The World’s Fairgrounds, Then and Now

Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesStructures of the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair remain standing.

What was once an ash heap in Corona, Queens, became the site of the 1939 World’s Fair. Its avenues, in turn, provided the layout for the 1964 World’s Fair. Despite Robert Moses’ intention of making Flushing Meadows-Corona Park a jewel of the city after the event, its evolution has been fitful. A few structures from the fair stand in good condition; others have fallen into disrepair; and still others have been reinvented.

Shea Stadium. Opened five days before the World’s Fair in 1964, it became the home of the New York Mets and the New York Jets. On Aug. 15, 1965, the Beatles played a 30-minute set before 55,000 screaming fans. The stadium was torn down in 2009 and turned into a parking lot; Citi Field, the new home of the Mets, was built next door.

Singer Bowl. An open-air stadium seating 18,000, it was built in 1964 by the Singer Sewing Company. In 1973, it was renamed the Louis Armstrong Memorial Stadium. (Armstrong, in fact, lived only blocks away until his death in 1971.) It was the centerpiece of the U.S.T.A. National Tennis Center when it opened in 1978, and it remained so until 1997, when Arthur Ashe Stadium was built.

Port Authority Heliport. An actual heliport topped the structure; the Beatles landed there on their way to their 1965 concert at Shea. The restaurant at the top, Terrace on the Park, is still open as a catering hall, with views that are said to be more spectacular than the food. When Madonna first came to New York, she lived in Corona and had a job running the elevators there.

New York State Pavilion. Consisting of an oval pavilion, a theater and three spaceship-like towers, the complex was designed by Philip Johnson. Murals that had decorated the outside of the pavilion, including Andy Warhol’s “Thirteen Most Wanted Men,” were painted over before the fair opened.

New York City Pavilion and Ice Theater. Originally built for the 1939 World’s Fair and later used as the home of the United Nations General Assembly, the 1964 pavilion featured a ride around a panoramic model of the city, as well as an ice skating show. It became a museum in 1972, and until 2008 the city operated an ice skating rink in the south end. The museum still houses the panorama.

Hall of Science. The Hall of Science, built for the fair, reopened as a science museum in 1966 and has since undergone several renovations. Nearby, in Space Park, were spacecraft and rockets, donated by NASA and the Defense Department. The Atlas and Titan II rockets remain outside; the Mercury I capsule is in the museum.

Chrysler Pavilion. The Queens Zoo opened on this site in 1968. The zoo’s aviary is the former New York World’s Fair Pavilion (later the Winston Churchill Pavilion), a geodesic dome designed for the fair by R. Buckminster Fuller.

Pool of Industry. During the fair the pool was the site of an elaborate nightly fireworks show, with music and tons of water spraying in the Fountain of the Planets. Community opposition helped derail plans last year to build a Major League Soccer stadium on the site of the pool.

World’s Fair Marina. Built specifically for the fair on Flushing Bay, the marina then held 800 slips for boats. There now are 250 slips.

Unisphere. Constructed of stainless steel, 120 feet in diameter and 140 feet tall, the Unisphere became the symbol of the 1964 World’s Fair.

Readers Share Their Memories of 50 Years Ago in Queens

Robert KestonLisa Keston Danielpour, 51, of Beachwood, Ohio, remembers her grandfather treating her and her cousin to ice cream at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

For the 50th anniversary of the opening of the 1964 New York World’s Fair, we asked readers to share their memories and photographs from their visits to the fair. Here is an edited sampling of memories and photographs submitted by readers.

As I was only 4 years old when my family visited the World’s Fair, my memories are less than vivid. What I do recall was going through the “Small World” ride. It was terrifying! The music was muffled, and I barely recall seeing anything. I’m sure I kept my eyes closed throughout the ride, and whenever I opened them, I caught glimpses of the scary moving objects. I could not get out of that ride soon enough.
â€" Amy Lee, 52, Manhattan

The G.E. Pavilion had a wonderful program that featured a “family” that benefited from the changes wrought by new electrical appliances through the decades. But the G.E. site also had a demonstration of nuclear fusion, which was held in a special hall and featured a loud report which scared the wits out of me.
â€" Thomas H. Alton, 56, Philadelphia

I was 12 in 1965 and I convinced my parents to let me go “alone” with my friend Ronald. Our biggest excitement: refillable soda at the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion. Endless soda, which I never before then experienced. Cup after cup. Heaven in Queens!
â€" Gene Russianoff, 60, Brooklyn

