The Century 21 Exposition (also known as the Seattle World's Fair) was a world's fair held April 21, 1962, to October 21, 1962, in Seattle, Washington, United States.Official Guide Book, cover and passim.Guide to the Seattle Center Grounds Photograph Collection: April, 1963 , University of Washington Libraries Special Collections. Accessed online October 18, 2007. Nearly 10 million people attended the fair during its six-month run.Joel Connelly, Century 21 introduced Seattle to its future , Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 16, 2002. Accessed online October 18, 2007.
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 (see History of Seattle (1940–present)).Regina Hackett, City's arts history began a new chapter in '62 , Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 29, 2002. Accessed online October 18, 2007. The fair saw the construction of the Space Needle and Alweg monorail, as well as several sports venues (Washington State Coliseum, now Climate Pledge Arena) and performing arts buildings (the Playhouse, now the Cornish 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.
The site, slightly expanded since the fair, is now called the Seattle Center; the United States Science Pavilion is now Pacific Science Center. Another notable Seattle Center building, the Museum of Pop Culture (earlier called EMP Museum), was built nearly 40 years later and designed to fit in with the fairground atmosphere.
Planning and funding Seattle mayor Allan 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 of Washington matching that amount. 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.
Cold War and Space Race context The fair was originally conceived at a Washington Athletic Club luncheon in 1955 to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1909 Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition, but it soon became clear that that date was too ambitious. With the Space Race underway and Boeing having "put Seattle on the map"Lesson Twenty-five: The Impact of the Cold War on Washington: The 1962 Seattle World's Fair , HSTAA 432: History of Washington State and the Pacific Northwest, Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington. Accessed online October 18, 2007. as "an aerospace city", 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".
In June 1960, the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) certified Century 21 as a world's fair. 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.Sharon Boswell and Lorraine McConaghy, A model for the future , The Seattle Times, September 22, 1996. Accessed online October 20, 2007.
As it happened, the Cold War had an additional effect on the fair. President John 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 the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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. In contrast, 12 years later—even in far more conservative Spokane, Washington—Expo '74 took environmentalism as its central theme. The theme of Spokane's Expo '74 was "Celebrating Tomorrow's Fresh New Environment.".Lesson Twenty-six: Spokane's Expo '74: A World's Fair for the Environment , HSTAA 432: History of Washington State and the Pacific Northwest], Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington. Accessed online April 9, 2011.
Buildings and grounds
Once the fair idea was conceived, several sites were considered. Among the sites considered within Seattle were Duwamish Head in West Seattle; Fort Lawton (now Discovery Park) in the Magnolia neighborhood; and First Hill—even closer to Downtown than the site finally selected, but far more densely developed. Two sites south of the city proper were considered—Midway, near Des Moines, and the Army Depot in Auburn—as was a site east of the city on the south shore of Lake Sammamish.
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; renamed Climate Pledge Arena in 2021 after naming rights were sold to Amazon.com, Inc).Point 22: World of Tomorrow, "Century 21: Forward into the Past", "cybertour" of the exposition, HistoryLink.org. Accessed online October 18, 2007. Interview with Paul Thiry Conducted by Meredith Clausen at the Artist's home September 15 & 16, 1983 Smithsonian, Archives of American Art. Accessed online October 18, 2007.Summary for 305 Harrison ST / Parcel ID 1985200003 / Inv # CTR004 , Seattle Department of Neighborhoods. Accessed online October 18, 2007. Some of the land had been donated to the city by James Osborne in 1881 and by David and Louisa Denny in 1889.Campus Walking Tour / Narrative for Seattle Center , Seattle Center. Accessed online October 19, 2007. Two lots at Third Avenue N. and John Street were purchased from St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church, who had been planning to build a new church building there; the church used the proceeds to purchase land in the Montlake neighborhood.Dorothea Mootafes, Theodora Dracopoulos Argue, Paul Plumis, Perry Scarlatos, Peggy Falangus Tramountanas, eds., A History of Saint Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church and Her People, Saint Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church, 2007 (1996). p. 112. The Warren Avenue School, a public elementary school with several programs for physically Disabled students, was torn down, its programs dispersed, and provided most of the site of the Coliseum (now Climate Pledge Arena). 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".Florence K. Lentz and Mimi Sheridan, Queen Anne Historic Context Statement , prepared for the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, Historic Preservation Program and the Queen Anne Historical Society, October 2005, p. 22. Accessed online July 24, 2008. The old Fire Station No. 4 was also sacrificed.Lentz and Sheridan, 2005, p. 23.
As early as the 1909 Bogue plan, this part of Lower Queen Anne had been considered for a civic center. The Civic Auditorium (later the Opera House, now McCaw Hall), the ice arena (later Mercer Arena), and the Civic Field (rebuilt in 1946 as the High School Memorial Stadium),High-School-Memorial-Stadium , Seattle City Clerk's Thesaurus. Accessed online October 18, 2007.Florence K. Lentz and Mimi Sheridan, Queen Anne Historic Context Statement , prepared for the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, Historic Preservation Program and the Queen Anne Historical Society, October 2005, p. 18. Accessed online July 24, 2008. Source for the 1927 date. all built in 1927 had been placed there based on that plan, as was an armory (the Food Circus during the fair, later Center House).
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 the Freemasons' Nile Temple, which they were able to use for the duration of the fair and which then returned to its previous use. 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 the Seattle Children's Theatre.
Paul Thiry was the fair's chief architect; he also designed the Coliseum building. Among the other architects of the fair, Seattle-born Minoru Yamasaki received one of his first major commissions to build the United States Science Pavilion. Yamasaki would later design New York's World Trade Center.Alan J. Stein, Century 21 – The 1962 Seattle World's Fair , HistoryLink.org essay 2290, April 18, 2000. Accessed online October 18, 2007.Walt Crowley, Yamasaki, Minoru (1912–1986), Seattle-born architect of New York's World Trade Center , HistoryLink.org Essay 5352, March 3, 2003. Accessed online October 18, 2007. Victor Steinbrueck and John Graham, Jr. designed the Space Needle. Hideki Shimizu and Kazuyuki Matsushita designed the original International Fountain. 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. 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.
The grounds of the fair were divided into: World of Science World of Century 21 (also known as World of Tomorrow) World of Commerce and Industry World of Art World of Entertainment Show Street Gayway Boulevards of the World Exhibit Fair Food and Favors Food Circus Source:Official Guide Book, Map, pp. 4–5.
Besides the monorail, which survives , the fair also featured a Skyride that ran 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 off the ground.Official Guide Book, p. 115. The Skyride was moved to the Puyallup Fairgrounds in 1980.Lisa Zigweid. Galaxy/Wild Mouse, Fun Forest, Seattle, WA , Defunct Coasters, Roller Coasters of the Pacific Northwest. Accessed online November 18, 2007.
World of Science
The World of Science centered on the United States Science Exhibit. It also included a NASA Exhibit that included models and mockups of various satellites, as well as the Project Mercury capsule that had carried Alan Shepard into space.Official Guide Book, pp. 8–24. These exhibits were the federal government's major contribution to the fair.