Office Lobbies Meet World Globes
Several prominent office buildings and corporate headquarters are famous for featuring monumental world globes in their lobbies, most notably The News Building in New York City and the Garmin (formerly DeLorme) headquarters in Yarmouth, Maine.
The News Building – New York, NY, United States
This Art Deco skyscraper features a famous 12-foot illuminated revolving globe set into a recessed floor pit under a black glass dome.
Installed in 1930 for the New York Daily News, it is surrounded by bronze compass lines showing distances to major world cities and famously served as the filming location for the Daily Planet lobby in the 1978 Superman movie. Read More.
Garmin / Former DeLorme Headquarters – Yarmouth, ME
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The three-story glass atrium of this office building houses Eartha, the Guinness World Record holder for the world’s largest rotating and revolving globe. Completed in 1998, the motorised sphere measures 41.5 feet in diameter, weighs roughly 5,600 pounds, and is tilted at a realistic 23.5-degree angle on a cantilever mount. Read More
Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart’s signatures on The Fliers and Explorers Globe (Photo by Luke Spencer)
American Geographical Society Headquarters (Brooklyn, NY). While smaller than architectural lobby globes and not in the public lobby, this office displays the historic Fliers and Explorers Globe. Dating back to 1929, this globe is famous for bearing the signatures and hand-drawn expedition routes of 82 renowned aviators, astronauts, and explorers, including Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, and Sir Edmund Hillary.
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The tradition of signing the globe originated in 1929 with John H. Finley, then both president of the American Geographical Society and editor-in-chief of the New York Times. Often Finley himself would go down to the docks of Lower Manhattan to personally greet the returning adventurers and have them trace out their routes across the Earth.
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Recent signers include Russian Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who in 1965 was the first human to walk in space – and film director James Cameron, for his unparalleled achievement in reaching, in his one-man submarine, the deepest point in the ocean, the Mariana Trench.
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The Mapparium at The Christian Science Publishing Society – Boston, MA
Located inside the publishing house’s headquarters building, this three-story, 30-foot-wide stained-glass globe allows visitors to walk through its interior on a glass bridge to view the world’s political boundaries as they stood in 1935. Vancouver Convention Centre (Vancouver, BC). The main entrance lobby greets visitors with a large, illuminated spinning globe suspended directly from the glass ceiling.
National Geographic Museum of Exploration – Washington, D.C.
You can see a huge 152cm (60 inch) diameter monumental world globe traditionally handcrafted by Bellerby & Co, Globemakers at the Museum of Exploration in Washington, DC. – you will see this special commission in the lobby as you walk in to the building which also serves as the headquarters for National Geographic.
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Bellerby & Co Globemakers
Traditional Globemaker and Mapmaker, London, England
