Fairs: What the Matter Can Be

“The contribution of this Fair to our times and our city in the end will be measured not by the clicking of turnstiles, but by the effect it has had on thinking people of all ages.” So pronounced World’s Fair President Robert Moses last week in a report to the Fair’s directors. Freely translated, Moses was admitting that the Fair would never make any money.

Instead of clicking faster than they did the year before, the turnstiles are revolving as sluggishly as a windmill on a calm day. Some skeptics predict that the Fair may end up as much as $50 million in the red by the time it closes on October 17. Attendance, instead of increasing by 37% as Moses had predicted, has fallen off 30% from last year. Though some exhibitors took heart when 13,469 more people showed up this Fourth of July weekend than last, the fact remains that 78,059 more people showed up the same weekend at Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey, a honky-tonk carnival that has been around for 68 years.

Lights Off. The three new discothéques that were opened in hopes of drawing New Yorkers out for the evening have done little to help. After 7 p.m., only 1,000 people filter through the gates on weekdays. The reason is simple. After a dinner at one of the Fair’s better restaurants, diners emerge to find all the major exhibits closing up and the lights being turned off.

Business has been so bad at one of the bright new exhibits, the People-to-People Fiesta, that it had to close eleven of its 17 folk-art sales stalls and two-thirds of its open marketplace. Proprietors at the amusement section, which last year was a disaster area, have little more to smile about this year. Although the six free water-skiing exhibits at the Florida Pavilion have drawn many fairgoers to the area, most head back to industrial and foreign pavilions right after the last ski run, passing up the area’s tame kiddie rides that lie along the way.

“Déjá Vu.” Why is history’s largest fair doomed to end in debt? Partly because it is so large. In his year-end report last year, Moses bragged that the Fair “cannot be covered in a leisurely, appreciative way in less than a week.” Unfortunately for the Fair, he was right. Many fairgoers are so overwhelmed by the endless offering of exhibits that they become exhausted trying to pick and choose. Those who determinedly set out to see all the sights are apt to call it quits ten exhibits and a few blisters later, discouraged by large lines at some attractions and meager offerings at others. Even if they persist, the price is high. If a family of four were to follow Moses’ commandment and push through the turnstiles seven days in a row at $2.50 a head, it would be a $70 bite in the family budget, without allowing for a simple bite into a Belgian waffle or American hamburger.

The Fair’s failure raises the question of whether the whole concept of the traditional world’s fair is still viable. A study recently conducted by the Real Estate Research Corp. advised Chicago to drop its plan for a world’s fair in 1976. It argued that fairs are no longer the futuristic fairylands they used to be, mostly because magazines, increased travel, movies and TV have made virtually all the offerings of science, architecture and foreign culture déjá vu. “The idea that an admission charge plus parking should be paid by the public in order to expose itself to public relations, advertising and business propaganda is increasingly rejected by the public.”

Chicago promptly tabled its plan for a fair. And Montreal, which is hard at work on its own “world’s fair,” scheduled for 1967 is deeply worried. None of the big U.S. auto companies have signed up for exhibits, and Montreal darkly suspects that their disillusionment with the New York Fair is the reason.

The feeling is that the future of fairs lies, if it lies anywhere, in those patterned on Seattle’s—which was handsomely designed but humanly scaled, and small enough to see in one day.