THE NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIRS
------------------------
John Pazmino
NYSkies Astronomy Inc
www.nyskies.org
nyskies@nyskies.org
2009 April 13
Introduction
----------
A history, social and cultural and civic, of the two 20th century
fairs was presented by Mr Ron Marzlock at the Science Industry
business Library on Thursday 8 January 2009. The little lecture room
in the lower level quickly filled to capacity with about 60 people by
door-closing at 17:30 EST.
Mr Marzlock noted that his talk stresses the New York City world's
fairs of 1939-1940 and 1964-1965. He reminded that, in fact, over the
ages, the City hosted THREE world's fairs.. The very first, not named
as such, was the Crystal Palace exhibition in the 1950s on what is now
Bryant Park. The pavilion burned down soon after the fair.
The audience consisted of a smooth gradation of generations, to
include people who attended the one or the other fair, or BOTH. On the
other hand, there were no children or others who obviously missed the
last world's fair.
Marzlock made an innocent suggestion at the start of his talk: If
you have questions or comments, please give them during the talk. This
is a polite and common way to run a lecture, in place of holding the
Q&A until the end of the presentation. In this instant case, it was a
mistake, but a wonderful one.
I can not replay everything from the talk. I give a general
collection of statements and comments blended from Marzlock's
statements, those of the audience, and extra ones from me.
1939-1940
-------
The idea for this fair came from a group of business professionals
who wanted a way to pep up the City during the Depression. They got
favor from the City to use land in Corona, Queens, then a dumping site
for brooklyn Ash Company. The land was purchased and additional land
was taken by condemnation to assemble a plot of some 6 square
kilometers.
The land was along Flushing Creek fronting Long Island Sound.
There was at the north edge the Willet's Point subway station on the
IRT flushing line and a Willet's Point station on the LIRR Port
Washington line. The brand new IND Queens Bv line was just
commissioned at the south edge.
The low areas of the plot were filled in and let to settle. The
idea was to build a town of pavilions for countries to exhibit the
world of tomorrow. American industry could also have pavilions.
After the fair, the land would be cultivated into a grand park for
Queens with a couple structures from the fair becoming park halls.
Robert Moses
----------
The entire enterprise was ruled by Robert Moses. He at the time
held the chairs of so many municipal and state agencies that he had
little trouble getting approval for his plans. In many cases, all did
was move a request from one side of his desk to an other, then signing
off on it.
One spinoff of the construction was the network of highways
thruout Queens. Moses despised transit and believed that the
automobile is the vehicle of the future. He laced Queens with just
about all of its present grid of highways, with only finishing touches
added after World War II.
After the war, when th transit system was under municipal
management, Moses refused to allow new subways to run within the
highway corridors. This forced, as one example, the IRT flushing line
to end in downtown Flushing and not extend farther east over the Long
Island Expressway.
It took four years to build the fair, with the guests taking care
of their own pavilions. To rouse up excitement, the fair ran tours of
the construction progress.
Mush of the construction was done by crews under federal agencies,
like the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation
Corps.
Insulting exhibits
----------------
The fair had attractions that today would be out of order. The
first was a village staffed by midgets. They went about their life for
the visitors to marvel at. There were at the time Liliputia sections
in Coney Island. Today such a show would earn a massive human rights
civil lawsuit and a raft of criminal charges.
There was also a hoochie-koochie section whose female crew wore
scanty outfits. At the time such behavior was sometimes handled as a
crime. A national pavilion nearby was so put off by this area of the
fair that it protested by not flying its flag! I forget which country
Marzlock mentioned. The pictures showed ladies in clothes actually a
bit MORE covering up than is typical today on a summer's day in the
City.
Transit access
------------
In spite of Moses's hatred against transit, the World's Fair had a
dedicated subway line built into it. This fair was the very first ever
featuring a direct transit link to it and remains today among the
very few fairs since then to be so favored
A spur of the IND Queens bv line, itself only a couple years old,
was built. It tapped off of the mainline at Forest Hills station and
curved north into the south end of the fairgrounds. The terminal was a
temporary one, the only IND station intended to be later closed.
Court St on the IND Fulton St line was closed from falling
ridership. It was a permanent structure still used today for the
Transit Museum.
The spur was torn up after the fair but a short piece remains in
use today. It turns trains that end their runs at Forest Hills and
moves trains to and from the Jamaica (Kew Gardens) yard. This section
is entirely underground, except when it comes onto the surface in the
yards.
