Kathleen ElliottMay 02, 2019Comment

1939 World’s Fair: 80 years since a ‘world of tomorrow’

Kathleen ElliottMay 02, 2019Comment

The New York World's Fair opened on April 30, 1939 in Flushing, New York. President Franklin D. Roosevelt kicked off the fair with an address from the rostrum of the Federal Building. The fair closed toward the end of the year in 1940.

In recognition of the 80th anniversary of this historic event, below is a selection of archive photos.

Crowds stream into the World's Fair in Flushing Meadow Park, in the Queens borough of New York, April 30, 1939. (AP Photo)

The following excerpts are from an AP story released on Sunday, April 23, 1989, in advance of the 50th anniversary:

By Jerry Schwartz

EDITOR’S NOTE: The world was on the brink of a second major war that April half a century ago when merchants of the future put on display their conceptions of a marvelous tomorrow. Visitors to the 1939 New York World’s Fair “were dazzled by what the future could be” one fairgoer recalls. But in some ways modern civilization didn’t pan out the way they envisioned that it would.
In many a dresser drawer across the country, amid the faded snapshots and other keepsakes, there rests a plastic pickle, a souvenir of a splendiferous tomorrow that came and went.

VIDEO: On April 30, 1939, the New York World’s Fair officially opened with a ceremony that included an address by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

50 years ago, in the interlude between the Great Depression and World War II, the pickle‘s owner had gone to Flushing, Queens to discover a sleek and glittering future had set up camp on 1,216 acres of reclaimed ash heap.
The visitor to the 1939 New York World’s Fair came away with visions of televisions and superhighways, of nylon stockings and automatic milking machines, of man-made lightning and aerated bread_all this and a pickle pin, one of 6 million such souvenirs distributed at the HJ Heinz pavilion.
They saw wonders like the Walker-Gordon Rotolactor, a revolving platform on which five cows were showered, dried with sterile towels and mechanically milked. They watched the seven-foot-tall Westinghouse robot, Electro, and his “moto-dog, “Sparko.” They toured 200 buildings_each of them spectacular_175 sculptures and 105 murals.

Jamming every inch of space in the huge Hall of Electrical Living at the Westinghouse Building at the World’s Fair in New York on May 8, 1939, crowds stand 6 deep on the sidewalk outside the glass-enclosed structure to watch Elektro, the Westinghous… — Jamming every inch of space in the huge Hall of Electrical Living at the Westinghouse Building at the World’s Fair in New York on May 8, 1939, crowds stand 6 deep on the sidewalk outside the glass-enclosed structure to watch Elektro, the Westinghouse Moto-Man, perform his 26 mechanical tricks, including, walking, talking, smoking a cigarette and counting. (AP Photo)

Others found fault with the fair’s crowd-pleasing amusement zone, which featured a Parachute Jump and Billy Rose’s Aquacade as well as more tawdry diversions like sideshows and bare-breasted women_offered, of course as educational exhibits on the lifestyles of Amazons.
The symbols of the fair were two abstract shapes, at once classical and modernistic_the Trylon, a 610-foot spike, and the globular Perisphere, a theater twice the size of Radio City Music Hall which was home to Democracity, a multimedia depiction of the city of the future.