1939 New York World's Fair

1939 New York City
Poster by Joseph Binder
Overview
BIE-class	Universal exposition
Category	Second category General Exposition
Name	New York World's Fair
Motto	The World of Tomorrow
Area	1,202 acres (486 hectares)
Organized by	Grover Whalen
Participant(s)
Countries	33
Location
Country	United States
City	New York City
Venue	Flushing Meadows–Corona Park
Coordinates	40°44′39″N 73°50′40″W
Timeline
Opening	April 30, 1939 (1939-04-30)
Closure	October 27, 1940 (1940-10-27)
Universal expositions
Previous	Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris
Next	Exposition internationale du bicentenaire de Port-au-Prince in Port-au-Prince
Specialized Expositions
Previous	Second International Aeronautic Exhibition (1938) in Helsinki
Next	International Exhibition on Urbanism and Housing (1947) in Paris
Simultaneous
Universal	Golden Gate International Exposition
Specialized	Exposition internationale de l'eau in Liège

The 1939–1940 New York World's Fair was a world's fair at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York City, United States. It was the second-most expensive American world's fair of all time, behind the St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated, and more than 44 million people attended over two seasons. It was based on the future, with an opening slogan of "Dawn of a New Day", and it allowed all visitors to take a look at "the world of tomorrow".

Plans for the 1939 World's Fair were first announced in September 1935, and construction of the fairground began in June 1936. The fair opened on April 30, 1939, coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the first inauguration of George Washington. When World War II began four months into the 1939 World's Fair, many exhibits were affected, especially those on display in the pavilions of countries under Axis occupation. After the close of the fair in 1940, many exhibits were demolished or removed, though some buildings were retained for the 1964 New York World's Fair at the same site.

Development

New York City had hosted the United States' first world's fair, the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, in 1853–1854. At the time, the site of the 1939 World's Fair, Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, was a natural wetland straddling the Flushing River. Flushing Meadows became the Corona Ash Dumps in the early 20th century. New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses first conceived the idea of developing a large park in Flushing Meadows in the 1920s. Although the neighborhoods around Flushing Meadows contained residential developments, the meadow itself remained undeveloped and isolated.

Planning

As early as May 1935, a group led by the municipal reformer George McAneny had considered hosting an international exposition in New York City in 1939, coinciding with the 150th anniversary of George Washington's first inauguration. That September, the group announced plans to spend $40 million to host an exhibition at the 1,003-acre (406 ha) Flushing Meadows site. The New York City Board of Estimate approved the use of Flushing Meadows as a fairground on September 23, and Moses directed municipal draftsmen to survey the site. The Flushing Meadows site had been selected because of its large size and central location, and the city already owned 586 acres (237 ha) nearby. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia pledged financial support for the fair that October; at the time, Moses estimated that it would cost $5–7 million to prepare the fairground and build transit to the fair. The New York World's Fair Corporation (WFC) was formed to oversee the exposition on October 22, 1935, and the Board of Estimate allocated $200,000 the next day for preliminary work. The WFC elected McAneny as its president at its first meeting in November, and two contractors were hired the following month to conduct preliminary surveys.

Before the end of 1935, several foreign exhibitors had expressed interest in the fair. There were also plans for exhibition spaces such as a fine arts building and a cosmetics show. In addition, the Fine Arts Federation of the City of New York urged the WFC to implement a "unified arts scheme" for the fair, and the WFC and the New York City Board of Transportation devised plans for public transit lines to the fair. In January 1936, state lawmaker Herbert Brownell Jr. proposed a bill to allow the city government to formally lease the Flushing Meadows site to the WFC. Moses warned that the fairground's completion could be delayed due to funding issues; by then, the fair was estimated to cost $45 million. That February, McAneny announced that he would organize a committee to devise an architectural plan for the fairground. Brownell requested funding from New York governor Herbert Lehman the same month for "basic World's Fair improvements"; the city and state governments were each supposed to spend $5 million on site preparations.

The project remained stalled during early 1936 because of disagreements over the fair's location and financing. There were also competing proposals to relocate the fair to Marine Park in Brooklyn. but the New York State Legislature ultimately voted in April 1936 to allow the city to lease out Flushing Meadows. The same month, Grover Whalen replaced McAneny as the WFC's president. The city government also announced plans to sell $7 million in bonds, while the state pledged $4.125 million for the project; in addition, the WFC was to sell $20 million worth of bonds. J. Franklin Bell was hired to draw up preliminary plans for the fair, and the WFC appointed a committee of seven men that May to devise a plan for the fairground. The New York City Board of Estimate appropriated $308,020 to begin landscaping the site the same month, and city officials acquired another 372 acres (151 ha) through eminent domain. The WFC dedicated the fairground site on June 4, 1936, shortly before the city finalized its lease of Flushing Meadows to the WFC in June 1936.