IRT & BMT
-------
The IRT had direct service to the fair on its Flushing line, fed
by the 2nd Av 'L' and Steinway/42nd St subway. This line opened in
about 1918 with tracks for rushhour express service. Queens was too
sparsely populated to run express trains. all trains stopped at all
stations. It took the World's Fair ti initiate, about 20 years after
the line opened!, express operations. After the fair, the service
continued, adjusted for the increasing traffic as Queens filled up
with new residents.
A new fleet of steel cars, the Steinway or World's fair cars, was
put into service. After the fair these cars were assigned to other IRT
lines, finally retiring from service on the Bronx segment of the 3rd
av 'L' in the 1970s.
The BMT had no direct service. Its runs from Manhattan via the
60th St line ended at Queensboro Plaza. Riders transferred to an other
BMT train to reach the fair. This arrangement was forced by the
different clearances between IRT and BMT size of coaches. The BMT cars
confined to Queens were built to IRT dimensions.
Trylon and perisphere
------------------
There was at first no theme or centerpiece structure. Early
advertising used the Statue of Liberty as an emblem. When the
Perisphere and Trylon were added, at the last minute, it immediately
captured the public attention. Some critics called it the golfball-&-
tack.
There was nothing inside the sphere, unlike, say, the Hayden
Sphere in the Rose Center on Manhattan. Altho constructed of steel
framing, the globe and spike were clad in sheetrock. The panels
suffered badly in the winter of 1939-1940 and were replaced in time
for the second year of the fair.
Attendance
--------
Attendance was gigantic, yet not enough to recoup the costs of
running the fair. It posted a shortfall of some tens of millions of
dollars, an immense sum in the 1930s. It is not clearly known how the
guests did, since they kept their own accounts. As long as they made
assorted payments to the world's fair company, they were left alone.
It seems from extant records that attendance was almost entirely
from the City and nearby districts. There seems to be little
advertising for the fair outside the City region, to attract remote
visitors. With the Depression still in force, probably few people
traveled to New York from a remote town to see the fair. On the other
hand, there were few hard statistics, like tour group bookings, to be
sure.
Shift of theme
------------
The two years of the fair were radicly different. In 1939 the
theme was 'the world of tomorrow' with peeks at robots, television,
car culture, and nylon fabric.
The fair ran for about 340 days, in spring and summer of each
year. Since then new rules for an official world's fair confined the
show to a single year and a maximum number of days.
World War II started in fall of 1939, casting a black cloud over
the 1940 run. Many countries, caught up in the war, did not return.
Their pavilions were dark and shuttered. The world-of-tomorrow came in
an unexpected, not pleasant, way. The second year's theme was more
like 'world peace'.
The British pavilion found a ticking suitcase and called the City
police about it. Detectives came and hand-carried the suitcase to the
street. They wore no special protection and had no special skills
about handling bombs. They tried to open it on the walkway outside the
pavilion. The bomb denoated, killing the detectives.
Out of this incident, never solved, the NYPD formed the Bomb
Squad. It was a dedicated corps of police with heavy vests and hoods,
hardened truck, tools, and all that. Decades later, time and time
again, the Bomb squad would be called to retrieve and defuse hundreds
of bombs placed around the City by a this or that badnik.
The future
--------
Many of the inventions and gadgets shown in 1939 were promised to
be in public hands within a year or two. Most had to wait until after
the war, five and six years later. Some didn't catch on until the
1950s, more than ten years after the fair!
One invention was television, developed by RCA under Sarnoff. He
touted its glories and vowed that by 1941 every one will have a
television in his home. My father went to the fair, saw the gadget,
and was freaked out. Then he was inducted in the army for the war. In
the four years of military service, he forgot about television.
After the war he enrolled in the RCA Institute for radio
technology on manhattan. He was in the first graduating class in 1947.
Near the end of the class, Sarnoff called all the students to an
auditorium and congratulated them. After his spiel, he pulled back the
curtain and showed off a wood cabinet with a small picture frame on
the front. he twiddled knobs and, lo!, a moving talking picture
appeared! A new film projector? No, television.
No one in the audience heard of 'television' and now were totally
amazed. Sarnoff noted that among their new assignments they would
repair these units, which will be in everyone's house in a year of
two. My father got our first television in 1948 and hosted 'television
parties' for the neighbors who did not yet have a unit.
