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A Rosy View of the Future

Before war strikes, hope for a better tomorrow draws millions to Queens' 1939 World's Fair

By David Behrens | Staff Writer

For a fleeting moment, the 1939 New York World's Fair held out the promise of a bright and easy future.

The theme was ``The World of Tomorrow,'' a message of boundless optimism that came at a perfect moment in American history: that slim wedge of time between the sorrowful era of the Great Depression and the tragic years of World War II, just around the corner.

The symbols of the future were the gleaming-white Trylon and Perisphere. The Trylon was a 700-foot tower overlooking the Perisphere, a 200-foot-wide globe rising 18 stories above its reflecting pool. Bathed in floodlights, the modern design became the most famous symbol since the Eiffel Tower dominated the Paris Fair of 1889.

Inside the Perisphere, visitors rode on one of two moving belts around the interior, peering down on Democracity, a diorama of urban and exurban life in the future, as if seen from an airplane. ``A symbol of a perfectly integrated futuristic metropolis pulsing with life and rhythm and music,'' the guidebooks read. Radio commentator H.V. Kaltenborn delivered the narration during the 6-minute circuit.

Much of the fair was devoted with reverence to the marvels of science, present and future, and the man-made achievements of the 20th Century. In retrospect, the message became one of the great ironies of the fair, with the nightmare of World War II and the atomic age just ahead.

Futurama, the General Motors exhibit, was the fair's most popular venture. Visitors queued up for hours, waiting for another glimpse of tomorrow. Riding in plush easy chairs on a moving belt, visitors saw a vision of the ultramodern city of 1960, where radio-controlled cars zipped along expressways, guided by beams on a 14-lane motorway. Steering would become an old-fashioned affectation in the midst of high-rise buildings and sleek suspension bridges. Writing about the fair, historian and futurist H.G. Wells saw the World of Tomorrow as a demonstration of ``what can be done with human life today.''

Claire Jay, a Freeport resident, was almost 12 when she made her only trip to the fair. It was ``East Rockaway Day at the fair,'' she recalled recently. ``We walked for hours. We'd see the Trylon wherever we went and we used it as a guidepost. There were fountains everywhere, lit up at night with colored lights. It was absolutely thrilling. It gave you a fairyland sort of feeling,'' she remembers as if it were yesterday. A gust of wind blew away her best hat, a coral straw Easter bonnet that ended up in the Perisphere's reflecting pool. But a glimpse of the World of Tomorrow was worth the loss, Jay said. She was old enough, even then, to appreciate all the innovative structures.

``My parents had been terribly hurt in the Depression and my father, a carpenter, was out of work from 1932 until 1936. By 1940, he had been working for several years. Things were better. I was old enough to appreciate the struggle my parents had gone through. So just making the trip, seeing what life could be like, was a miracle.''

Later, she and her family walked past the brightly lit Lagoon of Nations and into the Court of Peace, where 60 nations had built halls to celebrate a world at peace, another of the fair's great ironies. Only Germany, Spain and China were missing among the major nations.

By 1940, Nazi troops had already overrun Czechoslovakia and invaded Poland and their pavilions were draped in black. The Soviet Union spent millions on its hall, featuring a giant figure of a Russian worker holding aloft a red star. But in 1940, the hall was closed after the Soviet Union was branded the aggressor for its invasion of Finland.

Despite the shadows of war, more than 45 million admissions were recorded. Many visitors wore buttons that read ``I Have Seen the Future.'' Or they sported the lapel pin shaped like a pickle, a freebie from the Heinz exhibit.

There were stars of every variety: Billy Rose's Aquacade featured America's most famous swimmer, Eleanor Holm, his wife. There was music by composers Kurt Weill and Aaron Copeland, productions by Mike Todd and sculpture by Alexander Calder. And there were curiosities galore. Elsie, the Borden trademark, was the bovine biggie at the company's exhibit of the ``Rotolactor,'' a mechanical milking device. There was also a talking Plymouth at the Chrysler exhibit and Electro, Westinghouse's talking robot. The GM-X, an experimental car from General Motors, as pointy-nosed as a fighter plane, was also on display. There was a simulated trip to the moon and a block-long diorama of New York, three stories high, twinkling in Con Edison's City of Light.

There were many other firsts: the first public demonstration of nylon, Lucite and Plexiglas; the first 3-D movie, the first use of fluorescent lighting. And at the RCA pavilion, there was the first demonstration of a new idea, a radio with pictures: television! On April 30, 1939, Franklin Roosevelt gave the opening day address and became the first president to appear on TV.

In the 1920s, the marshy site of the fair had become a monumental dump. The idea of a World's Fair on 1,200 acres along the Flushing River was proposed in 1935 as an economic boost to counter the lingering effects of the Depression. A nonprofit corporation was founded and $27 million in bonds were sold.

So the brilliant 1939 fair sprang out of the marshland, and in those innocent times, millions of visitors were convinced that the World of Tomorrow would be filled with joy and hope.