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Re-Constructing the 1939 New York World’s Fair
By
Jen Carlson
Published Apr 4, 2011
Modified Apr 4, 2011
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Apr 4, 2011
Modified Apr 4, 2011
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This Sunday the Queens Museum of Art will unveil their latest exhibit, titled Future Perfect: Re-Constructing the 1939 World's Fair. Did you know it took up 1,216 acres of New York City's land? The museum notes that it spanned "from Flushing Bay on the north side to Kew Gardens on the south, and from the Federal Building on the east side in Flushing to the western entrance gate on 111th Street in Corona." It took three years to complete the construction, and finally opened in April of 1939.
Robert Moses had envisioned the remains of the fairgrounds as a people’s park—his “Versailles” for the city—after the fair closed in 1940, but it wasn't until after the subsequent 1964-65 New York World’s Fair that he "was able to realize much of his original ambitious plans for what is presently Flushing Meadows Corona Park."
With vintage gelatin silver prints, blueprints and original documents, Future Perfect: Re-Constructing the 1939 New York World’s Fair will illustrate the colossal undertaking that was the creation of the fair. Copies of the original blueprints for Harrison and Fouilhoux’s symbolic Trylon and Perisphere’s steelwork (inspired by the domes of San Marco in Venice) provide the underpinning of this exhibition along with a marvelous cache of photographs ground out on a non-stop basis by the official NYWF Department of Press. Whalen’s publicity machine produced heroic captions for these photographs such as “the 1,216 acre site was made in a 190-day engineering feat of moving nearly 7,000,000 cubic yards of ash “mountain” and meadow mat in a ‘once worthless area’ on Flushing Bay and within a few minutes by rail from mid-town Manhattan… to be a permanent city park after the fair.”
The exhibit will include never before seen scenes from the construction, including of Salvador Dali’s fabulist pavilion, Dream of Venus (video below). Click through for a preview.
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Future Perfect: Re-Constructing the 1939 World's Fair
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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