Scenery from 1939 worlds fair

Thanks for sharing -- the 1939 / 40 Worlds Fair was marvel for its time and set the stage for what the post war world would look like. I had not previously seen this modeling image of the city. Great stuff.

Thank you for posting this link!

My grandparents moved into their last home in 1937. Being "somewhat" OCD, my grandfather saved every magazine and newspaper (morning and evening editions). Each was sorted in chronological order; bundled by publication, by year. When we closed the house in 1974, we hauled two dump truck loads from the basement to the dump.

I'm 99% sure I threw that magazine away forty years ago! Time, Life, Look, National Geographic.... my back gets sore now just thinking about hauling those bundles up the stairs!!!! IF we had saved it all, with eBay I could be a gazillionaire by now.

Gilly

WOW!  It would be great to know what materials they used.  I'm sure they didn't have the plethora of resources we have today.

Dave

Those of us who love the big city look are very envious of this NYC model.

Keeping with the World's Fair theme. Here is the writeup on the layout at THE Better Living Center.

rat

The New York City exhibit of the 1964 World's Fair had a model of the city that contained each and every building in the five boroughs:

The neat thing is that this model still exists.  You can visit it at the Queens Museum, right across from the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Park:

Queens Museum

Just cool!

There was a similar (if not the same) exhibit at the 1964 - 1965 Worlds Fair which was held in Flushing Meadows, NYC. The exhibit is now part of the NYC Queens Museum which is located on the '64 - '65 fairgrounds. See the Panorama when you come to the 2015 TCA Convention; it will be just a train ride away!

Great post Chris.  I would loved to have gone to the fair.  My parents went to the fair. I have some of their pictures.

Amazing work!

Thanks for sharing this. Over the top cool!

Interesting.

Maybe I missed something here, but the Worlds Fair was in 1939-1940.

The write up talks of devices for removing radiation and fallout from the atmosphere and a train going to a uranium mine.  I thought uranium was mainly used as a pottery coloring agent until "the bomb" came along.

Thought I was a pretty good historian, but this has me wondering.

quote:

It would be great to know what materials they used.

There is a good chance that they used asbestos as part of the scenery material. Many old Model Railroading books have passages about using asbestos mixed with other things to make scenery.

quote:

The write up talks of devices for removing radiation and fallout from the atmosphere and a train going to a uranium mine.  I thought uranium was mainly used as a pottery coloring agent until "the bomb" came along.

There are links to three separate (but related) subjects:

1939 Worlds Fair

1964 Worlds Fair Better Living Center train layout

1964 Worlds Fair NYC exhibit

The radiation stuff is from the 1964 worlds fair Better Living Center train layout.

I went to the NYC exhibit as a kid.

Actually, Uranium was used quite a bit prior to WW2 for a lot of applications and as a source for Radium that had its primary use in medical applications.

Large plant for the production of Radium used to be in Canonsburg, PA. Uranium ore used to come in on the PRR.

http://www.canonsburgboro.com/...&StdChemical.htm

BTW, Radium-223 was approved for treating bone involvement of prostate cancer just a little over a year ago.

That model of NYC is amazing! 

Art

WOW!!!..Chris...thanks so much for posting this!  I had never seen images of or even heard of the city scene that you have pictured above.  You know how much I enjoy the urban theme for layout design...but....this is certainly over the top!  That model of the Empire State Building must be over 20 feet tall..!!!

Now I have to go upstairs and start all over....

Alan

Another exhibit in '64 had what was billed as a semi-controlled fusion reaction.

A big plastic (!) dome would have a few lights begin twinkling inside and then a big whoomff and a flash. I don't believe they ever used the word "simulation" in the description!

It would occur every few minutes. I've actually got a photo of it somewhere taken with my little Brownie.

They also promised that controlled fusion would be commonplace by the year 2000 with an end to the world's energy woes.

Jim

Here's the "fusion" photo as well as a prototype diesel on display at the fair - the first time I got a chance to sit in a real cab.

...and while I was scrounging through my ancient past, I came across this photo of the steam train ride at Freedomland - a short-lived Disneyland-type park in the east Bronx in the early 1960's. It closed about the time that the World's Fair opened

In fact, I think the high school our own Peter C. attended was built on or near what was once this attraction. The park failed partly because the builders didn't take into account the NYC winters which were not conducive to outdoor activities.

