I either wrote material for these books, supplied photos, or was interviewed by the authors. All descriptions are from Amazon.com unless otherwise noted. Links are provided for ordering those available on Amazon.
This page only lists my world's fair-related projects. For more details on my other work please visit my site billcotter.com.
The World’s Fair was held in 1982 for 184 days from May 1, until the wee hours of the morning, Halloween, October 31. It has been called One Big Party. Reports at the time referred to when “The World Came to Knoxville”. It was defined an official international exposition, fully licensed and sanctioned by the Bureau des Expositions Internationales in Paris, France. It was the first fair held in the southeastern United States in 97 years, and it turned out to be the next to last fair held, with the fair held in New Orleans in 1984 being the last one.
I contributed a photograph of the park built on the former Fair site.
Explore the world of the Ankylosaurus, a plant loving dinosaur that walked this planet over 65 million years ago! From its club tail to its armored body, find out what made this ancient lizard thrive in the Cretaceous Period.
I contributed a photo of the ankylosarus at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair.
When Claire loses her favorite bear, Benny, at the World’s Fair, she finds what truly matters. Throughout the vibrant, artful, and heartwarming comic book story, readers will find facts about the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair.
This is a really cute children's book set at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair. I love the story and the artwork. I contributed photos for reference and for a collage of images.
Claude Coats: Walt Disney’s Imagineer—The Making of Disneyland: From Toad Hall to the Haunted Mansion and Beyond is the story of artist and designer Claude Coats who, for more than half a century, was one of the most prolific creative talents at The Walt Disney Company and, arguably, the most accomplished. An unpretentious man of strapping stature, Claude was the artist behind some of the stunning backgrounds produced at the Disney studio during the Golden Age of animation before becoming one of the founding members, handed-picked by Walt Disney, to start the fabled WED Enterprises—now known as Walt Disney Imagineering. Working side by side with Walt Disney, Claude Coats is considered a significant influence in creating the first theme park, Disneyland, and a new form of creativity called Imagineering. He forever changed the worlds of global entertainment, technology, architecture, and popular culture.
I contributed several photos from the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.
Designing Pan-America presents the first examination of the architectural expressions of Pan-Americanism. Concentrating on U.S. architects and their clients, Robert Alexander González demonstrates how they proposed designs reflecting U.S. presumptions and projections about the relationship between the United States and Latin America. This forgotten chapter of American architecture unfolds over the course of a number of international expositions, ranging from the North, Central, and South American Exposition of 1885-1886 in New Orleans to Miami's unrealized Interama fair and San Antonio's HemisFair '68 and encompassing the Pan American Union headquarters building in Washington, D.C. and the creation of the Columbus Memorial Lighthouse in the Dominican Republic.
I supplied a picture of the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair.
This history of Expo 58 was released in the Netherlands and thus is written in Dutch. Here's a translation of one description:
Fifty years ago housed the Brussels Expo'58, the first post-war world exhibition. Despite the cold war organizers have tried to be as optimistic picture of the can in the field of contemporary art, science, art and culture This image was deliberately chosen to contribute to a better and more humane world. The optimistic modernism was reflected in the architecture of many pavilions. The Dutch pavilion with the theme "water" was at the end as number six on the list of most visited sections. This book gives special attention to this Dutch contribution to the Expo.
I contributed photos of Expo 58. The book sure makes me wish I could read Dutch.
From April to October in 1964 and 1965, some 52 million people from around the world flocked to the New York World's Fair, an experience that lives on in the memory of many individuals and in America's collective consciousness. Lawrence R. Samuel offers a thought-provoking portrait of this seminal event and of the cultural climate that surrounded it, countering critics' assessment of the Fair as the "ugly duckling" of global expositions. Although much attention has been paid to the controversial role of Fair president Robert Moses, who tried to use the event to ensure his personal legacy, the Fair itself was for the great majority of visitors an overwhelmingly positive, often inspirational, and sometimes transcendent experience that truly delivered on its theme of "peace through understanding." Much of the Fair's popularity, Samuel suggests, stemmed from its looking backward as much as forward, offering visitors sanctuary from the cultural storm that was rapidly approaching in the mid-1960s. Opening just five months after President Kennedy's assassination, the Fair allowed millions to celebrate international brotherhood while the conflict in Vietnam came to a boil. The Fair glorified the postwar American dream of limitless optimism just as a counterculture of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll was coming into being. It was, in short, the last gasp of the American Dream: The End of the Innocence.
