[Photo album including 1939-40 World's Fair content.] Photographs
- [New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and other locales, 3 Sept. 1936-23 Nov. 1940.]
A photo album compiled by an unidentified young couple documenting their vacations between 1936 and 1940, including a substantial number of photos of the 1939-40 New York World's Fair.
The 1939-40 New York World's Fair opened on April 30th, 1939 in Flushing Meadow, Queens. The first exposition to have a futuristic theme ("World of Tomorrow"), it hosted exhibits by sixty countries, the League of Nations, thirty-three U.S. states, several federal agencies, and the City of New York. By the time the fair closed on October 26th, 1940, over forty-four million people had visited the fair.
Seventy-four photos in this album depict the World's Fair and its buildings and landscapes in both 1939 and 1940, indicating that the couple visited at least twice. Images picture the buildings/pavilions of the League of Nations, Westinghouse, Corning Glass Works, and the modernist sculptures Trylon and Perisphere, as well as pavilions for individual nations including Poland, France, Japan, Russia, Italy, and America. Other highlights of the fair pictured here include Trains on Parade, the City of Light (presented by Consolidated Edison), man-made lightning, a view of the inside of the Perisphere, fountains, sculptures, elevated views of the fair, and the French ocean liner SS Normandie (the most powerful steam turbo-electric-propelled passenger ship ever built, crossing the Atlantic in a record 4.14 days). One image shows a group of Polish children wearing traditional Polish clothing, and several show the unidentified couple posing at the fair. A few evocative shots capture the fair at night, and a number of images reveal the house where the couple stayed during the fair.
A series of photos document a visit to West Point, New York on August 14th, 1938, including images of statues, an armed cadet, the West Point campus, and cadets engaged in drills on the school's training grounds. Between 1936 and 1940 the couple visited the Mohawk Trail in Massachusetts (included here are a shot of a confined bear on the Trail, and a couple of shots show the couple posing next to a statue of a Native American man); Forest Park, Massachusetts; Hubbard Park, Connecticut; Bronx Park, New York (several images of caged animals in the zoo); Benson's Wild Animal Farm, New Hampshire, and Highland Lake, Winstead, Rhode Island. The album concludes with several shots taken on Thanksgiving Day in 1940-a little less than a month after the World's Fair ended.
An appealing album with considerable documentation of the 1939-40 New York World's Fair.
Details
Title
[Photo album including 1939-40 World's Fair content.] Photographs
Condition
Unknown
Publisher
[New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and other locales, 3 Sept. 1936-23 Nov. 1940.]