Now the home of the Queens Museum, during the Fair it was the showplace for the New York Police and Fire Departments. On a small stage the police enacted "Murder at Midnight," to demonstrate how a crime scene was treated. Clues were taken to the Crime Lab, fingerprints were studied, residue from fingernails and shoes were examined and the entire process was explained to the audience.
The following text is from the "History of the 1939 World's Fair" page on the Queens Museum Web Site.
"The New York World's Fair 1939 and 1940"
The New York City Building was built to house the New York City Pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair, where it housed displays about municipal agencies. The building was centrally located, being directly adjacent to the great icons of the Fair, the Trylon and Perisphere, and it was one of the few buildings created for the Fair that were intended to be permanent. It is now the only surviving building from the 1939/40 Fair. After the World's Fair, the building became a recreation center for the newly created Flushing Meadows Corona Park. The north side of the building, now the Queens Museum, housed a roller rink and the south side offered an ice rink, as it still does today.
The building's architect, Aymer Embury III, was one of Robert Moses favorite designers and his other work includes the Central Park Zoo and the Tri-Borough Bridge. He designed the building in a modern classical style, which was perhaps a little ironic given that the theme of the 1939 Fair was the "World of Tomorrow". The exterior of the building featured colonnades behind which were vast expanses of glass brick punctuated by limestone pilasters trimmed in dark polished granite; the solid corner blocks were also constructed from limestone."
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