What Happened To Cool World's Fairs ?

The 1940 New York World's Fair Grounds:
There are some killer pictures here from 1940 NY World Fair. I can see Walt Disney attending this one and getting a ton of inspiration from it (as you will see from the photos). There were some cheesy parts of this fair too.
Anyone have any other info or photos on some great vintage World Fairs?

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/DISPLAY/39wf/taketour.htm

i wasn't too into the '82 worlds fair in knoxville

dig the atari 2600 box style graphics

i thought the best part was the arcade where i got to play ms. pac man. of course i was 11 at the time.

now the 1939 worlds fair- that was a different story

electro the socialist worker of the future?

of course i was -31 at the time...

[ Edited by: Johnny Dollar on 2004-06-17 13:35 ]

[ Edited by: Johnny Dollar on 2004-06-17 13:37 ]

I really enjoyed the 86' worlds fair in Vancouver, BC. I remember i had a fair passport book & each country's exhibit you got a passport stamp. The U.S. theme was the International Space Station, and a memorial for the Challenger accident. I also remember a Large hockey stick & puck, the puck was the size of a two car garage.

I went to the Seattle World's Fair in the extremly early '60's. Don't remember shit, I was only 2.

Damn my infant memory, age is where it's at!

you mean you can remember things now?

What?

On 2004-06-17 14:11, Tiki_Bong wrote:
I went to the Seattle World's Fair in the extremly early '60's. Don't remember shit, I was only 2.

I think I was an infant so my parents went and left me at home.

My mom:

and dad:

The 1939 World's Fair was awesome. KPBS airs a documentary every once in a while that I should record someday. It's narrated by Jason Robards who attended with his parents as a child and even incorporates some of his families home movies. The whole theme revolved around futurism & streamline design. Footage of the robot, a miniature fully operational future city, mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, a jitter bug contest and the forboding Nazi exibit make for a weird window to the past.

On 2004-06-17 20:31, thejab wrote:

On 2004-06-17 14:11, Tiki_Bong wrote:
I went to the Seattle World's Fair in the extremly early '60's. Don't remember shit, I was only 2.

I think I was an infant so my parents went and left me at home.

Great photos Jab!
I'm guessing they left you with "Electro" the octane socialist baby sitter and Retro, his stainless steel (non shitting) dog.

I have not seen any sales for this product in Ebay (Yet) . :)

On 2004-06-17 20:31, thejab wrote:

My mom:

and dad:

hey jab, looks like the style is in the DNA :)

mahalo fer the pix

On 2004-06-18 06:41, Johnny Dollar wrote:

hey jab, looks like the style is in the DNA :)

Yea, they couldn't believe it when in 1979 I raided their closet and started to wear my dad's old 60s clothes!

They turned into this:
http://park.org/

World's Fairs used to be stunning showcases of new technology, and unique attractions that would draw people from all over - My personal opinion is that

1. People (corporations) don't want to spend the kind of money it takes to get these (temporary) things off the ground.

2. With good design harder to come by for exhibits, rides, attractions & shows (due to the "design by commitee" mindset so prevalent today (i.e. the horrifying failure of The Millennium Dome - my friend Dan Howland sells a great little book on the history of this recent ill-fated fair at:
   http://dannysland.blogspot.com/2004/01/publish-or-perish-printed-7.html

It's too bad - some of the best rides & shows have come out of World's Fairs... Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition, and both the '39 & '64 New York World's Fairs stand out as incredible works of art...

Speaking of the Millennium Dome, one of my favorite (sadly didn't get to see first hand) attractions was the Body Zone - which was infested with animatronic Pubic Lice.... ah you wacky brits!

"Oh mystic powers - hear my call...
From my limbs, let new life fall..."
http://www.christophermerritt.com

[ Edited by: Tangaroa on 2004-06-18 12:16 ]

There are upcoming World Fairs (Expos) in Japan in 2005 and in China in 2010:

http://expomuseum.com/future/

Expo 74 happened in Spokane, Washington in 1974. The world failed to notice but it was big news in eastern Washington. I got to go (I was 9) but it didn't impress me as much as my parents' stories of the '62 Seattle fair, which still seemed wildly futuristic 12 years after the event. And no Elvis movie was made about Expo 74.

In Junk shops the '62 Seattle stuff always gets overpriced and put in the special display cases but the '74 Spokane stuff is treated like the rest of the junk. Poor Expo 74.

"What Happened To Cool World's Fairs ?"

taken over and sanitized by the modern corporate structure and lawyers, thank you very much!

I still have fond memories of Expo 86 in Vancouver... I was 9 when it struck, and my family took a cross-province trip to the coast to see it. Most of my memories are a bit incomplete (and our family photos don't help much since we apparently didn't have any real principle behind the camera's use... "here's a bush... an unimportant sign... a picture of our son in front of some wall..."), but it's more the impression of them that matters.

