What you will see at world’s biggest show
New York’s billion dollar dream fair
When the first visitors enter a onetime Long Island swamp on April 22, they will come face to face with the most varied extravaganza ever conceived — the billion-dollar New York World’s Fair. In the two years of its life the Fair will entertain, educate and probably exhaust between 70 and 100 million people with a brand of showmanship that is peculiarly American.
Like the multicolored pavilion dome in the picture above, the Fair’s existence seems to spring from the brow of its controversial president, Robert Moses. In spite of mountainous difficulties, he has lured 24 states, 51 foreign countries and 350 business concerns to build a dazzling city.
The visitor wandering through it will be hit by a succession of stunning images, a visual imaginativeness that is reflected in the paintings on the following pages.
He can visit a Cambodian forest or a Buddhist temple, and ride on every kind of vehicle from a cable car to a mobile armchair. He can take a boat trip around the world, watch a judo match, see a life-size replica of Dr Kildare, listen to an oration from an electric model of Abraham Lincoln, and eat himself spherical at 75 different restaurants.
And if he wants to see and do everything, and works at it for five hours a day, it will take him a solid month.
Gleaming like a city of gold, a 54-foot scale model illustrates the Fair’s architectural diversity. The Fair will cover a bit more than a square mile — nine times as much as the Seattle World’s Fair. A key to these places appears at end of color portfolio.
A mad moonscape custom-made for shutterbugs
Atop the Eastman Kodak Pavilion, a moonlike setting especially created by Designer Will Burtin provides an interesting backdrop for omnipresent Fair photographer — who may also find models in the many visitors from foreign lands. In the background stands a tower faced with color prints which will be seen for miles across the city.
Kodak expects the Fair to be just about the most photographed happening in history, and so, in addition to displays, their pavilion will provide services for camera-packing visitors — experts to help novices set their cameras, repairmen to fix jammed shutters and stuck film, and a day-by-day guide to the Fair’s most photogenic goings-on.
Fountains and fireworks to light the night and delight the eye
A complex of pavilions clusters around the Pool of Industry, which erupts with fireworks and rainbow-hued fountains. From left are the glass-faced Hall of Education, filled with futuristic teaching machines; the double umbrella of Travelers Insurance Companies, where visitors will make a trip through two million years of man’s history; the winglike Bell System building, which will show progress in communication; General Electric’s dome-topped Progressland, where Walt Disney’s electronic puppets will share the stage with a demonstration of nuclear fusion.
Below: In right foreground, Electric Power and Light Companies’ Tower of Light shoots its 12-billion candlepower beam skyward.
