Tomorrow-Land

by Joseph Tirella

  Even as the Beatles were exploring the limits of pop music and new ways of recording it, Bob Dylan was headed in an entirely different direction. After the chaotic concert in Forest Hills, he launched an American tour, where belligerent fans taunted him at every stop, pausing briefly during the winter of 1966 to record the double LP Blonde on Blonde. Believed by many to be his masterpiece, Dylan’s album was the culmination of the blues-based electric sound that he had been experimenting with since Bringing It All Back Home. He soon launched a world tour, where he and his backup band endured more hostile audiences in Australia and Europe.

  Dylan was quickly burning out: too much success, too many drugs, too much of everything. While on hiatus in Woodstock, New York, on July 29, 1966, he crashed his motorcycle and retreated from the public eye. Convalescing in both body and spirit, he turned his back on the political movements he inspired and eschewed the transfigured electric sound of his last three records, returning to a stripped-bare, simple folk and country style, which resulted in the album John Wesley Harding. “I asked Columbia [his record company] to release it with no hype,” Dylan said, “because this was the season of hype.” The psychedelic revolution would go on without him.

  That wasn’t the only music Dylan was making in 1967. During the Summer of Love, he was holed up in the basement of a house near Woodstock, New York, where he and his touring band—the five members of which would soon be known to the world as the Band—recorded a plethora of new songs that sounded like old, arcane standards straight out of the Americana songbook, which would eventually be released years later as The Basement Tapes. In the midst of what many thought of as the dawning of a new age, Dylan and the Band were turning back the clock—at least musically—to a simpler, seemingly less complex era.

  If by 1967 the World’s Fair seemed to represent an earlier, less complicated time for many who didn’t like the direction the country was taking or the youth movement, with its lax attitude toward sex and drugs and its refusal to accept America’s Cold War ideology, which had made the Vietnam War a reality, then they were fooling themselves. It was an illusion, no more real than the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion’s “It’s a Small World” boat ride created by the late Walt Disney (who, like Lenny Bruce, died in 1966). In fact, the years 1964 and 1965 were far from peaceful, and there was little, if any, understanding in New York City or the country at large.

  Instead, Moses unwittingly had created a World’s Fair that was emblematic of its times and displayed all the contradictions of postwar America: It espoused noble ideals, yet failed to live up to them; it purportedly sought peace, but often sowed conflict; despite the critics, it did celebrate art, but all the while preached the Gospel of Commerce and Industry. Although he converted the Fairgrounds into the second-largest park in the city, Moses’ new park fell far short of his vision. Failure was not something that the Master Builder took well; and having endured a lifetime of Moses venting his volcanic temper at them, the New York press couldn’t help but bask in his defeat. (That is, what was left of the New York press after a disastrous newspaper strike put the last nail in the collective coffins of the Herald Tribune, the World-Telegram, and the Journal-American.)

  Still, Moses’ World’s Fair would prove prescient in ways even its creator couldn’t envision. The 1964–65 New York World’s Fair with its symbol, the Unisphere—literally a sculptural global village—showed its millions of visitors what a multicultural world actually looked like. The media, so intent on ridiculing Moses for his mishandling of the BIE fiasco—which was certainly accurate—missed the larger story: Smaller, developing nations, the new republics of the Third World, had populated Moses’ Fair.

  And thanks to the 1965 Immigration Act, signed in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty weeks before the Fair ended, which finally rid America of its racist immigrant quotas, people from those same nations—Mexico, India, Pakistan, Korea, and many more—were allowed to come to America in search of a better life, just as their European counterparts had been doing for centuries. The seeds of America’s twenty-first-century political, social, and demographic transformation were sown during the years of the World’s Fair.

  Americans now live in a global village reminiscent of the 1964–65 World’s Fair, even if peace through understanding continues to elude us.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book began with a conversation with my friend Amber Canavan in the fall of 2007. We were both freelance editors at American Express Custom Publishing at the time. One day, Amber casually mentioned that her husband was an agent, in case I had a book idea that I wanted to pitch. A few months later, over lunch at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, I told her husband, Jud Laghi, who became both an agent and friend, the rough idea I had. With his help and patience, the idea of this book was born. A heartfelt thanks to them both.

