Terrace on the Park
52-11 111th Street | also 52-01 111th Street, 56-01 Grand Central Parkway | Flushing Meadows-Corona Park | built 1964
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1963
The Port Authority's heliport pavilion opens as the first finished building at the World's Fair site
The Port of New York Authority built this exhibition hall, restaurant and rooftop heliport for the 1964 World's Fair, and it opened on October 16, 1963, months before the fair itself, as the first structure completed on the grounds. The day before, the building had hosted its first event, a Travelers Aid Society of New York party. Its Top of the Fair restaurant took diners even as work continued across the rest of the grounds.
“The Port Authority Building opened on October 16, 1963, with a ceremony attended by hundreds of people; it was the first completed structure on the World's Fair site.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1963
Port Authority designers lift the pavilion on four 120-foot stilts shaped like the letter T
Allan Gordon Lorimer, the chief architect, worked with engineers Ray Monti and John Kyle and planner E. Donald Mills to set the building on four stilts 120 feet tall, one in the middle of each side, so every elevation reads as a "T" for transportation. The stilts carry stairs and elevators and are tied together at the top by girders. U.S. Steel's American Bridge Company fabricated the frame, and a helicopter landing pad originally covered the roof.
“The stilts are placed at the center of each of the building's elevations, giving the structure a "T" shape when viewed from the side; the shape stood for the word "transportation".”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1964
The pricey Top of the Fair restaurant files for bankruptcy during the fair's first season
Diners at Top of the Fair paid the fair's admission fee, typical dinners of $5 to $7.50, and another $1 just to get a menu, while the only coffee served was Chase and Sanborn instant. Craig Claiborne of The New York Times found the food mostly French with some Greek dishes. After complaints about slow service and high prices, the restaurant sought bankruptcy protection in August 1964, and Restaurant Associates took it over in March 1965.
“Visitors had to pay another $1 to get a menu... The restaurant served only one type of coffee: an instant coffee brand made by Chase and Sanborn.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1964
Fairgoers can fly by helicopter from the pavilion's roof to JFK, Newark and lower Manhattan
New York Airways began flights from the rooftop heliport a few days after the fair opened in April 1964, delayed by bad weather. Helicopters ran to JFK and Newark airports and the Downtown Manhattan Heliport, and a six-minute sightseeing hop over the fairground cost up to $6.50. That June a deal with Trans World Airlines added service to the TWA Flight Center at JFK; at first 800 to 900 passengers flew each day.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1965
The Beatles land on the pavilion's roof by helicopter on the way to Shea Stadium
The rooftop heliport drew famous passengers. Princess Benedikte of Denmark used it, and in August 1965 the Beatles' helicopter set down on the roof before their concert at nearby Shea Stadium. After the fair closed that October, the Port Authority offered money to tear the building down, but Robert Moses refused and it was kept.
“The heliport's patrons included Princess Benedikte of Denmark, as well as rock band The Beatles, whose helicopter landed there prior to their August 1965 concert at Shea Stadium.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1969
Continental Hosts reopen the empty pavilion as Terrace on the Park, a hall for weddings and proms
After sitting unused, the building was taken over in 1969 by the concessionaire Continental Hosts, which renamed it Terrace on the Park and split the old restaurant into smaller banquet rooms, adding a ballroom called the Penthouse on the former heliport. It became a venue for weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs and proms; one boy rode a baby elephant into a ballroom for his bar mitzvah. In the 1970s the singer Madonna ran one of its elevators, and the actress Fran Drescher was married there.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1979
The banquet hall's operator agrees to install utility meters after the city paid its power bills for years
Because separate utility meters were never installed after the World's Fair, the city had unknowingly covered the building's electricity for several years. Faced with a threatened $1.7 million lawsuit, operator Lewin agreed in 1979 to put in electric and gas meters. The dispute nearly cost the family its concession and was settled only in 1985, when they agreed to pay the city $1 million in exchange for a lease running to 1993.
“…the city paid for the building's electricity for several years without realizing it. Lewin agreed to install electric and gas meters in 1979…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2017
Terrace on the Park finishes a $9 million renovation
George Makkos and Jimmy Kaloidis of the Crystal Ball Group had run the hall since the late 1990s, and when their lease neared its end in 2013 they sought to renovate it. The $9 million project was finished in September 2017; the old cocktail lounge below the ballroom became a promenade with two 200-seat suites. The company pays the Parks Department 20 percent of gross receipts or $2.5 million a year, whichever is larger.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Terrace on the ParkWikipedia
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All 12 buildings with stories in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park