Abe Goes To The Fair II: Insult and Injury

Louis Slobodkin's statue of the young Lincoln, known variously as The Rail Joiner and Unity, was the runner-up in a government sponsored competition for a sculpture to grace the grounds of the Federal Building at The Fair. By his own account, Slobodkin spent a year creating the 15-foot-high steel-and-plaster statue, which cost the federal government somewhere in the neighborhood of $4000.

Slobodkin at work on The Fair statue

On or shortly before opening day of The Fair, however, understandably proud of and eager to show his wife his accomplishment, Slobodkin searched the grounds in vain: much to his chagrin and displeasure, his Lincoln was nowhere to be found.

Subsequent inquiry revealed that the statue had been not only removed from its location, but smashed! Smashed by order of Theodore T. Hayes, executive assistant to the United States Commissioner for The Fair, apparently acting on the suggestion of a female luncheon companion (left nameless, but pointedly identified as a blonde by several contemporary news sources) who thought the statue in poor taste. Oddly enough, Hayes's boss, Edward J. Flynn, had reportedly sat on the jury that had selected the winning submissions in the first place! (Conflicting reports place the blame for the statue's fate directly with Flynn himself.)

Though The New York Times reported that Fair officials were under no obligation to exhibit works of art for which they had paid (and which they therefore owned), the government, after a considerable amount of bad press regarding the incident, settled the matter by returning Slobodkin's original, smaller-scale maquette and commissioning from him another copy of the statue, this time to the tune of $1600.

A seven-and-a-half-foot cast (half the size of the one intended for The Fair) was quickly produced and placed...in an out-of-the-way basement courtyard of the Department of the Interior Building in Washington, DC. On view since August 1939, the statue can still be seen today. But it certainly deserves better.

Above, the Slobodkin statue in its current location at the US Deaprtment of the Interior Buidilng

Another copy of the statue was cast and placed in Lincoln, Nebraska in 2000.

Meet Their Majesties

In my opinion (one that is likely shared by many Fair enthusiasts and collectors), the single most important and valuable Fair "relic," the ultimate "souvenir," has got to be the guestbook that Fair President Grover Whalen kept. Filled with the signatures of visiting celebrities and dignitaries, the King and Queen of England signed the book when they visited The Fair in June, 1939. (They arrived late.)

New York Public Library

I believe I read somewhere that there are several of these books in existence; I got to see one two years ago when "Centuries of Progress: America's World's Fairs, 1853-1982" came to The Long Island Museum at Stony Brook. The book was quite the highlight of the exhibit, opened to the page bearing the royal signatures (which occupy a page all their own).

The book on display at Stony Brook is in a private collection. Alas, I can't show you a picture, since photography was prohibited. (Actually, I had my brother-in-law snap a few surreptitious pix with his phone, but they're so blurry that it doesn't make sense to post them.)

But it's nice to know the owner is amenable to exhibiting his treasure; hopefully it will be available for viewing again in the not-too-distant future!

Great Scot!

One of The Fair's most popular attractions was the railroads exhibit, and it's not hard to see why. The Duchess of Hamilton, one of the London Midland and Scottish Railway's luxury trains, was sent across the pond for a 3,000 mile tour of the colonies before being put on display at The Fair. The Duchess was, however, first re-christened The Coronation Scot. The real Coronation Scot was a slightly older train, inaugurated in 1937 for the coronation (hence its name) of George VI. (The real Scot was also blue with silver accents.)

The Duchess had also to be fitted with a headlamp and bell in order to make her legal for American rails. After The Fair, the Duchess became something of a war refugee, not returning home to England until 1942.

"The Coronation Scot" (far left) at The Fair

What a pity we don't
travel like this anymore!

Not long ago, The Duchess of Hamilton's locomotive was given a make-over to restore her to her original streamlined gorgeousness, and was unveiled in 2009 at Britain's National Railway Museum in York, where she can been seen and admired today.

The Eagle Has Landed

High atop two flagpoles flanking what is now Industry Pond (their original location in the park is a bit of a mystery) in Flushing Meadows Corona Park sit two stylized art deco eagles, retained form the 1939 Fair. Though said at various times to have been "gifts" from Nazi Germany, this myth is, thankfully, almost wholly discredited today.

