Twilight at the World of Tomorrow

by James Mauro

  In 1876, Philadelphia (supporting young Jacqueline’s assertion) commemorated the nation’s birth with its Centennial Exposition, erecting seven magnificent palaces and outspending New York by six times. But America’s crown jewel was Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 (named in honor of Columbus’s so-called discovery of America four hundred years earlier), more famously known as “the White City.” Looking to “out-Eiffel Eiffel,” this Fair presented George Ferris’s magnificent wheel and became famous as a symbol of architectural classicism that influenced a generation of builders and designers to come. It also had a profound effect on the country’s breakfasting habits, introducing Aunt Jemima pancake mix, Shredded Wheat, and Quaker Oats, and on its snacking preferences with Cracker Jack and Juicy Fruit gum.

  At over six hundred acres and featuring nearly two hundred buildings, the White City for a time served as a model for the 1939 New York World’s Fair: Most of its buildings were temporary structures, there were specially constructed canals and lagoons, and the entire enterprise served to show the world that beauty could be built upon ashes, in this case those left from Chicago’s Great Fire, which had destroyed so much of the city some two decades earlier. At a time when the country’s total population was sixty-five million, more than twenty-seven million visitors passed through its gates, netting the Fair a handy profit of more than $1 million.

  The United States continued its elaborate celebrations with the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. No longer content to have its exposition be considered merely a World’s Fair, the city of St. Louis decided to up the ante by calling its Fair a “Universal Exposition.” Although it was indeed huge—at twelve hundred acres, it was almost twice the size of the White City—and while sixty-two foreign nations and forty-three (out of forty-five) of the United States participated, there is no documentation to support the fact that any other representatives of the universe actually showed up.

  The Fair also contributed to the world one of the most brain-sticking tunes of all time, “Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis,” and claimed to be the birthplace of American staples such as the hamburger and hot dog, peanut butter, and cotton candy. It wasn’t, but it was nice to think so, and somehow the myth stuck.

  Yet the World’s Fair that was on everyone’s mind in the 1930s was Chicago’s second triumph—the Century of Progress exposition of 1933 and 1934. Its signature attractions were the Sky Ride, built in part by the Otis Elevator Company, and a scandalous fan dancer named Sally Rand. Chicago also boasted to its brethren on the Hudson that its Fair had paid off all of its investors and even turned a modest profit, and that a good many hotels along the city’s famous Loop had been rescued from receivership by the reigniting of its Depression-starved economy.

  Those numbers were key ingredients that lay behind the audacious dreams of Joseph Shadgen. They would also spur the even more feverish visions of the dreamers yet to come.

  The next morning, Jacqueline and her father continued to debate the anniversary issue. Shadgen decided to end the debate once and for all by taking her to the one spot he thought would settle the matter. After breakfast, they rode the Second Avenue elevated train down to Federal Hall on Wall Street, to the very place where Washington had been inaugurated. Together, they read the inscription at the base of his statue, miraculously unharmed in the Wall Street bombing fourteen years earlier:

  ON THIS SITE IN FEDERAL HALL, April 30, 1789,

  GEORGE WASHINGTON TOOK THE OATH AS THE

  FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

  Shadgen felt his point had been made, and the little girl probably didn’t feel like arguing anymore. Nevertheless, on the ride back to Jackson Heights, Jacqueline innocently asked her father whether there was going to be any kind of celebration to mark this anniversary. After all, in five years’ time the country would be one hundred and fifty years old; there ought to be some sort of commemoration.

  The idea was no doubt already spinning in his head as he answered that “as far as he knew,” there were no plans for any such thing. It all came together: Not only should the country plan something, but the occasion should take place here, in New York City, where the original event had actually occurred.

  “Why don’t you do it, Daddy?”7 Jacqueline asked. That single, innocent suggestion set the wheels in motion for a project so large in size and scope, one that would eventually cost so many millions of Depression-era dollars and would forever change the landscape of New York, that neither of them (nor anyone else at the time) would scarcely have believed it was possible.

