The idea for The Space Needle was first doodled on a napkin by Seattle hotel executive Edward “Eddie” Carlson during a visit to Stuttgart, Germany in 1959. He saw the potential of a Space Age tower as a symbol for the 1962 fair and the Seattle skyline.
Architect John “Jack” Graham, Jr. fresh from his success in designing the world’s first auto-centric shopping mall (Seattle’s Northgate) and experimenting with a revolving bar in Hawaii, focused on a flying saucer-shaped top house.
The tower had to be privately financed and situated on land that could be acquired for private use on the fairgrounds. Early investigations indicated such a plot of land did not exist. However, just before the search was abandoned, a suitable 120-foot-by-120-lot on the site of an old fire station was found and sold to investors for $75,000 in 1961, just 13 months before the opening of the World’s Fair.
The Space Needle tower was completed in December 1961, eight months after it began. In keeping with the 21st Century theme of the World’s Fair, the final coats of paint were dubbed ‘Astronaut White’ for the legs, ‘Orbital Olive’ for the core of the structure, ‘Re-entry Red’ for the Halo and ‘Galaxy Gold’ for the sunburst. The Space Needle stands at 605 feet tall and took approximately 400 days to build the Space Needle.
The Space Needle officially opened the first day of the World’s Fair. During the expo the tower hosted an estimated 2.65 million visitors. They included world celebrities including Elvis Presley, the Shah and Empress of Iran, Prince Philip of Great Britain, Bobby Kennedy, Walter Cronkite, John Wayne, Bob Hope, Chubby Checker, Billy Graham, John Glenn, Jonas Salk, Carol Channing, Neil Armstrong, Lyndon Johnson, Walt Disney and scores of others.
It cost $4.5 million to build the Space Needle in 1962. In 2018, the Century Project renovation cost closer to $100 million. The Century Project is the Space Needle’s $100-million renovation that transformed the disk.
The renovation includes floor-to-ceiling glass panels, an outdoor observation deck with open-air glass walls and glass benches and a glass-floor oculus at the base of a cantilevered steel, wood and glass staircase that connects to the Loupe, the world’s first and only rotating glass floor.
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