>>>tony guida: hello i'mtony guida and this is my new york. as they used to sayon the lone ranger program, we take you back to thoseglorious days of yesteryear. the time, fifty years ago. theplace, flushing meadow park. the event, anextravagant world's fair. >>>video: the fairhas taken as its theme, man's achievementsin the expanding universe. its purpose an ambitious one,peace through understanding. 66 foreign nations arerepresented including 24 african
countries that didn't exist afew years ago. this is the successful fruition of adream that began six years ago when the germ of the ideawas born, a germ that was nurtured to todays grandclimax. the greatest fair ever constructed by man. >>>tony guida: despite allthe hype the fair was a failure. nonetheless our guest todayjoe tirella argues it had a profound impact on thiscity and the nation. he's written a book aboutit, tomorrow-land.
we'll discuss it next. ♪ [theme music] ♪ >>>tony guida: i'm happy towelcome to the program joe tirella author of the booktomorrow-land subtitle the 1964-65 world's fair and thetransformation of america. welcome to the program. >>>joseph tirella:thank you tony. >>>tony guida: transformationof america is a big phrase we'll talk about that in theimpact of this fair but before
we do joe let's recall thepromise the extravagant promises that moses, robert moses, wasmaking for this event. >>>joseph tirella: wellyou know worlds fairs were always supposed to look to thefuture. they're always supposed to see take the long viewtwenty thirty forty years down the road what's coming. so afterthe 1939-1940 world's fair, which was also innew york and also in flushing meadows, which mosesdidn't have too much to do with he was thelandlord so to speak,
he just rented the place. buthe realized that was his opportunity to makeover flushing meadow park, which was a dump, of course,right? it was the garden- >>>tony guida:the valley of ash- >>>joseph tirella: valleyof ashes as fitzgerald wrote. so the garbage frombrooklyn used to come in by special train and bedumped there. so when the '39 fair happened moses'leveled it. that was a fair bit of ingenuity. buthe didn't make it the park
he wanted. he was going todo that with the profits of the '39 fair. but therewere none so when the '64 fair came along he sawthis as his opportunity to finally make flushingmeadows into the park that was going to surpasscentral park. that was his long goal he had fordecades and when the fair came around he realizedyou know fine we will have a follow up to the '39fair and his fair instead of, you know, the '39 fair was aboutthe world of tomorrow.
his fair was going to beyou know, it was more fitting for the 60's it wasgoing to be about peace through understandingand you got to remember when the ideathat it first happened, that new york would geta fair, it's like 1959, 1960, the cold war is on. there wasa belgian expo in 1958 and the russian the sovietunion they surpassed us. eisenhower was verydisappointed with what we had. we were showing kitchen cabinetsand, you know,
refrigerators andthey were showing rockets. and it all gave into this ideaand kennedy ran with this in one 1960 about this missilegap about somehow the soviet union was surpassingus. so when they had the fair in new york it really imean it was a noble theme of peace through understandingbut we wanted to show how the american way of life whichwas stood in contrast to the communist way of lifewas going to be better and that's why kennedy when hebecame president shortly
after new york ending thefair was totally behind it and was a huge proponentof the fair, he knew that the fair in new york couldbe a great advertisement for the american way oflife and so in that way it was a cold war battlewithout any bullets, just pure propaganda. but forthe people who went it was life changing. >>>tony guida: theslogan of the fair, "peace through understanding" isironic because it didn't really
the fair didn't reallyunderstand the world around it. >>>joseph tirella: that's right. >>>tony guida: at all. >>>joseph tirella: that'sright. well i think that, we can lean on moses a bit.moses was sort of a man out of time at that point he's stilldoing things the way he did in the 30's in the 40's in the50's which weren't that long ago but you know americawas changing more rapidly than a lot of people understoodand i think specifically him.
so the fair opens five monthsto the day of kennedy being assassinated so thenation is sort of it's in a glum mood it's theunknown. the same time the civil rights movementwhich had been going on for ten years but many ofthe major events that we look back to saythese were the moments- >>>tony guida: early 60's. >>>joseph tirella: early60's. so it's all happening and meanwhile at that same timeand this might have been
not known to the generalnation but you know to new yorkers kitty genovesehad just been murdered in queens. that was in marchso that's a month before- >>>tony guida: same timeas this fair, rising crime in new york- >>>tony guida: and i guess wecould call it the effects of or the mirroring of the civilrights issues in other parts of the country so i meanthere was a riot in harlem. >>>tony guida: in what, '64?
