Uniroyal Giant Tire Guide

It’s eighty feet tall, weighs twelve tons, and it started life as a Ferris wheel. The Uniroyal Giant Tire beside I-94 in Allen Park was built by U.S. Rubber for the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair, designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon — the firm behind the Empire State Building — and it carried 24 gondolas of four riders each around its rim on a 100-horsepower motor. When the fair closed, they shipped it here on 22 trucks and rebuilt it in 1966 without the gondolas, anchored in 24 feet of concrete and steel to shrug off hurricane winds. It isn’t rubber; it’s fiberglass-reinforced polyester resin. Nearly two million cars a day pass it on the freeway, which makes it one of the most-seen roadside objects in America, and it’s on the cover of this book for exactly that reason.