Come to the Fair

Seattle's excited buzz had nothing to do with the Christmas holidays: the city was in the frantic final stages of preparing for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, which will open next April for a six months' run, attracting some 7,500,000 tourists (hopefully, as many as 10 million), to the Pacific Northwest.

Getting a Facelift. Hotels, receiving reservation requests at a 10,000-a-week clip, were already nearly sold out for the three summer months. By last week advance sales of tickets had topped $700,000. In the shadow of Queen Anne Hill, on a 74-acre tract of land, fair buildings were rising dramatically. For Seattle, the experience was like that of the perennial wallflower who suddenly finds herself the belle of the ball. The town was mostly pleased, but partly dazed--and just a mite suspicious. There was dark talk about the girlie shows that are planned. Local businessmen were skeptical about the "New York money" that has poured into the fair and that, to many Seattleites, seems somehow tainted. The city fathers have refused to relax the Sunday curfew on liquor. But these are minor matters, and most of Seattle has pitched in with a will, dolled up the city to a fare-thee-well. Trees and colorful news kiosks have sprouted on downtown streets; and parking meters now come in pastel hues. Some 131 projects are being renovated to give the old town a facelift.

No Joke. The $80-million fair is the result of luck, audacity--and hard work. The notion for a world's fair was born seven years ago when three leading citizens met for drinks at the Washington Athletic Club. Two members of the Chamber of Commerce and a newspaperman convivially agreed that it would be nice for Seattle to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition with another, grander fair. By the time the three reached the label on the bottle, the fair was no joke, and things began to happen. The city pledged $10 million for an opera house, a theater and an exhibition hall. The state put up $10 million more for a coliseum. Local businessmen rounded up another $4.5 million, and finally the Federal Government appropriated $9,000,000. Then Joseph E. Gandy, Ford dealer and fair president, went to Paris and brashly asked the Bureau of International Expositions to designate the Seattle Fair as the only international fair it would recognize in the U.S. for a decade. To his surprise,* B.I.E. agreed. As of last week, 27 foreign nations, from Brazil to Yugoslavia, had signed up for exhibitions.

Although some local citizens attempted to impose their own ideas, the officials wisely brought in architects and entrepreneurs from all over the U.S. to plan the big show. "When I came here a year ago," says Harold Shaw, performing arts director for the fair, "the first response was, 'Well, he's from New York. Watch him.' They wanted local entertainment. The local Gilbert and Sullivan troupe. Dancers from the local studios. The local Little Theater groups. I told them, 'Look, this is supposed to be a world's fair, not a county fair. Grow up.' " The result of such determination has set a high standard. Among the fair's highlights:

> THE SPACE NEEDLE, being constructed as the fair's thematic tower. To stand 600 ft. high, it will be a graceful, wasp-waisted minaret, supported by six steel legs and topped by a four-story disk and a 40-ft. natural-gas torch. Within the slowly turning disk (one revolution an hour) will be a restaurant, an observation deck and a lounge where fairgoers will see a panorama of Mount Rainier, the Cascade Mountains, Puget Sound, the Olympic mountains and the city.

> THE WASHINGTON STATE COLISEUM, four acres of aluminum-covered space without a supporting column. Visitors will view exhibits from a "cloud" of 3,000 aluminum cubes, each 4 ft. square. After the fair, the coliseum will become the city's largest (capacity 20,000) sports arena.

>THE U.S. SCIENCE PAVILION, six buildings enclosing a courtyard full of "space Gothic" arches and scientific exhibits. One. the "spacearium," jointly sponsored by the Federal Government and Boeing Aircraft Co., will give visitors a realistic "trip" through the cosmos, and is expected to become the most popular single exhibit.

> ENTERTAINMENT will range from the Old Vic and the Philadelphia Symphony to Lawrence Welk and Elvis Presley. A $2,000,000 midway, unhappily called "The Gayway." will provide thrills, rides and freak shows. And of course the fair will have its undraped girls, in a "Las Vegas-type revue" to be produced by one Gracie Hansen, an entrepreneuse who promises "a daring show with some nudity, but all in good taste." Mrs. Hansen admits, however, that her last production, in a Cascade Mountains logging town, proved "too adult for the P.T.A."

As opening day draws nearer, the fair's fathers plan to put the laboring force on a round-the-clock, three-shift schedule. Says a fair official: "Everything will be completed by opening day. There may be some wet paint, but we'll be ready to go."

* And to the vast chagrin of the sponsors of the 1964 New York World's Fair, which will have no official exhibitions from most of the nations of Western Europe, all B.I.F. members.

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