Fairs: Moses in the Wilderness

New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefel ler pressed a lever, and psss-CHUNK! —a pile driver began to hammer in the first pile for a 200-ft. observation tower, the highest structure at the New York World’s Fair 1964-65, and part of New-York State’s elegant $5,000.000 pavilion, designed by Architect Philip Johnson. The fair, declared the Governor, was going to be a vast success, visited by 70 million people, and yielding “lasting benefits as a magnificent showcase.”

The 646-acre site in Flushing Meadow looked less like a showcase last week than a sordid battlefield of machinery and men. And inside the administration building, the generalissimo of it all. Fair President Robert Moses, kept things moving like the centurion in the Gospels, who described himself as a man who says “Go. and he goeth; and to another. Come, and he cometh.”

$20 Million Cancellation. There has been more coming than going. Already in the foundation stage are the buildings of the Bell System, Du Pont. Eastman Kodak, Electric Power & Light. Ford. Festival of Gas, IBM, General Motors, Sinclair Oil, Travelers Insurance, and the heliport. The international exhibitors are somewhat farther behind; 65 foreign exhibitors have declared their “intent” to be present. Of these, at least 35 have signed up for specific space, 17 have submitted designs. and two — Hong Kong and Vatican City* — have started test borings. Altogether, 83% of international area space has been allocated, 71% of the industrial area, and 77% of the transportation area. Thirty states, so far, have agreed to come in.

But there has been some going, too. Most notable: the announcement from the Soviet Union last fortnight canceling Russia’s building, which was to have been the fair’s largest, budgeted for $20 million (Congress has appropriated $17 million for the U.S. entry).

Funny Business. For the present, at least, New Yorkers are most aware of their fair in terms of the bumper-to-bumper embolisms the highway expansion program is causing in the borough of Queens. Travelers taxiing into the city from La Guardia and Idlewild airports are sometimes dumfounded to find a full-fledged traffic jam of early bird commuters at 6 a.m. But fair officials seem confident that when the new network of roads is in operation, their facilities will be able to handle a traffic-jamless 36,000 people an hour coming by car or bus.

With such round figures to deal in, Robert Moses and his aides are inoculated against most of the hair-tearing problems that are bound to pile up between now and opening day — and after. As Moses himself says: “The fair is a funny business, if, indeed, it can be called a business at all. It involves a strange combination of engineering and showmanship. It is part theater, part traveling carnival. part insubstantial pageant and part permanent park.”

* Pope John has agreed to send Michelangelo’s famed Picta, which will be leaving St. Peter’s Church for the first time since it was placed there in 1749.