1939: New York World's Fair

The New York World's Fair 1939 has joined the historic cavalcade of expositions which since the middle ages have galvanized public thinking with their inspiring messages of human progress. A mammoth venture in the field of mass education, the Fair brought together 60 nations representing 90 per cent of the world's population, 23 American states, and many of the greatest United States commercial interests in a magnificent summing-up of man's achievements. Between April 30 and Oct. 31, 25,817,265 visitors attended the Fair. So wide was the scope of knowledge exhibited here, the Flushing Meadow exposition could not fail to exert a powerful influence upon the minds and imaginations of all who saw it, and have a far-reaching effect upon the social, artistic and cultural welfare of the country.

The Fair was a staunch protagonist for the building of the 'Better World of Tomorrow.' It broke ground in many fields of achievement. The exposition marked the introduction to the public of a new, revolutionary form of communication — television, broadcast commercially for the first time from the Fair site. It also sponsored the debut of fluorescent lighting using chemical powders to convert ultra-violet radiation into 'cold' light of soft tints suitable for new and economical commercial uses. Nylon, duPont's amazing plastic made from coal, air and water, was also introduced to the public and the Fair.

The exposition suggested the direction of future development in other phases of man's activities. It brought about a new appreciation of the role of art in everyday life through two great collections of paintings — the $30,000,000 Masterpieces of Art, and the Contemporary American Art exhibit — and through the wide use of murals and sculptures to beautify architecture and landscape. The Fair also made spectacular contributions to the problem of city planning with several exhibits, including the spectacle of Democracity, metropolis of Tomorrow, inside the Perisphere; Pare Lorentz' famed documentary film, 'The City,' made especially for the Fair through a grant from the Carnegie Corporation; and through such forward-looking exhibits as the General Motors 'Futurama' of 1960.

General Description.

The World's Fair of 1939 commemorated the 150th anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington as first President of the United States, in New York City, April 30, 1789. Total investment in the Fair exceeded $155,000,000. The exposition was located on 1,216½ acres of Flushing Meadow Park on Long Island, leased from New York City, which will convert the site into a permanent recreation park after the exposition closes. This vast area, formerly a tidal swampland, had become a giant ash dump through the accumulations of many years. As a tangible expression of what could be done in building the World of Tomorrow, this eyesore was reclaimed after 7,000,000 cubic yards of ash-fill were removed, the course of Flushing River diverted, two great tidal gates built to prevent saltwater seepage into the great artificial fresh-water lakes (Fountain Lake and Lagoon of Nations) which now decorate the site, and 758 miles of piling driven into the crust of the site as foundations for more than 200 structures. More than 10,000 trees were transplanted from surrounding states to beautify the site. Novel seasonal arrangements of millions of plantings harmonized with the Fair's basic spectrum color plan, which divided the major exhibit area into easily identified zones of yellow, red and blue along the main thoroughfares.

Dominating this magnificent panorama, the Perisphere and Trylon — a 200-foot globe and a 700-foot triangular spire — symbolized the Fair's prophetic theme of social reconstruction. The interior of the globe was used as a theater to which spectators were admitted via two great electric staircases moving up through the base of the Trylon. Here, the Fair's major spectacle was viewed from two revolving platforms suspended just below the 'equator' of the great sphere. Combining sound, motion picture and diorama, the spectacle, lasting six minutes, presented a day in the life of the future metropolis, Democracity, imaginatively reproduced in a huge scale-model by Henry Dreyfuss. The spiral Helicline, a ramp 1,000 feet long sweeping around the Trylon and Perisphere, served as an exit.

The Perisphere show drew 5,718,224 paying customers and was the most popular show at the Fair. Most popular free show was the spectacular Lagoon of Nations display, more than 20,000,000 visitors witnessing this astounding fire, water, sound and fireworks spectacle that nightly erupted over Constitution Mall.

General Exhibits.