My family plus my Aunt Mary attended the fair one early spring day. My brother and I and my aunt went off in one direction and my parents another. From what I recall, we planned on meeting later by one of the Brass Rail restaurants. Anyway we went on the Swiss Sky Ride instead of walking back. My aunt grabbed my hand; she was so scared she nearly broke my fingers.
â€" Jon Berger, 58, Queens

What impressed me the most at the time â€" a memory that is still filled with color and excitement in my mind â€" was seeing real El Greco paintings in the Spanish pavilion. Somehow the El Greco sighting made me feel like the equal of anyone â€" I wasn’t relegated to merely reading about the important things in the world; I could experience them firsthand. I was 17 but I was having adult experiences!
â€" Judith Vanderkay, 66, Brookline, Mass.

I lived across the street from the fair and I visited many, many times â€" often by climbing the fence. On many occasions I would hop the fence to hear a performance by the great Paul Lavalle and his Cities Service Band of America. I thought he was the greatest person that ever conducted a concert band. He was a great musician and showman. He so influenced me that I spent my entire career as a music educator and band director.
â€" Andy Isca, 62, Grayson, La.

The animatronic Abe Lincoln and the way he spoke and moved intrigued me. I could not figure out how he could still be alive and talking to me.
â€" Cheryl Jacobs, 55, Columbus, Ohio

In the Works of García Márquez, Finding a Link to Home

Rodrigo Garcia/FNPI, via Associated PressGabriel García Márquez in 1972.

Under the fluorescent lights of a check-cashing store in Jackson Heights, Queens, a man recited the opening lines of “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” in Spanish, on Thursday night.

“Of course I remember them,” said the man, Alexander Caicedo, 39, a waiter who had just wired money to Colombia, where he first read the book in high school. “It’s been 22 years since I graduated, but I remember. It’s something innate for us, it’s ours.”

The death of the Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, at 87, set off a flurry of obituaries and appraisals on Thursday, which like a magical storm in one of the author’s books, seemed as if it might never end. In New York, Mr. García Márquez was remembered by friends, writers and scholars, but most of all, it seems, by his Latin American readers.

They included teachers and waiters, superintendents and shoe salesmen: those who had first encountered Mr. García Márquez’s work in village schoolhouses or libraries thousands of miles away from New York City, in places where “One Hundred Years of Solitude” â€" Latin America’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” â€" has been required reading for more than four decades.

In Jackson Heights, a Colombian enclave, some recited the book’s opening passage over beers.

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Col. Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of 20 adobe houses built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.

Others declared their favorite books. “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” said a woman behind the counter at a cantina on Roosevelt Avenue. “Love in the Time of Cholera,” a young woman said as she sliced into a chicken breast at a restaurant down the street.

“No One Writes to the Colonel,” said Guillermo Angarita, 69, who took off his horn-rimmed glasses and wiped away tears at a bar called Hairo’s. “I read them all,” said Mr. Angarita, a maintenance worker.

Mr. Angarita moved to Brooklyn from Colombia in the late 1960s, just after the publication of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” in Spanish. For readers like him, Mr. García Márquez’s books were a visceral connection to Colombia, during a time when photographs came months apart, and letters got lost in the mail.

For other readers from Latin America, his themes were universal: violence and war, the separations that follow. “After the difficult times, there was always a reason to go on,” said Raymundo Severian, of Mr. García Márquez’s works. Mr. Severian, a 44-year-old from Mexico, was eating dinner in Jackson Heights with a group of fellow Amway vendors.

The author Francisco Goldman, who lives in Brooklyn, said no writer had touched more lives in Latin America than Gabo, as Mr. García Márquez was affectionately known there.

“So many people in Latin America discovered literature through reading,” him, Mr. Goldman said, “people who maybe only read a couple of books in their lives.”

He continued, laughing, “You’d be at a bordello and the woman would have one book by her bed and it would be Gabo’s. And they would have read it.”

One of New York City’s first Spanish-language bookstores was called Macondo, after the fictional village in “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Jaime Manrique, a Colombian novelist, said the bookshop, on 14th Street in Manhattan, was important to him as he began writing, for the scene it provided and for its name. “It was important to see that Colombia existed, in so many places, because of his work,” he said of Mr. García Márquez.