  That it would also have serious and destructive effects on her father’s life and reputation could similarly not be imagined.

  By the time they exited the Queens Boulevard line at Roosevelt Avenue, Shadgen’s mind was already off and running. A few stations past their stop, the subway would eject passengers in a neighborhood called Corona, where the world’s most infamous garbage dump sat festering in the muggy afternoon air.

  “I first began to think8 seriously of this idea of a World’s Fair for New York,” Shadgen recalled, “… about July 1934. Working independently at first, my idea became concrete and I carried out surveys and researches covering the five boroughs of New York. I completed all my thought on this idea before telling anyone about it. And when my mind had finished working on it, well, to put it frankly, I was scared. I did not discuss it with anyone for at least six weeks, until I regained the courage of my convictions.”

  When “the idea was really ready for submission to anyone,” he said, “I spoke of it to some business associates.”

  Whether or not Shadgen was ready to present a project of such magnitude to his partner, the failure of his wine storage company gave him the fortitude to approach Edward with this mind-boggling idea, however ludicrous it might seem to him. To support his case, he had deduced that the best location for the eventual fairgrounds would be the site that had so damaged his neighborhood, all of Queens, and, by extension, New York City itself for decades: the Corona Dumps.

  On a bright fall morning in 1934, Shadgen hurried into their makeshift office to tell him the news. “Ed, this wine storage idea9 isn’t going to work out,” he said. “But I’ve got another idea. Let’s put on a World’s Fair.”

  “New York lives10 because of its great port,” he explained. Without the port, New York “would be just a burg.” The city needed business; it needed tourism, money. What could bring in money better than a World’s Fair? Chicago’s Fair had just closed its doors for good, after two successful seasons. And what could be done in Chicago could be done right here in New York. Bigger, even, and better, with greater financial reward.

  Shadgen hurried on, filling in the details, the occasion of Washington’s inauguration in 1789 and the upcoming anniversary in April 1939. Chicago’s Fair had taken exactly five years from concept to opening; they had almost as much time to create a New York version. After all, New York had a larger population and a better occasion to celebrate. Chicago’s Century of Progress theme had marked the Second City’s centennial, but that was merely a statewide anniversary. This one commemorated the birth of the entire nation and therefore, he reasoned, would attract more people.

  “I firmly believe11 that the holding of the World’s Fair here will augment New York’s civic pride and city-mindedness, as well as stimulate business,” he said. It was a difficult point to dispute.

  The more Roosevelt heard, the less skeptical he became. The idea had merit. After a few more conversations and prolonged arguments about the details, Roosevelt thought he knew who could get the ball rolling for them.

  Ironically or not, the man Edward Roosevelt chose to advance Shadgen’s World’s Fair idea was also named Roosevelt, and like Edward, he was a second cousin to Eleanor and sixth cousin to the president. He was also Edward’s first cousin, and his name was Nicholas. Shadgen must have felt his head spinning.

  This Roosevelt, however, had fared somewhat better in life than his counterpart. Nick Roosevelt, a Har
vard graduate, was an editorial writer for both The New York Times and the Herald Tribune, two of the most respected daily newspapers of their day. As such, he had access to that particular breed of people who got things done in New York. Nick, who probably felt some sort of familial pangs for his down-on-his-luck cousin, agreed to take a meeting.

  After making the proper introductions, Edward sat back and let Shadgen give his speech. He went into great detail about his qualifications as an engineer and his diligent survey of the region, anticipating that Nick might find it a ludicrous idea, considering the source.

  As it turned out, he was impressed; moreover, he knew exactly the best person to present it to. He picked up the telephone and started dialing. Shadgen, elated that the team had progressed up another rung of the ladder, prayed for two things: that the man on the other end was indeed a bona fide ball roller, and that he wasn’t named Roosevelt.

