Postcard History

A pictorial guidebook published for the 1939 season of the New York World’s Fair proclaimed that it “signalizes a triumph in which brain and brawn, patience and skill have combined with all the arts to build America’s Future, the World of Tomorrow.” The Fair exuberantly promoted the vision that, through the technological advances of the Machine Age of the early to mid-twentieth century, people could work together to carry out their destiny in positive and progressive ways to make the future a better place for all.

Through careful planning starting in 1935, visual arts were purposely integrated into the buildings and grounds of the exposition. The Fair Corporation hired more than one hundred often well-known painters and sculptors from different schools of art to produce figurative and abstract statuary and murals for the fair. Many more artists received commissions for the various commercial and government-sponsored pavilions, filling the 1,216-acre site with an enormous display of public art. In addition, as most fair buildings were air-conditioned and without windows, many otherwise blank exterior walls were graced by friezes with statues as well as often quite large murals.

There are hundreds of fair postcards depicting various pieces of this public art, but the best among them were produced by the Meriden Gravure Company of Meriden, Connecticut, using its “full-tone collotype” printing process. These crisp images were printed for the 1940 season of the fair and are not well-known among collectors. A small number of these are shown here, and interested readers can find more on the internet including internet postcard auction sites, along with biographies of their artists.

George Washington (left) was sculpted by James Earle Fraser’s (1876-1953). The monumental 65-foot-high statue was located on the Fair’s Washington Square. Fraser’s prolific sculptural output included the designs for the Indian head and buffalo nickels minted by the United States Treasury between 1913 and 1938.

Don Quixote de la Mancha was sculpted by Olympio Brindesi (1897-1965) and was located on the Fair’s Court of States. Brindesi was a prolific Italian American sculptor who lived in New York and was known for his figurative sculptures of people and animals.

Wings, sculpted by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875-1942), was located on the Fair’s Times Square. Whitney was an American sculptor, art patron and collector, and founder in 1931 of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. She was a prominent social figure and hostess, who was born into the wealthy Vanderbilt family and married into the Whitney family. This postcard was displayed in the recent exhibit Art Deco City: New York Postcards from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection at the Museum of the City of New York.

The Moods of Time was sculpted byPaul Howard Manship (1885 –1966), and was located on the Fair’s Constitution Mall. Manship created many mythological pieces in a classical style. He was a major figure in the Art Deco movement. He is well known for his large public commissions, including the iconic Prometheus in Rockefeller Center and the Celestial Sphere in Geneva, Switzerland and also at this exposition. He is also credited for designing the modern rendition of New York City’s official seal.

Chemical and Plastics is a mural painted by Eric Mose (born 1905), and was located in the Fair’s Hall of Industrial Science. In the late 1930s Mose created a number of murals in the New York City area with funding from the New Deal Works Progress Administration program.

Water as Power is a mural painted by Andre Maurice Durenceau (1904-1985), and was located in the Fair’s Hall of Industry. In the 1940s he was regarded as one of the outstanding mural painters and designers in the United States. He first worked in Hollywood as a designer of costume jewelry, and later in New York as a muralist and a commercial illustrator, including creating advertising for the fair.

Art of the Western Continent is a mural by Arthur Sinclair Covey (1877-1960), and was located in the Fair’s American Art Today building. Covey was a major figure in American muralism, who was praised for his vibrant images of industrial life.

Hippocrates banishes Superstition was sculpted in aluminum and brass by Hildreth Meière (1892-1961) and was located at the Fair’s Science and Education building. This sculpture was approximately fourteen by twenty-one feet in size. Meière was one of the most acclaimed American muralists of the twentieth century. Between the 1920s until her death in 1961, she blended influences from Byzantine mosaics, Egyptian wall painting, classical Greek vase painting, and Native American beadwork into the Art Deco style.