Fair Bonds

In the summer of 1935, seven smart Manhattanites, including George McAneny, banker politician, Grover Aloysius Whalen, supersalesman and onetime Police Commissioner, and R. H. Macy & Co.'s President Percy Selden Straus, came together to discuss Mr. McAneny's theory that New York could outdo Chicago with a World's Fair even bigger & better than the Century of Progress. After a summer of conversations, Mr. McAneny & friends invited 121 Manhattan bigwigs to a meeting at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, proposed to them a plan for a World's Fair company. From the enthusiasm of that occasion sprang the most grandiose of all Fair projects.

The New York World's Fair will open April 30, 1939, the 150th anniversary of George Washington's inauguration (in Manhattan) as first President of the U. S. The anniversary is more a coincidence than an excuse and the word "sesquicentennial," of unhappy memory since its association with the Philadelphia Fair of 1926, has been studiously avoided in the publicity. To give New York's Fair elbow room, the Fair Corporation and the City of New York chose a site about 18 minutes northeast of Manhattan on a tidal wasteland outside Flushing, L. I. It happens to be a place where General Washington once complained of the mosquitoes.

Over 1,216 1/2 acres of what had been for years either swamp or unregenerate dump heap, squads of workers have been plowing and digging 24 hours a day since last June. Their job is to transfer about 7,000,000 cubic yards of ashes from the ash dunes of Flushing and Riker's Island to the swamps nearby, leveling off and grading a Fair ground. By day the dust clouds of their operations can be seen from the offices of the World's Fair Corporation designers on the 80th floor of the Empire State Building four miles away. By night the glare of their floodlights keeps housewives awake in neighboring suburbs. Before next spring. Flushing Meadows will be ready for the installation of water, gas, electricity arid drainage. By spring of 1938 they will be meadows indeed, fit for the Fair buildings.

The financing of this enterprise was a three-cornered affair. The State Legislature authorized the City of New York to issue $7,000,000 worth of stock for acquisition of needed land, which will be developed by the Park Department after the Fair. From the State the Fair promoters are asking in all more than $4,000,000. Last spring when the bills for the first appropriation of $2,130,000 seemed to be lagging at Albany, Mr. McAneny resigned as president of the World's Fair Corporation, was succeeded by orchidaceous but politically shrewd Grover Whalen. Mr. Whalen went to Albany and a few days later the bills were passed.

Last week by far the most important piece of financing yet undertaken for New York City's biggest show was announced by Finance Chairman Harvey Dow Gibson, public-spirited president of Manufacturers Trust Co. To provide for planning and construction during the next two years, an issue of $27,829,000 in debentures will be offered by the World's Fair Corporation to businessmen-investors. To act as chief salesman for this offering Mr. Gibson named Richard Whitney, Depression president of the New York Stock Exchange.

Salesman Whitney's wares will bear 4% interest and will mature on Jan. 1, 1941. His selling scheme will take the form of subscription agreements by which the subscribers may make successive partial payments on their debentures, receiving allotment certificates which will bear interest and will be exchangeable for the debentures on the last date of payment. The debentures will be issued in an indenture agreement between World's Fair Corp. and Manufacturers Trust Co., by which the Corporation pledges to deliver 40% of the gate receipts at the Fair to the trustee to be applied to payment of interest and principal on the bonds.

Said Mr. Gibson: "No one will be asked to buy on the basis of aiding a community enterprise but on the basis that, purely from a business point of view, those engaged in business should . . . furnish the public participation necessary. ... An investment of $47-,000,000 produced for Chicago increased business revenue conservatively estimated at $700,000,000. . . . Sponsors of the Fair are convinced that increased business to New York . . . will reach a total volume of not less than $1,000,000,000--perhaps as much as $1,500,000,000!"

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