  He wasn’t. After a brief conversation, Nick made an appointment for them to go and see, as he described him, a “banker” named George McAneny, a man he knew personally since McAneny was also an executive manager of the Times. Nick hung up the phone and smiled at them. After offering a few words of advice, he armed the partners with a letter of introduction and sent them on their way. Grateful and terrified, they left his office, knowing they had their work cut out for them.

  For one thing, George McAneny was no ordinary banker. At sixty-five he was, in fact, president of the Title Guarantee and Trust Company. In the second decade of the century, he had served as Manhattan borough president, president of the New York City Board of Aldermen, and chairman of the Transit Commission of the State of New York. Most important to the cause of a World’s Fair, since 1929 (the year of its founding) McAneny had been president of the Regional Plan Association.

  Here at last, Shadgen realized, was the man who could indeed spin one of his ideas into gold. When the day of their meeting finally came, Roosevelt and Shadgen were ready—perhaps a little over-ready. They had even taken the liberty of drawing up a few “rough plans” for their vision of this World’s Fair.

  The two men entered McAneny’s impressive office and steeled themselves. McAneny, with his close-cropped hair parted in the middle and his old-fashioned, high-collared suit and pince-nez, looked every bit the high-powered executive he was. He greeted them formally, sat with his hands folded politely on his desk, and waited for them to begin.

  With typical audacity Shadgen stood up, laid his makeshift sketches across the banker’s desk, and dug into the backbone of his vision. For nine months, he said, he had been studying a nasty situation not far from his home in Jackson Heights, knowing that something had to be done about the abomination known as the Corona Dumps. He watched as carload after carload of coal dust and carcasses unloaded from the train tracks of the Brooklyn Ash Removal Company, quietly fuming, as did every one of his neighbors, at the fumes.

  McAneny shrugged but seemed interested. The Corona Dumps had been considered a blight on New York City since the turn of the century, but the site had grown so large and so intractable that the funds needed to clear it would total in the tens of millions. Given the current economic situation, the project was unthinkable.

  Nevertheless, Shadgen carefully described a method for “reclaiming the land, pumping up new land [and] dredging channels.” When McAneny failed to see the connection, Shadgen repeated almost verbatim the sales pitch he had given both Roosevelts regarding his idea for a World’s Fair, then delivered his ace. After he had eliminated seven possible locations for the Fair, he’d found one “which had more space than anything near the center of the city, and better traffic conditions than anything else available in outlying districts.

  “Flushing Meadows,”12 he stated proudly, “was a good place to hold the Fair.”

  McAneny leaned back in his tall banker’s chair and nodded at the two men.

  “My dear Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Shadgen,” he began, “a number of us have been sitting around talking off and on for three years, trying to figure out what to do about the commercial situation in New York.”

  He waited, savoring the moment. Roosevelt and Shadgen held their breath. “I think you gentlemen have found the solution,” McAneny said, with an uncharacteristic smile.

  The ball, finally, was rolling.

  In fact, it began to roll with more power than either Shadgen or Roosevelt could compete with. As it turned out, this meeting with George McAneny had been the high point of Shadgen’s involvement with the Fair; faster than he could have imagined, his role in its development became secondary and almost meaningless.

  Yet despite the urgency of a deadline, McAneny took his time getting things officially started. Speed was never one of his virtues (newspapers often referred to him as “Mañana Mac”); careful planning was. Over the next few months, he organized a seemingly endless series of luncheons13 with what he considered to be the city’s appropriate business and civic leaders. Most of these he held at the Oval Room of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, of which he was conveniently a director. His primary cohorts in these affairs included Percy S. Straus, president of Macy’s; William Church Osborn, a prominent attorney; Henry Bruere, president of the Bowery Savings Bank; Matthew Woll, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of the American Federation of Labor; and Grover Whalen, by then chairman of the board of Schenley Distillers Corporation but better known as the best promotions man in the country.

  It was a stunningly impressive group, and by contrast Shadgen and Roosevelt were just a pair of pikers. The first hint of their secondary status in the presence of such captains of industry came from Whalen himself. At one of McAneny’s luncheons, he leaned across the table and, in his best ingratiating manner said, “Mr. Shadgen and Mr. Roosevelt,14 I have great admiration for you. I congratulate you for spending so much time working for the good of our city.”

