Expo 76: Future Vision or Fever Dream? (episode 219)

Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome to Hub History, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. The Hub of the universe.
This is Episode 219. Boston’s World Freedom Fair. Future Vision or Fever Dream.
Hi, I’m Jake. This week I’m talking about a plan thought up during the Kennedy administration by a group this week. I’m talking about a plan thought up during the Kennedy administration by a group of Boston businessman led by a millionaire dairy farmer.
They proposed building an experimental city of the future on made land peers and floating platforms connecting Columbia Point in Dorchester with Thompson Island in Boston Harbor.
This new city would be the site of a world’s fair time to celebrate Boston’s bicentennial.
Then the site would be reused to solve all of Boston’s problems with housing, race relations, environmental damage and economic decline.
Spoiler alert. We don’t have a futuristic city connecting Dorchester to the Harbor Islands,
but the story of how a plan ripped straight out of science fiction almost came to be built in Boston reveals a lot about an optimistic city torn apart by the busing crisis.

[1:19] But before we talk about the World Freedom Fair. I just want to pause and thank Terry R, our most recent patreon sponsor, as well as Doug and Joe, who made generous one time contributions on PayPal.
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Now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

[2:23] The plan that would eventually spiral into a billion dollar boondoggle featuring a sci fi inspired futuristic city started out sounding completely reasonable,
in November 1960 for The Boston Globe reported on the city’s plan to stage a World Freedom Fair in 1975 to commemorate the bicentennial of the Lexington Concord Fight, Bunker Hill and the other local events related to the start of the war for independence.
The unavailability of one site large enough to compete with the other fair cities has been one of the drawbacks facing Boston boosters.
The idea for a series of sites is being recommended as part of the proposals contained in a new master plan, according to one source.
The fair is seen also as a way to celebrate the completion of Boston’s mammoth revitalization program currently underway.
The sites under consideration would be linked by modern transportation systems, which could include a monorail or hydrofoil craft.
Sites under consideration and qualify according to size standards, including 100 to 350 acres capable of high potential development following the fair,
locations include 100 and 50 acre area in the B&M Charlestown yards, which could be later converted.
The recreational use near the Charles River and for university complex.

[3:42] Also being considered as a 70 acre area in the East Boston Piers section, which could be later developed for apartment use, shipping and boating recreation.
Another site is the South Bay South Boston Area, 150 acre section, which is a potential industrial development site.
The Roxbury area adjacent to the proposed inter belt, the proposed Southwest Expressway, could include about 60 acres, which later could be developed for research industry, according to the planners.
Columbia Point in Dorchester Bay is seen as another site. Four other locations for special fair functions are the Boston Common in Boston Garden,
Long Island, which can be developed for recreational and residential use after the chronic disease Hospital is Relocated,
Spectacle Island and the Esplanade for outdoor music events.
The brief mention of a possible monorail or hydrofoil is the only early sign of the increasingly extravagant and futuristic plans that would escalate quickly as other cities pitched competing bicentennial festivals.

[4:45] Philadelphia was already in the planning stages for a bicentennial world’s fair as well.
Philadelphia was also already in the planning stages for a bicentennial world’s fair.
Both cities had deep revolutionary history’s, and both claimed the title of The Cradle of Liberty Washington D. C would jump in later and Miami of all places, through its hat in the ring at the last possible moment.
But from beginning to end, our friends in Philly were seen as the only real competition for the world’s fair.

[5:15] Planning began at least two years earlier with the public announcement about the plan to bring a world’s fair to Boston, appearing in the November 21st 1963 Globe.
Unfortunately, President Kennedy was shot the next day, driving the world’s fair plan off the front pages and out of Boston’s collective consciousness.
For the time being, however, that initial announcement makes it clear that from the very beginning, the idea of a massive bicentennial celebration in Boston was driven by business interests and not historians.

