FULL FEATURE: 1939: Fair at the End of the World

i’m in America, there was a tiny, hopeful piece of time in between the misery of the Great Depression and the onset of the Second World War. As a snapshot of that period, we have one mammoth event that captured the end of life as people knew it. A celebration of modern art, science, and emerging technology, the 1939 World's Fair in New York City was a projection of the world that everyone thought they were getting, the ‘World of Tomorrow;’ right before tomorrow was obliterated before their eyes…

One version go how it all came about is that the fair's origins went back to 1934 and a small group of New York businessmen. The depression had hurt the city. The economy was shot, and they decided to try and fathom collectively how they might come up with some kind of way to attract people to the city with money in their pockets. Their attention was piqued by the Chicago World Fair of 1933, which had attracted large numbers of visitors, and made a small profit. New York had always thought itself superior to the Windy City, and so surely, they could do better.

Original artwork used to publicise the fair in 1939. (All photos come from an exceptional collection relating to the fair that have been digitised by the New York Public library)

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The project was announced in September 1935, and by 1936 operations had moved into the Empire State Building. The phrase ‘World of Tomorrow’ was dreamt up by Grover Whalen, a PR guru with a flair for spectacle. 'He was… a former commie-hating, speakeasy-busting New York police commissioner who served for decades as the city's unpaid "official greeter," in which office he established the ticker-tape parade as a Manhattan institution;’ including organising the New York homecoming of General Pershing after the First World War. He had a definite framework in his head for this new project that he wanted to follow:

The Fair will exhibit the most promising developments of ideas, products, services and social factors of the present day in such a fashion that the visitor may get a vision of what he could obtain for himself, and for his community, by intelligent, co-operative planning toward the better life of the future. It will demonstrate the vital interdependence of communities, peoples, and nations. Thus in submitting to the world of today a new layout for life, we are engaged in building a world of tomorrow. The New York World's Fair will predict, may even dictate, the shape of things to come.

The site at Flushing Meadow.

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If you’re thinking that none of this sounds cheap, you’d be right, and Whalen wasn’t sure he’d be able to pull together enough money. The estimated cost was $40,000,000, or almost a billion dollars in today’s money. Banks in Manhattan provided about 5% for starters, but the bulk of the money was supposed to be raised by selling bonds, and Whalen was desperately trying to sign exhibitors to fill the space.

Meanwhile, ground was broken at Flushing Meadow in the summer of 1936, which is currently home to both the US Open (Tennis) and the New York Mets, amongst other attractions. Before the fair, however, it was described as ‘a miserable meandering tidal backwater, a pestilential eyesore’ rife with mosquitoes. It was also partly covered with the waste of the Brooklyn Ash Removal Company, who had dumped huge piles of the stuff. A Queens official pragmatically commented that never mind the fair, if the organisation behind it merely managed to get rid of the mosquitoes, he’d be happy.

First of all, the entire, massive site needed to be filled and graded so that construction could begin.

Dust clouds sweeping over Flushing Meadow by day, the glare of arc lights by night and the constant rumble of trucks attested to the speed with which the work of grading the site progressed. Eight giant steam shovels and four drag-line derricks kept one hundred rucks occupied day and night...

A workman with a measuring thingy onsite at Flushing Meadow