Construction

Work on the World's Fair site began on June 16, 1936, and a groundbreaking ceremony for the fairground took place on June 29. The WFC established seven departments and thirteen committees to coordinate the fair's development. Initially, the fair was to employ 35,000 people. There was controversy in 1937 when the Municipal Civil Service Commission accused the WFC of patronage, claiming that Whalen had hired hundreds of World's Fair employees from outside the city's civil service lists. To promote the fair, the WFC established advisory committees with members from every U.S. state. Several baseball teams wore patches promoting the fair during the 1938 Major League Baseball season, while the businessman Howard Hughes named an airplane after the fair and flew it around the world in 1938. Helen Huntington Hull led a women's committee that helped promote and develop the fair.

The construction of the fairground primarily involved leveling the ash mounds; excavating Meadow and Willow lakes; and diverting much of the Flushing River into underground culverts. The dirt from the lake sites was used as additional topsoil for the park. The project was an around-the-clock job, with 450 workers operating on three eight-hour shifts. As many as 10,000 trees were to be transplanted to the fairground, and thousands of Douglas fir timbers were driven into the ground to act as pilings for the fair structures. These modifications were to be retained after the fair.

1936 and 1937

The WFC's board of design reviewed several proposed master plans for the site, and the corporation had relocated the last occupants of the fairground site by August 1936. The WFC launched a design competition for several fairground pavilions that September and selected several winning designs two months later. Before the final master plan was revealed, Whalen said the fair would likely be dedicated to the past, present, and future. The WFC announced details of the fair's master plan that October, which called for a $125 million exposition themed to "the world of tomorrow". The city, state, and federal governments would spend $35 million; the WFC was to spend $30 million; and the remaining funds would come from individual exhibitors. There were to be ten themed zones and an amusement area arranged around a "theme center". The plans also called for a central tower with paths radiating away from it, in addition to extensive public-transit improvements. Construction contracts for the fairground's first building were signed later the same month, and the WFC also selected an official seal. At that point, only a small number of fairground buildings had been approved.

In November 1936, France became the first nation to announce its participation, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt urged other nations to join the fair. The city government also began selling bonds for the fair that month; by then, several nations and hundreds of businesses had expressed interest in the fair. That December, the International Convention Bureau endorsed the 1939 World's Fair, allowing the bureau's 21 member countries to host exhibits there, and Lehman also sent invitations to the governors of all the other U.S. states. By the beginning of 1937, eleven hundred concessionaires had applied for a concession at the fair, and nine buildings were under construction. The WFC unveiled a model of the fairgrounds at its Empire State Building headquarters that March. Workers had finished grading and filling the World's Fair site by April, and they began planting trees on the fairground. That month, AT&T became the first company to lease a pavilion at the fair, and work officially began on the first building, the administration structure. In addition, the WFC began auctioning off the fairground's concession spaces. Whalen predicted in mid-1937 that the fair would attract 59 nations.

Whalen announced plans in June 1937 for a 280-acre (110 ha) amusement zone at the south end of the fairground, and Moses proposed adding a trailer parking lot and a community interests zone to the fairground. Work on the first non-commercial pavilion, the Temple of Peace, began in July 1937. By the next month, the fairground's first structure (the administration building) was completed, and 86% of the fairground sites had been leased.

1938 and 1939

Souvenir booklet

The delivery of materials for the fair faced a delay in 1938 when it was temporarily halted during the New York City truckers strike. Edward Bernays directed public relations of the fair in 1939, which he called "democracity".

Opening

Ford pavilion

RCA Exhibit Building

On April 30, 1939, the fair had its grand opening, with 206,000 people in attendance. The date was chosen because it was exactly 150 years after Washington's first inauguration. Although many of the pavilions and other facilities were not quite ready for this opening, it was put on with pomp and great celebration. Plans for the United States Navy Fleet to visit New York City for the opening of the fair following maneuvers in the Caribbean were canceled, however, due to aggressive moves being made by Japan in the South China Sea, and the fleet instead transferred to the Pacific via the Panama Canal in April. President Roosevelt's speech was not only broadcast over the various radio networks but also was televised along with other parts of the opening ceremony and other events at the fair.

Whalen saw the fair as an opportunity for corporations to present consumer products, rather than as an exercise in presenting science and the scientific way of thinking in its own right. For example, televisions (then a new technology) were displayed at the RCA, General Electric, and Westinghouse pavilions, while RCA and NBC agreed to host television demonstrations at the World's Fair. Five major newsreel companies were hired to provide newsreel coverage of the fair.

• 1939 World's Fair ephemera
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  This 1940 general admission ticket also included visits to "5 concessions" (listed on backside)
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  Ticket backside
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  Trylon and Perisphere on 1939 US stamp

Fairground

Map showing exhibit locations and transportation access

The fairground was divided into seven geographic or thematic zones, five of which had "focal exhibits", as well as two focal exhibits housed in their own buildings. The plan called for numerous wide tree-lined pathways, including a central "Cascade Mall" leading to the Trylon and Perisphere. Because the fairground was built atop swampy land that extended 60 to 80 feet (18 to 24 m) deep, many of the largest buildings had to be placed on steel-and-concrete decks, pilings, or caissons.

