Tour the Future

History of the Fair        Tour the Future

The 1939-40 New York World's Fair was considered a major cultural event even before the first truckload of steel was delivered to Flushing Meadows.  Since the fair contains so many deeply embedded ideas and narratives, a true tour of The World of Tomorrow begins with the story of its design and planning, the virtual place in which those ideas were formed.  No event exists completely in a vacuum; the history of the fair's development contextualizes the exposition, and the fair itself illuminates the times and people who created it.  The history and the tour, individually and collectively, form a foundation for examining reactions to the fair as well as its legacy.