The grand park
------------
Because the fair closed during the war, there was no means to
reform the land into the grand park. Construction material and
machines were sequestered for the war effort. Demolition cleared the
pavilions but left the land empty and devoid of attraction. On
roadmaps of the City into the 1950s the area was labeled 'unimproved'
or 'undeveloped'.
Three major structures were left after the fair. The aquacade
theater at the south end of the fair, a 9,000 seat arena facing an
artificial lagoon, ran shows after the fair, for the 1964-65 fair, and
for years after. It was demolished in the 1990s due to irreparable
decay.
The Parachute Jump was moved to Steeplechase Park in Coney Island.
It ran until 1964 or so, when Steeplechase closed. Then after, it fell
into serious disrepair and was slated for demolition from time to
time. The Jump is now a municipal landmark, clearing it for a full
restoration in the 2000s. While it is operable with some further
fixup, no one so far came forward to run it.
The New York City pavilion was preserved for various uses and was
refurbished for the 1964-65 fair. For the second fair a 1/1,000 scale
model of the City was built inside. It has replicas of every edifice
and structure, all 200,000 of them!, plus topography and scenery.
There was a simulated helicopter ride with narration about the model.
The ride is no longer operating today but you can overlook the model
from a balcony around it. The Queens Museum now occupies the hall.
Since the streets within the fair were corridors for utilities and
services, many of these were kept in place and reactivated for the
second fair.
The name of the area avoided the word 'Corona' because of its
connotation as a marsh and dump grounds. The usual name was Flushing
Creek Park or similar. Only after the 1964-65 fair was 'Corona' added
to the park's name.
1964-1965
-------
A new business partnership thought of having a new world's fair
for the 25th anniversary of the last one. Robert moses became chair of
the new fair company! In the 1960s he was on the wane in power but
still an influential figure in city and state politics. To ease him
out, the city and state offered him $100.000 per year to run the fair,
provided he relinquished his other chairs. He accepted. other
political offices, like the city mayor, had salaries in the myriads of
dollars, making Moses about the highest paid official in New York
state.
Construction
----------
Construction followed more or less the pattern of roads and sites
of the 1939-1940 fair in Flushing Meadow Park. The main gate was at
the north end, but there were several others around the perimeter of
the fairground. The allocation of districts within the grounds was
more or less that of the previous fair, with the evening entertainment
centered at the south end around the aquacade theater.
Despite good-faith efforts to have everything in place on opening
day, several pavilions had punchlist work left to do. They opened
anyway with construction crews going to work after hours. In spite of
adverse publicity for these pavilions and the fair's management, once
the halls were finished, every one let the show go on.
Only a few kilometers of all new highway were built for the fair.
Most of the additions were improvements to interchanges among existing
highways and laying out new parking lots. The Kew Gardens interchange
in perhaps the best known automotive relic of the fair.
Unisphere
-------
The theme building was the Unisphere, then and still today the
biggest model of Earth ever made. It was made of stainless steel, so
it still looks good today. Lamps to show national capitals burned out
soon after the fair and were never repaired..
The United States on the Unisphere had TWO capitals. One was
Washington. The other, near the Quebec-New York border, was the
capital of the Mohawk nation. It was placed there by the workers, who
were then almost all from Mohawk tribes.
Stainless steel was in wide use for decorative and light-load
elements in construction. It wasn't used to any great extent for
heavy-load structural members, like columns and beams of a skyscraper.
The Unisphere is among the first, if not the first, in the US to use
stainless steel for a major heavy-load structure.
The Unisphere remains today the largest model of the Earth ever
made, some 35 meter diameter. Being of stainless steel, it is well
preserved as the signature edifice of Queens.
Transit access
------------
The BMT and IRT in about 1950 segregated their operations so only
the IRT worked the Flushing line. All BMT riders had to transfer to
the IRT at Queensboro Plaza station. They could also transfer to the
flushing line at Times Square. IND riders could trasnfer to the
Flushing line at Jackson Heights station. The transfers were now free,
being that the three systems were then under City operation.
A fleet of new subway cars, the R36 model, was dedicated to the
line. Many of the cars were named for states with the name and emblem
on their sides. They were not, as some histories state, air-condition
when new. These, and other subway models, were retrofitted for AC in
the 1970s and 1980s. Only brand new IRT cars from the 1990s onward
were had AC as delivered. A few of these cars are in the Transit
Museum collection. Some others were made into work cars. Most were
sent to Davy Jones's locker as artificial reefs in the 2000s.
