1939 New York World's Fair
| New York World's Fair 1939 | |
|---|---|
 View of Trylon and Perisphere |
|
| motto | "Building the World of Tomorrow, For Peace and Freedom - All Eyes to the Future" |
| General | |
| Exhibition space | 486.4 ha |
| Number of visitors | 44,932,978 |
| BIE recognition | Yes |
| participation | |
| countries | 33 countries |
| Exhibitors | 1,500 exhibitors |
| Place of issue | |
| place | New York City |
| terrain |
Flushing Meadows Park Coordinates: 40 ° 44 ′ 38.5 ″ N , 73 ° 50 ′ 39.9 ″ W
|
| calendar | |
| opening | April 30, 1939 |
| closure | October 31, 1939 |
| Continued May 11 to October 27, 1940 | |
| Chronological order | |
| predecessor | Paris 1937 |
| successor | Rome 1942 |
The 1939/40 New York World's Fair (NYWF) was a world exhibition held in New York from April 30 to October 31 in 1939 and from May 11 to October 27 in 1940 . The exhibition recorded 44,932,978 visitors.
Flushing Meadows Park was opened on the occasion of the exhibition . Landmarks of the exhibition were the Trylon and the Perisphere, a pointed obelisk 212 meters high and a huge white sphere 65 meters in diameter, in which Democracity , the city of the future, was shown. The theme park was created by architects Wallace K. Harrison and Jacques André Fouilhoux.
history
The year 1939 was set to host the world exhibition. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the swearing-in of George Washington . In September 1935 the New York Fair Society , the organizing committee of the World's Fair, was founded.
The then Park Commissioner of New York, Robert Moses , had a formative influence on the design of the exhibition . Moses became a member of the organizing committee in 1936. Under the influence of Moses, the Flushing Meadows Park area was selected for the World's Fair. Until then, this area served as a large landfill for the incinerated rubbish and ashes of the Brooklyn district , but was located in the geographical center of the city and well served by all means of transport.
On June 15, 1936, Congress passed a resolution to hold the New York World's Fair. On November 27, 1936, the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) recognized the exhibition. The main development and construction measures for the exhibition were implemented within two years.
1500 exhibitors from 33 countries showed their products and projects on 486.4 hectares . Under the motto “Building the World of Tomorrow, For Peace and Freedom - All Eyes to the Future”, the exhibiting countries were to show how they would imagine the world in 1960. Technologies on display included television , soft ice cream , electric dishwashers , the fax machine , intelligent traffic control and the robot electric from Westinghouse Electric . In addition, the world's first video conference in which telephone and television were connected was presented. Luxemburg presented the workers sculpture The Man with the Hammer .
particularities
China and Germany did not take part in the world exhibition because China was waging war against Japan and National Socialist Germany refused to participate in an exhibition supposedly organized “mainly by Jews”. The New York Mayor LaGuardia proposed the construction of a "Chamber of Horrors" that should show the true face of Nazi Germany. When this plan failed, exhibition director Grover Whalen suggested that a group of German emigrants around Klaus Mann should build a “Freedom Pavilion”. But the emigre scene was so utterly divided over what should be shown in the pavilion of the resistance against Hitler that this idea was also rejected. The exhibition saw little participation by nations at the start of World War II .
Reuse
The stated goal of achieving a record attendance for exhibitions in the Americas was missed by a long way and resulted in a huge deficit of $ 18.7 million. This meant that the funds for the planned design of a park after the exhibition were missing. The outbreak of war also made it difficult to clear the site: some pavilions remained standing but were not maintained, others were demolished but the rubble was not cleared away. The 1939/40 World Exhibition laid the foundation stone for the use of Flushing Meadows Park as urban green space. The area was reused and further developed for the world exhibition of 1964/65.
Picture gallery
Film recording of the 1939 New York World's Fair
Westinghouse's Electro robot
Life-size replica of an intersection inside the GM pavilion
Polish Pavilion
Westinghouse Tower
USSR Pavilion 1939
Postage stamp with Trylon and Perisphere
Web links
- New York World's Fair 1939. Bureau International des Expositions. Accessed March 23, 2017 .
- Website for the 1939 World's Fair
literature
- Erik Mattie: World's Fair . Belser, 1998, ISBN 3-7630-2358-5 .
- Monika Meyer-Künzel: Urban development of the world exhibitions and Olympic Games: urban development of the event locations . Dissertation Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina, Braunschweig 1998, p. 142–155 , urn : nbn: de: gbv: 084-120444 .
- Stanley Appelbaum (Ed.): The New York World's Fair 1939/40 in 155 Photographs by Richard Wurts and others. Dover Publications, New York 1977, ISBN 0-486-23494-0 .
- Jacques Greber et al. a .: L'Exposition Internationale de New York . In: L'Illustration. Vol. 203, No. 5023, 1939, pp. 196-236.
- Helen Harrison: Dawn of a New Day. The New York World's Fair 1939-1940 . Exhibition catalog Queens Museum New York, New York 1980, OCLC 6700486 .
- Larry Zim, Mel Lerner, Herbert Rolfes: The World of Tomorrow. The 1939 New York World's Fair . New York 1988, ISBN 0-06-015923-5 .
- EL Doctorow : World's Fair (1985); German world exhibition , Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-498-01267-3 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b The history of the world exhibitions, expo2000 ( Memento from January 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ a b 70 years ago: The world of tomorrow was also better once. c't magazin, heise.de, April 30, 2009.