[5:47] Boston’s business and civic community began mobilizing support Wednesday for a world’s fair for the city in 1975 to mark the 2/100 anniversary of a series of major historic revolutionary events.
During a press conference at the Chamber of Commerce offices, business representatives served notice to the rest of the country and the world that the hub must be considered a serious contender as the site for an internationally approved fair.
Such a fair, said the chamber representatives, would result in hundreds of millions of dollars being spent not only in Boston but throughout the New England area.
One of those representatives was Gilbert Hood, the president of the Boston Chamber of Commerce.
Now, if you’re asking yourself hood like hoodies like the dairy, yeah, like the dairy.
According to his 1985 obituary in the Chicago Tribune, Mr Hood was born in Derry, New Hampshire.
He attended the Phillips Academy and and over, and he graduated from Harvard University in 1920 the Harvard Business School in 1922.
He was a second lieutenant in the Army during World War Two, 1964. Profile of Hood and the Globe fills in some of the blanks, helping us make sense of how a North Beverly dairy farmer could become president of the Boston Chamber of Commerce.

[7:08] The Globe dubbed him the millionaire milkman back in 1921 when, as a college student, he drove a gray horse along a Boston milk round, selling a delivering to learn the business.
Now he’s president of the family company, a vast empire with liquid foundations.

[7:28] Gilbert H. Hood Jr of H. P Hood and Sons is a third generation milkman, a farmer and husband. Hman, a servant to society, and he knows all there is to know about the milk business.
His life has been shaped by his occupation.
Derry, New Hampshire born. His speech has the slow, soft countrymen accents of the Yankee, his words coming in the easy rhythm of a drover walking on a dirt road.
Those words have an influence on hundreds of thousands of persons in the vast enter our BIA.
He owns the family homestead and dairy, where the cattle are lowing, and he’s a hardworking, prominent member of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.
His herd on his North Beverly farm as a prize winner, Hood as well as the president of the 1975 World Freedom Fair of Boston.
Harvey Hood, Gilbert’s grandfather, founded the Milk Kingdom in 18 46.
Before that, he peddled bread from a wagon, carrying along some milk as a customer service.
Now it’s the other way around.

[8:34] For the first two years, Hood and the other champions of a Freedom Fair worked mostly behind closed doors, leaving the press to speculate about what they might come up with.
Like a January 1965 column that estimated the cost of a world’s fair at $40 million a small fraction of the eventual cost projections.
It also first introduced the idea of using the Boston Harbor Islands as the venue for the fair.
At the time, there was no Boston Harbor Alliance, no Boston Harbor Islands National Park area.
There was a patchwork of private state military ownership and a reputation for intense pollution.

[9:13] Among the intriguing possibilities for the site of the proposed 1975 Boston World’s Fair, though not discussed thus far are the islands of Boston Harbor.
A combination of filled harbor land and connections to in between the islands could provide one of the most picturesque sites at any world’s fair.
There are 35 islands in the harbor, give or take a few high watermarks and some of considerable size Thompson’s island offs.
Quantum is about 150 acres, Paddocks Island off house neck, 113 acres the islands, In addition to providing spectacular views of the city and harbour, are a most historic part of Boston.
Appropriate exhibits could be located on them. Clipper ships, whaling days, oceanography, the entire seafaring tradition of New England.
Some islands could be used for recreational purposes between helicopters, pontoon bridges, ferries,
overhead, cable cars or even causeways and interlocking system between any filled harbor land and the islands could be constructed without great difficulty.
The islands of Boston Harbor were once busy with hospitals, schools, military installations, farms and private housing.
Perhaps a world’s fair would encourage us to utilize the natural asset of the islands and to beautify the entire harbor and city.

[10:39] In November, 1965. Planners step back into the spotlight, announcing an early version of the Plan for a World Freedom Fair in Boston with the November 10th Boston Globe confirming that the Harbor islands would at least be a portion of the venue for the fair.
Estimates are that the fair would attract more than 20 million admissions, bring 10 million visitors to Boston in a single summer,
generate $500 million in visitor spending on and off the site, create 8000 jobs and reclaim for land starved Boston and Quincy 400 acres of prime residential land.
The last would be done by clearing Thompson Island and filling a 1500 ft section of the title area, which separates it from Quantum Peninsula.
Preliminary site plans show a built up area of 200 acres accessible to the mainland by water, rapid transit and highways.