The IND did not restore its 1939-1940 spur. Visitors had to take
buses from Forest Hills or Kew Gardens stations. It also ran the same
subway cars, the R1/9 models, left over from the old fair! These cars
were in service long after the fair, finally being retired in the mid
1970s. The Transit Museum has a set of these, which it hires out for
excursions.
The rogue fair
------------
The 1964-65 fair was not an official 'World's Fair'! There were
many regulations that define such a fair, most of which Moses cared
little for. He went and made up his fair over the objections of the
fair authorities. Most of the big countries abstained but a lot of
third-world nations were glad to come. Many states and american
corporations had their pavilions, too.
Information about the fair was distributed in flyers, booklets,
advertising, and television shows. Some sitcoms had fair settings.
A special phone line was set up, staffed by hordes of clerks
muscling books and maps for the fair. The number was 'WF4-1964'. This
was the first new telephone exchange in New York since before World
War II and the first to deviate from the prevailing code rules for
exchanges.
Civil activism
------------
The theme was 'peace through understanding', one that was
challenged when the fair opened in april 1963. It is a queer fact that
blacks were passed over for jobs at the fair! Not from deliberate
segregation but inertia from former times. It just didn't come to the
fair organizers to address blacks in hiring.
Mass protests with passive resistance marred the first several
weeks of the fair. They picketed various halls, handed out protest
litterature, chanted. They fell limp in the paths, forcing police to
haul them off the grounds.
Besides pickets and marches in the fair, protesters staged
breakdowns of cars on the entry roads. They stopped their cars in mid
traffic, raised the bonnet, and made like they were stuck. The traffic
backup behind them often lasted hours with potential visitors turning
tail to go home.
My family was caught in this tieup on an early day of the fair. My
father drove the family from Brooklyn to within a kilometer of the
parking lot. There the traffic came to a dead halt with no movement
for some two hours. when traffic got moving, police were shooing cars
AWAY from the fair because there were more jams farther ahead. There
after, we went to the fair by subway.
Women's movement
--------------
Marzlock's pictures showed an other aspect of bygone life. All the
women wore dresses or skirts! Maybe one or two dared be in public with
slacks. Many women wore flowery hats, in the summer heat! Some of the
women in the audience recalled that in the 1960s as young schoolgirls
they were punished for wearing slacks!
In my own case in school at that time, the dean of students made a
rule that female students can not wear pants on campus. They didn't.
They wore pantaloons, Poolakas, pedal-pushers, coulottes, and other
garments. Dean tried a reworded rule: No bifurcated garments. The
ladies complied with that, too. They went braless.
Also in the pictures, families are almost always father, mother,
and kids, with father in charge. There were no single-parent families.
Almost only men went after the gadget exhibits, like IBM, AT&T, GM.
Women back then didn't do much beyond taking care of the house. They
clustered at the shows for housekeeping and fashion.
Business
------
Like the first fair, the 1964-65 run lost money. Attendance was
huge, tens of millions of people, but the fair costs were a bit too
high to recover from the admissions and guest fees. While ten million
dollars was not so severe a sum as that in 1939-40, it could cover the
entire cost of building and running a major fair hall. The Unisphere,
for one, cost all of two million dollars to build.
While the admission fee was modest, $2, and most pavilions were
free. there were many annoying expenses. One of the worst was the
Brass Rail food tents. Prices for fast foods were about double the
prices outside the fairgrounds. After being nicked by the food prices,
my family took lunch sandwiches to the fair.
The big-name attractions suffered from immensely long lines to get
in. With the show inside being only twenty or so minutes long, a wait
of half, one, two hour turned potential visitors to other less crowded
attractions.
The guests in some cases lost major amounts due to poor planning
and management of their pavilions or bad luck. Oklahoma's pavilion
consisted of just a flower garden of Oklahoma plants, and a souvenir
shop.
The fair drew some 51 million visitors, this time from all over
the world. the City had a good tourist industry in place and steered
visitors to the fair as one of the things to do while in town. As one
accommodation, the fair's post office had drop boxes for many overseas
countries, to make sending postcards and letters easier for foreign
visitors.
In spite of being an unofficial fair, the New York World's Fair
attracted the second highest attendance of any world's fair in
history, about 51 million. Only the official fair in Osaka, Japan, in
1970 pulled a higher attendance, 64 million.