At the center of the fairground was Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz's Trylon and Perisphere, the fair's primary theme center. The Trylon was a tower measuring over 700 feet (210 m) tall, while the Perisphere was a sphere 200 feet (61 m) across. Each of the zones around the Trylon and Perisphere was color-coded.

Communications and Business Systems Zone

Fairgoers walking to the north of the Theme Center on the Avenue of Patriots would encounter the Communications and Business Systems exhibits. The focal point of this area was the Communications Building, a large structure with a pair of 160-foot-high (49 m) pylons flanking it. Numerous smaller exhibitors had space in the Communications Building. The structure also had a theater, Stuart Davis mural about technology, and seven illuminated panels about communications technologies.

The Communications and Business Systems Zone also contained the following buildings:

Pavilion	Description	Refs.
American Telephone & Telegraph	In front of the building was a semicircular entrance court with a sculptural group called The Pony Express. Inside was an exhibit on long-distance calls, an exhibit about the Voder electronic-voice synthesizer, a hearing test, a voice-recording room, and another room where visitors could listen to their own voices.
Business Systems and Insurance Building	An L-shaped structure that housed numerous companies such as Aetna, MetLife, and IBM. In particular, the IBM room displayed electric typewriters and an "electric calculator" that used punched cards. Sculptor Joseph Kiselewski created a large sundial for the building as well.
Crosley Corporation	A building displaying the products of the Crosley Corporation. The main building's facade had a panel depicting the corporation's products, while the products themselves were located inside. A separate pavilion contained a rest area.
Masterpieces of Art	Three pavilions around a courtyard, which contained 25 galleries with valuable Old Master works, many of which were borrowed from Europe.
Radio Corporation of America	A structure shaped like a radio tube. Inside were exhibits about televisions, broadcasting, and various types of radio communications; these included dioramas and a yacht.

Community Interest Zone

Souvenir tie clip owned by the late jazz musician Harry Gozzard

The Community Interest Zone was located just east of the Communications & Business Systems Zone. The region's exhibits showcased several trades or industries that were popular among the public at the time. It included buildings dedicated to home furnishings, plumbing, contemporary art, cosmetics, gardens, the gas industry, fashion, jewelry, and religion. Organizations such as the American Standard Companies, Christian Science, Johns Manville, Works Progress Administration, and YMCA also had buildings in the Community Interest Zone. In addition, there was also the "Electrified Farm", a working farm, and the Town of Tomorrow, which included 15 "demonstration homes" on a bowling green adjacent to the World's Fair station of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company.

Government Zone

The Government Zone was located at the east end of the fair, on the eastern bank of the Flushing River. It contained 21 pavilions, several smaller buildings, a centrally located Court of Peace, a Lagoon of Nations, and a smaller Court of States. The 60 foreign governments built many pavilions housing a myriad of cultural offerings.

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  British Pavilion
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  Italian Pavilion
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  Jewish Palestine Pavilion
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  The Netherlands Garden, located in the Netherlands Pavilion exhibit
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  Polish Pavilion
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  Swedish Pavilion
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  USSR Pavilion at night

