6 Stunning Landmarks Left Over From World’s Fairs

The theme of the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal was “Man and His World,” and fair organizers tapped the young Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie to build a futuristic housing complex to fit the fair’s utopian vision. Safdie’s creation, Habitat ‘67, still has the power to move and inspire, decades later.  

 "I think it's incredible that Habitat ‘67 was built by Moshe Safdie when he was so young—in his early 20s—and that people now live in something that was constructed for a World's Fair,” says photographer Jade Doskow, who photographed nearly all of the World’s Fair sites for her exhibition Lost Utopias. 

Safdie’s innovative idea was to build an entire urban apartment complex out of prefabricated concrete units of different sizes—from 600-square-foot one-bedroom apartments to 1,800-square-foot four-bedroom units. The modular design allowed Safdie to stack and arrange the units like a set of massive toy blocks. Each modern living space has its own rooftop garden and sweeping views of the St. Lawrence River.  

When Habitat ‘67 debuted at the 1967 expo, it was heralded as a work of architectural genius. Habitat ‘67 was supposed to be the first of many modular housing complexes Safdie was going to build in cities like New York and Jerusalem, but it remains the only one ever completed.  

Today, Habitat ‘67 is prized real estate in Montreal, where 1-cube units sell for nearly $400,000 and luxurious 3-cube units cost more than $1 million.  

When the World’s Fair in Seattle was first announced, the global gathering was heralded as a “Festival of the West,” but after the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik into orbit in 1957, the fair’s theme was hastily switched to the “Age of Space.”  

“Starting with the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958, every fair site had these ‘space race’ ambitions,” says Doskow. 

The Space Needle, now the most recognizable landmark in Seattle, began as a doodle on a cocktail napkin. Edward Carlson, a hotel executive and fair organizer, was inspired by a radio tower he saw in Stuttgart, Germany, that was topped with a restaurant. He sketched a crude drawing of a circle on a pole and handed it to a team of Seattle architects.  

The Space Needle was built in just 400 days and required 74,000 bolts. When it opened in 1962, the “Eye of the Needle” restaurant was the highest in the world at 502 feet. The total height of the Space Needle is 605 feet from the ground to the tip of its antenna.  

More than 2.6 million people visited the Space Needle during the 1962 World’s Fair and the quickly constructed tower cemented its place in the Seattle skyline.  

“The fact that this temporary event—World’s Fairs are usually six months or a year—would leave behind this icon of Seattle is very cool,” says Doskow.  

Visitors to Nashville, Tennessee have a glorious surprise awaiting them in the heart of Centennial Park: a full-size replica of the Parthenon, the famous temple lying in ruins atop the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.  

"I love that there is a Parthenon in Nashville that's in better condition than the actual Parthenon,” says Doskow.  

Why is there a perfect recreation of an ancient Greek temple in Tennessee? Because in the 19th century, Nashville was known as the “Athens of the South” (for its focus on Classical education, apparently) and the organizers of the 1897 fair went all-in on the Greek theme.  

Nashville’s Parthenon was supposed to be temporary. Although built to exacting specifications, the impressive building’s exterior was made entirely of plaster and the interior was left empty to serve as the fair’s main exhibition hall.  

In 1920, after repeated attempts to patch holes in the plaster, the city was ready to tear down the Parthenon, but the citizens of Nashville “rallied to have it made into a permanent part of the city,” says Doskow.  

The plaster was replaced with reinforced concrete and local sculptors were hired to make stone replicas of the Parthenon’s original frieze and pediments. Nashville’s Park Board even bought the original plaster casts of the Parthenon’s marble statuary from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for maximum accuracy.  

Nashville's Parthenon project was completed in stages, always paid for by local fundraising efforts. It wasn’t until 2002 that the monumental statue of Athena was given her gilded coating and the Parthenon was finally finished.  

Today, the Nashville Parthenon houses an art museum and is a monument to the city’s persistence and quirky charm.  

In the run-up to the 1915 World’s Fair, both San Francisco and San Diego, California, campaigned to host the international exhibition. San Francisco was awarded the honor, because the city had recently rebuilt after the catastrophic 1906 earthquake and fire.  

“But San Diego, which often felt like San Francisco’s younger sibling, still wanted to have its own fair,” says Doskow, “so they did it anyway.”  

The dueling California fairs of 1915 left behind distinctly different landmarks. In San Francisco, the only surviving structure is the Palace of Fine Arts, built in the Neoclassical style popular in its day. But San Diego’s World’s Fair led to the creation of Balboa Park as the cultural heart of the city and forged an architectural style all its own.  

The California Tower and California Building (now the Museum of Us), both designed by the architect Bertram Goodhue for the 1915 World’s Fair, fused Spanish-colonial architecture with colorful Moorish and Mexican tilework to create a “look” that was uniquely San Diegan.  

Along with the stately Plaza de California, the California Tower and California Building served as the eye-catching entryway into the 1915 fair and firmly established San Diego “as a serious urban center to be reckoned with,” says Doskow.  

The 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels, Belgium, was the first World’s Fair of the Cold War era. Because of World War II and the Korean War, no fairs had been held since the New York World’s Fair in 1940.  

The slogan of the 1958 expo was “A world for a better life for mankind,” and Belgian organizers were eager to promote nuclear power as the energy source of the future. (Plans to power the fair with nuclear energy were dropped over safety concerns.) 

The colossal centerpiece of the Brussels fair was Atomium, a 334-foot model of an iron molecule with nine massive metal spheres representing each atom. Visitors to the 1958 fair zipped from sphere to sphere via the world’s fastest elevators and escalators hidden inside 20 interconnecting tubes.   

“Each of the spheres alone can fit up to 50 people,” says Doskow, “so it's a pretty incredible place to visit.” 

The Atomium fell into disrepair in the decades following the 1958 fair, but it underwent a full restoration in the early 2000s and stands as a beloved fixture of the Brussels skyline. It’s also been called “the most Belgian of monuments.”  

The Eiffel Tower started out as a bet. In 1884, two of Gustave Eiffel’s chief engineers wagered that—with the right design—it was possible to build a structure that reached the unthinkable height of 300 meters (984 feet), more than twice the height of the world’s tallest building at the time.  

The tower was designed by the architect Stephen Sauvestre, but it was Eiffel’s genius with metal framework that brought the record-breaking tower to life. In his factory outside of Paris, Eiffel had just constructed the iron skeleton of the Statue of Liberty, gifted to the United States in 1886. But the “300-Meter Tower,” as it was originally known, was his most ambitious project yet and his most controversial.  

“Will the city of Paris continue to associate itself with the baroque and mercantile fancies of a builder of machines thereby making itself irreparably ugly and bringing dishonor to itself?” read a protest letter signed by more than 40 of France’s most prominent artists and writers. “Because the Eiffel Tower that even the commercial Americans didn’t want, will without a doubt dishonor Paris.” 

The fears were unrealized. When the 1889 Paris World’s Fair opened, the Eiffel Tower was the uncontested star of the show. More than two million fair attendees toured the structure, which was lit at night with thousands of rainbow-colored lightbulbs.  

Doskow says that modern Paris boasts more magnificent World’s Fair “leftovers” than any other site thanks to the foresight of French fair organizers in 1889, 1900 and 1937.  

“The Eiffel Tower, the Trocadéro, the Palais de Chaillot, the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais are all World's Fair structures,” says Doskow. “Probably more than any other city, Parisian ex-fair structures live into the future and are an active part of the city's life today.” 

To date, the Eiffel Tower has welcomed more than 330 million visitors, more than any site with a paid entry fee in the world. It’s also been replicated in more than 30 locations worldwide.