Something was fitting about visiting the Sunsphere on a hot day in June.

There might have been closer places to park near the structure, but I’m a rank novice when it comes to knowing my way around downtown Knoxville. Luckily, the streets weren’t densely packed with traffic, even on a mid-day weekday, so I made my way easily to surface parking about a quarter mile from the tower. Free parking, the best kind.

A quarter-mile isn’t too far to walk, fortunately. But high heat adds strain to the walk. It didn’t rise to the level of an ordeal, just discomfort, with my head toasty under a hat and my throat irrigated from time to time with bottled water. People might not believe it, but discomfort is an essential ingredient to a good trip. Not unremitting discomfort, just intermittent bursts.

From the parking lot, I followed a street to a corner, rounding to a view of the tower on the other side of the Henley Street Bridge. An ideal sort of bridge for pedestrians, actually, one that carries not only cars but has generous sidewalks, demarked by sizable planters.

The bridge from the other side, just under the Sunsphere. Good work. The colors are a nice touch.

A highly visible legacy of the Knoxville International Energy Exposition, that is, the 1982 World’s Fair, the Sunsphere abides as a goldish homage to Sun. At least, that was the idea that fair organizers (or their publicists) came up with. For an expo about energy, the centerpiece would be the source of all energy here on Earth, though not solar energy per se, certainly not in the early ’80s.

Why Knoxville? Why not? By then worlds fairs were passé anyway, and were regarded with indifference by most Americans. Such as my college-age self, and all my friends as well. More importantly for anyone thinking about organizing one, they tended to be money pits.

I’m of two minds about the decline of worlds fairs. One, tastes change, with information and experiences so widely available that a fair can’t compete, and so what? But I also think there’s much to be said for going places and seeing real physical things. Obviously I think that. Especially as opposed to losing yourself in a slender electronic box.

I’d come that day, passing through Knoxville from Nashville and en route to Charlotte, not just to see the Sunsphere exterior, but to ride the elevator to its observation deck and take in the view, roughly 300 feet up. I’d blown off seeing the fair 40+ years ago, but I wasn’t going to miss its shiny legacy on this trip if I could help it.

I’m glad to report that the interior of the Sunsphere is climate controlled. Also, admission is $10. If by magic the Sunsphere could relocate to any of the much larger U.S. metros, base admission might be three times that much, with a skip-the-line option for an extra fee. The structure is part of Knoxville’s World’s Fair Park, and I’d like to think that park authorities are holding the line on tourist inflation, but I’m sure it’s just what the market will bear.

A Knoxville architect named Don Shell, working for Community Tectonics in the early 1980s, led the design effort. “Much of the work involved structural engineering details, and Community Tectonics sought the consultation of Stan Lindsey and Associates in Nashville,” the Knoxville News Sentinel reported.

“Shell recalled that Lindsey used a new piece of equipment with which most architects at that time were unfamiliar — a computer. Problems were also encountered in trying to find gold-colored glass to represent the sun. In fact, the Rentenbach contracting firm checked with about 60 businesses before locating a company in New Jersey that would manufacture the pieces, Shell said.”

Actual gold is mixed in the glass, in what has to be minute amounts. Always useful, that element gold.

The observation deck is on the bottom half of the sphere, with 360-degree views of the terrain behind the gold-colored glass. In the images I made, that has the effect of bluing everything, creating the illusion that maybe the images are mid-century slides that have been tucked away unseen since then. Of course, these vistas didn’t exist in the mid-century, but never mind.

Getting a look straight down was a little tricky, but doable. The first image is the Tennessee Amphitheater, the only other structure from the fair still standing besides the tower.

One more of the Henley Street Bridge.

Once you’ve seen enough of the vista from the sphere, back on ground level the Knoxville Convention Center, developed on the former site of the U.S. Pavilion next to the tower, is open and showing the World’s Largest Rubik’s Cube. It used to grace the Hungarian Pavilion. I had to look it up: Rubik is still alive at 81, living in Budapest.

As usual with this kind of thing, both the tower and the cube went through a period of neglect in the decades after the fair, though it seems the cube got the worst of it, according to Roadside America: ‘The Cube, ten feet high and 1,200 pounds, constantly changed its color patterns thanks to a complex set of internal motors. When the Fair closed no one in Knoxville knew what to do with the Cube, and it eventually wound up beneath a freeway overpass, abandoned. This dereliction of civic duty was exposed by the Knoxville News Sentinel, and the embarrassed city then had the Cube restored and moved into the city’s Convention Center for the Fair’s 25th anniversary in 2007.”

As for the Sunsphere, it was never neglected so much physically, but otherwise it seems not much attention was paid to it for years until the 2010s, when the observation deck was renovated, adding exhibits about the world’s fair.

I’d actually gone inside the Convention Center to use the restroom. Sunsphere visitors, take note. The recent renovation didn’t include public restrooms, because there are none.