While the Better Living Center ultimately performed better than similar exhibition-style halls like the Pavilion of American Interiors, it was still a financial failure. By the close of the Fair losses were reported in excess of $500,000 and the Fair was only able to recoup $200,000 of that from the Better Living Center's investors while absorbing the balance (which only added to the debt problems the Fair Corporation already faced). There had been some speculation prior to the start of the 1965 season that the pavilion might be among those retained after the Fair as a place to store records for the city. Those plans never came to serious fruition as the city was not about to budget the necessary costs to make such a post-Fair use possible.

It is likely that the Better Living Center's restrictive traffic flow was a major contributor to its failure. Like it or not, the Fairgoer who wished to see the American Masterpieces exhibit on the third floor was not going to escape a look at demonstrations of massage chairs and Schick's History of Shaving, and youngsters who would have found the model train exhibit on the lobby level fascinating had to filter their way through the women's fashion exhibits on the upper floors before getting to see it. The Better Living Center's promoters had designed their pavilion to the benefit of their tenants -- to the detriment of their visitors. It "trapped" the Fairgoer denying them a choice in what they would or would not see. More often-than-not, this resulted in negative word-of-mouth about the pavilion making potential visitors more inclined to shy away from the Better Living Center and its exhibits than to spend two hours forced to endure exhibits they really weren't interested in seeing.

The failure of these kinds of pavilions was perhaps something that should have been better foreseen given the Fair's vast scope and the popularity of so many other larger-than-life attractions in the Industrial and Transportation sections. While the Better Living Center certainly offered more variety than simple department store-like exhibits and pitches, even its more diverse elements were not unique to the pavilion. The General locomotive, which quite possibly qualified as the most unique exhibit the Better Living Center had to offer, was situated on the ground level outside the building. A typical Fair visitor, especially male visitors who would not have a natural interest in something like the Crystal Palace Fashion Show, might think that he'd seen all he needed to once he'd seen the Civil War locomotive and then would move on to nearby General Electric or Kodak. "All About Elsie," despite the novelty of having a live animal fixed on-stage the whole time, was really no different than similar puppet show revues one could find in popular pavilions like those of Chrysler and IBM. The Arnold Palmer Putting Course on the third floor could by itself hardly measure up to the kind of game offerings to be found in the Fair's Amusement Area.

What the Better Living Center could have used most was a larger-than-life "grabber" situated on its upper levels; something truly unique from a Fairgoing perspective that would make its enforced traffic flow through the rest of the building worthwhile. Perhaps if the American Masterpieces exhibit had featured a very well-known, specific American painting that the typical Fairgoer would find a "must" to see, just as the Pieta was a "must" to see at the Vatican Pavilion or if the "All About Elsie" show was done with a Disney style Audio-Animatronic approach, more visitors would have included the Better Living Center on their "must see" list. In hindsight, the Better Living Center seems more like a case of a pavilion that was geared too much toward the style of a County Fair and, given the larger-than-life scope that had been planned for the New York World's Fair from the beginning, this was an approach that could never have succeeded without injecting some new forward thinking into the mix.

Demolition of the Better Living Center, 1966

SOURCE: Photos presented courtesy Bill Cotter collection © 2010 Bill Cotter, All Rights Reserved. See more images from Bill's fabulous collection of World's Fair photographs at his website WorldsFairPhotos.com.

The failure of pavilions like the Better Living Center should by no means make us lessen their importance to the overall history of the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair. Even if the exhibits inside were not especially unique when one tallied up the things to be found over the rest of the Fairgrounds, the Better Living Center did manage to serve as a microcosm of how this was a World's Fair that tried to be "Something for Everyone." New products from American business and industry, appreciation for history, musical and artistic creativity and simple amusement were things that could be found in many corners of the Fair. The Better Living Center was certainly the only place at the Fair that attempted to provide a taste of all of that under one roof.