  I would like to give special thanks to my editor, Keith Wallman, whose deft editing helped turn a manuscript into a book. I also thank Lyons Press and its staff that has helped with this project, particularly Meredith Dias and Lauren Brancato.

  A number of people read this book while it was a manuscript in progress, lending their expertise. I would like to thank Emily Raboteau, whose advice during those early days helped me focus my vision for the book and gave me the confidence to plow ahead. Thanks also to Lindsey Abrams for her editorial suggestions and her encouragement, and Michael Polizzi for taking the time to read these pages and offer his valuable insights.

  I first began thinking about Queens, New York, as a subject after I wrote a number of pieces about ordinary New Yorkers from my home borough while working as a freelance contributor to the much-missed City section of the New York Times. I would especially like to thank Frank Flaherty, my former editor at the City Section, for taking a chance on a random pitch from a freelance writer he had never met, and for helping me start a journey that has culminated in this book.

  During my years in magazine publishing, I worked with some amazingly talented people, far too many to recount here, but I would like to give special thanks to those who encouraged me along the way, particularly during the early days of my career: Jonathan Van Meter, Diane Cardwell, Linda Rath, Gilbert Rogin, Bruce Frankel, Steve Dougherty, Jamie Katz, Jim Kunen, William Plummer, and Joe Dolce.

  Thanks goes to my excellent editors and friends who kept me busy and working when I was a freelancer: Rachel Elson, Josh Moss, Sara Clemence, Laura Rich, Dan Jewel, Sue Rozdeba, Steve Marsh, Jon Auerbach, and Jared Shapiro. I would also like to thank my friends and colleagues at the late Fortune Small Business, especially Adriana Gardella, Richard Murphy, Jessica Bruder, Jeff Wise, Julie Lazarus, and James Lochart. During my years in the pressure cooker of weekly magazines, I learned many of the skills that served me well in the writing of this book. I had the good fortune to make many friends who made the tough times fun. A special thanks goes to Deborah Moss, Lydia Paniccia, Greg Emmanuel, Alec Foege, Orville Clarke, Matt Coppa, Antoinette Campana, Chris Kensler, Sydney Applegate, Bob Meadows, and Nadia Cohen. Thanks to my friends and professors at CCNY, particularly Jane Marcus and Mark Mirsky; and to colleagues at Lehman College: Ann Worth, Terrence Cheng, Evelyn Ackerman, Nika Lunn, Brendan McGibney, Maria-Cristina Necula, Sol Marguiles, Norma Strauss, and Nancy Novick.

  I would like to single out Al Kooper, George Lois, Richard J. Whalen, Gay Talese, Brian Purnell, Peter Eisenstadt, Bill Cotter (for his fair-priced photos), and Marta Gutman for taking the time to share their expertise and memories with me. And once again I would like to acknowledge the staff of the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library for their help and support of this project, as well as archivists at the Brooklyn Historical Society and the Columbia Center for Oral History.

  A special thanks to my parents, family, and friends for their enduring support. Thanks to Justin Rizzo for all his helpful suggestions. And finally, my most sincere gratitude goes to my wife, Kelly, and my wonderful children, Leo and Zoë. I have bee
n working on this book, in one form or another, for most of my children’s lives, missing many events and gatherings along the way. I would not have been able to finish this project without the love, support, and patience of my wife. And for that, she has my enduring thanks and love.

  NOTES

  To tell the story of the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair is to tell the story of Robert Moses. And any serious inquiry into the complex nature and legacy of Moses begins with Robert A. Caro’s celebrated work, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Vintage, 1975). Since Caro’s book first appeared forty years ago, other works have contributed to the understanding of New York’s enigmatic Master Builder. Perhaps the most important of these is the magisterial Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, edited by Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson (W. W. Norton, 2008).

