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    The New York World's Fair, 1939/1940: in 155 Photographs by Richard Wurts and Others
    The New York World's Fair, 1939/1940: in 155 Photographs by Richard Wurts and Others
    The New York World's Fair, 1939/1940: in 155 Photographs by Richard Wurts and Others
    Ebook198 pages39 minutes

    The New York World's Fair, 1939/1940: in 155 Photographs by Richard Wurts and Others

    By Richard Wurts

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    About this ebook

    The New York World's Fair 1939/1940 may not have been the greatest of all world's fairs, but it is probably the most fondly remembered of all of them, a spectacle that no one who was there has forgotten. The 700-foot-tall Trylon and the 200-foot-wide Perisphere are still vivid symbols and memories of a wonderful and lost time for millions of people.
    Do you remember seeing or being told about the vast diorama of Democracity representing the theme of the Fair in 1939, "Building the World of Tomorrow"; GM's Futurama ride; the world's largest mirrored ceiling; 3-D movie; Elektro, a robot seven feet tall; the Town of Tomorrow; Toyland; the Parachute Jump; Bill Rose's Aquacade? The Fair is here in this book which recaptures its abiding images in 155 photographs, 93 of them by Richard Wurts, and catalogs some of its best-remembered artistic and scientific achievements.
    There is the typical 1930s décor of the Bauhaus and Art Deco persuasion designed by such top-flight industrial designers and architects as Norman Bel Geddes, Raymond Loewy, Albert Kahn, Morris Lapidus, Edward D. Stone, Skidmore and Owings; its scientific contributions (fluorescent lights, nylon, television); its paintings, fountains, sculptures, and murals by artists like Salvador Dali, Rockwell Kent, Isamu Noguchi, Alexander Calder, Jo Davidson, Carl Milles, Paul Manship; its cultural and popular attractions; personalities like Eleanor Holm, Johnny Weissmuller, H. V. Kaltenborn, and many others.
    The detailed introduction relates the history of the Fair and the people and principles involved. The accurate and informative captions give the architects and important statistics of the buildings illustrated, and tell about many more exhibits and features not pictured. You will revisit the New York World's Fair and recapture some of its magic within this book.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateMay 27, 2013
    ISBN9780486317892
    The New York World's Fair, 1939/1940: in 155 Photographs by Richard Wurts and Others

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    Reviews for The New York World's Fair, 1939/1940

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    • 5/5
      I loved this book. It isn't the typical book that we review at Imaginerding, but after reading how influential the 1939/1940 New York World's Fair was to the creation and design of EPCOT Center, I knew I needed to read this book.After studying Jeff's posts on 2719 Hyperion about the 39/40 World's Fair, I became more interested in this period. You'll find the links to Jeff's articles at the end of this review.The New York World's Fair, 1939/1940 in 155 Photographs by Richard Wurts and Others.Selection, Arrangement and Text by Stanly Applebaum. 152pages, 1977, 0486234940.This book takes us on a visual tour of the 1939/1940 New York World's Fair that took place in Flushing Meadows. We are introduced to the history of the fair in the 10 page introduction--the controversies, financial issues and political turmoil. The rest of the work consists of maps, photographs and captions. You get a sense of the scale of the project--the vast construction project was the biggest land reclamation project of the time and over 48 million people visited the Fair during its two-year run. Unfortunately, the Fair lost almost 20 million dollars and had to declare bankruptcy.After studying the photographs and the accompanying text, it was obvious to me that the Imagineers charged with building EPCOT Center had visited the Fair as a child or considered historical documents to follow the designs. EPCOT Center is premeditated on the basis of the Fair.The most apparent references, physically, are the layout of the areas into larger sections and the larger architectural themes of the sponsored pavilions. As Jeff mentions, the Perisphere is the obviously the ancestor of Spaceship Earth. Every evening, on the Lagoon of Nations, there was son et lumiere show presented with fireworks, flames and colored fountains--all choreographed to music. Sound familiar?Democracity was located in the Perisphere and you accessed it from the escalator located in the 700 foot-tall Trylon (triangular-shaped building). Inside the Perisphere, you stepped onto one of two moving rings where you could view Democarcity, a diorama of a planned urban and exurban community of the future.Once you made your way to the Transportation Zone, you found yourself by the General Motors Pavilion--a huge sprawling complex made of multiple buildings. The hit of the Fair, Futurama, foretold of national highways, a perfect climate and the elimination of the blight of slums. All by 1960. The text accompanying the photos says it best: 20. Six hundred chairs with individual loudspeakers moved visitors over a 36,000-square-foot scale model of the highway world of 1960: seven-lane roads with permissible 100-mph speed, experimental homes, farms and urban developments, industrial plants, dams, bridges and all the intervening landscape. 21. Springing up around a planned traffic system-still looked on in 1939 as the guarantee of future happiness-the metropolis of 1960 was seen to be free of slums and blight, full of parks and civic centers. Energy sources would apparently be abundant, climate perfect. In 1964 GM offered an analogous ride at almost the same location.It all sounds familiar doesn't it...If We can Dream It...I truly enjoyed this book. Being an armchair architect, the pictures of the show buildings were simply stunning. Art Deco, on such a grand scale, at its finest.The Bottom Line:Get this book if you are a serious student of Epcot--in all of its incarnations: the planned community, the theme park of 1982 or the ideas leading up to its design or execution. You won't regret it. With that in mind, this isn't the book for the lay traveler or the Disney Geek just starting to earn their Geek Certificate--there are some cooler books about Epcot we've looked at that should be in every collection. * 2719 Hyperion articles about the 1939/1940 World's Fair and its influence on Epcot. There are 8 total, but they are well worth the read. Jeff really knows his stuff! * An article I wrote back in November 2007 describing the similarities between Horizons and Futurama. There is also a great video of Futurama. You can get the video courtesy of Wired.

