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The Tent of Tomorrow, Revisited
New York, NY - procyon - Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 : goo
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on the way from Chicago to visit my boyfriend on Boston, i had a Greyhound layover of about five hours in New York City. as those who have read my previous posts may know, i'm kind of enamored of a certain partially locked-up, probably-endangered (see www.worldmonumentswatch.org/
2008) building in Queens, so naturally my first course of action was to go visit it. the plan was to get back on the 7 afterwards and stop at as many stations as I had time--i didn't want my only destination to be someplace i'd already visited.
but my duffel bag got very heavy in the hot summer sun, unfortunately, and an afternoon is never as long as it seems when you're planning it, so the State Pavilion was as far as I got.
however.
this time someone let me in!!! :D
(the order in which my camera saves [or perhaps uploads?] photos is very weird, and for some reason in the middle of the Tent of Tomorrow photos is a family posing in front of the Unisphere)
the terrazzo map of New York state; cones are there so employees of the theater in another part of the building don't accidentally drive over the map. the square tiles in plastic-covered boxes are the bits of the map which are currently being restored (when the tent was open to the public, it used to be popular to chip off and steal your part of town, i guess).
there is a tree growing in the bottom tower.
This article has been viewed 1777 times in the last 29 months
CartLegger: 8th Aug 2007 - 03:23 GMT
Great photos.
I need to get there myself. Have you any suggestions for going about that?
procyon: 9th Aug 2007 - 03:55 GMT
General consensus seems to be a combination of luck (sometimes it's just unlocked) and being polite/respectful to the people who work there (i.e. if you see people working inside, try asking nicely if you can come in and take some photos, and if you get in because it's unlocked and someone sees you and asks you to leave, ask nicely if you can stay a bit instead of screaming at them that you have a right to be there. not that you would do that, but i guess people sometimes do).
Also, souvenir-taking (especially map pieces--they really are trying to fix at least that much) inside the building and forcing one's way in are very frowned on. as i learned on this visit, the red-and-white part of the structure is now so unstable in places that the theatre employees can't use some of the storerooms because the doors need to be closed to hold the surrounding walls up (and the old escalators' stairs are so rotten that even raccoons fall right through them--worse still the staircases inside the towers), so the footholding and squeezing-through-gaps necessary to sneak in through most of the obvious places could literally bring down part of a wall, giving the parks dept. a better case to get funds/support to demolish the building. Again, not that you would do that, I assume, just saying it for the record. Good luck! I hope you get in!
procyon: 9th Aug 2007 - 04:10 GMT
and since i'm already commenting on my own post, here's the NYSP feeling much less decrepit circa 1986: http://youtube.com/watch?v=VJQnZZ-Wmao
CartLegger: 9th Aug 2007 - 11:53 GMT
Thanks! It may take me a while, but I have new New York goal to fulfill.
Now that these buildings are on the UN's most endangered list, your photos serve an even more valuable function.
aer : 9th Aug 2007 - 21:05 GMT
rusting spiky metal, i'm in love. wish i could go there, beautiful shots.
Belroc: 9th Aug 2007 - 23:06 GMT
Awesome post!!!
Wow, I didn't know that what that place looks like up close..
its in shambles.
Now that I know that, I really wanna go check it out.
Thanx for the pictures!!
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