[11:33] Cost estimates had already escalated from the original $40 million price tag to about $67 million though that would turn out to be yet again a small fraction of the final projections.
The more the planners looked seaward, the higher the price tag would go.
One of those planners told the Globe in February 1966 that they,
proposed the dredging of channels and Anchorages and the link up of reclaimed area,
cause waste between Moon and Spectacle Islands between Squad Um and Thompson’s island and from the old Naval Air Station to a new filled in area on the shore side of Thompson’s island.
They would also construct a bridge from Columbia Point to the newly filled in area.
The Thompsons Spectacle Island area on the north could be served by rail transportation and uses a site for the 1975 World’s Fair, he said.
Developers point to the spectacular island views of both the city and the harbor they envision is fair exhibits one island devoted to clipper ships and whaling and others to oceanography or other seafaring aspects of New England life.

[12:43] That fall, all six New England governors endorsed the Boston Expo plan, even if those plans continued to grow.
By January of 1967 the cost estimates were up to a cool billion dollars, and the proposed expo site was bumping up against 1000 acres.

[13:03] The Globe has learned that over the past few months, Freedom 75 planners have radically changed their proposals for the fair.
Among other things, they now talk of a billion dollar event that’s at least twice as ambitious as anything previously mentioned.
They’re also calling for 1000 acre site in Boston Harbor instead of 400 acres.
This proposal would cost at least $40 million to landfill areas around Thompson’s island and off Columbia Point.
If there’s to be a fair in 1975 construction must begin in 1972.
Construction will be on filled land that should have had a couple of years to settle.
Filling operations, therefore, must begin in 1968 which means that engineering must begin this year.
It will be an immense project involving the manufacturer of 650 new acres, says Matthew.
It will be equivalent to the filling of back bay. Only that was done piecemeal.

[14:08] The radical changes to the plan could be credited to Jan Wampler, an MIT trained architect with one I Always on the Future.
On January 15th, 1969 the planners publicly unveiled Wampler is grand vision for the Expo, now scheduled for 1976 to coincide with the national bicentennial.
The story ran on the front page of The Boston Globe, complete with an $800 million budget,
690 acres of new land fill a city built on floating platforms served by an advanced transit line and topped off by a 700 ft transparent geodesic dome,
so families could have a catch or go for a picnic on a sunny lawn during the depths of a Boston winter.
Preliminary sketches from the planning group show landfill and floating structures extending far out into the outer harbor, linking Thompson Island and Long Island with gallops Georgia’s and levels and extending even out to the Brewster’s in Boston Light.

[15:07] The published plans were, by comparison, restraint.
They did not extend into the outer harbor, blocking the main shipping channel, but instead connected Carson Beach to Malibu Beach, embraced Columbia Point and extended out to Thompson island, nearly closing off the mouth of the Neponset River.
In a magazine article, a BR official described the project site conceptually. The plan is a cross, with each arm being approximately one mile long.
It will be dense and urban and character with an average height of 10 stories.
Flight paths at Logan prevent higher structures at the intersection of the arms as a water plaza in town centre, water oriented Harvard Square, replete with shops, theaters, restaurants, parks and boat landings.
The eastern arm of the plan extends to Thompson Island, which will be reserved for recreation and amusement.
A focal point on the island will be a 700 ft diameter glass geodesic dome designed to provide picnic and place based during inclement weather and the winter months.

[16:16] It may have been scaled back from the early sketches, but it was still wildly ambitious.
The announcement in the Globe said the planners hope to solve the problems of building over water and converting misused, poorly developed shoreline to functional use.
If we can solve these problems, says Jan Wampler, 29 principal designer, we will have helped find new solutions for other coastal cities with major urban concentrations adjacent to water and all sharing common problems.
They’ve incorporated the idea of floating platforms to service foundations for many of the structures in the proposed urban complex.
Floating platforms, they say are cheaper than landfill takes less time but does not destroy the marine ecology of the area.
Initial plans to use extensive landfill were scrapped, Wampler says, because they ignored conservation and recreation needs.
It makes no sense to destroy what’s good while failing to correct problems which need to be corrected, he asserted.
The planners also intend to expand desperately needed open space by conserving Thompson other islands and by cleaning up and utilizing the natural shoreline.
Our new community is not a futuristic science fiction world of tomorrow, says Wampler, but a real world where we will reach out to solve real existing problems.