    Book preview

    The New York World's Fair, 1939/1940 - Richard Wurts

    THE NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR 1939/1940

    THE NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR

    1939/1940 in 155 photographs

    by Richard Wurts and Others

    Selection, Arrangement and Text by STANLEY APPELBAUM

    DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC., NEW YORK

    Frontispiece: The Administration Building and the 1939 World’s Fair flag. The facade sculpture Mithrana by Albert Stewart represented the Spirit of the Fair unveiling the future. This photo by Richard Wurts was used on the title page of the Official Guide Book of the New York World’s Fair 1939.

    Copyright © 1977 by Dover Publications, Inc.

    All rights reserved under Pan American and International

    Copyright Conventions.

    The New York World’s Fair 1939/1940 is a new work,

    first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 1977.

    International Standard Book Number: 0-486-23494-0

    Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-70029

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    Dover Publications, Inc.

    31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    Editor and publisher owe the greatest debt of thanks to the lenders of the photographs, without whose cooperation this publication would not have been possible. (The numbers are those of the illustrations in this book.)

    Richard Wurts lent the following Wurts Bros, photos: 2–5, 8–16, 22, 23, 26–28, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 39–44, 46, 47, 49–57, 63, 69, 71–73, 76–78, 80, 81, 85–89, 91–95, 98–101, 103, 105–107, 109–111, 113, 114, 116, 118–120, 123–125, 129–132, 142–145, 150, as well as the frontispiece and the three illustrations in the Introduction.

    The General Electric Company furnished the photo (58) of the Rockwell Kent mural, and kindly gave permission to reproduce it.

    John F. H. Gorton, Director of The Rockwell Kent Legacies, lent the original squared-off print of Kent’s cartoon for the mural (59), and kindly gave permission to reproduce it.

    The General Motors Corporation kindly consented to the reproduction of two photos (20 and 21) from their 1940 booklet Futurama, issued at the Fair.

    All the other photographs were lent by the Museum of the City of New York, through the courtesy of Joseph Veach Noble, Director, and A. K. Baragwanath, Senior Curator. Among the Museum’s prints, the following bore credits to photographers:

    Sigurd Fischer: 75, 150.

    Samuel H. Gottscho: 18, 25, 30, 67, 68, 115, 138, 147 (the last four given as Gottscho-Schleisner).

    Michael L. Radoslovich: 84.

    Underwood & Underwood: 74, 122.

    Carl Van Vechten: 6, 7, 35, 65, 96, 97, 102, 117, 126–128, 133–135, 137, 139–141, 146, 148, 149, 151. The photos by this famous writer are technically inferior to the others in the book, but are invaluable for their attention to details of sculpture and amusement exhibits not otherwise documented in the sources available to us.

    Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company: 60.

    In addition, thanks are due to Miles Kreuger, President of the Institute of the American Musical, Inc., who permitted me to consult his important collection of World’s Fair memorabilia.

    And love to my sister Faye, with whom I saw the Fair.

    THE WORLD’S FAIR IN 1940

    Several buildings and areas had had different designations in 1939. The changes in the Great White Way (1939: Amusement Area) along Liberty Lake (1939: Fountain Lake), and those in the Court of States, were too numerous to indicate here. The chief alterations in the principal Zones, marked on this map by asterisks, were:

    CONTENTS

    Introduction

    Theme Center, Constitution Mall, Administration, General Features

    Transportation

    Communications and Business Systems

    Production and Distribution

    Food Zone

    Community Interests

    Government

    Amusements

    Index

    INTRODUCTION

    Chicago had dazzled the world with its Columbian Exposition of 1893—the source of the Ferris wheel and the consecration of Beaux Arts architecture in America—and had scored high with its Century of Progress fair in 1933/1934. Philadelphia had hallowed its past at the 1876 Centennial—which featured the telephone—although its 1926 Sesqui-Centennial was a failure. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis, 1904) and the Panama-Pacific Exposition (San Francisco, 1915) were bewitching, and many a smaller American city, not to mention world capitals like Paris, had put on successful shows.

    Yet New York City, financial center of the nation, and its reputed cultural center as well, had housed no fairs since 1853, when it had responded in a low key to the first great international industrial fair of modern times, Prince Albert’s Crystal Palace exposition in London, 1851. But when the sleeping giant was roused, it produced a spectacle that no one who was there has forgotten, and that remains a touchstone for future exhibitors.

    The Depression of the 1930s was not yet shaken off, and business needed a stimulant, when in May 1935 a Jackson Heights engineer, Joseph F. Shagden, and a distant relative of the President, Edward F. Roosevelt, presented the idea of the Fair to an appreciative group of New York businessmen.

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