Century 21 Exposition
The Space Needle nearing completion in
1961.
The Century 21 Exposition (also known as
the Seattle World’s Fair) was a World’s
Fair held April 21, 1962, to October 21, 1962
in Seattle, Washington, USA.[1][2] Nearly ten
million people attended the fair.[3] Unlike
some other World’s Fairs of its era, Century
21 ran a profit.[3]
As planned, the exposition left behind a
fairground and numerous public buildings
and public works; some credit it with revital-
izing Seattle’s economic and cultural life (see
History of Seattle since 1940).[4] The fair saw
the construction of the Space Needle and Al-
weg monorail, as well as several sports ven-
ues and performing arts buildings (most of
which have since been replaced or heavily re-
modeled). The site, slightly expanded since
the fair, is now called Seattle Center; the Un-
ited States Science Pavilion is now the Pacific
Science Center. Another notable Seattle
Center building, the Experience Music Pro-
ject, was deliberately designed to fit in with
the fairground atmosphere, but was built
nearly 40 years later.
The fair and the city were the setting of
the Elvis Presley movie It Happened at the
World’s Fair (1963), with a young Kurt Rus-
sell making his first screen appearance.
Cold War and Space
Race context
The fair was originally conceived in 1955 to
mark the 50th anniversary of the 1909
Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, but it soon
became clear that that date was too ambi-
tious. With the Space Race underway and
Boeing having "put Seattle on the map"[5] as
"an aerospace city",[6] a major theme of the
fair was to show that "the United States was
not really ’behind’ the Soviet Union in the
realms of science and space." As a result, the
themes of space, science, and the future com-
pletely trumped the earlier conception of a
"Festival of the [American] West."[5]
In June 1960, the International Bureau of
Expositions certified Century 21 as a World’s
Fair.[7] Project manager Ewen Dingwall went
to Moscow to request Soviet participation,
but was turned down.