Notable pavilions

Pavilion	Description	Refs.
Albania	An exposition of products made in Albania, along with an Albanian restaurant.
Argentina	A set of four pylons with glass showcases, including a diorama. There was also a fine arts room, exhibition hall, theater, restaurant, newspaper room, tourist bureau, post office, and information desk.
Australia	A structure at the western end of the Lagoon of Nations. The building was divided into three sections each describing a different aspect of Australia's history.
Great Britain and the British Colonial Empire	Included two buildings with a first-floor connection. The copy of Magna Carta belonging to Lincoln Cathedral also left Britain in 1939 for the first time to be in the British Pavilion at the fair. Within months Britain joined World War II, and the Magna Carta copy remained in Fort Knox during the war. The pavilion included a collection of stamps celebrating Rowland Hill, and the 100th anniversary of the postage stamp. One of the stamps was the British Guiana 1c magenta.
France	A two-story structure on the Court of Peace whose facade featured enormous windows with "majestic curves". After the fair closed and World War II ended, its French restaurant remained in New York City as Le Pavillon.
Greece	Located in the Hall of Nations and was a mirror of how the Metaxas quasi-fascist regime wanted to show Greece to the world. The interior rooms were designed by Nelly, the famous Greek photographer. Nelly's collages expressed four aspects of Greece: the legacy of ancient Greece, the Christian spirituality, picturesque landscapes and the Greek racial continuity. On one of its outside walls there were four big murals featuring four historic episodes of Greek history, authored by Gerasimos Steris. After the Fair concluded, the pavilion was dismantled and parts of it were donated for the construction of the Greek Orthodox cathedral of Saint Nicholas in Tarpon Springs, Florida.
Italy	A structure with a 200-foot (61 m) high waterfall dedicated to Guglielmo Marconi. The pavilion occupied 100,000 square feet of space and cost more than $3 million. Italy paid for the right to use another ten thousand feet of space in the fair's Hall of Nations. Within that space was a representation of She-Wolf, mother of Romulus, the founder of Rome; in the center of the room stood Romano Romanelli's bronze statue of Mussolini. The pavilion's popular restaurant was designed in the shape of the nation's luxury cruise line ships.
Japan	A structure designed by the Japanese-American architect Yasuo Matsui to resemble a traditional Shinto shrine, set within a Japanese garden. It offered tea ceremony and Japanese flower arrangement exhibits. The interior had a "Diplomat room", which featured a reproduction of the Liberty Bell made out of Japanese pearls and diamonds, worth $1 million. This room also featured a photomontage mural across which was written the motto "Dedicated to Eternal Peace and Friendship between America and Japan". The interior of the pavilion was designed by the Japanese architect and photographer Iwao Yamawaki.
Jewish palestine	The building featured a monumental hammered copper relief sculpture on its facade titled The Scholar, The Laborer, and the Tiller of the Soil by Art Deco sculptor Maurice Ascalon. Over 2 million visitors flocked to the Jewish Palestine Pavilion, making it one of the most successful exhibits in the fair. The pavilion sought to showcase the achievements of Jews and their advancement of the land. Several major Israeli artists presented their work, including Isaac Frenkel Frenel, Shimshon Holzman and more.
Netherlands	This exhibit presented a comprehensive survey of the cultural importance of the three parts of the empire: the Kingdom of Europe, the Dutch East Indies and the territories of Suriname and Curaçao in South America.
Pan American Union	The 21 countries of the Pan-American Union, as well as several communications companies, were represented in the Pan American Union Pavilion. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, and Nicaragua were among the cooperating countries. The Good Neighbor policy at the 1939 World's Fair was an extension of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy, which sought to redefine negative Latin American stereotypes. Each country seized the opportunity to showcase their country and to make it more appealing to those around the world, especially in the United States. In their bid to increase cultural awareness at the World's Fair, the countries promoted tourism and strove to compare itself to the United States in an effort to appeal to Americans.
Poland	A steel tower with gold-plated copper shields and a sandstone building plus Polish restaurant in a round building. The Second Polish Republic prepared some 200 tons of artifacts, including a royal carpet of King Casimir IV, seven paintings presenting important events of Polish history, 150 contemporary Polish paintings, a gunmetal monument of Józef Piłsudski, armor of a Polish hussar from Kórnik Castle, ancient Polish weaponry (14th–18th centuries), a bell manufactured for the purpose of the Fair, folk costumes, house furniture from different regions of the country, and over 200 examples of Polish inventions like the first Polish streamlined steam locomotive Pm36-1 dated 1937 reaching 87 mph (140 km/h). The pavilion also displayed a color film about Poland, Visit Poland! (1938; later renamed The Land of My Mother), made using the then-newly invented Kodak Kodachrome process was shown in the pavilion.
Sweden	The Swedish pavilion was designed by Sven Markelius and highlighted the progress of democracy and welfare in Sweden. The pavilion buildings were grouped around a central garden and included a restaurant and a cinema, as well as a 9-foot-tall Dalecarlian horse.
USSR	A semicircular structure with two wings partially enclosing a courtyard. Exhibitions included the life-size copy of the interior of the showcase Mayakovskaya station of the Moscow Metro, whose designer Alexey Dushkin was awarded Grand Prize of the 1939 World's Fair. The USSR Pavilion's courtyard contained a statue on a pylon, which was 260 feet (79 m) tall. The pavilion was only open for 1939 and was razed at the end of that year.
United States	The Federal Building's main building was set between two 150-foot (46 m) pylons. The Federal Building and several surrounding structures contained a combined 23 exhibits, dedicated to 22 states and Puerto Rico. Midway through the fair, the world's largest carillon was installed in the spire of the Florida state exhibition building, which weighed 25 tons and was moved to the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center after the fair.

Food Zone

Southwest of the Government Zone was the Food Zone, composed of 13 buildings in total (the Swedish and Turkish pavilions were physically within the Food Zone but were classified as being part of the Government Zone). Its focal exhibit was Food No. 3, a rhomboidal structure with four shafts representing wheat stalks.

