six countries of theEuropean Economic Community; and a joint pavilion by those countries of Africa that had by then achieved independence. Sweden's exhibit included the story of the salvaging of a 17th-centuryman-of-war fromStockholm harbor, and San Marino's exhibit featured its postage stamps and pottery. Near the center of this was the DuPen Fountain featuring three sculptures by Seattle artist Everett DuPen.[40]
The Fine Arts Pavilion (later the Exhibition Hall) brought together an art exhibition unprecedented for theWest Coast of the United States. Among the 50 contemporary American painters whose works shown wereJosef Albers,Willem de Kooning,Helen Frankenthaler,Philip Guston,Jasper Johns,Joan Mitchell,Robert Motherwell,Georgia O'Keeffe,Jackson Pollock,Robert Rauschenberg,Ad Reinhardt,Ben Shahn, andFrank Stella, as well as Northwest paintersKenneth Callahan,Morris Graves, Paul Horiuchi, andMark Tobey. American sculptors includedLeonard Baskin,Alexander Calder,Joseph Cornell,Louise Nevelson,Isamu Noguchi, and 19 others. The 50 international contemporary artists represented included the likes of paintersFritz Hundertwasser,Joan Miró,Antoni Tàpies, andFrancis Bacon, and sculptorsHenry Moore andJean Arp. In addition, there were exhibitions of Mark Tobey's paintings and of Asian art, drawn from the collections of the Seattle Art Museum; and an additional exhibition of 72 "masterpieces" ranging fromTitian,El Greco,Caravaggio,Rembrandt, andRubens throughToulouse-Lautrec,Monet, andTurner toKlee,Braque, andPicasso, with no shortage of other comparably famous artists represented.[41]
A separate gallery presentedNorthwest Coast Indian art, and featured a series of large paintings byBill Holm introducing Northwest Native motifs.[42]
A US$15 million performing-arts program at the fair ranged from aboxing championship to an internationaltwirling competition but with no shortage of nationally and internationally famous performers, especially at the new Opera House and Playhouse.[43] After the fair, the Playhouse became theSeattle Repertory Theatre; in the mid-1980s it became theIntiman Playhouse.[44] When the Intiman Theatre became financially unstable,Cornish College of the Arts took over the lease from the city of Seattle, and now operates it as the Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center.[45]
Scheduled groups performing at the Opera House included:Source:[46]
| Date (all dates are 1962) | Act |
|---|---|
| April 21 | Opening Night:Seattle Symphony Orchestra conducted by guest conductorIgor Stravinsky withVan Cliburn as a guest soloist |
| April 22–25 | The Ed Sullivan Show, live telecasts |
| April 20 – May 5 | Dunninger the Mentalist |
| May 6 | The Littlest Circus |
| May 8–12 | TheSan Francisco Ballet |
| May 13 | Science Fiction Panel includingRay Bradbury andRod Serling |
| May 15–16 | Seattle Symphony Orchestra conducted byMilton Katims, with guest soloistsIsaac Stern,Adele Addison, and Albert DaCosta |
| May 17–19 | Victor Borge |
| May 22 | Theodore Bikel |
| May 24–25 | ThePhiladelphia Orchestra conducted byEugene Ormandy |
| May 29 – June 3 | TheOld Vic Company (Shakespeare performances) |
| June 7, June 9, June 11 | Seattle Symphony production ofVerdi'sAida, featuringGloria Davy,Sandor Konya,Irene Dalis,Robert Merrill, andJan Rubeš |
| June 10 | Josh White |
| June 17 | Norwegian Chorus and Dancers |
| June 18–19 | Ukrainian State Dance Company (U.S. premiere) |
| June 22–23 | International Gospel Quartets |
| July 8 | SPEBSQSA Barbershop Quartet Song Fest |
| July 9–14 | Bayanihan Dancers of the Philippines |
| July 24 – August 4 | New York City Ballet Company |
| August 27 – September 2 | Ballet Folklorico de Mexico |
| September 10 | CBC Vancouver Chamber Orchestra |
| September 18–23 | D'Oyly Carte Opera Company (Gilbert and Sullivanoperettas) |
| September 25–30 | Rapsodia Romîna: Romanian National Folk Ensemble and Barbu Lăutaru Orchestra of Bucharest (U.S. premiere) |
| October 2–7 | Uday Shankar Dancers |
| October 8–13 | Foo-Hsing Theater (Republic of China), youthChinese opera |
| October 14 | U.S. Marine Corps Band |
| October 16–17 | Seattle Symphony Orchestra conducted by Milton Katims, world premiere of new work by Gerald Kechley |
Events and performances at the Playhouse included Sweden'sRoyal Dramatic Theatre; a chamber music performance byIsaac Stern,Milton Katims,Leonard Rose,Eugene Istomin, the Claiborne Brothers gospel quartet, and theJuilliard String Quartet; two appearances by newsmanEdward R. Murrow;Bunraku theater;Richard Dyer-Bennet;Hal Holbrook's solo show asMark Twain; theCount Basie andBenny Goodman jazz orchestras;Lawrence Welk;Nat King Cole; andElla Fitzgerald. Also during the fair, Memorial Stadium hosted theRingling Brothers Circus,Tommy Bartlett's Water Ski Sky and Stage Show,Roy Rogers andDale Evans' Western Show, and an appearance by evangelistBilly Graham.[47]
The fair and the city were the setting of theElvis Presley movieIt Happened at the World's Fair (1963), with a youngKurt Russell making his first screen appearance. Location shooting began on September 4 and concluded nearly two weeks later. The film would be released the following spring, long after the fair had ended.
At the northeast corner of the grounds (now theKCTS-TV studios[15]), Show Street was the "adult entertainment" portion of the fair. Attractions included Gracie Hansen's Paradise International (aVegas-style floor show (rivalled next door byLeRoy Prinz's "Backstage USA")),Sid and Marty Krofft's adults-only puppet show,Les Poupées de Paris, and (briefly, until it was shut down) a show featuring naked "Girls of the Galaxy".[48][49] Tamer entertainment came in forms such as the Paris Spectacularwax museum, an elaborate Japanese Village, and the Hawaiian Pavilion.[49]
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47°37′17″N122°21′03″W / 47.62139°N 122.35083°W /47.62139; -122.35083