Water crisis
----------
During the fair there was a severe water drought. The City imposed
restrictions on lawn and garden watering. The City would not give
exemptions for the fair. The Oklahoma garden withered! To save the
show the state actually trucked water from Oklahoma and piped it into
the garden's sprinkler system. The tank truck parked in the pavilion
with a sign proclaiming that the water is pure Oklahoma, not City,
water.
The landscaping in general got ratty and spotty from the lack of
watering. Coupled with the drought were rounds of heatstorms that made
waiting on lines oppressive, to be kind. Some halls built sheds or
canopies to shield the visitors. Other offered music and performers to
ease the burden and boredom of waiting.
Flared emotions
-------------
One hall posed a peculiar security problem. It consolidated many
religions under one roof, they not having their own halls. Several
lager religions had sumptuous halls, like the Vatican and the
Anglicans and Billy Graham. Other,s even ample-sized religions opted
to take stalls or booths in the union pavilion.
Delegates at one religious group frequently got into ideological
arguments with an other group. Words drifted to punches, kicks,
vandalism of booths. Guards, wholly unfit for security functions,
swang billy clubs at any one approaching too close.
The future
--------
The were the usual futuristic inventions, like push-button phones
(the Princess) and the picture-phone, audioanimatronics[!], several
new plastics, color television, lasers, videotape, computers, habitats
in Antarctica and under the oceans.
Some of the predictions were so far off the mark they are
hilarious or shocking now to look back on. We don't have and likely
will never have towns in the deep sea. We certainly will not have
laser-powered forest-clearing machines or robotic highway building
vehicles.
Others are already so far surpassed expectations that the
prediction of the 1960s seem childish. Could there be imagined in the
1960s that a telephone can be carried in the pocket and call any place
on Earth? Could there be conceived a whole computer on a small table
at home? Or one that folds up like a valise to carry around? Could
humans rise up to take better concern and care for wildlife and
ecology? Would we ever see a revival of trolley cars? Would robots
really roam around on Mars?
Some in the audience felt that the 1939 fair was more futuristic
then the 1964 fair. The items shown in the latter fair seemed more
plausible and not so far off into the future. In deed, many were items
already in use but not well known to the public, like lasers and
computers.
Others contended that the fair was a glorified bazaar for
corporations to show off their current products; cars, insurance,
refrigerators, beverages.
The grand park
------------
After the fair, the park was improved into Flushing Meadows park.
However, the land deed was recorded in 'Corona'. Now with the old
connotation gone, the park was renamed Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
Because of its huge size, about 6 square kilometers, it seems
vastly empty. With the dozens of fair halls demolished, the place sure
was vacant. Many visitors played 'Remember', standing at places where
a this or that pavilion once stood.
Memory of the fair was so deep, that into the 1990s the park was
commonly called the 'fairgrounds', like in road and weather
reports.This social feature wa missed for the 1939-40 fair because of
the heavy overburden of World War II. Too many people, once visitors,
were diverted to the war effort.
Leftover structures
-----------------
There were many structures intended to stay after the fair, but
only a few survived today.
The aquacade theater, a holdover from the 1939-40 fair, continued
to host concerts and other music shows. It was torn down in the mid
1990s.
The United States hall fell to ruin by neglect and vandalism.
There was a political tussle about who had jurisdiction for it after
the fair, which prevented timely repairs. It had to be pulled down in
the mid 1970s
The Singer Bowl is now the Armstrong Theater and hosts various
sports and cultural events.
The New York State hall deteriorated from disuse and neglect,
there being nothing in it but a tower restaurant. It was under gradual
dismantling as pieces break off or become hazardous. In 2008 its glass
elevators were taken down for fear of falling loose. The hall probably
can not be salvaged.
The New York City hall is the same building put up for the 1939-40
fair! it is now the Queens Museum. It still has the fair's model of
the City in it. This model is updated from time to time to reflect
changes in the city skyline. In spring 2009 the old Shea Stadium model
was pulled out and replaced with one for the new Citi Field. On the
other hand, the late World Trade Center stays in place until the new
one is completed.
The Hall of Science was often missed during the fair. It was
outside the fairground, not part of the admission fee. It lingered as
a drab dreary collection of industrial vanity exhibits and a comical
simulation of a spaceship docking at an orbiting station. It closed
for massive rebuilding in the late 1970s. Today it is a major modern
children's science museum.
