Maps

Fly Mohawk to the Fascinating World of Glass

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Description

A lone silhouetted figure stands beneath a ceiling of backlit honeycomb glass on the cover — a fold-out promotional brochure for the Corning Glass Center, Corning, New York, printed while Mohawk Airlines still flew.

The Corning Glass Center opened in 1951, built by Corning Glass Works to mark its own centennial. The complex was designed by Harrison & Abramovitz, the firm also responsible for Rockefeller Center's RCA Building and the UN Secretariat. It combined a museum, an auditorium, and a working Steuben Glass hot-shop visitors could watch through windows. Entry was free; summer parking cost $1.00 — roughly $7–8 in today's dollars.

The air-travel section lists both Allegheny Airlines and Mohawk Airlines, a regional upstate New York carrier that was absorbed by Allegheny on April 12, 1972. That absorption gives a firm upper date for printing. The graphic vocabulary — black ground, oversized photography, blocky sans-serif — is consistent with late-1960s corporate promotional work.

The brochure frames Corning as the southern gateway to the Finger Lakes and lists nearby draws:

A pull-quote from the New York Times — "Certainly one of the most fabulous places in the world" — sits unbylined in the lower-right panel alongside a photograph of the center's low glass-walled exterior. The institution was later renamed the Corning Museum of Glass and remains open today.

Researched with claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 on May 25, 2026. AI-assisted — verify before citing.

Details

Publisher◇ AI
Corning Glass Works
Coverage◇ AI
Corning, New York; Finger Lakes region
Paper◇ AI
glossy coated stock
Print medium◇ AI
offset lithograph
Color◇ AI
full-color

FeaturesAI

  • folded multi-panel brochure
  • full-bleed cover photograph
  • integrated road map

Condition notesAI

  • fold creases along panel divisions
  • good overall condition

Tags

promotionaltourismmuseumnew-yorkfinger-lakesindustrial-heritagemid-century

Highlights

  • The cover photograph is a tight close-up of a honeycomb glass ceiling, lit from behind so each cell glows amber-orange, with a single dark silhouetted figure visible at the lower edge.
  • The title stacks in oversized white sans-serif type — "Corning / Glass / Center" — against the dark photograph, with the tagline "The Fascinating World of Glass" set smaller below.
  • A small road map of New York State locates Corning in the Finger Lakes region with a circled marker, showing the Atlantic coast at the right edge for orientation.
  • Under "By Air," the brochure lists Allegheny Airlines and Mohawk Airlines — Mohawk ceased operations in April 1972, dating this printing to before that month.
  • "Free Admission" appears in bold at the foot of the visiting-hours section, followed by "Parking $1.00 During Summer Months."
  • A New York Times pull-quote — "Certainly one of the most fabulous places in the world" — is set in bold italic in the lower-right panel alongside a photograph of the center's glass-walled exterior.

Further reading