General Motors Futurama – The 1964-65 NYWF-Trek Connection

GM tagline for the Futurama – “If you’ve only seen it once, you haven’t seen it all”. I went a hundred times, and never saw it all!

While trolling through the General Motors image archive, I came across shot of the architectural model of the GM Futurama. I just about wet my pants. I’m a huge ’64-’65 N.Y. World’s Fair fan, and a student of it’s design impact on Star Trek. We used the Futurama as inspiration for Starfleet HQ in San Francisco. “Venture Brothers” fans will also recognize it as the Venture Industries building. What a sleek work of genius! For more on the NYWF and it’s influence on Star Trek check out these drex files links -

http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/starfleet-command-building-san-francisco/

http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/days-of-future-past-the-treknywf-connection/

http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/starfleet-command-building-san-francisco/

Starfleet Command – 1964 NYWF Connection

A gorgeous shot of some of the best 60′s googie architecture ever. The DS9 Starfleet Command building in the foreground, it’s sail framing the iconic Starbase Eleven towers in the distance. the date is 1964, so folks are reading about Moon Maid and Dick Tracy in the Sunday paper before heading off to be amazed that sunny day at the  New York World’s Fair.

Something fun to look at while I prepare today’s entry about Bob Justman. I’m being a bit self indulgent with it, so expect it to post later today!

The Ford Pavilion

Another futuristic 1964 NY World’s Fair building that has been used numerous times to populate Starfleet facilities. It’s seen in the opening of the Directors cut of ST: TMP.

Starfleet Command Building – San Francisco

An impressive architectural model of the GM Pavilion from the ’64 NY World’s Fair, the inspiration for the main building at Starfleet Command in the San Francisco Presidio.

Starbase 11

In my mind it always was Starbase 11.

NYS Pavilion – ’64 NY World’s Fair.

Connections – The 1964 NY World’s Fair

The General Motors pavilion at the ’64 NY World’s Fairwas a nexus of sci fi extrapolation influencing the look of science fiction films, and in particular Star Trek, to the present day. As a kid on the loose at the fair, I helped myself to all the printed material that I could carry. Some of it ended up on the wall of the Trek art department as a source of inspiration three decades later. The Fair was a major influence on original Trek art director Matt Jefferies, and it continued to be for us as well.

The original blog entry on the Fair’s influence on Star trek can be found here -  http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/days-of-future-past-the-treknywf-connection/

(Below) Promotional flyer for the General Motors pavilion at the NYWF. The GM sail was the inspiration for Starfleet HQ in San Francisco, as seen in the DS9 episode “Homefront”.

Days of Future Past – The Trek\NYWF Connection

Twice a week  and for two summers, impressionable eleven year old Doug Drexler was dropped off by his Dad at the front gate of the world of tomorrow. It did not neccessitate a slingshot around the sun, nor did it call for call for Mr. Atoz and his Atavachron.  The lad’s awe inspiring and futuristic destination was not some far flung decade,  but then and there in 1964. It rose from the most unlikely of places… a landfill in Flushing Meadow. It was the  New York World’s Fair, and it was the proverbial world of tomorrow. It would impress him to the core.

As Spock observed, time could be perceived as a river, with eddies and backwashes. Someone else was washed up onto that shore, and our paths undoubtedly crossed at the jetting waters of the iconic Unisphere,  or trekked side by side along the undulating Kodak Moon Deck, or stood in line at Ford’s Magic Skyway. My fellow time traveller was Walter “Matt” Jefferies…  aviator, illustrator, art director, and he would become one of the most important artistic influences in my life.

The 1964-65 New York World’s Fair was the largest international exhibition ever buit in the United States, and it was all about THE FUTURE. Never before, and never again would there be such an amazing conglomeration of optimistic, sci-fi, wet dream, futurism in one place. Matt Jefferies absorbed it all with intense fascination. And so the New York World’s Fair was the birthplace of the Star Trek design ethic. I would never be the same because of it… and although you probably were never there, and most likely never heard of it, neither would you…