So the top one is the the New York Pavilion and the bottom is the Unisphere aka the Globitron ( i personally prefer that name.) They are what remains of the 1964 World's Fair site in Queens, which was also the site of the 1939 Fair, and before that was a dumping ground which Fitzgerald described in Gatsby as the "valley of ashes." Cool stuff! The sphere was dedicated to "man's achievements on a shrinking globe in an expanding universe." I realized that woody allen makes reference to that in Annie Hall... the scene where he is taken as a child to a therapist because he is obsessed with the notion of the universe expanding and what is it all worth anyway etc.....
I love how these connections reveal themselves!