The Panorama of The City of New York
Location: The Queens Museum
Year: 1964
The Panorama of the City of New York is the jewel in the crown of the
collection of the Queens Museum and a locus of memory for visitors from
all over the globe. Conceived as a celebration of the City’s municipal
infrastructure by urban mastermind and World’s Fair President Robert
Moses for the 1964 Fair, the Panorama was built by a team of more than
100 people working for the great architectural model makers Raymond
Lester & Associates over the course of three years.
Comprising an area of 9,335 square feet and built to a scale of 1:1200
where one inch equals 100 feet, the Panorama is a metropolis in
miniature. Each of the city’s 895,000 buildings constructed prior to
1992 and every street, park and some 100 bridges are represented and
assembled onto 273 individual sections comprising the 320 square miles
of New York City. In this miraculously scaled cityscape, the borough of
Manhattan measures a seemingly vast 70 x 15 feet and the Empire State
Building is a towering 15 inches tall while the Statue of Liberty is
only 1-7/8 inches in height. Long Island and New Jersey peek onto the
model as black shadowy masses to the east and west.
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