>>>joseph tirella: '64that was the first summer of the fair and that wasanother thing i think once the nation's focus shiftedto new york city what and was growing, had beengrowing there through the 1960's you know this thefair was being built. once people started to seriouslystart thinking about the fair they realize that thecivil rights struggle, which i guess to new yorkers'mind northerners it was a southern thing but it reallywasn't. yes. martin luther king
was marching in the south forvoting rights but in the north there was discrimination.and group civil rights groups in the north sawthe fair as an opportunity to get some attention fortheir cause. they had the right to vote but there wasstill racial discrimination, there was still policebrutality, there was still bad housing, bad schools. sothat's why when the fair opened there was amassive civil rights protest. >>>tony guida: a stall-in-
>>>joseph tirella: a stall-inplan so instead of a sit in some a group of core,which is the congress of racial equality their brooklyngroup called and they were a little more radical, theycalled for a stall-in that is robert moseswouldn't give any more jobs, you know all the unions, it washard for african-americans and puerto ricans toget jobs and that was sort of out of his control buthe wasn't helping much. so they decided ok if everyonewants to talk about this
world of fantasy we're goingto show them the real world and we're all going todrive to the fair we're going to use robert moseshighways, his beloved, you know, highways against himwe're going to drive and cause the world's biggesttraffic jam and this actually, it never happened becauseat the end of the day i think people realized i'm goingto lose my car i'm going to get arrested and i don't knowif this group can bail me out but it literally scared moses,wagner, mayor wagner,
the city administration, thegovernor rockefeller who condemned it, presidentjohnson who condemned it, robert f. kennedy was theattorney general condemned it and i have to be honestat this point they, lbj and rfk, and others, weredesperately trying to pass the civil rights bill andyou had these, you know, let's be honest racistsouthern senators who did not want to pass it andthey could point and they did to the stall-in seewhat happens. so it was
bad for politics but atthe same time it was great for local people new yorkis not, you get the world to understand we too haveproblems. yes we can vote here in new york but there's alot of racial discrimination. >>>tony guida: well theygot that message out as you describe in thebook also by heckling and shouting down lyndonjohnson, president johnson's spoke at theopening day of the fair and was shouted, prettyheckled pretty loud-
>>>joseph tirella: yeah. >>>tony guida: byprotesters in the crowd. >>>joseph tirella: wellpresidents usually opened up world fairs, mckinleyopened he was assassinated at a fair. fdr opened upthe '39 fair. so kennedy was obviously supposed to bethere, obviously he wasn't alive and so lbj came andhe arrived by helicopter to the old single ball he gave ahuge speech there and then he went outside. now he didn'tknow when he was inside
with the ten thousand v.i.p.'sthe protesters were already inside taking their positions.and they were openly laughing because his speech couldbe heard on the p.a. so then he comes outcomes to the outside to give the same speech to the generalaudience and there's 300 activists, manyof them college students, many of them core butnot the brooklyn core, many from queens becauseand actually andrew goodman who would later diein a few months-
>>>tony guida: ironic isn't it. >>>joseph tirella: ironic, wasthere- >>>tony guida: part of thegoodman, schwerner, chaney group three civilrights workers murdered in philadelphia mississippi? >>>joseph tirella:philadelphia, mississippi. he was there toprotest lbj and 300 people including james farmer, thehead of core cause once the brooklyn coreactivists was on a stage there,
outside stall-in, he decidedto lead something inside and they were all arrested and it'sthe first time that anyone had seen a president shouteddown by college students. well within, he could seethem and they could see him and he could hear them. you canfind the footage of it and he's giving the speechand you hear people in the background laughing andjohnson's trying to say yes we're not perfect we arestriving to pass this bill to create equality we're tryingto correct ourselves and they
just wouldn't buy it, they werejust laughing in his face and the next day jacobjavits, senator jacob javits, a republican, called johnsonto apologize for the behavior of his citizens, mayorwagner apologized and i just it shows a certaintime that you know in 1964 a republican senatorcalled a democratic president to apologize on behalf of hiscitizens because they embarrassed the presidentwhich is something that would never happen today. i thinkit was a more civil time.
