President Donald Trump’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of American independence has been a dollar-burning bonanza so far this year. The Great American State Fair, the latest debacle, has a barely functional Ferris wheel on the National Mall and poorly built pavilions that make the Hoovervilles look like Beverly Hills. The event is so attractive that concerts are being staged for more than one million blades of grass. Indeed the great fairs of the past provided summers of entertainment for the masses, but persisted in the popular imagination for decades.
Despite being in the final stages of the Great Depression, the 1939 New York World’s Fair asked society to imagine a technologically advanced future. The Big Three used the occasion in Flushing Meadows, Queens, to showcase their version of a prosperous tomorrow. Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors built huge pavilions on the fairgrounds. GM’s Futurama show was particularly predictable, with vast highways connecting sprawling suburbs and skyscraper-filled metropolises.
The fair’s “World of Tomorrow” theme helped popularize the use of Art Deco styling in works of science fiction and later in retro-futuristic depictions. In recent media, fictional depictions of the World’s Fair as the Stark Expo in the animated sci-fi comedy Futurama or “Captain America” immediately come to mind.
This lasting legacy might lead you to believe that the fair was attended by a good number of people, but this was far from the case. According to the New York Herald TribuneThe World’s Fair had a paid attendance of 25.8 million visitors in the 1939 season. Organizers estimated attendance at 60 million people. It is surprising that the fair’s second season came in 1940, especially with the war in Europe.
The Grand Prix was the spectacular finale of the World’s Fair.
As the 1940 World’s Fair season was coming to an end, organizers planned to wrap everything up at the end of October and wanted to end it with a bang. There were fireworks, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. The Automobile Racing Club of America held a one-time car race in its final event. I should note that this ARCA was the precursor to the Sports Car Club of America and was not related to today’s stock car racing body.
The Grand Prix at the World’s Fair was held on a three-quarter-mile short circuit on the public roads of the fair grounds. The temporary track curves between the pillars of the pavilion, with its longest straight length being 450 yards. The biggest attraction of the event was its pace car driver, Ralph DePalma. The Italian-born Brooklynite was perhaps the most famous racing driver of all time as a two-time Vanderbilt Cup winner and 1915 Indianapolis 500 champion.
The 55-lap race was held on the morning of 6 October to a crowd of 10,000. The New York Times noted The largest crowds were at the Boy Scout camps near the two most dangerous corners of the circuit. There is nothing more timeless than the innocent bravery of a Boy Scout. Thankfully, neither driver broke the guardrail attached to the hay bale.
Race participants were wealthy hobbyists driving largely imported European machinery. The most interesting car in the Grand Prix Miles Collier’s Boo-Merc. The car, built by Briggs Cunningham, had a Mercedes-Benz SSK body mounted on a Buick Century chassis. However, the race was won by Harvard-educated aristocrat Frank Griswold, driving a 1934 Alfa Romeo Tipo B Monoposto. He later won the inaugural Watkins Glen Grand Prix in 1948.
Grand Prix racers will find their way to Watkins Glen
While notable in the history of the automotive industry, the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair was largely a footnote in racing’s past. ARCA was closed in December 1941 following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into World War II. Former members of the organization founded the Sports Car Club of America in 1944 with a public road race at Watkins Glen, New York, as its first major event. The SCCA continues to organize all FIA-sanctioned international events in the United States.
Trump’s Great American State Fair is set to end on July 10, but there will be a race on the National Mall later this summer. The IndyCar Series is scheduled to run the Freedom 250 Grand Prix in late August. The last-minute temporary circuit in the shadow of the Capitol Dome will cross Pennsylvania Avenue, looping around the National Archives and the National Air and Space Museum. We have no idea what the circuit will look like once the obstacles are installed because the White House has posted AI slopes specifically to promote the race.
