Queens Museum of Art

The New York City Building was built to house the New York City Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair, where it housed displays about municipal agencies. The building was centrally located, being directly adjacent to the great icons of the Fair, the Trylon and Perisphere, and it was one of the few buildings created for the Fair that were intended to be permanent. It is now the only surviving building from the 1939/40 Fair. After the World’s Fair, the building became a recreation center for the newly created Flushing Meadows Corona Park. The north side of the building, now the Queens Museum, housed a roller rink and the south side offered an ice rink. In 1972 the north side of the New York City Building was handed to the Queens Museum of Art (or as it was then known, the Queens Center for Art and Culture). Almost twenty years after it opened, the Museum undertook its first major renovation. In 1994, Rafael Viñoly significantly redesigned the existing space, creating some of the most dramatic exhibition galleries in New York. In the near future, the Museum will begin a second renovation; it will double in size by expanding into the south side of the New York City Building. The architects for this new expansion are Grimshaw/Ammann and Whitney.