The Food Zone included the following buildings:

Pavilion	Description	Refs.
Academy of Sport	A building with sports-related murals on the facade. Inside were displays of sports trophies and sports gear. Coaches also taught classes about sports.
American Tobacco Company	This building included cigarette-making machines, dioramas about tobacco production, and a movie about how cigarettes were made.
Beech-Nut Packing Company	A structure with murals on its facade. Inside were dioramas about coffee production, in addition to a miniature circus parade.
Borden Company	A rotunda with 150 pedigreed cows (including the original Elsie) on a Rotolactor that allowed bathing them, drying them, and milking them in a highly mechanized way. There was also a main hall with dioramas and displays.
Continental Baking Company	A structure with a curved facade decorated with balloons. Inside was a demonstration of the breads and other products being baked.
Food Building	A large rotunda measuring 60 feet (18 m) tall, with murals on its red-and-white facade. Inside was a dining terrace and a large restaurant. The rotunda hosted exhibits from multiple companies, such as dioramas, live manufacturing demonstrations, slideshows, films, and snack bars.
General Cigar Company	A structure with a tobacco-themed mural, an exhibit auditorium, a movie screen displaying world news, scoreboards for American football games, and a lounge.
Heinz Dome	A 90-foot-tall (27 m) dome with murals on its facade. Inside was the Goddess of Perfection sculpture by Raymond Barger, a set of plaques, and a laboratory where tomatoes were grown.
Libby, McNeill & Libby	A replica of a modern ship. On the lower deck were an exhibition about the canning industry's history and a set of live shows. Libby, McNeill and Libby's products were displayed on a lounge on the upper deck.
National Dairy Products Corporation	An exhibit about the manufacturing process of dairy and ice cream products, with a replica of a pasteurization and bottling plant.
Schaefer Center	A 1,000-seat restaurant serving European and American cuisines. The restaurant included murals about the history of beer, and the attached bar included murals about the restaurant's sponsor, Schaefer Beer.
Standard Brands Inc.	Four glass pavilions surrounding a 1,600-seat amphitheater. Inside the pavilion were exhibits relating to Fleischmann's Yeast, Chase & Sanborn Coffee Company, Royal Desserts, and the baking industry.
Swift & Company	A replica of an airliner. The "body" of the airliner had a lounge with a pool, while the "wings" had exhibits about the manufacturing process of Swift & Company's hot dogs.

Production and Distribution Zone

The Production and Distribution Zone was dedicated to showcasing industries that specialized in manufacturing and distribution. The focal exhibit was the Consumers Building, a L-shaped structure occupying a triangular plot on the Avenue of Pioneers, illustrated with murals by Francis Scott Bradford. Numerous individual companies hosted exhibitions in this region. There were also pavilions dedicated to a generic industry, such as electrical products, industrial science, pharmaceuticals, metals, and men's apparel. Among the exhibitors in the Production and Distribution Zone was General Electric.

Transportation Zone

Views of the "World of Tomorrow" (video)

The PRR S1 on display at the fair. This engine ran continuously at 60 mph (97 km/h) on a dynamometer while the fair was open.

The Transportation Zone was located west of the Theme Center, across the Grand Central Parkway. Perhaps the most popular of the Transportation Zone pavilions was the one built for General Motors, which contained the 36,000-square-foot (3,300 m²) Futurama exhibit, designed by famed industrial designer and theater set designer Norman Bel Geddes, which transported fair visitors over a huge diorama of a fictional section of the United States with miniature figures. Along the way, visitors would encounter increasingly larger figures until they exited into a representation of a life-size city intersection. Stores in the GM Pavilion included an auto dealership and an appliance store where visitors could see the latest GM and Frigidaire products.

Adjacent to the GM Pavilion was the Ford Pavilion, where race car drivers drove on a figure eight track on the building's roof endlessly, day in and day out. Not far from GM and Ford was the focal exhibit of the Transportation Zone, a Chrysler exhibit group. In the focal exhibit, an audience could watch a Plymouth being assembled in an early 3D film in a theater with air conditioning, then a new technology. Other structures included an aviation and marine transport building, as well as exhibits for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company and Goodrich Corporation.

Another large building was the Eastern Railroads Presidents' Conference, dedicated to rail transport. The centerpiece of the Railroad Conference exhibits (on seventeen acres) was Railroads on Parade, a spectacular live drama re-enacting the birth and growth of railroads. It had music by Kurt Weil and choreography by Bill Matons. In addition to the show, there were important historical objects on display by the various railroads and manufacturing companies, such as the Tom Thumb engine. The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) had its S1 engine on display, mounted on rollers under the driver wheels and running continuously at 60 mph (97 km/h) all day long. The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad had its own 4-6-0, #169, on display. The British London Midland & Scottish Railway sent their Coronation Scot express train with a locomotive LMS Princess Coronation Class 6229 Duchess of Hamilton, (disguised as sister locomotive 6220 Coronation), to the fair.

Amusement Area

Life Savers Parachute Jump

Beyond the corporate and government zones, the wildly popular but less uplifting Amusements Area was not integrated into the thematic matrix, and was classified as an Area rather than a Zone. It was located south of the World's Fair Boulevard, along 230 acres (93 ha) on the east shore of Fountain Lake. Despite the high-minded educational tone that Grover Whalen attempted to set, the Amusements Area was the most popular part of the Fair. The attractions included a roller coaster, a Flying Turns-style bobsled, a Life Savers-branded parachute tower called the Parachute Jump (later moved to Coney Island, where it is standing but not operating), the 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge Gimbels Flyer train ride, (later purchased by Kennywood, where it still runs today), and carnival acts such as a "Little Miracle Town" with dwarves. Other attractions included a "winter wonderland" called Sun Valley, a Theatre of Time and Space, and a replica of Victoria Falls.