I contributed all of the photographs used in this extensive look at the Fair.
Focusing on the golden era of world's fairs, from the 1930s to the 1970s, this book offers a nostalgic glimpse of the future in vintage photographs, postcards, previously unpublished memorabilia, and drawings of pavilions, created by such designers and architects as Buckminster Fuller, Norman Bel Geddes, Kisho Kurokawa, and Le Corbusier. Innovative, informative, and entertaining, this souvenir of yesterday's tomorrow is a superb tour of the achievements of avant-garde architecture and design.
I contributed a photograph of the United States Science Center from the 1962 World's Fair.
This Japanese language book features 100 essays on different world's fairs and expos.
I contributed five photographs from the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair. Sadly I can't read Japanese so I can't comment on the rest of the book but at 417 pages it seems quite detailed.
Originally built as a Ferris wheel for the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, the Uniroyal Giant Tire sits adjacent to I-94 in Allen Park, Mich., and welcomes over 100,000 motorists to the Motor City every day. Much of this beloved landmark's history has been lost over time. With interviews from those that were there in the beginning, newly uncovered information, and never before seen photographs, historian Steven J. Frey separates truth from legend, and literally gives us an inside look at the life of America's most iconic roadside landmark and the most successful single marketing object ever made.
I contributed a number of photos and other material.
Crafted from the 35 + year collection of industry aficionado Jeremy Kennedy, comes one of the most fascinating publications to ever spotlight Amusement Ride’s second golden age. Coasters, kiddies, verticals, wheels, transports, splashers, flats, virtual rides, and even skyscrapers are all celebrated in this magnificent retrospective of press releases, theme park public relations materials, travel brochures, and ride manufacturer promotional profiles. From the popular to the peculiar, Hang on Tight! leaves no story untold.
I contributed a photo of the AMF Monorail at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair.
The New York State Pavilion is a legacy of the 19641965 New York Worlds Fair. It is located in the southwest corner of Flushing Meadow Corona Park, where the Long Island Expressway crosses over the Grand Central Parkway. From these freeways alone, the pavilion is seen by hundreds of thousands of motorists per day and is a symbol of the Empire State, the Eiffel Tower of Queens. From the observation towers that offer spectacular views of Queens and beyond; to the expansive Tent of Tomorrow, which showcased the worlds largest map (of New York State); to the stunning Queens Theatre in the Park, New York State Pavilion is an insightful look at this iconic landmark, with many spectacular historic color photographs, published here for the first time.
In 1958, Swiss-French architect and urban planner Le Corbusier designed the Philips Pavilion for the World's Fair in Brussels. It is the only building the artist produced for a Dutch client. The unconventional pavilion was the setting for the experimental performance "Le Poème électronique," by avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse, seen by one and a half million visitors. Combining film, color, music and light, this event is regarded as the first multimedia performance for the general public. After its demolition in 1959, the pavilion became an icon of 20th-century art. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam hosts a scale model of the pavilion and also provides the eight-minute soundtrack of "Le Poème électronique." EYE Filmmuseum, also in Amsterdam, has kept the film footage of the performance. This monograph includes a complete overview of the Philips Pavilion, including its history, construction and detailed documentation of "Le Poème électronique."
