Don’t Walk On The Bronx!

The New York City Panorama at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park has officially reopened after a $750,000 renovation:

The Panorama, commissioned by [Robert] Moses for the 1964 World’s Fair, was constructed by the architectural firm of Lester and Associates. A team of 200 architects worked for three years to complete the Panorama and place it on view in the room that was home to the General Assembly of the United Nations from 1946 to 1950 while the permanent headquarters of the United Nations was under construction in Manhattan. The 9,335- square-foot model shows all five boroughs of New York City on a scale of one inch to 100 feet. It was last updated in 1992 and includes the bridges, roadways, parks and 895,000 buildings that comprised the city at that time. The World Trade Center still stands where it did in 1992. Tom Finkelpearl, executive director of the Queens Museum of Art, envisions future updates to include many new structures and roadways as well as the new buildings to be constructed on the site of the World Trade Center. Raising funds for such a project would be daunting and such updates would be a monumental undertaking, requiring input from many architectural firms currently involved in designing actual buildings in the city.

The Panorama has been closed to the public since September while David Lackey and a team from Whirlwind Design worked on a massive lighting and media effect upgrade at a cost of $750,000. This upgrade was funded by the City Council, the Mayor’s Office, the Office of the Queens Borough President and the state Assembly. Every hour on the hour, a 12-minute tour of the model city that includes lighting effects and informational films projected on screens throughout the room where the Panorama is housed can be seen.

“The thing I love about the Panorama is that you don’t have to know anything about contemporary art. You don’t even have to speak English to enjoy the experience. One thing we all have in common is that we love the city,” Finkelpearl said.

The Panorama can also be used as a “memory map”. Visitors can look at the model and remember when they lived in a particular neighborhood or worked on a certain block. But while several visitors to the museum have expressed an urge to reach out and touch the model, touching it or walking on it is out of the question. For example, one misstep could wipe out The Bronx.

Location Scout: Panorama of the City of New York.