Cities: Hello & Goodbye

It seemed somehow appropriate that on the day before the Seattle fair opened, the one familiar symbol of another great fair—indeed of another great era—should say goodbye. Dead last week of a stroke at 75 was Grover Michael Aloysius Augustine Whalen, president of the 1939 New York World's Fair, chief greeter of the world's celebrities who came to New York during a pulsating quarter-century, inventor of the ticker-tape parade—the Host of New York.

His top hat or Homburg set squarely on his head, his natty guardsman's mustache stretched over a smile, a fresh carnation peeping from his lapel, Whalen flashed...