It probably left a greater impression that it ought, but I was small. I remember a very 1980's aesthetic sensibility... On one hand very colourful and utilitarian with exposed pipes and girders painted in bright primaries. On the other, it was very dark and avant garde, akin to Cirque du Soliel. Probably a lot of why I'm still into 80's style nowadays.

Some of my more vivid memories include the giant hockey puck and stick, the Canada Pavilion with it's flying UFO, the cedar forest outside the BC Pavilion, the giant undulating roadway sculpture with all sorts of vehicles painted mat grey, a giant room filled with multi-lingual Teddy Ruxpins (no really) and how my parents wouldn't let me use my souvenier money to buy a Sharkticon Transformer, saying that I could just buy it when we got home and then never actually doing so.

Calgary actually tried to get the 2005 Expo, but failed. I question how good of one we could have produced anyways. At least it would have had a nice ironic theme: our relationship with the land, in a city for which the oil industry is primary.

Cory

My wife's grandmother had some cool pics from the Chicago World's Fair in the '30s including the Ford Rotunda which was very Space Age-like. I'll have to try to hunt them down.

heh heh... try to get people in 2004 to buy a car with the word "rotund" in it...

the chrysler chubb!
the kia zaftig!
the toyota plump-xs!

Yeah, that would be some crazy name for a car! It was a large gear-shaped building that was later moved to Dearborn, Michigan to be used as Ford's showroom for new cars and any other presentations. It burned in the early '60s. The place where it stood is still just a field now.

http://www.samgambino.com

[ Edited by: Sam Gambino on 2004-06-22 08:48 ]

oh, a thousand pardons... i thought there was a car called "ford rotunda," not there was a rotunda building for fords. silly mee...

JD, I wasn't correcting you. I just didn't make myself clear in the first place - my fault. No harm intended.

http://www.samgambino.com

[ Edited by: Sam Gambino on 2004-06-22 09:06 ]

you the man, sam g :)

Thanks! Back atcha... :)

I'd like to put in a word for Expo '67 in Montreal. I went with my dad towards the end of the fair in October -- not the best time to visit Montreal, weatherwise, but hey, it got me out of grade 6 for a week! And I got to see the country by train which was a blast.

Expo was a marvel of architecture, especially Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome for the American pavillion and Moshe Safdie's Habitat 67 -- a complex of modular living units that was hyped as the future of housing.

Another remarkable aspect of Expo '67 was the cutting edge (for that time) use of film and multi-media, with everyone trying to outdo each other with bizarre multi-screen presentations.

I recently found an Expo '67 guidebook in mint condition which brought back lots of memories and made me wish I'd been a little older at the time to appreciate it more (like my sister who was a teenager then. I think her fondest memories of Expo were the discotheques and the exotic French speaking boys).

I found this website that has photos and detailed descriptions of all the pavillions: http://naid.sppsr.ucla.edu/expo67/

I also went to Expo '86 in Vancouver but there was no comparison. 1967 was Canada's Centennial year -- a huge "coming out" party for the country and a very exciting time to be a Canadian. I don't think that feeling has ever been the same since.

Ford also built a Rotunda building shaped like gears in San Diego in 1935 for an exhibition, which is still standing in Balboa Park and currently houses the Aerospace Museum:

Building history:
http://www.aerospacemuseum.org/exhibits/building.html

On 2004-06-22 11:45, thejab wrote:
Ford also built a gear-shaped Rotunda building in San Diego in 1935 for an exhibition, which is still standing in Balboa Park and currently houses the Aerospace Museum:

Building history:
http://www.aerospacemuseum.org/exhibits/building.html

My folks took me to the '64 NY World's Fair. We went by train – way fun. The only thing I really remember (aside from various structures and some guy knocking the french fies out of my hand) was GM's Futurerama. I was amazed. And still am. I've lost my souvenir postcards. Dammit!

I'm way ready to be amazed again. Who can do it?

On 2004-06-22 11:45, thejab wrote:
Ford also built a Rotunda building shaped like gears in San Diego in 1935 for an exhibition, which is still standing in Balboa Park and currently houses the Aerospace Museum:

Building history:
http://www.aerospacemuseum.org/exhibits/building.html

Thanks, thejab. I never knew there was another one.

The New York Times November 5, 2004:

U.S. Rejoins World's Fairs...With a little help from its sponsors

By FRED A. BERNSTEIN

SINCE the end of the cold war, the United States has given world's fairs the cold shoulder. In 1992, when Spain marked the 500th anniversary of Columbus's voyage with a huge fair in Seville, the State Department erected a tentlike structure that it had in storage. In 2000, the U.S. sat out the Hannover, Germany, exposition, which 181 countries attended.