[17:41] Now, the moment at which Wampler says they’re not creating a futuristic science fiction world of tomorrow is the exact moment at which I’m kind of sorry that this isn’t a video podcast.
Even if you don’t usually check out our show notes. You need to look at some of the pictures. I’ll post at hub history dot com slash 219 They were absolutely planning a futuristic sci fi landscape.
This was the height of American dominance in the space race. Apollo eight had just returned to Earth with the crew of Americans who orbited the moon for the first time, and Apollo 11 would take flight before the end of the year.

Clips

Jake:
[18:26] That August, the Globe reported on a conversation with Jane Wampler.
He envisions an approach similar to the one taken by NASA and landing an American on the moon,
a vast coordinated systems effort in which not only industry, government and educational institutions are involved, but nations as well, like the moon effort only much more realistic, said Wampler.
It will harness technology to cure urban ills.

Clips

Jake:
[18:54] When I look at the concept art for the Expo, though, I don’t see the aesthetic of America’s actual space program.
What I see is the aesthetic of the 1968 film 2000 and one. A Space Odyssey.

[19:21] The maps showing four long, spindly arms of floating decks on Boston Harbor, each branching off into small pods of housing. Exposition, space and office buildings look like nothing so much as a space station.
Renderings show eight stories of glass and steel cubes rising from the harbor. Waters supported by super structures have exposed triangulated pillars of aluminum or steel that stretched off to an infinite horizon.
Public squares, open air movie theaters, green spaces and ducks for water.
Taxis and hovercraft were all embraced in miles and miles of these space inspired, exposed super structures.
Taken right from Kubrick set design, the renderings are shot through with what looked like single lane road bridges but are actually the guide ways for a futuristic transit system.
To connect the Expo with the Red Line and the Southeast Expressway,
based on the Alden Starrcar, or Self Transit rodent railcar, the system would have been composed of 10 ft long cars running on rubber automotive tires within self contained concrete guide ways.
They looked like something of a cross between a minivan and a monorail.

[20:31] Each one would have carried six people with a cargo car variant for carrying baggage maintenance materials or even for garbage collection or other municipal uses, there would have been no driver in each car.
Instead, the entire system was designed to be operated from a central computerized control facility with dispatching of cars, bypassing stations as needed and avoiding collisions nearly completely automated.

[20:58] At the time the designs became public, the Alden Corporation was in the middle of testing a four person, scaled down version of the Starrcar on a test track in a parking lot out in Bedford.
The World’s Fair, or Expo 76 would require scaling the system up just a bit.
Alden’s proposal called for 5000 cars running on about six miles of track that would be capable of moving one third of a million riders each hour.
It called for three major station complexes wanted the Columbia Red Line stop, one of the new parking complex on the expressway and one of the center complex that ocean facing Harvard Square.
We described before it would also incorporate bypass guide ways for emergency vehicles, as well as temporary sightseeing loops for tourists who wanted to see more of the expo that would have been removed when converting the whole thing into a planned city.
There would even be a station inside the giant geodesic dome on Thompson Island so the family could get off the red line during a blizzard.
Assuming that the red line could handle snow better back then, then again now transfer to a Starrcar and get off in the warm and sunny spring climate inside the dome.

[22:14] This advanced transit system was obviously never built in Boston, but versions of the Starrcar were built for Expo 75 in Okinawa, Japan, and around the campus of West Virginia University.
I’ve actually written the personal rapid transit system in Morgantown, West Virginia, which is nearly identical to the Starrcar system proposed for Boston and was designed by all.

[22:38] It runs over about four miles of track with a highly automated central control.
Believe it or not, there have only been two accidents in 46 years of operation and no fatalities.
The Starrcar is perhaps one of the only proposals dreamed up for the expo that would have been useful in Boston today, maybe as a replacement for the Silver Line or to serve neighborhoods that have no access to rapid transit today.

