Night view of the Perisphere at the New York World's Fair of 1939, as conceived by an artist. Moving patterns of colored light on the ball will cause it to appear to turn.
America's largest city hosted the world’s largest fair, a $150,000,000 exposition costing about three times as much as Chicago's famed Century of Progress. In addition to costing three times as much, the New York fair was three times as big as the Chicago fair. The Century of Progress covered 424 acres. The New York World's Fair of 1939 extended over 1,216 acres.
In fact, New Yorkers pointed out happily, if Chicago’s Columbian Exposition and Century of Progress were combined, both of them together would not be as large in area or as costly as the one in New York.
Building the world of tomorrow was the New York fair’s central theme. It presented an example of man-made magic as amazing as the blooming of a lily out of the mire. For Flushing Meadow Park, the exposition site on Long Island, was formerly a city dump and this fair was rising out of a mountain of ashes to demonstrate how the tools and processes and knowledge of today can be used to create a better world tomorrow.
The theme center of the exposition and the dominant architectural feature is the white globe 200 feet high seemingly poised on a cluster of fountains and flanked by a 7OO-foot triangular shaft. This great white ball, called the Perisphere, rises eighteen stories above the ground and was broader than a city block. Except for the tower, it was the fair’s highest structure and housed the key exhibit, a spectacular portrayal of the world of tomorrow.
An endless stream of humanity was flowing into the Perisphere night and day by way of a glass- enclosed moving stairway, the world’s longest. From the top of this flight, five stories above the ground, visitors were stepping on a ‘‘magic carpet’’ or circular moving platform for their journey into the world of the future.
As this platform, fourteen feet wide, 450 feet in circumference and carrying 1,200 passengers, moves slowly around the sphere, the crowds gaze down on a vast panorama showing cities and towns, factories and farms and fields stretching off to the horizon on all sides and blending into the clouds and light patterns of the dome.
Here are shown all the elements of society linked together for the common good. Ships and trains and trucks are being observed bringing raw materials from farms and fields to cities and factories, and carrying manufactured products back to the country. A voice explains the significance of all this movement, stressing the fact that each person today is dependent for his existence on the efforts of many other persons and pointing out how the problems of living have been simplified by cooperation.
From the exit, visitors are crossing a bridge linking Perisphere and tower, descending a stairway inside the shaft or walking down a 900-foot ‘‘helicline’’ or ramp winding around the fountain basin beneath the sphere. The top of this helicline, fifty feet above ground, it was the highest point to which visitors were admitted and commands a view of the entire fair.
Spectacular illumination made the globe an awe-inspiring sight at night. Batteries of projectors spot the sphere in color and other projectors superimpose moving patterns of light on the ball, creating the illusion that it is a glowing, almost transparent bubble of changing color rotating lazily atop supporting clusters of spouting fountains.
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