In Mr. Whalen's Image

Monday, May. 01, 1939

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Nine miles from the heart of Manhattan, on what was once a Flushing (L. I.) dump, the biggest world's fair in history opens this week. Whether cynics believe it or not, New York's $156,905,000 show is not "just another fair" but "a lot more fair." It outdoes Chicago's $47,000,000 Century of Progress Exposition in showmanship, imagination and spectacle. It completely dwarfs Chicago's in size: with 200 buildings on 1,2164 acres—on which there are 62 miles of roads and paths, 10,000 trees, one good-sized lake and a lagoon, 2,000,000 shrubs and plants. Fifty-eight nations, two international organizations, 33 States, 76 concessionaires and 1,354 exhibitors are represented. To see the entire fair (including concessions) will cost $15 in admissions and will take even an iron man three full days (to nourish iron men there are 310 eating places).

Promotion. Like all world's fairs, this is a business venture, a supposedly self-supporting promotion stunt. Few such stunts actually break even. The Century of Progress did manage to net $702,171, but that was a peewee return on the $47,000,000 investment (of which $10,000,000 was put up by the fair's promoters and recovered in full). The real return was an estimated $700,000,000 in extra business it drew to Chicago.

When Chicago held its fair, the whole city was steamed up—not only the concessionaires and tradesmen, direct beneficiaries, but citizens whose enthusiasm was born of civic pride. The anomaly of the New York fair is that most New Yorkers have been genuinely bored with it. For the cosmopolitan conglomeration that is New York City has less civic interest, is less given to boosterism, than any place in the country. The sole reason New York has a fair, let alone the biggest in history, is that a small, hardheaded group high-pressured the city, the nation and most of Europe into it.

Figurehead and real head of the fair is Grover Aloysius Whalen. And the fair as it stands today—a $157,000,000 extroversion of Mr. Whalen's fantastic extrovert personality—gives him fair claim to the title of greatest salesman alive today. Grover Whalen suggested the fair in 1935 and a civil engineer named Joseph Shadgen came through with a historical excuse—the 150th anniversary of Washington's inauguration; Shadgen also suggested the site—a foul ash dump in Corona, L. I. which New York Park Commissioner Robert Moses had long itched to clean up. The original scheme was a fair the size of the Century of Progress. But with the Magnificent Whalen in the driver's seat and a flashy theme, "Building the World of Tomorrow," the budget mushroomed threefold.

Pressure. New York's fair is a private business venture set up by 121 incorporators with a board of directors, officers and all the other main adjuncts of an ordinary business enterprise except that it is "nonstock, non-profit," pays no taxes.