Macondo was closed in 2007, but in recent years the Spanish-language literary scene has grown. Every month, as many as 50 people crowd into McNally Jackson Books in SoHo for a book club conducted entirely in Spanish. Javier Molea, a bookseller from Uruguay who runs the club, said its members are bilingual - Latin Americans but also people who speak Spanish as a second language.

“This isn’t the end of an era,” he said.

Edith Grossman, who lives in New York and is regarded as one of the foremost translators of Latin American fiction, recalled a conversation she had on Thursday. “Some friends called me when they heard he had died,” said Ms. Grossman, who has translated “Love in the Time of Cholera” and other works by Mr. García Márquez. Her friends had gone to a hardware store in Manhattan, she said, and “There was a young kid in the store, working. He mentioned Gabriel García Márquez had died and that they really had to read his work, it was really good.”

Carlos Labbé, a Chilean writer who spent the evening gathered with other writers in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, compared the work of Mr. García Márquez to the achievement of the epic poets. “He rescued a rural world, a place outside civilization, and brought it to New York,” he said.

“No one else has done that, for us.”

In the Bronx, a Tribute to a Salsa Singer

David Gonzalez/The New York TimesA mural in progress in the Bronx honors Cheo Feliciano.

Muralists in the Bronx are honoring the salsa singer Cheo Feliciano, who died Thursday in a car accident in Puerto Rico.

In Hunts Point, the artists known as BG183 and HEF worked on a wooden panel that mimics a full-length subway car, behind the studios of TATS Cru, a Bronx group of artists.

The mural, which the two artists began on Thursday within hours after hearing of Mr. Feliciano’s death, is a short walk from what was once the Hunts Point Palace, where he performed as the vocalist for the Joe Cuba Sextet in the 1960s.

Big Ticket | Light-Grabbing Penthouse for $42 Million

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York TimesThe Prasada co-op building

A 12-room penthouse with panoramic Central Park views and more than 2,500 square feet of terraces atop the venerable Prasada at 50 Central Park West sold for $42 million and was the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records.

Originally priced at $48 million, the monthly maintenance for No. PHB, created from the reconfiguration of two penthouse units that had totaled 15 rooms, is $19,114.

The Prasada, on the southwest corner of West 65th Street, was built in 1907 in the French Second Empire style; the building was converted to co-ops in 1973. Besides 45 windows, the 6,500-square-foot unit has two fireplaces, four bedrooms, six baths and a corner library. There is also 50 feet of park frontage.

The master suite faces north, and a private stairway leads to a rooftop terrace with 360-degree views of the city.

The seller is Jon L. Stryker, the philanthropist/architect/social justice activist who is an heir to the Stryker Corporation, a medical supply company founded by his grandfather. Mr. Stryker’s efforts to support primate conservation through his Arcus Foundation earned him the distinction of having a newly discovered species of monkey named after him in 2010. The listing brokers for the penthouse were Robby Browne, Chris Kann and Jennifer Ireland of the Corcoran Group, and John Burger of Brown Harris Stevens.

The buyers preserved their anonymity through the Kzolp Realty Trust. The buyer’s broker declined to be identified.

The elegant runner-up, at $34.5 million, is a three-unit assemblage of condominiums on the eighth floor of the Plaza Hotel, the 1907 landmark building at 768 Fifth Avenue at Central Park South.

The 11-room corner apartment, No. 807, a 5,850-square-foot, four-bedroom five-and-a-half-bath combination of two units, Nos. 807 and 809, with 75 feet of entertainment space overlooking the park and Fifth Avenue, sold for $32 million. A one-bedroom suite across the hall, No. 808, sold to the same buyer for $2.5 million. The combined monthly carrying costs are $16,134.

The Corcoran brokers Julia Cahill and Adelaida Delgado Palm represented the seller, Plaza One Acquisition/Plaza Two Acquisition. Linda Ruocco of Douglas Elliman negotiated on behalf of the buyer, Babacan Plaza.

Big Ticket includes closed sales from the previous week, ending Wednesday.

A version of this article appears in print on 04/20/2014, on page RE2 of the NewYork edition with the headline: A Light-Grabbing Penthouse.

New York Today: Surviving Spring Break

Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesPut all eggs in one basket.

Updated 6:32 a.m.

Good Friday morning on this Good Friday.

Attention parents of vacationing schoolchildren:

You’ve taken the kids to the museum, the movies and the zoo â€" and there are still five days of spring break to get through.

What’s left?

Plenty.

Here’s a little list of things to do, many of them free.

Continuing:

- Make a stop-action movie using Legos at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, through Tuesday.

