Since it was constructed for the 1939 world’s fair, the New York City Building in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, now the Queens Museum, has played assorted unexpected roles. Its staid, modern-classical architecture, designed, ironically, to suit the “Building the World of Tomorrow” theme, has demonstrated a surprising agility in supporting a variety of programs. Planned to be the fair’s only structure to remain in permanent use, it was to become a recreation center for roller-skating and ice-skating. Yet it also served as temporary quarters for the United Nations General Assembly in the late 1940s—while the U.N.’s real home in Manhattan was being completed—and then as the New York City Pavilion for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. In 1972, the Queens Museum of Art moved into the north half, leaving only the ice-skating rink on the south.
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