WORLD’S FAIR

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 438, 20 May 1937, Page 3

WORLD’S FAIR

NEW YORK PREPARATIONS Novel “Theme Centre” Preparations for the New York World Fair of 1939 are going forward with even greater speed than its organisers had expected. The site of the fair at Flushing Meadow Park, which overlooks Flushing Bay and the East River, has already been drained and levelled at a cost of 2,200,000 dollar? ( £440,000) and the foundations of the administration building, which will cost 900,000 dollars (£180,000), are being laid. Mr Grover Whalen, president of the Fair Corporation, has made public the plans for the “Theme Centre,” from which the entire fair will radiate. The grounds will be dominated by a slender triangular obelisk 700 ft. high, and by a great white sphere, 200 ft in diameter, which will house the fair's central exhibit. Although the sphers and the triangle are simple geometrical forms, it is believed that they have never before been employed in formal architecture. The architects, Mr W. K. Harrison and Mr J. A. Fouilhoux, were at a loss for a word to describe the obelisk and have been finally forced to coin the word "trylon,” while the great sphere is described as a “perisphere.” The “perisphere” will be raised from the ground on eight pillars, which will be concealed from view by banks of fountains so that the structure will appear to the spectator as a ball resting upon jets of water. The entrance to the sphere will be approached by an inclined ramp 900 ft. long, and by escalators which will carry the visitors to a circular platform suspended in the sphere; this will revolve slowly, carrying those upon it round the entire circumference of the building in 15 minutes. Below the visitor will see, as from an aeroplane, a panorama of the world’s work. Town, countryside, and ocean will be spread before him in model form, with trains, motor-cars, ships, factories and farms all playing their part in the busines of production and distribution. The ’’trylon” will not he opened to Visitors, and its main purpose, apart from that of decoration, will be to serve as a station from which announcements may be broadcast to all parts of the fair grounds.