  Another important, and entertaining, book is Wrestling With Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City by Anthony Flint (Random House, 2009), which details the epic battles between Jacobs and Moses. Peter Eisenstadt’s Rochdale Village: Robert Moses, 6,000 Families, and New York City’s Great Experiment in Integrated Housing (Cornell University Press, 2010) is another valuable work that examines a forgotten episode in the sordid history of public housing in New York City.

  There is also Moses’ own attempt at autobiography—or something like it: Public Works: A Dangerous Trade (McGraw-Hill, 1970), a 952-page attempt to preempt The Power Broker’s critical assessment of his legacy. Another absolutely indispensible study of Moses can be found in Marshall Berman’s All That Is Sold Melts Into Air (Penguin, 1988); Berman’s musings about Moses are an epiphany. I am indebted to all of these works; all have helped shaped my thinking of Moses, his legacy, and the World’s Fair.

  While there are a few books on the 1964–65 World’s Fair, among the best of these are the pair of photo books by Bill Cotter and Bill Young, The 1964–65 New York World’s Fair and The 1964–65 New York World’s Fair: Creation and Legacy (both published by Arcadia Publishing). These books, as well as my conversations with Bill Cotter and the excellent website that both authors maintain, which functions as an online archive of World’s Fair photos, articles, and memorabilia, helped make the Fair come alive for me.

  Another all-important text was Remembering the Future: The New York World’s Fair From 1939 to 1964 (Rizzoli, 1989), a collection of invaluable essays by the likes of Morris Dickstein and Helen A. Harrison; the same is true of Lawrence R. Samuel’s The End of the Innocence (Syracuse University Press, 2007). All of the above were excellent guidebooks to the 1964–65 World’s Fair. Another key book for understanding America in the early 1960s was The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964, the Beginning of the “Sixties” by John Margolis (Harpers, 1999), a brilliant and concise work of narrative nonfiction.

  During his lifetime, especially, during his years with the World’s Fair, there was little, if anything, that Robert Moses said or did that didn’t end up in the New York papers. While I have primarily relied on the New York Times—which assigned some of its very best reporters to the Fair, including Gay Talese, McCandlish Phillips, and Robert C. Doty, among others—I also perused hundreds of articles from the metropolitan papers, primarily from the years 1959 to 1967, including the New York Post, the New York Daily News, the Journal-American, the New York Herald Tribune, the New York World-Telegram, and the Wall Street Journal. Often these articles—and Moses’ belligerent response—became part of the story, as I note in the text. I have also read articles from the most important magazines at the time, including Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Reader’s Digest, and Harper’s, among others.

  But by far the most important aspect of my research—and the most important influence on this book—is the time I spent examining the archives of the Robert Moses Papers and the 1964–65 World’s Fair Archives housed in the Manuscripts and Archive Division at the New York Public Library (NYPL) on 42nd Street. I spent months poring over the fourteen boxes of the Moses collection pertaining to the Fair and several boxes of his correspondence, as well as eleven more boxes of the Fair archives. Together these collections—thousands of pages of memos, letters, clippings, photos, speeches, progress reports, etc.—formed a meticulous diary of Moses’ actions, thoughts, words, feelings, and intentions over the course of his seven years as head of the World’s Fair Corporation, and all the people, including presidents, business leaders, and ordinary folks, with whom he corresponded. At every turn, the unfailingly professional and knowledgeable staff of the Manuscripts and Archive Division assisted me in my work. I offer a most gracious thanks for their help.

  Part One: The Greatest Single Event in History

  1.

  My depiction of the ground-breaking ceremony in December 1962 is based on newspaper articles of the day, largely from the New York Times, which ran the full text of President Kennedy’s speech. I also based my narrative on photographs of his visit and a short newsreel of his arrival found online. Much of the behind-the-scenes drama of Kennedy’s visit to Queens, the administration’s battles to secure congressional funding, the Cold War–era intrigue surrounding the Fair, and Moses’ public battles with congressional leaders was detailed in the New York Times and other papers. Important documents were also found in the Robert Moses Papers, the World’s Fair Archives at the NYPL, and accessed online at the John F. Kennedy Library (jfklibrary.org), where, thankfully, pertinent presidential papers have been digitized.