>>>tony guida: one criticof the fair wrote, called it a white bread utopiaof rocket ships, superhighways, and kitchen gadgets. i meanagain not understanding the world outside its own gatesas you say in the book. >>>joseph tirella: mosesreally tried desperately to keep the world outside.he didn't want the outside world coming in- >>>tony guida: and hedidn't have much of a social conscience i guessand well i guess in terms
of color he didn't, he didn'thave a good head of black- >>>joseph tirella: no heyou know and he did think about it and write abouthe wrote about it in the times actually in theearly 40's this piece called "what's the matter with newyork" and saying that when something has to be doneto solve you know what he called at that time the wordwas ok, the negro problem, we have to do somethingto help these people but moses' idea of helping people of colorwas something more like a
booker t. washingtonlike 1900 separate- >>>tony guida:separate but equal. >>>joseph tirella: butequal, and that's a. it doesn't, it's not the way and b.it's certainly just out of date by 1960 and you have toremember martin luther king now that we've seen that likehe was only in his thirty's at that time he was seen as theyoung gun of the civil rights movement the other leaderand farmer too but the other leaders, they wereolder and this idea of
sitting in and protestingand stall-ins. i mean moses was very wary. i saw the memoswhere he was you know he had his police but you knowmoses was also he was smart enough. when james farmerled that protest inside the world's fair and farmerwas someone who met with kennedy, he metwith johnson, so he was a national player, andi had the scene in the book, moses had his ownpinkerton police, they were the private police, sofarmer is a larger man,
he was sitting in front, hewas blocking the entrance, which is illegal and thepinkerton guard comes over and says, you know, mr. farmer.mr. moses knows that you're protesting. he doesn'twant to arrest you. he would like you, could youplease move? and he said no. yes but i'm here for mr. moses.mr. moses told me to tell you, we don't want to arrest you.because moses understood you're having a world's fairabout peace through understanding. you're arrestinga major civil rights national
leader on day one. this can'tgo well. and he refused to leave. they hadto lift him. >>>tony guida: i'm stillstunned by the by the power moses could wield anything hewanted and with this fair. i mean, it wasn't even anofficial world's fair because western europecountries and others, canada- >>>joseph tirella: the bie. >>>tony guida: the bie.the institution in paris is it? >>>joseph tirella: in paris.they're the institution that
regulates world's fairs. andthey have a lot of the power and it's a treaty, it's aninternational treaty that nations have to sign. so in theunited states that means it's an act of congress, whichmoses was dead set against. they tried to do it in 1939,which was also not an official fair, which hadall the participation of western europe. the differencewas in '39 that fair was run by a man called groverwhalen, who i believe used to be new york city's policechief, but he was a,
he wasn't elected to anythingbut he was a politician. you know how he had thenine suits and the flower in his lapel and the slick hair, heknew how to schmooze people and he told the bureaucratsin paris, don't worry. i'm going to get that.i got connections in washington. we'll pass it. you justsend everyone here and then they protested. theysaid, well you know. you have, you've had worldfair's in the 30's, you're not supposed to haveworld's fairs in the same
country all throughoutthe same decade. >>>tony guida: so theydidn't sanction it. >>>joseph tirella: theydidn't sanction it but they didn't stop it. but moses ofcourse, he insulted them. he went to paris, he didn'tlike them, he didn't like the questions they asked, he didn'tlike their apartment where their office was, and he cameback and he call them a bunch of clowns and we'renot going to let a bunch of parisian bureaucratstell us what to do.