- The roller rink is open in Prospect Park. (The cafe now serves alcohol, beleaguered parent.)

- It’s Earth Week at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.

- The Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater presents “Don Juan, or Wages of Debauchery,” supposedly suitable for children 6 and up, on the Upper East Side, through Sunday.

Today:

- The Culinary Kids Food Festival at the New York Botanical Garden.

- A preview of a musical about Einstein at the Hall of Science in Queens at 1 p.m.

- An introduction to bird-watching in Prospect Park at noon (also Saturday).

Saturday:

- An autism-friendly performance of “Disney Junior Live on Tour!” at Madison Square Garden at 11 a.m. [$32 and up]

- Egg hunts galore at city parks.

- Puppet shows: “The Squirrel and the Caterpillar” at Forest Park in Queens, and “Seucy & Boto (Stories From the Amazon Jungle),” at La MaMa in the East Village.

Sunday:

- The Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival in Midtown.

- Explore Orchard Beach in the Bronx.

- A Passover dance party at the Jewish Museum on the Upper East Side.

Monday:

- Look at pond water and rocks under a microscope at High Rock Park in Staten Island.

Tuesday:

- Earth Day celebrations abound, including in Union Square.

For even more activities, check out the city’s kid-friendly itinerary or spring-break guides from Mommy Poppins and the parks department.

That should keep ‘em busy.

Here’s what else you need to know for Friday and the weekend.

WEATHER

Getting warmer, a bit: 53 and sunny today.

Warmer still on Saturday, with a high of 65.

Cooling down Sunday but still nice, with a sunny high of 58.

Today’s tree pollen forecast: moderate.

COMMUTE

Subways: Delays on the northbound A and N. Check latest status.

Rails: O.K. Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: Inbound Northern State stalled by crash. Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is suspended for Good Friday.

Weekend Travel Hassles: Check subway disruptions or list of street closings.

COMING UP TODAY

- Mayor de Blasio appoints a PBS documentary executive, Cynthia Lopez, to head the city’s office of film, theater and broadcasting. 12:15 p.m. at Steiner Studios in Queens.

- Two Way of the Cross processions for Good Friday â€" one across Manhattan starting on East 47th Street at 8:30 a.m., the other over the Brooklyn Bridge starting at 10 a.m.

- Food vendors return to the High Line.

- The still-uncategorizable 2004 documentary “Tarnation” screens at BAM at 7:30 p.m. [$13]

- The night bazaar in Greenpoint runs from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. [Free]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- Charles Hynes, the former Brooklyn district attorney, admitted that his office detained witnesses against their will. [Daily News]

- The M.T.A. reached a deal with the transit workers union that requires no fare hikes to pay for it. [New York Times]

- A father of 13 was fatally shot behind the counter of the bodega he ran in Bushwick. [New York Post]

- A New York hotelier illegally funneled more than $180,000 to candidates, inlcuding Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. [New York Times]

- The man inside the baseball-headed mascot Mr. Met says a Secret Service agent vowed to “go for the kill shot” if he got too close to President Clinton at a 1997 game. [Daily News]

- A cabbie sneaked through toll plazas 4,000 times by “piggybacking” on the driver in front of him â€" but still charged passengers for the tolls, prosecutors said. [New York Times]

- A man who had made a home in the underside of the Manhattan Bridge was evicted. [New York Post]

- Rangers shoot down Flyers in playoff opener, 4-1. Yankees dim Rays, 10-2.

THE WEEKEND

Saturday

- A junk swap in Sunnyside, Queens. Noon to 3 p.m. [Free]

- Opening party for the Crate, a vinyl record store in East Williamsburg. Noon to 9 p.m. [Free]

- A Japanese cherry blossom festival in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. [Free]

-The Times’s Weekend Miser recommends “Next Goal Wins,” a documentary about the Samoan national soccer team, at Brookfield Place downtown. Live Samoan drums and soccer drills at 6 p.m., movie at 8 p.m. [Free]

Sunday

- A commemoration of the April 19, 1943, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial on Riverside Drive. 2 p.m. [Free]

- An Easter organ recital and a choir performance at St. Thomas Church in Midtown. 2:30 p.m. [Free]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

- And if you’re looking for stuff to do outside New York City, The Times’s Metropolitan section has suggestions for Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Sandra E. Garcia contributed reporting.

New York Today is a weekday roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning. You can receive it via email.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com, or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Follow the New York Today columnists, Annie Correal and Andy Newman, on Twitter.

