"Where were you in '62?" No, this article isn't about the movie, American Graffiti. If you are old enough to have been around in 1962 at all, you might remember the Seattle World's Fair, aka the Century 21 Exposition. And if you were living in the Pacific Northwest, I can almost guarantee that you attended the Fair. The Fair is back in the news again because it has been sixty years (and a few days) since the Fair opened on April 21, 1962. It ran for six glorious months, closing on October 21. You can read all about it in a big, beautiful book that we have in Plymouth Library (The future remembered : the 1962 Seattle World's Fair and its legacy by Paula Becker (979.7772 BEC)) or an article in the PacificNW section of The Seattle Times for April 17, but today, I am sharing my memories. I would love to hear yours, too.
The world came to Seattle, and I basked in the cosmopolitan atmosphere. If you look at the photos that my great-aunt took, you can see that going to the Fair (I always think of it as the Fair with a capital F) was a special event. Everyone dressed up. There is my grandma in her suit and hat in the first picture. (Of course, she dressed up to drag her little trolley down to the Madison Park IGA every week for her grocery outing.) Autres temps, autres moeurs as they say in France. Oh, and about France - the French exhibit featured a sort of New Wave-ish film that impressed me no end. Then there was a Danish restaurant with smorrebrod (open-faced Danish sandwiches), the popular Belgian Waffle House, and more international cuisine. On the subject of both food and fashion, Heinz had a display where they gave out highly covetable green plastic, dill pickle pins. I still have mine, but haven't worn it for maybe fifty-nine years. I also have my Century 21 charm bracelet which I probably wore on the last Saturday that the Fair was open, along with my turquoise and white jacquard knit suit with a straight skirt and bolero jacket. I wore it with a turquoise shirt and white gloves. My friends were similarly decked out. Pat and I had taken the bus downtown and then gotten the monorail for the rest of the trip. We met Verlaine at the Spanish exhibit where we bought bull fighting posters. Verlaine wanted to be a bull fighter, but settled for a different type of battle as an attorney. We listened to a man playing flamenco music and felt so grown up to be on our own at the Fair. We also strolled through a fashion exhibit where there was a fountain of perfume.
I've covered food and fashion. What about culture? My mother took me to see the New York City Ballet (A Midsummer Night's Dream) and the San Francisco Ballet (House of Cards) at the Opera House, but there were so many other opportunities to soak up culture. What about science? I was impressed by the Univac computer in the American Library Association's exhibit which printed out a booklist for me, tailored to my reading tastes, thus combining science and culture in one exhibit. And I was very excited that my father worked at The United States Science Exhibit in what is now the Pacific Science Center. According to Wikipedia, the exhibit "began with Charles Eames' 10-minute short film The House of Science, followed by an exhibit on the development of science, ranging from mathematics and astronomy to atomic science and genetics. The Spacearium held up to 750 people at a time for a simulated voyage first through the Solar System and then through the Milky Way Galaxy and beyond." My father was one of the projectionists who ran the Eames Theater and the Spacearium. They both used groundbreaking technology and my father was honored to be involved with the Fair. He continued to work at the Science Center for a number of years after the Fair closed.
The Seattle World's Fair left a remarkable legacy to the city and wonderful memories for me and maybe you, too.
The future remembered : the 1962 Seattle World's Fair and its legacy / Becker, Paula. 979.7772 BEC