Now the United States wants back in the game. But because Congress banned federal financing of world's fairs in 1999, major corporations will be picking up the tab for the American pavilion at the first major expo of the 21st century, which opens next March in Aichi, Japan. Thom Filicia — the wisecracking interior designer on the hit TV show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" — will design the pavilion's V.I.P. suite, where sponsors like General Motors, ExxonMobil and DuPont will woo Japanese clients.

"The U.S. is a product I believe in," said Mr. Filicia in his NoHo studio. And with America's image suffering abroad, he added, "We could use a world's fair every month."

...Most of the fair's expected 15 million visitors won't see Mr. Filicia's (V.I.P. suite) handiwork.
Historically fairs provided architects a chance to experiment with materials and forms. Some structures, though intended to be temporary, have stood the test of time: the Eiffel Tower was created for the 1889 Paris Exposition; at the Montreal Expo in 1967, R. Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome wowed visitors to the American pavilion; the Space Needle in Seattle, a relic of the 1962 World's Fair, has become a landmark. In Hannover four years ago, architects including Peter Zumthor of Switzerland and Shigeru Ban of Japan created striking evocations of their countries.

Alfred Heller, the author of a 1999 book about world's fairs, called America's no-show in Hannover an embarrassment. Mr. Heller says that the government's ambivalence about world's fairs reflects a feeling that after the fall of the Soviet Union there was little need to burnish this country's image abroad.

When the Aichi fair was announced in 2000, the United States government did not sign on. But a private group — formed at the behest of Dr. Shoichiro Toyoda, the honorary chairman of his family's Toyota Motor Corporation and now chairman of the Aichi fair — was formed to make sure there would be a American pavilion.

Full article:

http://www.fredbernstein.com/articles/display.asp?id=76

I don't suppose anyone here has photos of the gift shop interior of Sinclair Dinoland at the 1964-65 World's Fair? I think I have almost everything sold in it, but would love to see how it was displayed.

In my previous hobby of collecting dinosaur and prehistoric animal toys and memorabilia, the World's Fairs were a particular favorite of mine. Aside from the copious amount of stuff cranked out by Sinclair's Dinolands at 1933-34's Century of Progress and the 1964-65 World's Fair, there was also a more obscure exhibit in 1933-34 called Messmore and Damon's The World a Million Years Ago.

I managed to correspond with Francis Messmore, son of the Messmore who worked on the exhibit, and purchased a few bits of memorabilia from it, including some hard rubber "dinosaur fighting dinosaur" dioramas that were on display there, and a perfectly awful Archeopteryx (first bird) made of paper mache over wire that was actually in the exhibit. I suppose they could get away with crude renditions of most of the animals because The World a Million Years Ago was an early ride-through ride, the animals were seen briefly and in dim lighting and people weren't running around with camcorders back then.

[ Edited by: tikijackalope 2006-04-21 04:36 ]

Some Worlds Fairs have really played into the hands of Serial Murderers. Maybe someday Product launches will too...some cannibals will dress up as "The Steve", others as Sting...oh yeah, easy feed

When I used to work in the Pasadena area I would find old crap (bottles, car parts, paper ephemera) in these vacant turn of the century houses. I just found some of my old stash. I have a stack of photo portfolios of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Some are dated either 1893 or 1894. The statues, art, and archetechture were incredible. here are a few out of the hundreds of photos that TCers might enjoy...

Would love to see inside this exhibit. $80,000 in 1893 money just for this one building.

The carvings of the Northwest Indians have many things in common with Souh Sea art. 100 pages.

Current World Fair info. http://www.worldsfairs.com/.

The link Jab posted two years ago is still also active http://www.expomuseum.com/future/

Missed Seattle 62 and Vancouver 86? You might get another chance in 2020....
togetherness
(Looks like our talk of an 'International Tiki Event' isn't so far fetched!)

Chicago's new Historical museum just opened, and there's a nice section there devoted to the Expositions of 1893 and 1933 (There is also a great temporary exhibit of Dior's New Look with some awesome dresses).

Here are a few interesting things I shot there last week.

First, a ticket, admitting one Felix Van Clief to the South Sea Islands Village and Theatre.

Next, an ad for the same theatre, "In the theatre are given the war songs and dances of the natives". Admission was one thin dime.

Finally, a buch of 'natives' lined up to punch the clock after a long day's work. Reminds me of that old Warner Brothers cartoon with the voyotes and sheepdogs punching the clock:
"Mornin' Ralph"."Mornin' Fred".

And...

Look at these creepy midway sideshow exhibits!
I want to see them all!

Finally:
This was a model for a building.
I want to live there.
(in the real building, not the model)