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EXPO2000
1. June - 31. October 2000
The History of World Expositions

The New York World Exposition 1939 & 1940



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Gardener Harding: World's Fair, New York Come in, let us say, from the Interborough gate, on the northwest side, you get a breath-taking first impression of the amazing uses to which the architects of the Fair have put the tools of the present in projecting, on these once flat and dreary marshes, their ideals of the city of the future. Tall pylons carry the eye over the flat roofs of the exhibition buildings. Great domelike structures, bisected and connected on the flat side with huge ramps to the ground, invite you to the massive buildings of the big exhibitors. Arclike roofs resembling huge railway stations loom in the transportation section. Bold masses of color catch the light everywhere. (...) Preeminent among the satisfying beauties to the average beholder is the lavish use of color. Under its spell great areas of wall surface lose their monotony, and the flatness of buildings seldom more than fifty feet high is enlivened with vitality and beauty. At night capillary mercury tubes and mercury vapor lamps are used on a scale that revolutionizes all our ideas about the use of light. A softened but brillant radiance, with no glare or concentrated intensity, diffuses light over color in a way that makes the color produce its own life. Quelle: Harpers Magazine, Bd. 179, Juli 1939, S. 193-200.