>>>tony guida: and instead ofdoubting their participation with pavilions of countriesthat were honoring the fact that it wasn't sanctioned,mostly western european countries weren't there, canadawasn't there, he gets lots of corporations and he getsthe third world, what we now call or maybe eventhen called the third world, but before we get to that thepower, i'm stunned, and i went to this fair, i rodethat escalator, that walkway, past the pieta, michelangelo'spieta. he got the pope
to lend the pieta to this fair. >>>joseph tirella: wellmoses had a lot of friends at the time. and one of hisclosest, i wouldn't say closest like they're buddies, but i meangreat personal relationship and when they needed favors for eachother was cardinal spellman. he was a very, again it's hardto think about cardinal having that much poweror influence might be a better word and sway inthe media. so moses called up his friend cardinalspellman and said you
know, italy is not coming.how good would it be to have the pieta? of course,you also have to chalk this up to moses who likedthe finer things in life. you know he spoke italian,he knew latin, he'd spent time in europe traveling,he was you know a person who went to the ballet,went to the theater, knew arts, knew culture. andso, he's like, he needs us to ask for anything. imean, think about how much art is in the vaticanlibrary. and he's like,
i want the pieta. i wantthe single most famous sculpture thatmichelangelo has created, in florence that has onlyever lived in rome and i want it in flushing,queens for two years. now can you make that happen?and sure enough spellman did. he asks pope john xxiii, whosaid yes, who died in between and as soon as pope paul xicame in moses made sure that there's a change at the guard.we're still good. pope paul says sure, take it.and they made the
beautiful pavilion, which isas everyone i've talked to who went is one of the fondestmost popular things at the fair. >>>tony guida: ironicallyin the seeds of not being sanctioned by the organizationto sanction these things and therefore reaching outto the rest of the world comes what you feel was themajor impact and you say in the book even though the fairwas a failure, financial failure profound impact.talk about the impact and how you see what moses accomplishedeven though he didn't know
he was accomplishing it. >>>joseph tirella: right.well. because the western europe didn't come, andbecause the bie not only didn't approve it, theyboycotted it, so all those countries were forbiddenfrom coming. moses and his people had to go out tothe rest of the world. so instead they got newlyfree african countries, new african republics tocome, they got the middle east to come, they got asia tocome, india, japan, korea,
all over south america,so you can look at the world, the west didn't come but therest came. and you also have to think that this is the early60's, it's kind of the heyday of the united nations. there isthis cold war going on, there are all these othernew nations who you know that the time of the previousworld's fair were colonies of western europe so insteadof the european colonial masters coming it's thepost-colonial world who's coming. and for thefirst time americans could walk
through now you know in flushingmeadows and sit by the fountain and see the entireworld pass by and i think that was the real culturallegacy of the fair because then a few, well, in october1965, 50 years ago this month, lyndon johnson signed theimmigration act of 1965, which changed all the racesquotas, which allowed all these people to come. >>>tony guida: ourimmigration law at that point was frankly and openly imean it wasn't openly but
it was racist. we kept out- >>>joseph tirella: evensouthern european countries, which you know our backgroundthere was a limit. you know and the more southernyou got the higher those, the more limiting you got. andthe rest of the world they were very strict quotas. it'sto keep the country european and northern european at that.and johnson got rid of that. i mean, and both kennedybrothers were there and he signed it in new york cityat the statue of liberty
because the next day hewas meeting pope paul xi who came to the fair thatday. so i talk about that in the book. and in thatmoment, so if you went to the world's fair in '64and sat down and watched the people go by you gota glimpse of the actual future. not the technologicalfuture that world's fairs are supposed to show youbecause that was a knock against this fair. you knowlike, ok, so now we've had a t.v. like at the '39fair, now we have color t.v.
ok, yes we're going to have carson super highways with taller buildings. a little ofthat was more the predictions of the '39 fair hadcome true by the '64 fair. but really what this fair waspredicting was a multicultural america. and that's thebig transformation that i referred to in the title. >>>tony guida: and interestingisn't it that it happened and the dawning of it as youtalk about in the book was in queens, which is reallyour most diverse borough-
>>>joseph tirella:ethnically diverse county in the country. >>>tony guida: imean we have you know- >>>joseph tirella: i thinkit's up to 108 languages- >>>tony guida: one hundredand i don't know how many in queens. >>>joseph tirella: i mean,it's amazing. if you got on the 7 train and you actuallygot out each stop and just went along roosevelt avenueyou could take a tour of
the world. and you couldtake a taste of the world too. i mean that is really thecultural legacy of the fair because it started in queens.and you have to think that you know a lot ofthese pavilions, you know, there's an indian pavilion,there's a mexican pavilion, i mean, it's staffed with peoplefrom those countries. and then within a year, noteven, within the same month that the fairended they passed this immigration bill. it takeseffect in 1968 and suddenly
the same countries thathave been exhibiting at the fair and others all start coming toamerica. and where do they start? they're startingin queens just like you know their european predecessors.it's a working class area. get a job. get a nice home.you're within distance of the city. and they spreadout. so now to the point you know the whole countryis, you know, houston has a very diverse population.there's even some a few people say well houstoncould be more diverse.
