The 1939–40 New York World’s Fair surpassed all previous international fairs by any measurement, including size, cost, attendance, and publicity. Nearly 60 foreign nations, 33 states and U.S. territories, and over one thousand exhibitors participated, including some of the largest corporations in America. 45 million visited the fair during its two-year run, making it the best-attended event of the first half of the 20th century—all on the site of a recently converted tidal swamp mostly covered by the Corona Dump.
The clearance and filling in of this area remains one of the largest land reclamations in the eastern U.S., with construction extending to public transportation stations, a new subway line, a marina, and the Grand Central Parkway.
Read More: Transit Station Drawing Encapsulates Futuristic Vision For 1939 World's Fair
Previous world’s fairs focused on innovations and advances of the present, but this exposition boldly promised visions of the future. At the heart of this fast-rising showcase of tomorrow rose the Trylon, a 700-foot obelisk, and the Perisphere, a 200-foot globe, which became the symbols of the fair and appeared on everything from bumper stickers and buttons to souvenir spoons, menus, and snow globes.
The fair’s director of public relations, Edward Bernays, ensured that these architectural emblems, collectively called the “Theme Center” of the expo, featured on all official advertisements and publications, and officials licensed them to industrial design and merchandising companies.
Design of World's Fair hat.
They appeared, too, on the sides of train cars, on the costumes of performers, and on the uniforms of fair workers, including their hats. The hat design, one of over 250 items now on display as part of the Library’s permanent Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures, is attributed to Peggy Boone and incorporates the blue and orange of New York’s City flag adopted as the fair’s signature colors. In the above image, the winner of the Miss New York World’s Fair contest wears a similar creation.
The Perisphere hosted the central thematic exhibit of the fair, a miniature model city titled “Democracity.” Visitors could ride the then-longest escalator to visit this scale model of an imaginary planned community of the future envisioned by Henry Dreyfuss.
Trylon and Perisphere
Also a Broadway set designer, Dreyfuss’s myriad industrial design innovations ranged from the “Princess” phone for Bell laboratories and a refrigerator for General Electric to tractors for John Deere and the interior of an aircraft for the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. Here he took considerable inspiration from Le Corbusier, allocating different areas of use to separate districts—the business, higher education, and social and cultural center (Centerton); industrial towns (Millvilles); and residential towns (Pleasantvilles)—linked by high-speed roadways that also ran to the surrounding countryside (The Farms). Two rotating platforms offered visitors a panoramic, aerial view of this utopian metropolis, which an accompanying booklet proclaimed “Your World of Tomorrow” and optimistically described as resulting from “the interdependent co-operation of men and of nations.”
The 1939–40 World’s Fair manifested a hopeful look toward a brighter future as America strove to distance itself from the recent Great Depression, but World War II soon loomed on the horizon. The exhibition’s physical monuments to progress proved mostly temporary, as well. When the fair closed, the 40 million tons of steel that made up the Trylon and Perisphere were repurposed for the war effort.
This story is part of our partnership with the NYPL around the Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures, which showcases items spanning 4,000 years from the Library's research collections—we'll be publishing one NYC-related object a day throughout September, and you can see everything at gothamist.com/treasures. The Treasures exhibition is now open at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Free timed tickets are now available here.
