Edmonds Author to Discuss Book on Seattle's World Fair at Richmond Beach Library Tonight

On May 4, 1962, 101-year-old Isaac Newton Bowen of Edmonds traveled down to Seattle to take in the Seattle World’s Fair. The centenarian rode in on the Monorail Red Train and then headed straight for the Space Needle. “This probably is as close to heaven as I’ll ever get,” he told The Seattle Times.

That’s just one of the anecdotes collected by HistoryLink.org staff historian and Edmonds resident Alan Stein for his new book, The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and Its Legacy. Released Friday and co-written with fellow HistoryLink historian Paula Becker, it’s a 300-page coffee-table-style book filled with history, stories and pictures to celebrate the fair’s upcoming 50^th anniversary.

(Watch a report from KOMO News on the book that features Stein.)

Stein will present a slide show and talk about the book tonight at 7 at Richmond Beach Library in Shoreline. Admission is free.

“We amassed this amazing story, how it started, all the effort from the government and the public and construction crews,” said Stein. “It goes through month-by-month what went on a fair.”

Stein says his 45-minute Power Point presentation will followed by audience interaction. “It won’t be as much questions as discussion, because everybody’s got their World’s Fair story. So many people who were at the fair and remember it were children at the time. It’s so interesting to hear stories from the fair, the child’s-eye wonderment of it all. They remember the rides, the fun stuff. Of course, those that are older remember it too. But the fun ones are the kid memories.”

Stein himself does not remember the fair, as he turned 50 last week. The Illinois native moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1983 to work as a software engineer for Boeing, but says he’s always been taken by history. When HistoryLink, a free online encyclopedia of Washington state history, was launched in 1999, Stein jumped at the chance to come aboard.

He’s already written five books, including one on Seattle’s first World’s Fair, Alaska Pacific Yukon Exposition of 1909.

Stein and Becker were both commissioned by the Seattle Center Foundation to write The Future Remembered, which is selling the $39.95 book.

Stein says the 1962 World’s Fair put Seattle on the map. When local officials pitched Seattle to the Bureau of International Exhibition, he said, some members didn’t even know where Washington state was. “They said, Why do you need a tower like the Space Needle when you have the Washington Monument nearby?”

( when the Ford Pavilion, a geodesic dome structure, was dismantled and moved to the Edmonds waterfront in the fall of 1962, where for several years it served as a yacht showroom.)

Although the fair brought attention to Seattle, Stein says it was planned with the idea of allowing the city to have a true civic center after all the tourists left. “You’ve got a place a meeting place, a place for theater, a tourist destination. Of course, it also left us with this icon of the Space Needle. Ask anyone outside of the state what comes to mind when thinking of Seattle—it’s the Space Needle.”

Alan Stein will present a slide show and talk about The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World's Fair and Its Legacy, today at 7 p.m. at Richmond Beach Library, 19601 21st Ave NW, Shoreline. Admission is free.