Frank Buck exhibited his "Frank Buck's Jungleland", which displayed rare birds, reptiles and wild animals along with Jiggs, a five-year-old trained orangutan. In addition, Buck provided a trio of performing elephants, an 80-foot (24 m) "monkey mountain" with 600 monkeys, and an attraction that had been popular at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair: camel rides. A number of the shows provided spectators with the opportunity of viewing women in very revealing costumes or topless, such as the "Frozen Alive Girl", the Living Pictures, and the Dream of Venus building. This last attraction was a pavilion designed by the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí which contained within it a number of unusual sculptures and statues as well as live nearly-nude performers posing as statues. For the 1940 season, the area was rebranded as "The Great White Way".

Bendix Lama Temple and nude show

The Bendix Lama Temple was a 28,000-piece full-sized replica of the 1767 Potala temple in Rehe, Manchuria. It was commissioned and brought back by the industrialist and explorer Vincent Bendix. The Temple had previously been exhibited at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, called "Century of Progress". Attendance was disappointing in 1939. As a result, in 1940, a provocative show was added to the temple, which involved multiple nude women.

Aquacade

Audience members viewing The Billy Rose Aquacade at the 1939–40 World's Fair

For the 1939 World's Fair, the New York state government built a massive curved amphitheater at the north end of Meadow Lake, which originally was intended to accommodate 12,000 guests. The amphitheater hosted Billy Rose's Aquacade, a spectacular musical and water extravaganza with an orchestra to accompany the spectacular synchronized swimming performance. It featured Johnny Weissmuller and Eleanor Holm, two of the most celebrated swimmers of the era, and dazzled fairgoers with its lighting and cascades and curtains of water, pumped in waterfalls at 8,000 gallons a minute. The cost of admission was 80 cents. The Aquacade facility served as an entertainment venue in the park for several decades; following a period of extended deterioration, it was ultimately demolished in 1996.

Temple of Religion

William Church Osborn led an effort to construct a Temple of Religion, a modern building for the purpose of religious assemblies and production of plays, pageants, and concerts. The building included a 150-ft tower filled with stained glass windows. Olin Downes was the general director of the World's Fair music department, and he selected Hugh Ross (director of the Schola Cantorum) to organize the vast series of recitals and concerts that were planned. John W. Hausermann funded the new Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ that was installed in the building.

Standalone exhibits

There were two focal exhibits that were not located within any zone. The first was the Medical and Public Health Building on Constitution Mall and the Avenue of Patriots (immediately northeast of the Theme Center). This structure contained a massive "Hall of Man" dedicated to the human body and a "Hall of Medical Science" dedicated to medical professions and devices. The other was the Science and Education Building, located on a curved portion of Hamilton Place between the Avenue of Patriots and Washington Square, just north of the Medical and Public Health Building. The building was not used to teach science, but it contained an auditorium and several exhibits on science and education.

One of the first exhibits to receive attention was the Westinghouse Time Capsule, which was not to be opened till the year 6939. The time capsule, a tube containing various contemporary objects, is located at a depth of 50 feet (15 m) and is marked by a small stone plaque.

At the west end of the fairground was the administration building. This structure included a first-floor hall with maps, displays, and other fair-related objects, in addition to offices and a cafeteria. The building's facade had a 27-foot-tall (8.2 m) relief of a woman.

Culture

Themes

As announced in 1936, the fair was themed to "the world of tomorrow". The colors blue and orange were chosen as the official colors of the fair, as they were the colors of New York City. Each day at the fair was a special theme day, for which a special button was issued. The fair's official seal depicted the Statue of Liberty with her torch. The seal was available in multiple color schemes, such as an orange-and-blue scheme and a white-and-silver scheme. The fair's official flag was originally a triband with a blue bar flanked by orange bars; there was a white seal in the center of the blue bar.

Another theme of the fair was the emerging new middle class, leading a hoped-for recovery from the Great Depression. The Westinghouse Electric Corporation produced the film The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair, which depicted a fictional Midwestern family, the Middleton family, taking in the sights of the fair. Westinghouse also featured Elektro the Moto-Man, a robot that talked, differentiated colors, and smoked cigarettes.

Music

The WFC established a music advisory committee for the fair in 1937, which was led by the conductor Allen Wardwell. The music advisory committee had proposed a music festival with performances at the fairground itself, Carnegie Hall, and the Metropolitan Opera House.

Ralph Vaughan Williams composed his work for harp and string orchestra Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus on commission from the World's Fair, which was first performed at Carnegie Hall in 1939. In addition, the British Council commissioned a piano concerto from Arthur Bliss for the British Week at the World's Fair. Adrian Boult conducted the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall in 1939 with Solomon as the soloist.

