Panorama of the City of New York depicts New York City
Early history
Commissioned by Robert Moses as a celebration of the City's municipal infrastructure, this 9,335-square-foot (867.2 m2) 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 4 by 10 feet (1.2 m × 3.0 m) 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.