James Rosenquist's paintings, with their billboard-sized images of commercial subjects, are utterly emblematic of 1960s Pop Art. Their provocative imagery also touches on some of the major political and historical events of that turbulent decade--from the Kennedy assassination to the war in Vietnam. In the first full-length scholarly examination of Rosenquist's art from that period, Michael Lobel weaves together close visual analysis, a wealth of archival research, and a consideration of the social and historical contexts in which these paintings were produced to offer bold new readings of a body of work that helped redefine art in the 1960s. Bringing together a range of approaches, James Rosenquist provides a compelling perspective on the artist and on the burgeoning consumer culture of postwar America.
I provided research and photos for the chapter on Rosenquist's work at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.
John Chamberlain rose to prominence in the late 1950s with energetic, vibrant sculptures hewn from disused car parts, achieving a three-dimensional form of Abstract Expressionism that astounded critics and captured the imaginations of fellow artists. For a seven-year period in the mid-1960s, the artist abandoned automotive metal and turned to other materials. Motivated by scientific curiosity, Chamberlain produced sculptures in unorthodox media, such as urethene foam, galvanized steel, paper bags, mineral-coated Plexiglas and aluminum foil.
I contributed a photo of an untitled work by Chamberlain that was part of the New York State Pavilion Theaterama art exhibit at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.
This volume marks the first publication of the audio recordings kept by the German art historian Heinrich Klotz. These journal-like records chronicle the eventful years before and after the founding of the Deutsches Architekurmuseum in Frankfurt in 1984, where Klotz served as the first director, and which is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this summer. Klotz’s trenchant and idiosyncratic depictions of the major events and figures of European and American architecture in the late 1970s and early 1980s have an almost "behind the scenes" feel to them. In singular fashion, these records illuminate the evolution of the postmodern movement in architecture. ...
I contributed a photo of the Wonderwall from the 1984 New Orleans World's Fair.
In 2001, when graphic designer Paul Sahre rented a summer home in Montauk, his retreat turned out to be a relic: it was one of only 200 or so cookie-cutter beach houses built in the mid-1960s as part of the Leisurama housing project. Sold by Macy's, Leisurama homes were both affordable and all-inclusive; their boxy, simply designed interiors came fully furnished and accessorized -- all buyers needed were 'groceries and a key.' The houses were immensely popular but ultimately unprofitable, and thus sadly short-lived. Sahre's fascinating study of Leisurama's brand identity, marketing effort, and mid-century modern design presents a passionately visual and contextually dense study. All told, it's a revelatory history of how prefab became fabulous.
I contributed several photographs of the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair. Some of my material was also used in a film about Leisurama.
The Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) is the oldest railroad in the country still operating under its original name. It is the busiest railroad in North America, with 90 million annual riders on 735 trains covering 11 different branches. The Port Washington Branch carries 14 million riders annually and is the third-busiest branch on the LIRR, behind the Port Jefferson Branch (19 million riders) and the Babylon Branch (18 million riders). Port Washington Branch trains converge with the main line just east of Woodside Station. The branch has been electrified since 1913 and is double-track to a point just east of Great Neck Station. The highest bridge on the railroad is the Manhasset Viaduct, which goes over Manhasset Bay. The branch has serviced the 1939 New York World's Fair and the 1964 New York World's Fair as well as the stadium of the New York Mets baseball team. The Whitestone Branch, which was abandoned in 1932, diverted from the Port Washington Branch at a point a bit east of the current Mets-Willets Point station.
I contributed four photographs of the LIRR exhibits at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.
Since 2007, American photographer Jade Doskow has been documenting the remains of World’s Fair sites, once iconic global attractions that have often been repurposed for less noble aspirations or neglected and fallen into decay. Lost Utopias brings together the substantial body of work that Doskow has completed over the past decade, including iconic monuments such as the Seattle Space Needle, the Eiffel Tower, Brussels’ Palais des Expositions and New York’s Unisphere.
I contributed a photograph of the New York State Pavilion at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.
Award-winning filmmaker Pete Docter and veteran Walt Disney Imagineer Christopher Merritt share a deluxe two-book slip-cased set celebrating Disney Legend Marc Davis. The hefty volumes showcase Marc's mostly unseen Disney theme park concept art and offer a unique behind-the-scenes view as told through Marc's own words.
