The Tower of the Four Winds was a whimsical icon located at the 1964 New York World’s Fair near the original attraction of It’s a Small World. It was designed by Imagineer Rolly Crump, known now for his pivotal role in the early years of Disneyland. The Tower of the Four Winds is not as famous as some of Walt Disney's other iconic attractions before 1964. It eventually got worldwide attention at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It was designed for the Pepsi Cola Pavilion by Walt Disney. Sadly, after the World’s Fair ended with two seasons, the structure was unfortunately too massive to move back to Disneyland and was torn down.
History[]
Rolly Crump with a model of the Tower of the Four Winds
Walt wanted a compelling visual marquee for It’s a Small World, primarily because the show building was so plain and lifeless. He knew that an exterior marquee would be essential in attracting audiences, especially when it came to It’s a Small World, which would be competing with the Fair’s architectural wonders. Walt remembered an exhibition of distinctive mobiles presented at the Studio library, the work of Imagineer Rolly Crump. The display of kinetic sculpture, the creation of one man, featured mobiles literally built inside bottles and snifters from such unusual materials as toothpicks, ornate match boxes, bright tissue paper, small driftwood, and other bits and pieces.
Walt came to Rolly Crump and said, “Rolly, I want to do this big tower out in front of the assignment because I had remembered my interest in kinetic sculpture.” The models did the trick and Walt approved Rolly’s creation. Once it was finished, it was subcontracted to an engineering firm called Taggart and Cass. With because they were concerned about the wind loads in New York, they over-engineered it. Pipes that were six inches in diameter became nine inches in diameter. The center column that was nine inches in diameter, became two feet in diameter. The whole thing lost the delicay that he had in the original design. The problem was that they had a real short time frame to engineer it, build it, and ship it to New York.
After the Tower of the Four Winds was built, Walt and Rolly went to inspect it before it was shipped to New York. Rolly was surprised by the final product; the pipes he designed for support were much larger than he planned because they needed to make sure it would hold up under the wind, and if the supports were much thinner, then under under strong winds, the tower could be at risk of damage or collapse.
“I hated it. I was really unhappy with it. It was something that was really special to me, as far as being kinetic sculpture. I drove Walt down to show it to him and he took one look at it and said, ‘Well Roland, what do you think?’ I said, “I think it’s a piece of crap.” He said, “It can’t be a piece of crap, it cost me $200,000! Besides I like it.’..I was upset that it was so different from my original model. Well, Walt understood my concerns with it, but he spent over $200,000 on the thing, so he had it shipped to New York and installed. The people visiting the New York World’s Fair had no idea that the pipes were twice the size that I had planned, and it was actually a popular attraction. They even created the catchphrase, ‘Meet me under the Tower of the Four Winds’ since you could see the Tower from almost anywhere at the Fair. That just goes to show that Walt really knew what he was doing, and he knew which people were the right fit for the job.” -Rolly Crump
Global installations[]
1964 New York World’s Fair[]
The Tower also provided protection for the Disney Costumed characters.
The tower was disassembled and shipped to the 1964 New York World’s Fair and then reassembled. When the fair opened on April 22, 1964, it was very successful at the Fair and a lot of people remembered it. All the public saw was the incredible twelve-story exclamation point at Small World’s entrance. A 1964 Disney press release paints the picture: “Attached to three primary columns and four slender buttresses will be more than 100 spinning, swiveling, oscillating elements of as many colors and shapes. Propellers of every description and size, a miniature, purely decorative carousel with animals from several countries (a giraffe, camel, reindeer, llama, horse, elephant and donkey), a stylized representation of the sun; figures of birds, flying fish, winged dragon, butterflies, bees and other creatures–all will be in perpetual motion.” The tower became a fair landmark and introduced the phrase “Meet Me Under the Tower of the Four Winds.”
Mary Blair and Walt Disney with a model of the facade replacing the Tower of the Four Winds
After the World’s Fair ended in 1965, It’s a Small World was packed up and shipped to Disneyland where it would be bigger and better. Sadly, the Tower of the Four Winds was too massive to move and unfortunately did not make the trip to Disneyland—it was torn down unceremoniously and either sold as scrap metal or dumped into Flushing Bay. The Tower of the Four Winds was instead replaced by Glockenspiel, which was a large, flat facade with stylized cutout turrets, towers and minarets which are vaguely reminiscent of world landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The facade was designed by Disney Imagineer Rolly Crump, who was inspired by Mary Blair's styling.
