Futurama: A Closer Look at the 1939 New York World's Fair

by Liz Publika

Wurts Bros. (New York, N.Y.). People waiting in line for the Futurama ride at General Motors Highways and Horizons pavilion, New York World’s Fair. Museum of the City of New York.

The 1939 New York World's Fair featured Futurama, a giant model city and ride built by designer Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958) and presented by General Motors at its Highways and Horizons exhibit.

Excerpted image from “Futurama,” 1939, in the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair Collection. Museum of the City of New York.

Its intent was to show what America might look like twenty years later, around 1959–1960. The name comes from combining "future" with the suffix "-rama," meaning a wide view or spectacle — the same root behind words like panorama and diorama — which was fitting; the ride covered 35,000 square feet and was made up of 408 separate sections created by hundreds of skilled artists and craftspeople.

Excerpted image from “Futurama,” 1939, in the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair Collection. Museum of the City of New York.

The exhibit centered on a one-acre miniature landscape packed with over 500,000 tiny buildings, a million model trees, and roughly 50,000 miniature cars — 10,000 of which moved along a 14-lane automated superhighway. Visitors experienced it seated in moving chairs on an 18-minute ride simulating a low-flying airplane journey over the model, complete with coordinated lighting, sound, and color effects as the "landscape" scrolled beneath a curved glass viewing pane.

Excerpted image from “Futurama,” 1939, in the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair Collection. Museum of the City of New York.

The terrain itself was modeled on 408 real topographical sections built from aerial photographs of different U.S. regions. Its central vision, a nationwide system of expressways with semi-automated vehicles, connecting cities to sprawling suburbs, is notable for with introducing the American public to the idea of the modern highway network.

Detail of the Futurama Diorama,1939

The exhibit was the fair's runaway hit, drawing over 30,000 visitors a day and rating far above any other pavilion in visitor surveys. Attendees even received a pin stating, "I Have Seen the Future" to proudly display their participation. Its popularity is credited with helping build public support for the legislation that eventually created the U.S. Interstate Highway System.

Logo for Matt Groening's animated series Futurama

A follow-up version, "Futurama II," ran at the 1964–65 World's Fair with a similar ride concept and drew record attendance. The name later resurfaced as the title of Matt Groening's animated series Futurama — Groening had considered other names like "Aloha, Mars" before settling on a nod to the exhibit's "world of tomorrow" framing.

Note* Images provided by the Museum of the City of New York belong to the museum respectively. Remaining images are available via Fair Use and Public Domain.