I contributed several photographs of the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair, Disneyland, and Walt Disney World.
Fueled by a dissatisfaction with existing architectural solutions and an infusion of pop culture, art and rebellion, utopian urban proposals from the 1960s, such as Archigram's Plug-in City, Yona Friedman's La Ville Spatiale and New Babylon by former CoBrA painter, Constant, constitute a template for the concept of the megastructure-a city encased in one large structure or series of structures. Megastructure Reloaded posits the megastructure as a fix for contemporary urban architectural problems. The key figures of this resurgence--a group of architects and artists including Jose Davila, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Ryan Gander, Erik Goengrich, Franka Hörnschemeyer, Victor Nieuwenhuijs & Maartje Seyferth, Tobias Putrih, Tomas Saraceno, Katrin Sigurdardottir and Tilman Wendland--are detailed in this volume through texts and images. Soviet peripheral cities are discussed for their historical precedent and contextualized through ironic responses to them by radical architecture collectives such as Superstudio and Archizoom. The volume is rounded out with texts on Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Lucio Costa and the planned cities of Chandigarh and Brasilia, as well as a theoretical section on megastructures and megacities. This volume is published in concert with an extensive European traveling exhibition and a series of symposia and workshops.
I contributed a photo of Expo 67 in Montreal.
When Lee Iacoca brought his Fairlane Committee together in 1962 to explore the possibilities of a new kind of car for young, forward-thinking families, no one could have predicted quite how successful this car would eventually be. Finding a styling void in the swiftly growing baby boomer market, Ford hit a marketing bullseye with the Mustang--a four-seat, sporty "pony car" perfect for the times. In the first two years of its production, more than a million Mustangs were built--redefining the Ford brand and becoming the company's most popular car since the Model T. Based on extensive research and interviews with Mustang team members, including Lee Iacocca, management and factory employees, this book tells the fascinating story of how a clandestine group at Ford created one of the most iconic car designs in history.
I supplied pictures of the Ford Pavilion from the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.
New York Mid-Century is the story of how the postwar Big Apple emerged as the cultural capital of the world. Annie Cohen-Solal brings alive the influential critics and patrons, the legendary galleries, and the artists themselves. Paul Goldberger presents the modernist architectural masterpieces that created the city’s sleek new profile, highlighting both public and private spaces. Robert Gottlieb invites us to relive the heyday of the musical, explore the great jazz clubs of Harlem, and peek into the inventive studios of the dance world. Richly illustrated with art, photographs, and ephemera, this volume is a stirring collection of a remarkably fertile period in the city’s history.
I supplied a picture of the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.
In this fascinating analysis, Cher Krause Knight peels back the actual and contextual layers of Walt Disney’s inspiration and vision for Disney World in central Florida, exploring the reasons why the resort has emerged as such a prominent sociocultural force.
Knight investigates every detail, from the scale and design of the buildings to the sidewalk infrastructure to which items could and could not be sold in the shops, discussing how each was carefully configured to shape the experience of every visitor. Expertly weaving themes of pilgrimage, paradise, fantasy, and urbanism, she delves into the unexpected nuances and contradictions of this elaborately conceived playland of the imagination.
I supplied a picture from the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.
As today's valued examples of modern architecture age to the point that preservation is called for, the methods and technology used in such preservation must be carefully considered so that the design integrity of the building is maintained. Written by the president of an organization committed to the documentation and preservation of modern architecture, this book outlines best practices for undertaking such efforts and addresses the latest technological advances in the field. Containing relevant case studies of preservation projects in the United States and in Europe, this is the only professional reference for architects dedicated specifically to the subject of preserving modern architecture.
I supplied pictures from the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.