The Rocket Park, next to the Hall of Science, fell into ruin. In
the early 2000s it was fully rebuilt, still with real rocket
fuselages. However, no newer rockets, since the 1960s were added.
The Port of Authority hall is empty or off limits except for its
rooftop restaurant. It's now the Terrace in the park.
The Unisphere, without its capital lamps, still is the rallying
symbol of Queens. It is the Eiffel Tower, Empire State Building, Big
Ben of Queens. Altho the globe is intact, the fountain around it fell
into disuse and became a garbage pit. It is cleaned out from time to
time.
The Sky Tower was moved to Coney island, where is was a center
attraction in the Astroland Park. It was a round column or pillar
along which slided a doughnut elevator. Thru windows on the outer
wall, visitors got a panorama view of Coney Island and the ocean. It
ran until 2008, when Astroland closed. It will be removed in 2009 as
part of clearing for a new amusement area.
Many of the pavilions were dismantled to be relocated for use
elsewhere, not demoished and scrapped. The 'Underground house' was
merely entombed in place and covered with grass. Much of the
fairgrounds's furniture and fixtures like lamppoles, were distributed
thruout the country for further use.
Many small structures, mostly art pieces, remain in Flushing
Meadows Park. They are either in their original sites or moved to
other sites in the park. Their condition ranges from well-maintained
to decaying.
The Time Capsules, from both fairs, are left in place, under stone
markers, to be opened a millennium from now.
Collateral projects
-----------------
During the 1964-65 World's Fair there were other large-scale
projects around the City. Some in the audience thought they were part
of the Fair in some way, but they were separate developments that
merely coincided in time.
Lincoln Center is the world's largest performing arts center west
of Lincoln-Dante Square on Manhattan. It replaced a massive slum
district with major theaters, new Metropolitan Opera House, several
smaller halls, Julliard School of Music. It is undergoing a rehab and
update, to complete in 2010.
Shea Stadium, just north of the fairgrounds and reached by the
same World's Fair station of IRT and LIRR, was built for the new
expansion team, New York Mets. The team was formed partly to
replace the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants, who a few years
earlier moved to California. Over the years, former Giants fans took
favorably to the new Mets but Dodger fans generally ignored them. The
stadium was intended as both a baseball and football arena but was
never fully finished as such. The new New York Jets played there until
they moved to the Meadowlands. Shea Stadium is torn down for a
replacement, smaller, ballpark next to it, named Citi Field.
The New York International airport, Idelwild airport, was under a
gut rebuild with allnew terminals assigned to major airlines. The
circulatory roads were upgraded and new runways added. This project
was never 'completed' because there is almost a permanent state of
construction to tinker with the buildings and roads. Air Train, a
linear-induction railroad, now works the terminals and connects with
the LIRR at Jamaica and IND at Howard Beach. It opened in about 2003.
The World Trade Center was talked up in the early 1960s as a
modest low-lying ensemble of halls in the Radio Row section of
Manhattan. The final design, with the twin Towers, came in about 1965
with construction starting in 1966. The complex took ten years to
complete but as parts were finished, tenants were moved in. The last
hall, #7 World Trade Center, was completed in the mid 1980s. The
entire campus was thrown down within 90 minutes by deliberate
collision of two airliners into the Twin Towers. the site is now under
rebuilding, with 7WTC already in operation.
Astroland Park opened in Coney Island in 1962 to complement the
adjacent Steeplechase Park. Steeplechase was the last of America's
three charter theme parks, opening in 1902. The other two, Dreamland
and Luna Park, also in Coney Island, were destroyed by conflagration
and never rebuilt. Astroland obtained the Sky Tower from the 1964-65
fair and set it up as a funky attraction on its grounds. The park
closed in 2008 and was almost completely leveled by early 2009 for a
new park under an other management.
Penn Station on Manhattan was in miserable condition due to
falling fortunes of owner Pennsylvania Railroad. recall that the 1960s
was a period of intense deprecation of trains in American society. The
railroad replaced the old depot with an underground structure, topped
by a corporate tower and Madison Square Garden. The new facility was
designed for short distance commuting with only a few long-distance
trains. Penn Station s now under design for a second replacement built
into the Farley post office across 8th Av.
