The Fredösphere

Jeffrey Hart records in the January 2005 New Criterion his fond memories of the 1939 World's Fair in New York.  (I got my copy only a few days ago.  I don't know who screwed up, the publisher or the post office, but getting a magazine mid-month is pretty pathetic.  Come on, guys, I have needs.)  Hart  was a nine year-old with a season ticket and he visited the Fair repeatedly.  Clearly, it made a lasting impression, particularly the centerpiece:

In the sunshine, the first thing you saw as you came down the boardwalk and into the Fair was its dominating symbols, the Trylon and Perisphere [sic; why not Perösphere?  Looks like someone dropped the ball, har-har] the former a triangular spire fifteen stories high, the latter a gigantic globe a city block across....The Trylon and Perisphere remian in our minds today.  They have become something like the archetypes Jung imagined as central to the mind.  We have them in salt-and-pepper shakers, plates, scarves, pencil sharpeners, glasses, rings, ash-trays.  I have a copper penny rolled oblong with the image of the Trylon and Perisphere stamped on it, a souvenir of the Fair.  I wear it on a silver chain as a necklace along with a silver cross....The two gleaming structures were of course male and female symbols.  Inside the female globe, the designers had gestated their vision of the World of Tomorrow.  The called it Democracity, and it was the most popular exhibit at the Fair.

Let's look carefully at this bun in the Perisphere's oven.  Hart describes it as a model of a Corbu-inspired city planned according to rationalist principles, zoned into massive tracks devoted to worker's housing, industry, agriculture, recreation, and commerce, each linked to the others via superhighways.  Much effort was put into designing the Perisphere total spectator experience, with visitors riding revolving balconies while watching a multi-media presentation:

As the crowd watched from the two circular and suspended balconies, the familiar voice of radio announcer H. V. Kaltenborn exmplained how Democracity functioned.  After two minutes, daylight faded under the great dome of the Perisphere, and as dusk slowly deepened toward dark the dome twinkled with stars.  To a musical accompaniment a thousand-voice chorus sounded from the glittering heavens, while at ten locations on the dome you same images of marching men -- farmers in their work clothes, mechanics carrying tools -- and as they came closer you saw that they represented the various ethnic groups that make up the American metropolis, her presented as an image of national unity.

"Ah-ha!"  you cry; you see why the heck this article is quoted at length here at the Fredösphere -- its the juxtaposition of choral music and sci-fi!  Or at least sci-fi's twin, futurology.

What's with the "thousand-voice" chorus?  Clearly its purpose is to signal that the visit to the Perisphere is a religious event.

That's it.  I don't have any more points to make, really.  I saw it, I thought it was cool, I blogged it.  That's the formula.  I could express my horror one more time at the social engineers, but that's getting old.  I'm even getting tired of laughing at these outdated visions of the future, even though their predictions were so bad they failed to predict obvious stuff like this just six years away.

Labels: Architecture, Culture, Futurism