Progress Report

Under a dusting of dirty snow in New York City's Flushing Meadow Park, some weird and wonderful construction is going on. More than 30 pavilions for the 1964-65 World's Fair are currently abuilding, and President Robert Moses has told the fair's board of directors that ground will be broken for 75 more within a couple of months. On opening day, April 22, 1964, there will be more than 200 pavilions in all. Judging by the renderings and models already on view, Flushing Meadow will be a maze of pleasure domes, some dazzling, some merely elaborate. Among them: >>THE FEDERAL PAVILION, a hollow square hovering over a watery circle designed by

Charles Luckman Associates, will house a series of exhibits around the theme "Chal lenge to Greatness." Cost: $17 million. >> NEW JERSEY'S TERCENTENARY PAVILION, designed by Philip Sheridan Collins, will be a cluster of small pavilions, the roof of each suspended by a cable from an overhead mast, like bobbins from a spiky ring of fishing poles.

>> THE NEW YORK CITY BUILDING: this holdover from the 1939 fair will have a skating rink with an ice revue, and a scale model of all five boroughs of the city, consisting of 800,000 structures (the Empire State Building will be one foot high) and costing $2,000,000. Visitors will view the model from sus pended cars traveling around its 500-ft. perimeter.

>> THE FRENCH PAVILION will consist mainly of three buildings looking like a children's game in their pure geometrical forms: a rectangle housing Maxim's restaurant, an immense egg-shaped ellipsoid (the largest structural ellipse ever built), which will shelter a 1,500-seat theater for the Folies-Bergere, and a pyramid in which visitors will view "The Treasures of Versailles," a huge collection of paintings and art objects.

>> THE FESTIVAL OF GAS. the $5,000,000 exhibit of the gas industry, designed by Walter Dorwin Teague Associates, will be a pure white building 300 ft. long, 130 ft. wide and 50 ft. high, which will seem to float gassily in space with no walls at all.

>> GENERAL MOTORS' FUTURAMA, designed by Albert Kahn Associates, has a fac,ade looming over the entrance like a monstrous radiator grille, will occupy a seven-acre site in the fair's transportation section, and will contain a "ride to the far corners of the earth." >> THE FORD MOTOR COMPANY PAVILION, designed and engineered by Welton Becket, will have a 235-ft., glass-enclosed rotunda surrounded by 64 arching pylons. Adjoining this main entrance will be a flared rectangular exhibit building seven stories tall which will house a show to be created by Walt Disney. >> THE BELL SYSTEM PAVILION, its ancient bell symbol blazoned incongruously on a dynamic modern facade designed by Harrison & Abramovitz. will give visitors an armchair ride through a "narrated story of man's need to communicate" on its upper level; the lower level will have gadgets that visitors may work themselves. >> THE EASTMAN KODAK PAVILION is an undulating, low structure topped by an eight-story tower mounted with five giant color photographs illuminated from within, looks like a TV set on an unmade bed. It will house a photographic-information center and two theaters.

>> THE NATIONAL CASH REGISTER PAVILION, which resembles some kind of cybernetic component, will demonstrate "The Computer World of Tomorrow," plus the latest developments in office automation.

>> THE JOHNSON'S WAX PAVILION is basically a 600-seat theater in a disklike gondola suspended 24 ft. off the ground from six vaulting columns. The theater will be reached by a ramp.

"An extraordinary array of originality, talent, ingenuity, and stimulating competition," said Robert Moses in good circus-barker style. "There is more to come."

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