The Fair offered visitors exhibit material in scores of specialized subjects. The latest knowledge of cancer, diabetes, blood diseases, pneumonia, allergy, heart disease, syphilis and tuberculosis was presented in the Medicine and Public Health Building. Fifteen full-sized completely furnished houses illustrated new building trends and materials in the Town of Tomorrow. The Electrified Farm displayed 100 uses of electricity in agriculture. The General Motors 'Highway and Horizons' exhibit, designed by Norman Bel Geddes, provided visitors with a 15-minute ride into 1960. While seated in easy chairs mounted on a continuously moving platform, visitors passed before the largest model ever made. The Ford Motor Co. took visitors for a ride in new cars on an elevated ramp encircling its main building, also prophetic of possible trends in motor transportation facilities. 'Railroads on Parade' was an impressive pageant which dramatized the romance of railroad transportation, using a cast of 250 actors and a cavalcade of historic locomotives. Actual airplanes and functioning airport apparatus, housed in a unique building designed to represent the fuselage of a modern airliner emerging from a hangar, told the story of the aviation industry's growth in the past decade.

Manufacturing processes never before seen in public and factories in full operation were displayed by industry to dramatize their functions in supplying the needs of human society. A tire was produced every four minutes at the Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. building; marvelous machines created cellophane, spun acetate yarns and stuffed toothbrushes with plastic bristles within the duPont 'Wonderland of Chemistry'; furnaces and spinning machines operated in a demonstration of the manufacture of fiberglass fabrics; a 10,000,000-volt bolt of lightning, largest ever created artificially, was systematically discharged in the General Electric Co. exhibit; 138 cows were automatically milked every day on the Borden Co.'s 'rotolactor' or mechanical turntable; daily demonstrations of television were on view at the Radio Corporation of America, General Electric, Crosley Corporation and the Westinghouse exhibits.

Foreign Participation.

Unexpectedly, the Fair became charged with the drama of turbulent history in the making when, before its close, three foreign participants had disappeared as nations and two others had gone to war. Czecho-Slovakia was annexed by Germany, a non-exhibitor; Italy seized its fellow-participant, Albania; and Poland suffered its fourth partition, this time at the joint hands of Germany and Russia. Popular subscriptions continued their pavilions, which became centers of nationalist sympathy during the remainder of the Fair.

Twenty-four foreign nations were represented at the Fair with their own buildings, while others were housed in the Halls of Nations adjoining the United States Government Building. Twenty foreign restaurants served native dishes. All the participating nations had ransacked their museums and drawn heavily on their national art treasures and heirlooms to fill the flag-decked buildings with the finest examples of their native art, industry and culture.

American Government and the States.

The American section of the Fair was a popular and dramatic evocation of our national philosophy of peace and freedom. A great edifice with two massive towers flanking a colonnade of 13 columns — one for each of the 13 original states — the Federal Building contained displays describing the function of government in every field of human activity. The government's functions were shown in twelve basic sections, intended to give the average person a better understanding of its service. These divisions were: conservation, food, shelter, industry and trade, finance and credit, transportation and communication, social welfare, education, arts and recreation, protection, foreign relations, and territories and fiscal affairs. The dominant feature of each of these 12 exhibits was a revolving mural seven feet wide and extending 23 feet up the back wall of the building. These murals, painted by Eugene Savage upon a belt-like strip of canvas, revolved slowly downwards into groups of statuary symbolic of each function. American traditions and achievements were also pictorialized in a specially-made film, 'These United States,' shown in a motion picture theater seating 500 persons.

The roster of states which exhibited at the Fair included Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.

As host to the exposition, New York City was also represented at the Fair with a comprehensive exhibit describing the everyday functions of a great municipality in providing services to its citizens.

The New York World's Fair 1939 represented a unique cooperative expression of man's belief in his future progress. It offered facts, not merely theories, on which to build the Better World of Tomorrow. It can be said without fear of contradiction that every step the visitor took on the Fair site brought him closer to a fuller understanding of himself and the world about him. So vital was its role as a powerful force for fostering peace, freedom and democratic progress, particularly since the outbreak of the war had engulfed most of Europe, that it was voted to continue the exposition for a second year. The opening date of the New York World's Fair is set for May 11, 1940. See also ARCHITECTURE: Exposition Architecture; MUSIC.