Going Coastal

FDR’s VISION: When President Franklin D. Roosevelt came to the site in 1938 with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to break ground for the upcoming fair, he was so impressed by what he saw that he inquired if parts of the fair could be kept permanently for a world peace organization. On April 30, 1939, Roosevelt opened the fair in the first TV broadcast in history but his speech was a direct reply to a belligerent diatribe delivered the day before by Chancellor Adolph Hitler in Berlin. FDR declared “the eyes of the United States are hitched to a star – but it is star of Peace.”

THE COURT OF PEACE: Situated around a vast plaza and the Lagoon of Nations, the entire world was represented by enormous and impressive pavilions. Standing side by side were France, Great Britain, Italy, Poland, Belgium, the Soviet Union and Japan. Nations that would soon be at war with each other peacefully displayed their arts, history, culture and cuisine. Only one nation was absent from the World of Tomorrow – Nazi Germany. Hitler, who had arranged for the largest pavilion at the fair, angrily pulled out after Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia said that “the German pavilion belonged in the Chamber of Horrors at the Fair.”

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: In an almost obscure area of the fair’s international zone along the banks of the Flushing River was the League of Nations pavilion, topped by a circular turret of the flags of the member nations with a pentagonal base representing the five continents and the five races of mankind. The fair’s official Guide Book describes the pavilion’s goal; “If the League can make even a modest contribution towards international appeasement, towards substituting cooperation for conflict and thus laying the groundwork for lightening the burden of armaments, it will have fulfilled the hopes of the many nations which have united to build on American soil this contribution to The World of Tomorrow.” Of course, the U.S. never joined the League after World War I despite the efforts of President Woodrow Wilson to break America’s isolationist mood, and the outbreak of World War II ended the dream of this world body – the fair would be its last hurrah.

EINSTEIN & PALESTINE: The great scientist Albert Einstein took a keen interest in the fair, writing a special message to the future in the fair’s Time Capsule, pressing a button to ignite cosmic rays to trigger the fair’s night illuminations on opening night and sharing the podium with President Roosevelt on opening day. Just weeks later Einstein would send the fateful letter warning FDR of the possibility of development of a nuclear bomb, thus triggering the super secret ‘Manhattan Project’ which would end WWII at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and open the frightening new world of the Atomic Age.
But what most occupied Einstein’s time at the fair was his support of a private Pavilion of Palestine that was a fervent call to the world for a return of a Jewish state in the Holy Land. Neither he nor the other sponsors of the exhibit could have prophesied the upcoming horrors of the Holocaust or the fact that their dream of a State of Israel would later come about in these same grounds at Flushing Meadows.

FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM: The fair’s theme for its second season was changed from The World of Tomorrow to “For Peace and Freedom.” The reason was obvious. The peaceful world existing at Flushing Meadows was jolted by the winds of war overseas and after Hitler’s invasion of Poland and Czechoslovakia; the glorious pavilions of one country after another like France and Lithuania were either shuttered or kept open by expatriates as a sign of defiance. The giant marble pavilion of the Soviet Union was removed and on July 4, 1940, a bomb was found in the British pavilion, believed to have been placed by Nazi sympathizers. Two NYPD officers were called to the scene and removed the device from the crowded pavilion and attempted to defuse it. The bomb blew up, killing both detectives and ushering a frightening new dawn of international terrorism on U.S. soil. A plaque in memory of the officers stands in front of the New York Building in the park today.
As the great fair closed in October 1940, it was obvious the planet was engaging on the second and most bloody war of the 20th century. The Trylon and Perisphere – the iconic symbols of a peaceful and democratic world of tomorrow – were dismantled and the tons of steel that made up these huge structures of peace were purchased by the government to make bombs for the upcoming war. The great park envisioned by Robert Moses for the site had to be put on hold. But two structures from the fair remained – one of them the New York City Building, which was converted to an ice skating and roller rink. On the night of Dec. 7, 1941, after news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a crowd of angry Queens residents went to the park and descended on the Japanese Pavilion – a beautiful replica of an ancient Shinto shrine. It and its adjacent Japanese garden were to be left as a permanent gift to show the eternal friendship between the people of the United States and the people of Japan. That night the crowd torched the building and burned it to the ground.

