The World of Tomorrow in a World Gone Mad
On April 28, 1939, Adolf Hitler stood on the podium of the German Reichstag. In front of Hitler sat his Nazi sycophants; behind and above the German dictator sat the party leaders. Hitler told the Reichstag he had received a "curious telegram." He then read aloud a letter written to him, the Chancellor of Germany, from the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The American president had asked the German chancellor to respect the rights of specifically named European countries. With a sarcastic smile Hitler read the names of each nation; the room erupted in laughter after each name. Filmed by newsreel cameras and broadcast live on radio, the speech was seen and heard around the world.
Forty-eight hours later, at the opening of the New York World's Fair, President Roosevelt stood on the podium looking out at an area described fifteen years before by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby as "the valley of ashes." From the ashes of the Corona dump in the borough of Queens, New York City, now rose the The World of Tomorrow -- the 1939 New York World's Fair. The President told the huge opening day crowd that the world will find "the eyes of the United States are fixed on the future. Our wagon is hitched to a star. But it is a star of good will, a star of progress for mankind, a star of greater happiness and less hardship, a star of international good will, and, above all, a star of peace."
The idea of a New York world's fair grew out of Chicago's successful Century of Progress Exposition in 1933-34. New York officials felt that if the nation's Second City could run a top-notch fair and make money, so could the nation's Premier City. For the fair's theme, planners decided to carry Chicago's look back at a century of progress forward to the world of tomorrow. The fair's goal, besides making money, would be to "demonstrate the vital interdependence of communities, peoples, and nations. Thus in submitting to the world of today a new layout for life, we are engaged in building the world of tomorrow. The New York World's Fair will predict, even dictate, the shape of things to come." In the long term many predictions came true; in the short term, during a two-year run, the fair sadly mirrored world events.
The keynote for the World of Tomorrow was the fair-sponsored theme center exhibit, Democracity. Located inside the Perisphere (a round white building 180 feet in diameter) next to the Trylon (a 610-foot white triangular shaft) that together formed the fair's symbol, Democracity drew huge crowds. After waiting in lines foreshadowing the Disney experience, fairgoers stepped onto a moving platform that carried them inside the Perisphere, where they saw the city of 2039 in miniature laid out on a floor space twice the size of Radio City Music Hall. The six-minute peek at the future ended with a "vision in the sky" projected onto the dome above. Fairgoers of 1939 saw the march of the men and women of 2039 and heard the voice of radio commentator H. V. Kaltenborn: "They are marching in triumph...they have triumphed over chaos...they have built the world of tomorrow."
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