There’s a dinosaur in Pittsfield. It might not be the first place you’d expect to find one, a town in western Massachusetts. As I photographed it, people came out of the museum and looked. Engrossed, I noticed the statue’s broken tail, but not the contretemps between policeman and driver on the street.
For the 1964 New York World’s Fair, Sinclair Oil had built Dinoland–a pavillion with nine animatronic dinosaurs. Why dinosaurs? Sinclair Oil’s logo is a shield with a brontosaurus on it, based I assume on the (false) belief that oil came from dinosaurs.
After the Fair, the animatronics were removed and the sculptures ultimately dispersed around the States. But this stegosaurus? This one was never at the Worlds’ Fair. It’s a copy of Sinclair Oil’s original stegosaurus (minus animatronics, sadly).
For 30 years, “Steggie” the Stegosaurus stood outside the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio. In 1997 it was moved here—outside the Berkshire Museum—and renamed “Wally.”
As I walked away, I finally noticed the driver standing next to his car, shouting at the policeman. I smiled at the man who had walked out of the museum to watch. I wasn’t sure whether it was the policeman or me he was looking at. Maybe both. He smiled at me before turning to go back inside.
This is one in a series of linked posts on the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs. Follow this link to see the others.
