Skip to main content

Seattle World’s Fair photographs

 Collection
Identifier: 2025-006

Scope and Contents

A set of 28 publicity photographs of Seattle World’s Fair pavilions, exhibits, and grounds taken by Schiller/Cravens of Camera Press Ltd. and accompanied by a written description of the fair. All photographs feature captions on the back. Includes shots from the French Pavilion, Hovercraft and technical gas rectifier from the British Pavilion, “Backstage U.S.A.” show, Jean Tinguely’s “anti-functional devices” exhibit, “Sermons from Science” program, and the Mercury space capsule.

Dates

  • Creation: 1962

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open and available for use.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright restrictions apply.

Biographical / Historical

The Seattle World’s Fair, also known as the Century 21 Exposition, took place between April 21, 1962 and October 21, 1962, and was attended by almost 10 million visitors. The fair was hosted on the grounds of what is now the Seattle Center and many structures on the Seattle Center campus were constructed specifically for the fair such as the Space Needle, the Monorail, the International Fountain and Climate Pledge Arena (then known as the Coliseum).

Full Extent

.21 Linear Feet (1 box) : 28 photographs

Language of Materials

English

Metadata Rights Declarations

  • License: This record is made available under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Creative Commons license.

Abstract

A set of 28 captioned publicity photographs of Seattle World’s Fair (also known as Century 21 Exposition) pavilions, exhibits, and grounds taken by Schiller/Cravens of Camera Press Ltd. and accompanied by a one-page written description of the fair.

Arrangement

This collection was processed at the collection level.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Purchased from private seller.

Related Materials

Century 21 Exposition Seattle World's Fair Collection. Seattle Public Library, Seattle, WA

https://seattle.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S246C605057

https://cdm16118.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15015coll3

Processing Information

Acknowledgement of Harmful Content
The Seattle Public Library Special Collections Department is committed to creating an inclusive archive that documents the history of our diverse communities in a respectful manner. Our collections include historic materials that may contain images and outdated language which can be harmful due to issues such as racism, colonialism, sexism and homophobia. This content can provide important insight into the creator and context of the historic materials but can also reveal hurtful biases and prejudices.

We may decide to use or retain harmful language in our description when the terms have been used by the creator(s) of the materials to describe themselves or their community; when we have reused description created by the donor; when we have transcribed information directly from the materials; and when using national standards such as Library of Congress Subject Headings, which allow for standardized searching and retrieval of records. When including language from the original material in our finding aids or descriptions, we will indicate that this material comes directly from the original item by putting the language in quotes or prefacing it with a note that says the description is transcribed from the item or provided by the creator.

We will continually review our finding aids to identify harmful language and encourage you to contact us at specialcollections@spl.org if you find language that causes concern.

Title
Seattle World’s Fair photographs, 1962
Author
Finding aid prepared by Gergana Abernathy
Date
September 2026
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin

Repository Details

Part of the Seattle Public Library, Special Collections Repository

Contact:
1000 4th Ave.
Seattle WA 98104 United States
206-386-4636