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USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Dec, 1996

Architectural designs and futuristic drawings that provided the vision for the 1939 New York World's Fair are being shown at the Museum of the City of New York. Featured are 40 original illustrations by artists whose job it was to "Build the World of Tomorrow with the Tools of Today."

The 1939 World's Fair was conceived by a group of businessmen in 1936 and brought to fruition by a committee led by historian Lewis Mumford, with the intention of avoiding the traditional focus on advances in technology in favor of exhibits of genuine social value. The Board of Design was set up to oversee the planning and to integrate the varied influences into a visually harmonious whole. While major projects were matched with well-known architects, there also was a completion for "the design of a typical building."

The Fairs design team included four official delineators whose job it was to present visually alluring drawings of the architects' conception. One of the most important designs is an early study of the Theme Center, rendered by urban visionary Hugh Ferriss. The rich charcoal drawing depicts the Trylon, Perisphere, and Helicline designed by architects Wallace K. Harrison and J. Andre Fouilhoux, who were commissioned in 1936 to design the Theme Center. According to Harrison, "We considered a tower 1,500 feet high; we thought of building a cluster of bowls for open air exhibits; we would show the movement of the planets; we conceived of towers on top of balls and balls on top of towers...."

Also on view is a rendering of the Chrysler Motors Building, designed by architect James Gamble Rogers. The building contained the focal exhibit for the Transportation Zone and depicted the story of transportation through history, emphasizing the fact that the world has grown steadily smaller, with its people drawn closer together by improved methods of transportation on land, sea, and in the air.

One of many extraordinary designs is the proposed Micromegas building by the Austrian emigre artist Frank Rudolph Paul. This fantastical drawing shows and exterior perspective with a giant figure clad as a Roman centurion sitting atop a building eyeing the globe that he holds balanced on his knee. Surrounding the figure are World's Fair buildings and a New York City skyline that appears to have been conjured out of a science fiction tale. Although Paul's Micromegas figure was rejected by the Board of Design, he took revenge on the Fair in the June 1939 cover design of Science-Fiction No. 2, where he shows the Trylon and Perisphere being blown to smithereens by the death rays of invading spaceships.

The World's Fair, inaugurated on April 30, 1939, remained open through Oct. 26, 1940, on a site in Queens that encompassed what was once a swampy landfill known as the Corona Dumps. Admission was 75 cents for adults and 25 cents for children. Visitors could meander through the many different thematic zones, which included amusement, communications, food, government, production, distribution, and transportation. Exhibitors included approximately 60 countries, the League of Nations, 33 states and territories, the Works Progress Administration, and the City of New York. Despite all of the hoopla, the Fair was an economic failure. Attendance totaled 44,931,681, falling short of the forecast 100,000,000, and, of the $155,000,000 it cost to mount, much was never recouped.

All the close of the Fair, most of the original blueprints, renderings, and actual structures were destroyed. The exhibition, "Drawing the Future: Design Drawings for the 1939 New York World's Fair," offers a glimpse of the most accurate remaining record of the intentions of the architects and designers who created this momentous event. It will run at the Museum of the City of New York through Jan. 19, 1997.