This year marks the 50th anniversary of the 1964 World’s Fair. There, New Yorkers were introduced to the touch tone phone, caught their first sight of the Unisphere to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, and were able to view Michelangelo’s Pieta.
Amid all the nostalgia for that fair, it’s worth remembering the century’s other New York World’s Fair. The 1939 version, also in Flushing Meadows, captured the imagination of the Depression-era city.
This Art Deco souvenir matchbook features the fair’s logo: an image of the Trylon obelisk and 18-story Perisphere, the iconic, futuristic buildings that helped make the fair seem so magical.
Both symbolized the promise of the Machine Age. Yet after the end of the fair, they were scrapped and used for armaments in World War II.
Wow, look at that pill box. No childproof safety features!
Tags: Anacin vintage ads, matchbook ads, New York World's Fair 1939 souvenirs, old matchbooks, vintage matchbook covers, vintage medical ads, World's Fair Perisphere, World's Fair Trylon
Ephemeral New York 
April 21, 2014 at 3:40 pm |
My father attended this fair as a boy and still has a souvenir, a handheld metal viewer that contains a film loop showing the architectural highlights of the fair, seen through a little eyepiece.
April 21, 2014 at 10:34 pm |
The Queens Museum, which is housed in the former New York City building of the ’64 Fair and is directly across from the still impossing Unisphere sculpture, has a large permanent exhibit on both NY Worlds Fairs and is also a great art museum. Easy to get there by subway on the 7. exiting at the Mets-Willets Point stop.
April 22, 2014 at 8:49 pm |
Reblogged this on The Quotidian Hudson and commented:
A visit back to the 1939 World’s Fair, courtesy of the always useful and fun Ephemeral New York.
June 20, 2016 at 7:34 am |
[…] a lot of nostalgia for New York World’s Fair of 1939-1940—an ode to progress and optimism that helped distract the city from the Depression […]