Panorama of the City of New York

The Panorama of the City of New York is an urban model of New York City that is a centerpiece of the Queens Museum. It was originally created for the 1964 New York World's Fair.

Early history

Commissioned by Robert Moses as a celebration of the City's municipal infrastructure, this model includes every single building constructed before 1992 in all five boroughs, at a scale of 1 inch = 100 feet (1:1200). The Panorama was built by a team of 100 people working for the architectural model makers Raymond Lester Associates in West Nyack, New York in the three years before the opening of the 1964 World's Fair. The model was constructed in 273 sections of Formica boards and polyurethane foam, originally depicting 830,000 individual structures; the section showing the Far Rockaway neighborhood was never installed, due to space limitations, and is normally kept in storage.

Displayed alongside the modern city, the 1964 exhibition also included a 1:300 diorama of a "Castello Model" based on the 17th century Castello Plan, borrowed from Museum of the City of New York.

The Panorama was one of the most successful attractions at the 1964 Fair, with "millions" of people paying 10 cents each for a 9-minute simulated helicopter ride around the City, a dark ride narrated by Lowell Thomas to a text written by Harvey Yale Gross. It was one of three colossal representations of geography at the fair, alongside the Unisphere and the New York State Pavilion.

The panorama was also intended to serve as a standing urban planning tool after the fair, after Moses' vision. In this way it anticipated the technology of a 3D city model, though in practice it was of limited utility. It did however, play a role in the defeat of Donald Trump's 1980s Television City proposal, as a model put on the panorama by activists demonstrated the relative size of the development. Additionally, the opening of the Panorama was set to coincide with the 300-year anniversary of the English takeover of New Amsterdam—which occurred in 1664—and highlight the city's growth over that period.

After the Fair closed, the Panorama remained open to the public, and Lester's team updated the map in 1967, 1968, and 1969.

Later history

After another update in 1974, very few changes were made until 1992, when again Lester Associates was hired to update the model to coincide with the re-opening of the museum, after a two-year total renovation of the building by Rafael Viñoly. The model makers changed over 60,000 structures to bring it up-to-date at that time. and there are now 895,000 structures total. The mechanical "helicopter" vehicles for conveying exhibition visitors were showing signs of wear, and were removed before the 1994 reopening. The current installation by Viñoly features accessible ramps and an elevated walkway which surround the Panorama, allowing viewers to proceed at their own pace, or to linger for as long a look as they desire. Because of space constraints, portions of the walkway are cantilevered over the outer edges of the map, but a glass floor still allows views of the model below. As in the original installation, tiny scale model airplanes take off and land at the model airport of LaGuardia Airport, mechanically guided by long wires.

In March 2009, the museum announced the intention to update the Panorama on an ongoing basis. To raise funds and draw public attention, the museum will allow individuals and developers to have accurate scale models made of buildings newer than the 1992 update created and added, in exchange for a donation of at least $50. More-detailed models of smaller apartment buildings and private homes, now represented by generic models, can also be added.

, the original Twin Towers of the World Trade Center are still on the map, even though some new buildings have been built on the actual site; the museum has chosen to allow the destroyed structures to remain until construction is complete, rather than representing the ongoing construction. The first new building to be added under the new program was the new Citi Field stadium of the New York Mets; the model of the old Shea Stadium was to be displayed elsewhere in the museum.