Jim

I remember that exhibit.  It was the GE pavilion.  Actually, it wasn't quite just a "simulation".   Read about it here:

 Fusion Demonstration

Thanks, Pete.  Neat link - I never realized what I was watching!!!

If I had, I may not have grabbed a spot up that close by the railing.

Jim

The 1939-1940 World's Fair featured several notable dioramas.

The Theme Center, epitomizing the spirit and motto of the fair, "Building the World of Tomorrow," comprised the Trylon and Perisphere and immediately adjacent grounds. The 700-foot-high Trylon and 200-foot-wide Perisphere, were regarded as the most imposing symbol for any fair since the Eiffel Tower of 1889.

Visitors rode part way up the Trylon on what was then the world's highest escalator, then entered the Parishere, stepping onto one of two moving rings, from which they viewed the vast diorama of Democracy, a planned urban and exurban complex of the future.

A six minute show of narration and accompanying musical score, ended with film projections presenting groups of happy farmers and workers.

Afterwards, the visitors walked back to the ground level via a ramp called the Helicline.

Cant judge the scale but it could be "O".

Very cool.  How we will live tomorrow!  

Jim.....you are correct......I went to Cardinal Spellman high school......probably less than a mile from the Freedomland site.....and now, Coop City. 

Right near there is the old NY Westchester & Boston ROW, now the Dyre Avenue subway.

Peter

I remember seeing this in 1964 at the World's Faire. Quite a sight!

Futurama

The General Motors complex, actually four interconnected buildings, known collectively as "Highways and Horizons," was the largest presented by any individual participant in the fair. The designer was Norman Bel Geddes. There were numerous displays of new Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, Buicks, Cadillacs, and La Salles, as well as Frigidaires and a diesel-electric locomotive. A Previews of Progress science show was also offered, and there was an impressive lifesize multilevel futuristic "street intersection of 1960." But the hit General Motors and the fair as a whole was the futurama ride.

Six hundred chairs with individual loudspeakers moved visitors over a 36,000-square-foot scale model of the highway world of 1960.

Seven lane with permissible 100-mph speed, experimental homes, farms and urban developments, industrial plants, dams, bridges and all the intervening landscape.

Springing up around a planned traffic system, still looked on in 1939 as the guarantee of future happiness, the metropolis of 1960 was seen to be free of slums and blight, full of parks and civic centers. Energy would apparently be abundant, climate perfect.

In 1964, GM offered an analogous ride in almost the same location.

A couple more Futurama...

What's cool about that last scene is that when the visitors exited the Futurama ride, they found themselves in a 1:1 scale rendition of the very same scene!

Yes they did...

Wasn't the future wonderful? 

Rusty

Ironical...

I just love this stuff. Some of the predictions were spot on, the portrayal of Freeway Interchanges would be perfect of only they made a few of the ramps always under construction. Have there been parts of some of the displays duplicated on layouts?

I need to add that to my layout.  Nice idea.  

Here is a project I made about 10 years ago in 1/35 scale that was somewhat inspired by this sort of thing as well as Judge Dredd comics and the movie Blade Runner. It was built in a utility trailer to see it you had to look in through one way mirror glass and mirrors were used to make it appear much larger (and taller). I showed it at an art show in LA. Some day I may make a better version.it was very hard to photograph. 

Yes, the theme of the 1939 World's Fair was the futuristic and imposing "Trylon and Perisphere".

It was a noble essay of the "World of Tomorrow", but the real "world of tomorrow" was World War Two, which erupted on September 1 of that year and lasted nearly 6 years, resulting in 60 million deaths worldwide, or 2.5 % of the world's population!

That was the reality of "the World of Tomorrow".

RIP TRACK

HEY MARTIN,

During the 1950's & 1960's, Uranium Oxide was used as a coloring agent to produce the red-orange tone for a line of tableware known as "FiestaWare".

It was mildly radioactive, because as you know, naturally occurring U-238 has 7/10 of 1 percent of the isotope U-235, which is the fissionable isotope used in "Little Boy", the "gun-type" bomb that destroyed Hiroshima on 8/6/45. 

There was 140 pounds of weapons-grade U-235 in the bomb, but less than 2.5% of it actually fissioned, because the initial phase of the chain reaction blew most of it away.

Thus, only about 3.5 pounds of U-235 was enough to instantly incinerate 70,000 Japanese and flatten most of their city.

Cheers,

RIP TRACK

(The red rings are the U-235 Target and Projectile, 140 pounds total, click to enlarge)