Expositions: Tivoli in Texas

Brussels, Seattle, New York, Montreal—and now San Antonio. Of fairs, there seems no end. Why another now?

For one thing, because HemisFair '68, which last week opened its six-month run, gives a big lift to the civic pride of San Antonio, long a sleepy city (pop.: 755,550) at the edge of the Texas hill country, previously noted mainly as the site of the Alamo. For another, it stimulates tourism: officials estimate conservatively that, during HemisFair, 7,500,000 people will visit San Antonio and will spend $35 million there.

But beyond this, the city has good reason to pick a fair as its 250th birthday present to itself. For what the city has really accomplished is urban renewal under the guise of a carnival, with the Federal Government paying a portion of the bill. Already the $158 million fair has turned 147 acres of downtown San Antonio "from slum to jewel box," as Texas' Governor John Connally puts it, provided the city with a permanent new $13.5 million Civic Center and contributed an impressive symbol of progress in the 622-ft.-high Tower of the Americas, tallest observation tower in the U.S.

Seizing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to inject new life into the city core, San Antonio has dredged out a short waterway linking the fair to the San Antonio River and threaded the 92.6-acre HemisFair site itself with a network of canals. It has refurbished its heritage by restoring 24 fine 19th century Victorian houses on the fairgrounds, and the area adjacent bristles with new construction, including the 445-room Hilton Palacio Del Rio, which overlooks HemisFair from the bank of the San Antonio River.

Bumplcins in Buckskin. As international expositions go, HemisFair is a minifair, only slightly larger than Seattle's Century 21 but only one-tenth the size of Montreal's Expo '67, the alltime giant. As a result, the exposition is "manageable in human terms," says HemisFair's chief designer, Allison Peery, meaning that all the exhibits are within easy walking distance. On the elevated "people expressway," no point is more than a ten-minute walk from any other, and for variety there are flower-bedecked barges plying the canals, a minimonorail, and that familiar world's fair fixture, the Swiss Skyride, lofting fairgoers 80 ft. in the air from one edge of the grounds to the other. Pure Texas: the massive outdoor air conditioners that cool off the busiest walkways, rest areas and queues.

HemisFair's modest size does not mean that there is not plenty of room for fun. The 43-second ride up the side of the Tower of the Americas in a glass-fronted elevator is a guaranteed belly-grabber. And from the tower's open-air observation platform, or its two levels of restaurants, one revolving at the rate of one complete turn every hour, Texas stretches out to the horizon 90 miles away.