The borough of Queens has seen many historical and geographical changes. Marshlands, woods and farms gave way to factories, thriving communities and the nation’s premier arterial highway system. Queens, the latest offering in Arcadia Publishing’s Then & Now series, by Jason D. Antos, a lifelong resident of Queens and the author of two other local history books about the borough, Whitestone and Shea Stadium, offers a rare look at New York City’s largest borough, featuring many photographs never published until now.
I supplied a picture from the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.
Expo 67, in its utopian aspirations, invited artists to create the world anew. What distinguished Montreal's exhibition from previous world fairs were its dramatic displays of film and media, transformed into urban and futuristic architectures. Reimagining Cinema explores the innovations that film and media artists offered Expo audiences and presents extensive visual material to reconstruct the viewer's experience. At the pinnacle of a new global humanism, cinema was expanded beyond the frame into total environments, multi-screens, multi-image and 360-degree immersion - experiments often seen as a harbinger of the digital age. Taking this expanded cinema as a starting point, the contributors focus on eight screen experiments, and employ innovative methodologies to reveal the intricacies and processes of production, while including factual descriptions, interpretive essays, interviews, and image dossiers. The book reflects how the Expo 67 film-events were encountered as creative experimentations that resonated with broader 1960s arts and culture, and as institutional collaborations with artists. More displays of photographic, cinematic, and telematic technology were experienced at Expo 67 than in any other previous world exposition. Reimagining Cinema captures the complexity and imaginative fervour of this exciting period in film history.
I contributed three photos to this in-depth look at the innovative films that were so popular at Expo 67.
The follow-up to his critically acclaimed book A-frame, Chad Randl's Revolving Architecture: A History of Buildings that Rotate, Swivel, and Pivot explores the history of this unique building type, investigating the cultural forces that have driven people to design and inhabit them. Revolving Architecture is packed with a variety of fantastic revolving structures such as a jail that kept inmates under a warden's constant surveillance, glamorous revolving restaurants, tuberculosis treatment wards, houses, theaters, and even a contemporary residential building whose full-floor apartments circle independently of each other. International examples from the late 1800s though the present demonstrate the variety and innovation of these dynamic structures.
I supplied pictures from the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.
Part travelogue, part scavenger hunt, Right Palm Up, Left Palm Down: The Log of a Cross-Country Scavenger Hunt is a humorous account of one man's cross-country quest to unravel the mysteries surrounding a type of 20-foot-tall fiberglass statue popularly, though misleadingly, known as the Muffler Man. Who made them, and when? How many were made, and for what purpose? How many are still out there?
I supplied a picture and information on the Paul Bunyan statue at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.
This book goes back ninety years and recounts a series of exploits by Salvadoran immigrants who have contributed art, solidarity, education, technology, creativity, hard work and sacrifice in the Big Apple and its suburbs. A starting point for new and future transnational generations to question where they come from and build positive bridges based on dialogue and understanding.
I supplied pictures of the Centralamerica and Panama pavilion at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.
Knoxville's Sunsphere is the iconic tower built as the theme structure for the 1982 World's Fair held in Knoxville, Tennessee. This new book is the author's second editiion containing the history and happenings in one of the South's most famous buildings. It is an excellent source of study for historians and students of all ages.
I supplied several photographs of the Sunsphere and the park built after the Fair closed.
Catalogue of the TECHNOSCAPE exhibition, held at MAXXI in Autumn 2022, focusing on the relationship between artistic and scientific disciplines, nowadays closer than ever, and the consequent contacts between technique, creativity and social awareness.
Architecture, engineering and science have overlapped on numerous occasions during the 20th century. First in the heroic phase and then in the mature phase of the reinforced concrete, then with the affirmation of hi-tech construction methods in the 1970s and 1980s and finally with the eruption of digitally controlled technologies.
TECHNOSCAPE explores this alliance, responding to MAXXI’s mission to look towards the future of our planet and the disciplines that modify its spaces.
The volume follows the dual register of the exhibition, first dealing with how technology is making architecture, urban planning and other related disciplines more aware of their technical and scientific responsibility and capable of opening up new lines of research. The focus shifts then to structural engineering, comparing current masterpieces with previous historical modernist examples.