A NEW WORLD: With the end of World War II, the fledgling United Nations looked for a new home and after a grand plan for a World Capitol that would occupy most of Flushing Meadows was rejected in favor of the present site on the East River in Manhattan, the UN General Assembly met in its first home in the New York City Building from 1946 to 1950. The ice and roller rinks were covered to make way for the Assembly Hall and offices and the circular plot directly in front of the building that had been site of the Trylon and Perisphere now contained large flag poles of the member nations of the UN. Even the subway and Long Island Rail Road stations at Willets Point now bore signs saying “United Nations.”
Across the world, newsreel and newspaper and radio reports regularly touted the amazing developments that were shaping the postwar world by saying “today at Flushing Meadows.” The decisions being made in the park were momentous in those years. In addition to the partitioning of Palestine and the Creation of Israel in November 1947, the UN took up the partition of India and Pakistan, the partition of North and South Korea, and the creation of new international organizations such as UNESCO, the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

A NEW HOME: Housing needs for the panoply of delegates, staff and other UN personnel became necessary and Queens provided it. Trygve Lee, the first Secretary General of the United Nations, decided on a nice home near Flushing Meadows in Forest Hills Gardens. When President Harry Truman came to the park to address the UN for the second time (he first gave the opening address in 1946) on Oct. 24,1950 he then went for lunch at the home of Trygve Lee at 123 Greenway North. The home still stands today in the Gardens.
Robert Moses created Parkway Village in Jamaica, a project of 110 buildings housing 685 families on a 45 acre tract for UN personnel and including a United Nations school. One of its most prestigious tenants was the Under-Secretary General of the United Nations, Dr. Ralph Bunche, an African-American diplomat who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his peacekeeping efforts. After the UN left Flushing Meadows, Bunche later took up residence in Kew Gardens. Parkway Village still stands today as a residential development.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: One of the most prominent and influential figures at Flushing Meadows during the UN years was the former First Lady who Harry Truman appointed as the U.S. delegate to the UN. She saw her late husband’s dream of a United Nations come to fruition on the same site he had envisioned for it back in 1939. Her most lasting achievement was in drafting and getting the UN to adopt a Universal Declaration of Human Rights which would call for all nations to abide by principles of freedom of speech, assembly and religion. She worked tirelessly for its creation and adoption and it is fittingly the logical world extension of the ideals drafted three centuries before by a group of citizens in the town nearby – the Flushing Remonstrance.

STAMP OF APPROVAL: The UN left Flushing Meadows for its new permanent headquarters in1950. But the international body did not forget its formative and historic first home in the park and on March 30, 1959, issued two UN postage stamps in four languages with a picture of the NY City Building saying Flushing, New York.

COMING FULL CIRCLE: In 1964-65, a second New York World’s Fair was held at Flushing Meadows. On the very same circle in the center of the park which had seen the Trylon and Perisphere in ‘39-40, and the circle of flagpoles of United Nations members from 1946 to 1950, now rose a new symbol – the Unisphere, the largest globe of earth ever built and symbolizing the second fair’s theme of Peace Through Understanding. The fair hosted the pavilions of more than 65 nations, many of them newly independent nations of Latin America, Asia, Africa and countries such as Indonesia, India, Pakistan Spain, Mexico and a newly resurgent Japan – all there to proudly show their cultures and achievements.
But just as in, 1939-40, the looming international situation would show its face in the otherwise peaceful landscape of Flushing. Israel and Jordan both had pavilions at the fair and a mural in the Jordanian pavilion pleading the case of Palestinian refugees ignited a firestorm of protest demonstrations from Jewish groups – all foreshadowing the tensions of the coming decades in the Middle East. But there were still the peaceful reminders of what the world could be.
Walt Disney created an attraction for the benefit of UNICEF – -the children’s relief organization created by the UN at this very site. Called “It’s A Small World,” its simple message delivered by animated dolls from around the world accompanied by the still familiar song that still reverberates to visitors to Walt Disney World in Florida, where it was moved after the fair became one of the most popular and enduring attractions at the Magic Kingdom.