not really when you considerthat queens itself is, you know, it's big enough, ifqueens was its own city it would be the fourthlargest city in the country, ahead of houston. >>>tony guida: i was thinkingreading the book afterwards that i think about somethingdowntown on the west side, the high line. the high line wasa freight rail service from low, you know, from verylower into midtown. fell into disrepair. it wassitting there all those years.
somebody had the idea thatwe can turn this into a park and look what happened. i mean,an amazing transformation of an old railroad into amagnificent walkway park and has inspired you knowextraordinary growth in the lower, you know, thechelsea, whatever you want to call that area, thewest the lower west end of manhattan. you go to flushingmeadow park even today you see remnants of the fair,you see buildings and they're falling apart. shouldn'tthe city do something like
what it did in- >>>joseph tirella: absolutely.but it's going to take vision. and the thing is when it comesto queens and outer boroughs there's always been somethingof a profound lack of vision coming out of city hall. imean, it's not just city hall it's the whole state. i meanlook they're finally getting around to fixing laguardia andi know what the exact impetus of that was because you couldhave picked one at any time, let's say that it was joebiden the vice president of the
united states saying it's likeflying into a third world country. i mean really ifthat's what it's going to take i'm glad that they'refixing it but like is that really what it takes? ittakes an off-hand comment from the vice president? >>>tony guida:and in 2015? >>>joseph tirella: it'sgoing to take time. i mean, if you look at thehigh line, it was just nothing. it was just an old railroadthat someone didn't bother
to tear down. and partof it you have to give credit that old nabiscofactory became chelsea market, which is you know just hotterthan hot. that whole area is, i have to say it, i thinkthey're more tourists there or equal amounts to timessquare. so then you look at flushing meadow andyou say you have all these wonderful buildingslike new york state pavilion, which they're now,and the borough president of queens is doing quite a lotto get funding to save but
they just painted the top.they're doing something- >>>tony guida: well, thenew york state pavilion was built by philip johnson. >>>tony guida: you know,i mean, he was kind of a good architect. >>>joseph tirella: i mean youjust have to ask yourself, if philip johnson,internationally renowned architect, an american,built a major work in a major european city, anywhere,paris, london, rome,
brussels, would they allow itto deteriorate at the rate that they did in queens? andthe answer is absolutely not. they would never allow a workof a major artist to do that. and here is one, anamerican, a new yorker. it's just a profound lackof vision. and the thing is i always point to thehigh line, moses wanted flushing meadows tosurpass central park, now that's probably not goingto happen but, you know, look where it's located.but still, look at what
the potential is. >>>tony guida: wellit's located at almost the exact center, geographicalcenter, of the city. >>>joseph tirella: right.and at that time it was the population center. idon't know if that's the case anymore but it'sright in the center of the city. you have to pass itcoming from two airports. you have a major ballpark,brand new and a team who's doing pretty well at themoment right there.
you have the queens museum,which was an old building from the '39 fair thatthey kept for the '64 fair and it's now been refurbished.it looks spectacular. you've got the unisphere,which they did a wonderful job of cleaning and maintainingand then you have the science museum so you haveall the raw ingredients, it's low hanging fruit but it'sgoing to take a little vision and i just don't know if thatvision is with all of the city's-
>>>tony guida: at the endof the fair they buried what they called a time capsuleand in that time capsule as you point out i think in thebook were various things including you knowrepresentative of the time, tranquilizer pills, birthcontrol pills, freeze dried food and plastic wrap, i guesssaran wrap, i wonder what people will thinkof that when they dig that up, if they ever dig that up. >>>joseph tirella: it'ssymptomatic of the
times you know? >>>tony guida: the book iscalled tomorrow-land, the world's fair, '64- '65world's fair and the transformation of americaby joe tirella. good to have you here talkingabout it. good book. >>>joseph tirella: thankyou tony. great to be here. >>>tony guida: and we lookforward to seeing you next week.