  With Whalen’s subtle suggestion of the past tense, he might as well have ended his statement with, “Thank you. And goodbye.”

  As winter turned to spring and spring into summer, McAneny kept up the pace of these meetings, until at one time or another he had met with and subsequently fed every merchant, banker, lawyer, and architect he deemed worthy of an invitation. Privately, he also met with Mayor La Guardia, Governor Herbert Lehman, and even FDR himself, each of whom expressed a “lively interest” in the Fair and, without committing to anything, offered to “try to see that it got the backing, both moral and financial,” of their respective government branches.

  Finally, on September 23, 1935, with three and a half years to go until the anticipated opening, McAneny formally announced a plan for the city of New York to host a World’s Fair in 1939. No fewer than sixty muckety-mucks were present, and the dinner was once again held at the Ritz. Both Lehman and La Guardia attended. Shadgen and Roosevelt were there as well, but if the Belgian still didn’t imagine the degree to which he was being dismissed, he must have sensed something was up when he read the list of names that made up the Fair’s newly formed steering committee in the papers the next day: Nicholas Roosevelt was on it; he and Edward were not.

  At the dinner, McAneny boldly stated that the Fair’s opening would have to be April 30, 1939, in order to mark the inauguration anniversary. The shortened deadline was met with a few harrumphs, but when he declared its intended location, in Flushing Meadows, not a few of his surprised guests slurped their soup in shock. About the only detail he got wrong was his original estimate of the cost, which he figured would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 million total.

  Both the mayor and the governor spoke, and McAneny read a telegram from President Roosevelt in support of the idea. And when a few questions arose about the logistics of converting the horror that was the Corona Dumps and the surrounding Flushing Meadows area into anything remotely resembling parkland, McAneny dropped a name that silenced the detractors.

  “The subject of the site15 was taken up some weeks ago,” he reassured them, “with Parks Commissioner Robert Moses,
who also examined the various possibilities and declared emphatically in favor of the Flushing plan.”

  An exchange of raised eyebrows and hushed whispers ensued. Moses was already enjoying his reputation as a man who got things done despite impossible odds.

  It was Moses’s belief, McAneny went on, “that a development of great beauty may be worked out both on the shore and through the meadow area, and that the picture of a new White City on the edge of the bay would prove a fascinating one.”

  Suddenly, all were in agreement. Flushing Meadows it would be. After all, what was good enough for Moses was good enough for them.

  When McAneny had first brought the concept of a World’s Fair to the attention of Robert Moses, he told him, “We have a great idea16 and we want your help.”

  Moses, as if seeing the answer to all his problems, pounded on his desk and shouted, “My God, that17 is a great idea!”

  Instantly, he recognized the plan for what it was: a means to an end. By his own account, from the very beginning Moses cared less about the Fair than its aftermath. “I am waiting for another18 and less dramatic event,” he admitted, “the night when the Fair closes…. In another quarter of a century, old men and women will be telling their grandchildren what the great Corona Dump looked like in the days of F. Scott Fitzgerald … and how it was all changed overnight.”

  His vision was that of a park to end all parks, one and a half times the size of Central Park, that would be known as “the Versailles of America.” In fact, he had been trying to get the thing built for years. The site he had in mind was the exact location McAneny had suggested for the World’s Fair—a square-mile patch of land that had been subjected to the most extreme degrees of decay despite its prime location at the geographic center of New York City’s five boroughs.

  Moses, never one to underestimate himself, took his inspiration from the Bible: “Give unto them beauty for ashes.” In 1931, he had begun construction on the Grand Central Parkway, connecting the city with Nassau County in order to provide better access to Jones Beach, his most famous state park to date.* His decision to build the new parkway through the western edge of the Corona Dumps also carried the secondary goal of reclaiming the land around it.