The World of Tomorrow As Seen Today

The main exhibit at The National Building Museum is Designing Tomorrow: America's World's Fairs of the 1930s.

The exhibit is divided into 6 rooms, each capturing some aspect of the 6 world's fairs which were held from 1933 until 1939.  Of course, at the time America found itself immersed in a catastrophic economic crisis (sound familiar) and government officials and leaders of industry viewed the fairs as a way to wow, educate, and convince the general public that more and better goods would lead to a happier, healthier life.  The areas explored are:

• Welcome to the Fairs
• A Fair-Going Nation
• Building a Better Tomorrow
• Better Ways to Move
• Better Ways to Live
• Better Times
• Legacies of the Fairs

As someone who spent 50+ years of their life in the Southern New Jersey town of Bridgeton, once home to an Owens-Illinois plant that was the largest glass making factory in the world, I was particularly interested by the strong O-I presence at the NY World's Fair where Owens was pushing glass as a building product "strong enough for people who throw stones to live in."

One of the highlights of the exhibit, as it was at the NY Fair, is Electro, The Moto-man, a robot that walks, talks, and, in keeping with those times, even smokes a cigarette.  You can check out the 1939 reaction to Electro by viewing this YouTube clip.

As you stroll through the exhibit,  you are struck by how much the 1930s future does resemble our today. TV, in its infancy then, does appear in virtually every home, as do the dishwashers, vacuum cleaners and countless other household necessities that debuted during the decade of fairs.  Of course, you see changes too. For example, unlike 1930s fairgoers, we no longer dress up much to go out. And Electro would probably sip a lattte, not smoke a Lucky, today.  

Travelers' Tip:
If you can't get to DC to see the exhibit which closes Sept.5, you can still learn more about the times  through 2 best-sellers dealing with the 1939 NewYork World's Fair. For fiction fans, there is E. L. Doctorow's World's Fair: A Novel.  For those who want a factual account there is Twilight at the World of Tomorrow: Genius, Madness, Murder, and the 1939 World's Fair on the Brink of War by James Mauro, which, ironically, I just began reading the night before we visited the National Building Museum.