Visual art and sculpture

From the outset, the fairground was also planned to include murals, sculptures, and colorful decorations. Whalen, who was determined that the fair should "not represent the work of any one person or school", employed 181 visual artists, designers, and architects. WPA artists painted murals for the fair, which appeared in The New York Times Magazine. Ceramic sculptor Waylande Gregory created The Fountain of the Atom, which displayed the largest ceramic sculptures in modern times.

Consumer products

Nylon fabric, the View-Master, and Scentovision (an early version of Smell-O-Vision) were introduced at the Fair. Other exhibits included Vermeer's painting The Milkmaid from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, a streamlined pencil sharpener, a diner (still in operation as the White Mana in Jersey City, New Jersey), a futuristic car-based city by General Motors, the first fully constructed computer game, and early televisions. Bell Labs' Voder, a keyboard-operated speech synthesizer, was demonstrated at the fair.

Special events

The fair coincided with the 1st World Science Fiction Convention, which took place at the Caravan Hall in Manhattan on July 2–4, 1939.

On July 3, 1940, the fair hosted "Superman Day". The event included an athletic contest with a "Super-Boy and Super-Girl of the Day", as well as a public appearance by an actor portraying Superman. Broadway actor Ray Middleton, who served as a judge for the contest, is often credited with having appeared in the Superman costume on Superman Day, but this is disputed.

Transportation to the fair

The Willets Point station on the Flushing Line was rebuilt for the fair.

Whalen predicted in late 1936 that these lines needed to be able to handle as many as 800,000 visitors per day, though he predicted an average of 250,000 daily visitors. As such, several public transit lines were built or upgraded to serve the fair. A special subway line, the Independent Subway System's (IND) World's Fair Line, was built to serve the fair. The World's Fair Line, a spur of the IND Queens Boulevard Line, was dismantled after the fair ended. The Willets Point station on the Flushing Line was rebuilt to handle fair traffic on the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) and Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit (BMT) systems. A special fleet of 50 World's Fair Lo-V subway cars were built, and the existing Q-type Queens subway cars were rebuilt to provide additional service on the Flushing Line. A Long Island Rail Road station (now Mets–Willets Point) was built next to the Flushing Line station. In addition, Queens-Nassau Transit Lines bought 55 buses to provide service to the fair.

Several highways were planned in advance of the World's Fair. For example, the Bronx–Whitestone Bridge and Whitestone Expressway were opened just before the fair, connecting Flushing Meadows to the Bronx. The Grand Central Parkway was also extended to serve the fairground, and Queens Boulevard was widened and paved. The construction of the Queens–Midtown Tunnel was also expedited for the fair, though the tunnel did not open until 1940. Maps also touted the fairground's proximity to five airports and seaplane bases.

Closure and aftermath

World's Fair exhibit Duchess of Hamilton, now preserved in York, England

The fair was open for two seasons, from April to October each year, and was officially closed permanently on October 27, 1940. To get the fair's budget overruns under control before the 1940 season and to augment gate revenues, Whalen was replaced by banker Harvey Gibson. In addition, much greater emphasis was placed on the amusement features and less on the educational and uplifting exhibits. The great fair attracted over 45 million visitors and ultimately recouped only 32% of its original cost. Following the fair, the vast majority of structures were dismantled or moved, but seven structures were preserved in Flushing Meadows.seven structures at Flushing Meadows to be preserved following the 1939 fair.

World War II

Although the United States did not enter World War II until the end of 1941, the fairgrounds served as a window into the troubles overseas. The pavilions of Poland and Czechoslovakia, for example, did not reopen for the 1940 season. Also on July 4 that same year, two New York City Police Department officers were killed by a blast while investigating a time bomb left at the British Pavilion. The bombing has never been solved, but there is evidence that bombing was an inside job by William Stephenson, a British agent based in New York.

Countries under the thumb of the Axis powers in Europe in 1940 like Poland, Czechoslovakia, and France ran their pavilions with a special nationalistic pride. The only major world power that did not participate for the 1939 season was Germany, citing budget pressures. The USSR Pavilion was dismantled after the first season, leaving an empty lot called "The American Commons". When the fair closed, many among the European staff were unable to return to their home countries, so they remained in the US and in some cases exercised a tremendous influence on American culture. For example, the French pavilion gave rise to three French restaurants—La Caravelle, Le Pavillon, and La Côte Basque.

World War II presented additional problems with what to do with the exhibits on display in the pavilions of countries under Axis occupation. In the case of the Polish Pavilion, most of the items were sold by the Polish Government in exile in London to the Polish Museum of America and shipped to Chicago. A notable exception was made for a monument of the Polish–Lithuanian King Jagiełło. La Guardia liked the Jagiello monument so much that he helped spearhead a campaign to have it installed in Central Park, where it still stands.

Relocated attractions

Many of the rides from the World's Fair were sold after its closure to Luna Park at Coney Island, which was allowed to call itself the New York World's Fair of 1941. The Life Savers Parachute Jump was sold that same year and relocated to Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, where it was renamed the Parachute Jump.

