30 July 2009

A magical, ever-turning mobile

When it’s a small world opened at the 1964 World’s Fair perhaps the single greatest incentive for venturing over to the Pepsi Cola/UNICEF pavilion was to catch a glimpse of the120 foot tall Tower of the Four Winds. The kinetic structure, built by the Kelite Corporation, was the creation of Imagineer Rolly Crump. In the photograph below, from the UCLA Library, the Tower of the Four Winds is being constructed in front of a Kelite Corporation building.While the structure no longer exists in the same grand fashion it once did, it has not been forgotten. Tucked away near the elevators on the Contemporary Resort’s Grand Canyon Concourse is a model that has been built to represent the original Tower of the Four Winds mobile. It just goes to show that greatness never truly dies, it only finds a new form. An ever-turning form as the case may be.