1940: New York World's Fair

The New York World's Fair closed Sunday, October 27 with the largest paid crowd in modern history. More than 538,000 people packed the Fair grounds, which with 72,000 passes — a total of 610,000 — officially made it the largest single day of the two-year exhibition. During the three closing months of the exhibition a veritable 'blitzkrieg' of promotion was created on the Fair grounds in order to attract widespread attention of press and public. Claude Collins was appointed by Charles O'Neil, director of Promotion to take over all promotional activities. The writer was delegated by Harvey D. Gibson, Chairman of the Board, to take over all publicity. For ninety consecutive days, high pressure with a capital 'P' was administered. Events were staged that literally leaped off the pages. Newsreel subjects were staged that reached 85,000,000 people weekly. Scarcely a day passed that an event with plenty of 'journalistic sex appeal' did not make its appearance some place on the Fair grounds.

From a dismal daily attendance of thirty, forty, and fifty thousand people during the months of June-July, the attendance jumped into sky-rocket figures with 200,000-days commonplace as early as the second week in August. Week-ends broke all records with 650,000 being not too unusual. The total paid attendance of the 1940 Fair was over 19,000,000 as compared to 24,000,000 of the 1939 Fair, which for a two-year run was a show business 'paradox.' The underlying secret of this stimulant was intrinsic creative ability on behalf of the publicity and promotional staffs.

Readers may recall the sensational newsreels of Jimmy Lynch and his 'Death Dodgers' in their dive-bombing automobile act in the Court of Peace; the parachute wedding (genuine), world's largest outdoor piano recital, the Overseas Press Conference, the largest outdoor art class, and the full page rotogravure spreads from coast to coast on the orangutan, 'Jiggs, Mayor of Jungle Town,' most hilarious animal expressions ever photographed. It was these 'stunts' that brought grandiose publicity, that gave newspaper men covering the Fair something to write about. Nothing was wrong with the Fair. It was still the greatest show in the Universe. What went wrong was the promotion and publicity. The public was allowed to forget. Once the public came to see, the Fair sold itself. That, to me, is the story behind the news on why the 1940 Fair took on new blood and showed a net working profit of over $5,000,000.

Most pleased of all exhibitors were concessionaires in the amusement zone. Unlike their 1939 experience, the 1940 Fair brought them a boom time business. Week-ends were sell-outs in the big shows. One amusement, a roller coaster, which was in sorry financial shape at the end of the 1939 Fair showed a substantial profit after paying all indebtedness.

Commercial exhibitors during the 1940 Fair reported the largest visitors' days of either year. Their total attendance was marked, too, by 50 per cent and 60 per cent jumps.

Most dramatic international angle of the '40 Fair was the disappearance of seven European nations under the Hitler assault. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, France, Holland, Belgium, Denmark — all exhibitors at the Fair — officially disappeared from the public at large when the Fair closed. All foreign exhibitors joined commercial and amusement exhibitors during the last few weeks of the Fair in offering bargain sales to the public of everything from linens and furniture to foods and wines.

There'll never be another exhibition during your lifetime or my lifetime like this one. The story has yet to be told about the fantastic and paradoxical salesmanship on a world-wide scale that made the New York World's Fair a reality. It's a crazy, almost unbelievable job that Grover Whalen put over. Running it and showing a profit is almost as immense, a task which Harvey Gibson, Chairman of the Board (Manufacturers Trust Co.) did to stun the stockholders who long ago gave up all hopes of getting ' — even five cents on the dollar back.' They got $.40 on the dollar and were elated.

During the closing weeks of the Fair much discussion went on as to the ultimate destination of buildings and their contents. Only five buildings remained — the rest were torn down at a total cost to the Fair Corporation of $114,000. Commander Howard A. Flanigan, Vice President of the Fair, directed the demolition program in accordance with the Fair Corporation's contract to the city of New York. Under the supervision of Commissioner of Parks, Robert A. Moses, the Flushing meadows will bloom again, resplendent in World's Fair foliage as a park second to none in beauty.

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.

1938: New York World's Fair

The New York World's Fair, held from April 30 to Oct. 31, 1939, on Flushing Meadow, New York, represents a $150,000,000 spectacle of human achievements in building the World of Tomorrow. Its purpose is to promote trade and industry throughout the world, stimulate international friendships and dramatically to emphasize the interrelationship of all men's interests, while with this theme and purpose it commemorates the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Washington's inauguration as first President of the United States.