Belgium Pavilion

Another building saved from 1940 was the Belgian Building designed by Henry Van de Velde. It was awarded to Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia, and shipped to Richmond in 1941. The school still uses the building for its home basketball games.

After the Fair, the Temple was again disassembled, and placed in storage for many years. There were proposals to erect it at Oberlin College, Harvard University, Indiana University, and elsewhere, but they all failed for lack of funding. In 1984, the approximately 28,000 pieces were shipped to the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm, Sweden, with plans to rebuild it in a nearby park, but objections from the neighboring Chinese Embassy have stalled the project indefinitely.

Park site

The New York City Building of the 1939 fair were used for the first temporary headquarters of the United Nations from 1946 until it moved in 1951 to its permanent headquarters in Manhattan. The former New York City Building was used for the UN General Assembly during that time. This building was later refurbished for the 1964 fair as the New York City Pavilion, featuring the Panorama of the City of New York, an enormous scale model of the entire city. It became the home of the Queens Center for Art and Culture (later renamed the Queens Museum of Art, and now called the Queens Museum) in 1972.

One other structure from the 1939–40 Fair remains in its original location: the New York City Subway's Mets–Willets Point station, which continued to serve Flushing Meadows Park after the fair. It was also renovated the 1964–65 Fair.

Impact

When the fair was being developed, The Washington Post wrote in 1936 that the fair would give New York City a permanent public park, while the "visitors will get an eyeful beyond their fondest imagination and the hotel-keepers will get a pocketful" of money.

Economic and regional influence

The fair's development helped spur real estate development in central Queens. City officials requested in early 1936 that the neighborhoods around Flushing Meadows be rezoned as residential areas. The Board of Estimate voted in 1937 to enact zoning restrictions around the fair, which prevented the construction of high-rise buildings around the site and created a buffer zone around the fairground.

Grover Whalen predicted that the fair would attract 50 million visitors who would spend $1 billion in total. The WFC predicted in 1936 that it would lost $3.9 million if the fair recorded 40 million visitors and that it would earn at least $1 million with 50 million or more visitors. Numerous retailers on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan renovated their buildings in advance of the fair.

Media and archives

An archive of documents and films from the 1939 New York World's Fair is maintained at the New York Public Library. The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., described the 1939 fair in its exhibition Designing Tomorrow: America's World's Fairs of the 1930s, which ran from October 2010 to September 2011.

See also

• Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations – 1853 World's Fair in Bryant Park, New York City
• List of world expositions

References

Sources

• Caro, Robert (1974). The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-48076-3. OCLC 834874.
• Cotter, Bill (2009). The 1939–1940 New York World's Fair. Images of America. Arcadia Pub. ISBN 978-0-7385-6534-7.
• Fortuna, James J. (December 17, 2019). "Fascism, National Socialism, And the 1939 New York World's Fair". Fascism. 8 (2): 179–218. doi:10.1163/22116257-00802008. hdl:10023/19258. ISSN 2211-6257.
• Monaghan, Frank, ed. (1939). Official Guide Book of the New York World's Fair, 1939. Exposition Publications. OCLC 575567.
• Official guide book of the New York World's Fair, 1939 : building the world of tomorrow. New York: Exposition Publications. 1939. OCLC 123481289.
• Wood, Andrew F. (2004). New York's 1939–1940 World's Fair. Postcard history series. Arcadia. ISBN 978-0-7385-3585-2. Retrieved July 25, 2024.
• Steinberg, Ted (July 21, 2015). Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York. Simon and Schuster. pp. 209–225. ISBN 978-1-4767-4128-4.

Further reading

• Gelernter, David Hillel (1996). 1939, the lost world of the Fair. New York: Avon Books. ISBN 978-0-380-72748-3. OCLC 34889552.
• Kargon, Robert H.; Molella, Arthur P.; Low, Morris; Fiss, Karen (2015). World's fairs on the eve of war : science, technology, and modernity, 1937-1942. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 978-0-8229-8114-5. OCLC 933516797.
• Mauro, James (2010). Twilight at the world of tomorrow : genius, madness, murder, and the 1939 World's Fair on the brink of war. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-51214-7. OCLC 449845319.
• Roesch, Roberta (1967). World's fairs : yesterday, today, tomorrow. The John Day Company. pp. 61–68 – via Internet Archive.
• Wurts, Richard; Appelbaum, Stanley (1977). The New York World's Fair, 1939/1940 in 155 photographs. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-23494-6. OCLC 3379917.
• Zim, Larry; Lerner, Mel; Rolfes, Herbert (1988). The world of tomorrow : the 1939 New York World's Fair. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-015923-8. OCLC 18970335.

External links

• New York World's 1939–1940 records, 1935–1945 Manuscripts and Archives, New York Public Library.
• Official website of the BIE
• Tour of the 1939 World's Fair
• WNYC Broadcasts from the 1939–1940 New York World's Fair