You can always find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.

New York Today: Chilly Critters

Nathaniel Brooks for The New York TimesThey’ll be back soon.

Updated 10:02 a.m.

Good Thursday morning to you. It’s still cold â€" 38 degrees, with a wind chill below freezing.

Sleep tight, little salamanders.

After poking their noses into the spring air, salamanders may have ducked under the leaf cover when the temperature dropped this week.

And gone back to sleep.

Salamanders â€" including the orange-skinned juvenile eastern newt shown above â€" are found in wooded areas all over the city:

Inwood Hill Park in Manhattan, Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx and Blue Heron Park in Staten Island.

If a cold snap strikes in early spring, many species of animal return to hibernation, the parks department says.

This includes ants, flies, bees and butterflies, many of which began appearing in parks and gardens across the city last week.

As long as the cold doesn’t last too long, they can survive. And luckily, the cold won’t last.

Should you want to see them as they wake, the parks department is offering exploration walks.

There’s a night creatures walk in Staten Island tonight.

And a salamander-spotting walk there on Sunday.

Ghanim Khalil, the urban park ranger who gives that tour, said he hoped to spot a red-backed salamander or two, particularly if children were on the hike.

“They get very excited, especially when it moves around,” he said.

Here’s what else you need to know for Thursday.

WEATHER

Frosty at both ends, mild in the middle, with a high of 50.

The wind will rise now and then.

And clouds may briefly cover the sun.

Tomorrow looks similar.

COMMUTE

Subways: Check latest status.

Rails: Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is suspended through Friday for Holy Week.

COMING UP TODAY

- Mayor de Blasio announces an expansion of the program to buy back hurricane-damaged buildings on Staten Island. 12:45 p.m.

- Then the mayor speaks at N.Y.U., his alma mater, at 6 p.m. [No seats left, but there’s a livestream]

- Senator Charles E. Schumer calls for a federal investigation of this winter’s high electricity prices, at his Midtown office. 11:30 a.m.

- Metro-North holds an all-day blood drive in Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central.

- Experts share ideas for how to put the city’s old wood to use, at Parsons in Greenwich Village. 6 p.m. [Free]

- The Iraqi author Hassan Blasim talks about his short story collection, “The Corpse Exhibition,” at Barnes & Noble on the Upper East Side. 7 p.m. [Free]

- “Strongman,” a documentary about “Stanless Steel, The Strongest Man in the World at Bending Steel and Metal,” screens at the National Arts Club in Gramercy. 8 p.m. [Free]

- After Maundy Thursday services at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, poets read from Dante’s “Inferno.” 9 p.m.

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

- Note: the event we listed earlier, wherein the motel chain Red Roof Inn unveils new upscale rooms inside a truck parked at Union Square, is actually happening next Thursday. It was mistakenly listed as occurring today by The Associated Press.

IN THE NEWS

- Architectural drawings for the 1964 World’s Fair show the Port Authority’s inventively whimsical streak. [New York Times]

- The suburbs are trying to prevent the exodus of their young people for the city. [New York Times]

- The M.T.A. and unions are near a contract deal that would mean modest raises for 34,000 workers. [Daily News]

- Homeless families with children will be able to stay overnight in a city shelter, thanks to a letter from the Public Advocate Letitia James. [Capital New York]

- The medical examiner ruled the death of a baby found in a Brooklyn teenager’s Victoria’s Secret bag a homicide. [News 12 Brooklyn]

- Christine Quinn will re-emerge â€" on Bill Maher’s “Real Time” show on HBO. [Capital New York]

- Scoreboard: Yankees club Cubs twice, 3-0 and 2-0. Mets bury Diamondbacks, 5-2. Basketball regular-season finales: Cavs carve up Nets, 114-85. Knicks clip Raptors, 95-92.

AND FINALLY …

You may not have heard of Rafael Guastavino, but you have walked beneath his work.

Mr. Guastavino, an architect who died in 1908, designed arches and domes.

You can see them all over the city: in some of our grander subway stations, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and the Elephant House at the Bronx Zoo.

Mr. Guastavino’s work is the subject of a new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York.

And today, masons will show you and your children how to build arches on the museum terrace.

Sandra E. Garcia contributed reporting.

New York Today is a weekday roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning. You can receive it via email.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com, or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Follow the New York Today columnists, Annie Correal and Andy Newman, on Twitter.

You can always find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.