[23:06] Other things that the Expo was supposed to bring to Boston that we could really use right now is housing.
Boston’s housing crunch has reached crisis proportions today, but we’ve always been short on housing.
In the 19 sixties and long before the physical constraints imposed by Boston Harbor method, it was always hard to build new housing in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Boston solved that problem by building new land in the Back Bay, South Boston, East Boston, the South Cove and many other areas.
The Expo plan promised to bring land making back in a big way.

[23:48] In that February 1969 magazine article R B R, a designer stressed that the re use of the expo site would make housing available to all income levels, saying that,
the creation will follow the fair of a complete new town in Dorchester Bay.
This new community will reuse the fairgrounds. It’s transportation system and many of the fair structures.
Keystone to the development will be the construction of 20,000 new dwelling units for low moderate middle and upper income families.
These combined with new industrial and commercial sites as well as new schools and other public facilities will create a balanced community of approximately 75,000 people.
It’s scheduled to be completely occupied by the early 19 eighties.
Upwards of 10,000 housing units are scheduled to be completed before the fair opens its gates in the spring of 1976.
These 234 and five bedroom units will initially be subdivided to provide 20,000 on site motel units,
immediately following the close of the International Exposition in the fall of 76 the temporary partitions will be removed and the dwelling units ready for permanent occupancy.
Both rental and sales units will be available to the public, with prices to fit all income ranges.

[25:12] During the push to win public support for the expo plan, milk magnet Gilbert Hood delivered an address to the October 1969 Mass. State A f l C i O convention.
He stressed the themes of reduced harbor pollution, increased construction jobs and a new suburban seeming community at Boston’s back door.

[25:33] As has been pointed out by the Federal Housing Authority and other agencies, Boston desperately needs new housing.
The exposition plans call for 20,000 motel units during the exposition and then these will be reconverted following that period to approximately 15,000 dwelling units for 50,000 persons.

[25:54] From the beginning, the expo planners face criticism for not involving the community, especially communities of color and the planning process.
This seemingly deliberate blind spot resulted in a project plan that Boston residents felt would not benefit them.
James Matthew, general manager of the Bicentennial Corporation, defended the lack of African American involvement in planning the expo by saying, We have a black area, but we don’t have a black problem.
In Boston, The Globe reported that Paul Parks, one of only two black members of the Bicentennial corporation’s board and administrator of the city’s Model Cities program, says that there hasn’t been much need for involvement so far.
In these early stages, the project will build.

[26:43] Mm hmm.

[26:46] Of the cities of the city’s Model Cities Programme, says that there hasn’t been much need for involvement so far in these early stages, the project will bulldoze no one’s home.
His concern up to now has been getting assurances of black employment in the construction work.
Black people, he said, are wary of big projects being plunked down in their neighborhoods.
There is the traditional worry over Negro removal, but also the fear of drawing in white entrepreneurs who will shoulder aside blacks unable financially to stand off the invasion.
Meanwhile, he says, Boston needs more housing sites, and he has a commitment that a fair percentage No one will say how much of the future Newtown’s housing will be for low income people.
That ignored one of several elephants in the room on the original January 15 1967 map that first publicly floated the idea of filling in the harbor and connecting the shoreline to the harbor islands.
Columbia Point is surrounded by shading, indicating new land that will be constructed and the points portrayed as a blank canvas for developers to work with.
But in the middle of that canvas was a dot labeled Columbia Point housing project.
This was the largest unit of public housing in New England, and it was becoming ever more heavily segregated.

[28:10] I’ve actually just been listening to an interesting, limited podcast series that looks at the history of Boston’s housing crisis and the black liberation struggles in the 19 sixties and seventies through the lens of the Columbia Point projects.
If that strikes your fancy, look for a link to the podcast, a people’s history and this week’s show notes but fair warning that if you think my show has a liberal bias, people’s history is told from a Marxist historian perspective.
In the most recent episode I just finished, the narrator referred to Mike Dukakis as a conservative right wing Democrats, just saying.