The site of this giant pageant is a 1,216½-acre area on Flushing Bay, excavated, planted, and landscaped from swampland. The leveling and construction of the land was launched in the fall of 1935. The central theme structures of the Fair are: the Trylon, a three-sided steel spire rising to a height of 700 feet and measuring 68 feet on each side of the base, and, in front of it, the Perisphere, a hollow, eighteen-story globe, 200 feet in diameter and weighing 9,300,000 pounds. The Perisphere contains within it a panoramic kaleidoscope of the World of Tomorrow. The Trylon is used as a broadcasting station tower. A spiral ramp called a helicline encircles the pool beneath each form and leads up to a platform in the Trylon and from there crosses a span to the Perisphere.

From this Theme Center, which has become the trademark and the symbol of the Fair, three general areas and fourteen major zones radiate to the four points of the compass: the great Exhibit Area presented by the Fair itself and private industry; the Government Area which includes the $3,000,000 United States Federal Building with its two 150-foot towers, the foreign and international pavilions, and the varied displays of the states and possessions of the Union; and the 280-acre Amusement Area which encircles Meadow Lake. Within the scope of these comprehensive general areas are the fourteen zones into which the varied and complex exhibit sections have been divided. These zones are termed the Government Zone, the Zones of Production, of Transportation, of Communication, of Distribution, of Business Systems, of Shelter, of Clothing and Cosmetics, of Sustenance, of Health and Public Welfare, of Education, of Recreation, of Arts and of Religion.

The plan of the exhibitions has been worked out in an effort to obtain the highest degree of order and accessibility. East of the Theme Center lies Constitution Mall, the main esplanade and the chief axis of the display area. Upon this central courtway are landscaped cascades, buildings with colored mosaics, pools, and fountains, sculptured groups, and, facing the Theme Center from Washington Square, the sixty-five foot statue of George Washington by James Earle Fraser followed by the sculptured figures of the four Freedoms by Leo Friedlander, representing Freedom of the Press, of Speech, of Religion, and of Assembly. Behind the Freedoms are Paul Manship's The Moods of Time and a 50-foot sundial. On either side, one thousand full-grown trees have been planted along the branching thoroughfares. The Mall proper terminates at a large lagoon, 700 feet long and 400 feet wide, which links the exhibit area to the government and foreign zones. Over this lagoon are staged great spectacles of fireworks composed of skyrockets, jets of water, colored floodlights and bursts of flame, and day and night floodlights play over the various sections of the exhibits on Rainbow Avenue, coloring the buildings on the right of the Theme Center blue and those on the left yellow with the central portions possessing all hues in between.

North of the Theme Center, on the Avenue of Patriots, the Court of Communications, Park Row and Petticoat Lane, are situated the Science and Education Display buildings, the Communications building, and the Cosmetics and Textile buildings, which extend eastward to Bowling Green and the five-acre model 'Town of Tomorrow.' South of the Theme Center lie the Avenue of the Pioneers, the Court of Power, the Plaza of Light, Commerce Circle, and the Avenue of Labor on which are situated the Electrical and Distribution buildings with their scientific displays, and further east the Chemicals and Plastics buildings, which extend to Lincoln Square and finally to the Court of the States where the buildings and displays of forty states and territories of the Union are represented. South of the Plaza of Light, the Empire State Bridge crosses to the New York State Amphitheater on Meadow Lake where great marine exhibitions take place. On the eastern side of the Amphitheater stands the Music Hall which seats an audience of 2,500 spectators, and behind it the Amusement Area, while on the western side lie the Terrace Club and the Army and Navy buildings stretching southwest along the lakefront.

Finally, west of the Theme Center, on City Hall Square, stands the New York City Building, to be one of the permanent municipal structures of the Fair. The Business Systems building and the Pharmacy building flank the Square, and behind the New York City Building lie the Courts of Railways and Ships and the Avenue of Transportation on which the motor, aviation, and marine buildings are located.

Among the outstanding attractions featured in these various zones and areas of the Fair are the Model Town of Tomorrow, designed for a population of 3,500 inhabitants, constructed with a new architectural treatment, and complete with homes, home furnishings, roads, a playground and an art center; the two painting exhibits, one of modern American paintings, the other of old masters; the Shakespeare Theater devoted entirely to Shakespeare's plays; the 280-acre amusement zone, comprizing novelties, shows, burlesque bullfights, dancing, and entertainments; a complete miniature railroad; the air display of the latest type clipper and special aeronautical exhibits; the replica of Independence Hall in Philadelphia erected by the State of Pennsylvania; the foreign restaurants where exclusively native food is served; and the Children's World where guests of the Fair may safely leave their children for an instructive afternoon.

Over sixty foreign nations, investing $25,000,000 in buildings, are represented in the various exhibitions and displays of the Fair, and an attendance of 60,000,000 spectators is expected to have witnessed this giant Exposition before its close. At the end of the Fair, the landscaped grounds and municipal buildings and amphitheater will be turned into a permanent City Park.