Documentary evidence in the New York Public Library and elsewhere shows the eagles to be the work of sculptor Robert Foster. Indeed, the eagles are perfectly in keeping with Foster's demonstrated style; compare them with his Mercury sculpture, which adorned the Ford Pavilion, for instance.

Assertions of this alleged Nazi connection are rendered even more silly when one remembers that the eagle is the national bird of the United States...its presence in the park would be wholly expected and thoroughly unremarkable.

Elektro in New York Now Through March 31 Only

There’s not a hell of a lot to be seen at the Museum of the City of New York’s exhibition Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s, which relies heavily on photographs, video and ephemera not always optimally reproduced. In addition, there’s a handful of souvenirs, a few exhibit pieces (like the Sunbeam T-9 toaster), some striking models (including a very impressive Trylon and Perisphere), and artists’ renderings of both realized and un-realized fair buildings, structures, and exhibits. (MCNY’s exhibit covers six fairs, so the amount of material from 1939 is actually quite minimal.)

The real star of the show, though, has got to be the life-size replica of Elektro, the walking, talking, cigarette-smoking robot that wowed audiences at the Westinghouse Pavilion in ‘39. The original Elektro resides in Mansfield, Ohio, in a museum that’s only open a few hours on weekends during the milder months. Presumably the Elektro at MCNY is the replica created and owned by the Mansfield museum, though MCNY provides no detail. And, to tell the truth, I thought that he looks like he’s made out of plastic or fiberglass, not metal...



Elektro was featured in Westinghouse's promotional film The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair, which probably more accurately should have been titled The Middleton Family at the Westinghouse Pavilion. Elektro also appeared in the 1960 comedy Sex Kittens Go to College under the name Thinko. 

Elektro will be at the Museum of the City of New York now through the end of March.

Souvenir lapel pin, featuring Elektro, from 
the Westinghouse Pavilion (Author's Collection)

A View From the Bridge

The Bridge of Flags in 1939;
from the Richard Wurts/Dover paperback

As previously noted, anyone who knows anything about The Fair knows that there are two structures from 1939 still standing in situ in Flushing Meadows: the New York City Building and the Boat House. But it's curious to me how many overlook an important third Fair structure from 1939--the Bridge of Flags. Also referred to as the "Spillway" bridge, it led from the Town of Tomorrow to "Gardens on Parade" and into the foreign zone, which lay to the northeast.












Perhaps its anonymity can be attributed to the fact that the bridge lay on the periphery of the fairgrounds, and does not seem to be indicated by name on any Fair maps. And while one can purchase postcards of the "Bridge of Wings" (one of two bridges that spanned Grand Central Parkway and provided access form the main fairgrounds to the Transportation Zone, the other being the Bridge of Wheels) on eBay, it would seem that the Bridge of Flags was not deemed important enough to be immortalized on a postcard.

December, 2012

To what porpoise?

Today the bridge goes by the name "Porpoise Bridge", which is the name I am assuming was assigned to it for the '64-65 Fair. Why, I cannot imagine...just how many porpoises show up in Flushing Meadows?

Now Playing

The Fair was, of course, intended (originally at least) to be uplifting, educational, and inspirational. According to most authoritative accounts, the Amusement Zone was only admitted to The Fair rather late in the game, when organizers realized that if they wanted to attract the crowds they hoped for, they would have to include something to appeal to the baser instincts. The Amusement Zone (dubbed "The Great White Way") was segregated from the main Fair grounds, and most amusements required additional admission.

But there were other entertainments to be enjoyed that were perfectly in keeping with the vision of The Fair's creators. For a number of years I had heard (read, really) that the documentary films "The City", "The Plow That Broke The Plains", and "The River" were shown at The Fair, but I could never confirm this detail. Well, after a little bit of research at The New York Times, I was able recently to determine that these films, along with a few others, were, in fact, screened as part of The Little Theatre Film Program in the Science and Education Building, located right next to the statue of George Washington at the very center of The Fair.

See Today, 1pm for Showtimes

And guess what? These three films are available on DVD. A fourth, Let My People Live, can be seen and downloaded here. So you can program your own Fair Film Festival! 

The City is available here...

And Plow and River here...

I have to confess, though. As interesting and as important as these films might be as historic documents, as examples of documentary filmmaking, they're pretty dry, pretty tough to sit through. No wonder Fair-goers needed to take a parachute jump, or enjoy some "Living Magazine Covers"!

A still from The Plow that Broke the Plains