Verrazano Bridge, maybe with other numbers of 'r' and 'z', was
planned for many years but always deferred. One concern was the hazard
in wartime when it could be bombed to block entry into new York
harbor. It connects Brooklyn and Staten Island across the Narrows, th
narrowest neck of the harbor. The bridge caused a mass migration of
people from Brooklyn and Queens into Staten Island with assorted
growing pains.
Chase Manhattan Plaza on Manhattan is the headquarters of the
bank. It was built next to the Federal Reserve Bank and connected with
it thru tunnels. the bank is the finance front for the US in foreign
money transactions, so it was simpler with the tunnels to push money
back and forth between the two. The address, One Chase manhattan
Plaza, is the first vanity plaza in New York. Previously buildings
used the postal address for the street they stood on.
Federal Plaza was in design during the fair and partly completed
in 1968. Only the east half of the full structure was opened with the
west half occupied by a temporary parking lot. The intent was to
consolidate all federal offices into one structure, but there ended up
being far too many people to fit into it. Never the less, it is the
largest federal office outside the Washington DC area. The wet half
was built in the 1980s.
These were operated by other private and public agencies with out
coordination with the fair. Never the less, they benefited from the
attention the City earned thru the fair.
Recycled exhibits
---------------
After the fair some of the exhibits were models to make new ones
elsewhere in the City. The Con Edison 'egg' was redone in a smaller
scale to sit inside the Hall of Science to promote nuclear energy at
Indian Point. The Burlington House on Manhattan built a simulation
fabric mill in its exhibit hall, based on techniques used at the fair.
The sky tower moved to Astroland Park in Coney Island, where it
operated until 2008. It will be torn down to make way for a new
amusement park in 2009.
Audioanimatronics is widely used today for mechanical, as opposed
to computerized video, models, like for store windows. It used used in
a political exhibit of waterboarding in Coney Island in 2007, fueling
protests against the practice at Gitmo.
The Unisphere was replicated in a smaller size for the Trump Hotel
on Columbus Circle. Unlike the stabile Unisphere, the Trump globe
rotated. When its motorized base died, it became fixed in orientation.
The three orbits around it are schematic, not matching those on the
Unisphere.
Casualty
------
The projects described above benefited handsomely from the roof of
attention from the fair. There was one major project that, incredibly,
was killed off by the fair! Freedomland, the world's largest theme
park ever, opened in Baychester, the Bronx, in 1960. It was an East
Coast version of Disneyland modeled after American history.
Its sections were deployed over a 800,000m2 campus in the outline
of the United States. The sections were named for towns or regions of
the country and had rides and attractions alluding to them.
The park had its own troubles, such as construction
fires, onsite crime, erratic management, lousy public transit access.
It was also in a part of the City at the time of a really icky
character.
The knockout punch came in 1964 with the opening of the World's
Fair in Queens. Patronage at Freedomland slided down as potential
visitors flocked to the fair in the stead. The fair was really more
fun, friendly, cheaper, easier to get to.
The park went into bankruptcy. It closed in fall of 1964, before
the end of the World's Fair season. The land was leveled in 1965. On
its site is now the Co-Op City housing estate.
Conclusion
--------
The 'audience' didn't just listen, it spoke up! At almost every
slide one or an other person chimed in with a comment or factoid. i
admit to tossing several of my own. Mr Marzlock was amazed at how many
in the room went to BOTH fairs and remembered so much from each.
Each comment sparked rounds of banter. Result: A one-hour talk in
the quiet prolonged into almost THREE HOURS! The custodian crew were
starting to clean up and put equipment away as we were leaving the
room!
The fairs were a defining feature in our lifes, a two-year window
to the exterior world, a peek into other cultures and nations, a bit
of fantasy, a bit of funkiness.
After the talk everyone chatted up a storm about the fairs, young
and old together. The younger flock never experienced a world's fair,
altho they recall being taken there as toddlers or in carriages. . The
ones held since 1965 in other countries somehow never captured the
spirit and spark of the New York fairs. In fact some historians treat
the New York fairs as if they were the ONLY world's fairs on Earth!
It was in the years and decades following the fair, when the
pneuma of the experience filtered thruout the body and soul of the
visitor, that lessons come out. The 1964-65 fair featured the civil
rights movement, women's liberation, Viet Nam, Cold War, Space Race,
Kennedy and King assassinations, disabilities neglect, Great Society,
conspicuous consumption, ecological disregard,
Many of these we came around to address in a more sensitive and
positive way. Others, in addiurnate form, today still dog us.