Plan

The building was the New York City Building at both World's Fairs and housed the United Nations General Assembly in between, and it still holds the Panorama of the City of New York, a 9,335 square foot model of all five boroughs with every structure built before 1992 on it. That is 895,000 buildings at a scale where a house is the size of a grain of rice. Admission is pay what you wish.

Wed to Fri, noon to 5pm. Sat and Sun, 11am to 5pm. Closed Mon and Tue

A Saturday evening market in the parking lot behind the Hall of Science with about a hundred vendors, most of them cooking food from a country that has a community in Queens. Nearly everything is capped at a low fixed price. You walk the rows, buy a plate at a time and eat standing. It runs from April into the autumn with a break for the US Open.

Saturdays only, 4pm to midnight. The 2026 season ran April 18 to August 22, then September 19 to October 31, closed August 23 to September 18 for the US Open

A twelve-story stainless steel globe built by US Steel for the 1964 World's Fair, standing in a fountain at the center of the park with the three rings of early satellite orbits around it. Walk five minutes south and the New York State Pavilion's sixteen columns are still holding up what is left of the Tent of Tomorrow, closed off and mid-restoration but visible from the path. The whole thing is open parkland with benches.

Park open daily, 6am to 1am. The fountain runs in the warm months

Philip Johnson's 1964 pavilion stands directly beside Queens Theatre, which is in fact the pavilion's old theater building. The Tent of Tomorrow is an open steel ring on sixteen columns. Its roof cables are long gone. Three observation towers rise behind it. You cannot go inside: a $54 million restoration has been underway and the interior remains fenced. From the path you are a few feet from it and the scale reads properly from there.

Visible from the surrounding park paths at any hour, daily 6am to 1am. The interior is fenced and closed to the public

A corner window on 108th Street that has sold Italian ice since 1944, founded by Nicola Benfaremo and run from the same spot ever since. You read the flavors off the board above the window, order, and they hand you a cup. There is no seating and no indoors to speak of, so people eat on the benches in the park triangle across the street. It is cash and it closes for the winter.

Daily, 11am to 10pm in season, roughly March to October. Closed for the winter