  Bruce K. Nicholson’s memoir Hi Ho, Come to the Fair: Tales of the New York World’s Fair (Pelagian Press, 1989) provided an eyewitness account of Kennedy’s visit to the Fairgrounds—thanks to my friend Suzanne Rozdeba for helping me track it down. Footage of Kennedy’s April 1963 call to the World’s Fair from the White House can be found online. Rick Perlstein’s magnificent Nixonland (Scribner, 2008) provided details on Senator Paul Douglas—as well as inspiration. The Illinois senator’s opinion of Robert Moses can be found in The Power Broker.

  For the history of World’s Fairs, I turned to World of Fairs: The Century of Progress Expositions by Robert W. Rydell and Fair America: World’s Fairs in the United States by Robert W. Rydell, John E. Findling, and Kimberly D. Pelle, as well as World’s Fairs by Erik Mattie. Moses’ role in the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair is detailed in The Power Broker and Moses’ own Public Works, as well as referenced time and again throughout Moses’ own papers.

  My understanding of the events and legacy of the Cuban Missile Crisis was formed primarily by A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (Mariner Books, 2002), the celebrated historian’s account of his years in the Kennedy White House; President Kennedy: Profile of Power by Richard Reeves (Simon & Schuster, 1993), which gives you a front-row ticket to Kennedy’s Oval Office; The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris by Peter Beinart (Harper, 2010); and Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas (Simon & Shuster, 2000). Other books that were consulted for information about this terrifying episode in American history were Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt (Penguin, 2006); The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s by G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot (Penguin Press, 2008); Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years by David Talbot (Free Press, 2007); An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 by Robert Dallek (Little, Brown, 2003); and Michael Dobb’s One Minute to Midnight (Knopf, 2008).

  2.

  Robert Kopple’s quotations about the origins of the World’s Fair were taken from an interview he gave to the New York Times (“Blending of Ideas in 2 Opposing Minds Went Into Creation of the Exposition,” April 22, 1964). Details about Kopple, as well as the Mutual Admiration Society, were gleaned from Charles Poletti’s recollections found in Columbia University’s Oral History Project. Kopple is also featured prominently in “Hi Ho, Come to the Fair,” M
artin Mayer’s article from the October 1963 issue of Esquire.

  The New York Times and other papers provided details of Moses’ visit to the nation’s capital, which the Master Builder also recalls in Public Works. The World’s Fair difficulties with the BIE are detailed in the aforementioned Esquire article, the New York Times, and Bruce Nicholson’s Hi Ho, Come to the Fair, as well as “Diplomacy at Flushing Meadow,” by John Brooks, which appeared in the June 1, 1963, issue of The New Yorker, the most detailed account of the international difficulties that plagued the Fair from the start.

  3.

  This biographical chapter on Moses was influenced by my readings of Caro’s The Power Broker, Flint’s Wrestling With Moses, and the essays in Robert Moses and the Modern City, such as Martha Biondi’s “Robert Moses, Race, and the Limits of an Activist State” and Hilary Ballon’s “Robert Moses and Urban Renewal.” I also consulted To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City by Martha Biondi (Harvard University Press, 2003).

  Also helpful in researching this chapter was Moses’ lengthy New York Times obituary (“Robert Moses, Master Builder, is Dead at 92” by Paul Goldberger, July 30, 1981), as well as Al Smith’s Times obit (“Alfred E. Smith Dies Here at 70; 4 times Governor,” October 4, 1944); I also found “Unhappy Warrior” by Elizabeth Kolbert from the March 5, 2001, issue of The New Yorker informative. Numerous newspaper articles were also useful, particularly “A Few Rich Golfers Accused of Blocking Plan for State Park,” New York Times, January 8, 1925. The Wagner quotations were found in the Reminiscences of Robert F. Wagner, Jr., at the Columbia Center for Oral History (June 23, 1976, p. 97–100; Jan. 14, 1977, p. 349–351; March 15, 1978, p. 747). Many thanks to Columbia’s staff, particularly Kristen La Follette, Breanne LaCamera, and Hana Sutphin Crawford, for their help.