I supplied two photographs from Expo '70.
Motivated by potentially turning Flushing Meadows, literally a land of refuse, into his greatest public park, Robert Moses--New York's "Master Builder"--brought the World’s Fair to the Big Apple for 1964 and ’65. Though considered a financial failure, the 1964-65 World’s Fair was a Sixties flashpoint in areas from politics to pop culture, technology to urban planning, and civil rights to violent crime.
In an epic narrative, Tomorrow-Land shows the astonishing pivots taken by New York City, America, and the world during the Fair. It fetched Disney’s empire from California and Michelangelo’s La Pieta from Europe; and displayed flickers of innovation from Ford, GM, and NASA--from undersea and outerspace colonies to personal computers. It housed the controversial work of Warhol (until Governor Rockefeller had it removed); and lured Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Meanwhile, the Fair--and its house band, Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians--sat in the musical shadows of the Beatles and Bob Dylan, who changed rock-and-roll right there in Queens. And as Southern civil rights efforts turned deadly, and violent protests also occurred in and around the Fair, Harlem-based Malcolm X predicted a frightening future of inner-city racial conflict.
I supplied pictures of the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair and am quoted in the book.
Former Cosmopolitan executive editor Mauro tries to underscore the irony of the 1939–1940 New York World's Fair, with its theme of world unity, opening on the brink of world war. But Mauro has multiple narratives, moving erratically between the evolution of the fair, with its slogan Building the World of Tomorrow; war brewing in Europe; and Germany gobbling up territory (Hitler refused the invitation to have a pavilion at the fair). As, one by one, European nations closed their pavilions, due to the war, the fair's theme rang increasingly hollow. During the fair's run, Einstein famously wrote to President Roosevelt expressing concern over Germany's stockpiling of uranium, giving rise to the Manhattan Project. To this unwieldy narrative Mauro adds the story of two NYPD bomb squad detectives killed when a bomb detonated on the fairgrounds on July 4, 1940.
I supplied pictures of the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair.
The theme center of the 1964-1965 World’s Fair ‘Unisphere’ was installed April 1963 in Flushing Meadows Park, Queens, New York. Unisphere was preliminarily designed by architect Gilmore Clarke with a developed structural engineering design by industrial designers at Peter Muller-Munk Associates and engineers at American Bridge Company. The 140 feet high, 900,000 pound stainless steel behemoth is one of the largest representations of Earth on the Earth. Unisphere has stood for fifty years as both a representation of the dawn of the space age, and as a lasting relic of one of the greatest of the World’s Fairs. - lulu.com
I supplied pictures and editorial assistance. I highly recommend this book to World's Fair fans.
Set at the iconic 1939 New York World’s Fair, Susie Orman Schnall's "We Came Here to Shine" is historical fiction featuring two bold and ambitious women who navigate a world of possibility and find out what they're truly made of during a glorious summer of spectacle and potential.
I supplied several atmosphere photos and reference material from the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair.
The post–World War II science-based technological revolution inevitably found its way into almost all international expositions with displays on atomic energy, space exploration, transportation, communications, and computers. Major advancements in Cold War science and technology helped to shape new visions of utopian futures, the stock-in-trade of world’s fairs. From the 1940s to the 1980s, expositions in the United States and around the world, from Brussels to Osaka to Brisbane, mirrored Cold War culture in a variety of ways, and also played an active role in shaping it. This volume illustrates the cultural change and strain spurred by the Cold War, a disruptive period of scientific and technological progress that ignited growing concern over the impact of such progress on the environment and humanistic and spiritual values. Through the lens of world’s fairs, contributors across disciplines offer an integrated exploration of the US–USSR rivalry from a global perspective and in the context of broader social and cultural phenomena—faith and religion, gender and family relations, urbanization and urban planning, fashion, modernization, and national identity—all of which were fundamentally reshaped by tensions and anxieties of the Atomic Age.
I supplied reference material and photographs.
