Robert Moses on Architectural Plans for the 1964 New York World's Fair

In a talk delivered at Brandeis University, Robert Moses discusses the architectural plans for the 1964 World's Fair, or rather, the lack of a plan. "The Fair administration belongs to no architectural clique, subscribes to no aesthetic creed, favors no period or school, and worships at no artistic shrine."

He defends this lack of central design against his perceived critics, past designs for World's Fairs, as well as time and budget limitations. He discusses, in particular, the 1939 New York Worlds Fair and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. He guarantees "no third-rate Coney Island, midway, or cheap, vulgar honky-tonk area," a spectacle that New Yorkers might be accustomed to and expecting in Flushing Meadows.

"We are not puritanical killjoys; we don't deprecate fun, we are not against gaiety, we shall try to have it throughout the fair but not concentrated in narrow streets of Cairo. We shall inaugurate many new inventions infinitely more diverting than whiskered women, tattooed giants and nudes on ice such as worldwide color vision."

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection

WNYC archives id: 150446
Municipal archives id: LT9090