[28:49] Exactly two years after that original map was published showing the Columbia Point housing project in the middle of the development area.
A new, much more detailed map of the proposed development ran in the January 15th 1969 globe.
The first map had no explanation of what would happen to the housing project, and the second one had no explanation of its erasure where the public housing projects stood.
This new map showed a waterfront theme center for the expo and temporary housing for expo workers and exhibitors.
The presentation stressed that this new construction would result in housing for 25,000 families after the expo was over in 1977.
But there was no mention of what would happen to the thousands of low income families who would be displaced from Columbia Point for nearly a decade.
As the winter of 1969 faded into spring, the expo planners worked overtime to meet a looming deadline.
Their presentation before the presidential American Revolution Bicentennial Commission was scheduled in Washington, D. C. On April 22nd, in April 23rd.

[29:57] The expo was first proposed during the Kennedy administration, and Boston backers were confident of a home court advantage after his assassination.
Early in the process remained optimistic that the Johnson administration, though headed by a Texan, would continue to honor the New England roots of his predecessor.
Now, though Nixon was president as a California, he didn’t have a personal stake in either Philly or Boston.
But choosing Boston would only strengthen one of his main rivals, JFK’s brother, Senator Ted Kennedy.

[30:32] Unfortunately, early spring, 1969 was also the time when organized opposition to the plan coalesced.
Ironically, around the very issues of housing and harbour development that the planners saw as the project’s greatest benefits.
Along the line of the ST Patrick’s Day parade in South Boston, there were a healthy smattering of signs reading Expo No, and Don’t Be Silly sent it to Philly.

[30:58] South Boston politicians could feel which way the wind was blowing, and they started to line up against the Expo plan by the Fourth of March.
State Senator Joe Moakley was quoted as saying that the project was financially practically and intellectually unrealistic and declaring that Philadelphia was welcome to take Expo 76,
in early April, the Globe reported on his appearance before the City Council at a meeting on the Expo plan,
the biggest applause getter with state Senator John J. Moakley of South Boston.
He told councillors that the landfill necessary for the fair might result in further harbor pollution and could ruin his native South Boston.

[31:39] The question squarely presented, he said, is whether we are willing to sacrifice a priceless natural resource widely utilized by the entire Metropolitan Aereo for a project symbolizing crass commercialism.
That same week, the Globe cited unnamed sources to report that Louise Day Hicks was also against the Expo.
Hicks was a former teacher turned attorney who was in the midst of her ascendancy, is the most vocal and famous segregationist in Boston.
She joined the Boston school Committee in 1961 but gained prominence in 1965 from the Legislature passed a measure requiring schools with over 50% minority students to be desegregated.
Hicks led a faction that resisted desegregation, rocketing to city wide fame and almost winning the mayoral race against Kevin White in 1967.
By the end of April 1969 she was on the daytime chat show on Channel seven, Dave Garroway at large and living in Boston to talk about the Expo plan.

[32:42] Like Joe Moakley, Louise Day Hicks mostly focused on the environmental impact of the world’s fair, though many observers speculated that her real issue was the promise to repurpose the expo development as low and middle income housing,
in the minds of many South Boston residents, even those who lived in low income housing themselves, like the Old colony projects low income housing only meant one thing. Black people.
The suggestion that black people might encroach on South Boston allowed Hicks to organize mass protests against the project at the MDC skating rink on Day Boulevard and at Carson Beach in May 1969,
at the skating rink protests.
She spoke as planes flew low overhead on their way in and out of Logan.
And she said, Just think of how it’ll be with 300,000 people coming here every day, there will be a lot of planes, a lot of cars you’ll never watch television.

[33:43] At the end of June, she announced her candidacy for the City Council one morning and then testified against the Expo that afternoon, with television cameras eagerly covering both events.

[33:55] Outside the insular community of South Boston, the main argument against Expo 76 was financial.

[34:04] The budget is announced would require $75 million from Boston taxpayers, $175 million from Massachusetts coffers, and it depended on $250 million in federal funding.
That was by no means a sure thing. Yet in a report released at the end of April 1969 the City Finance Commission seemed cautiously optimistic about the outcome of the expo.

[34:29] If the proposed land and buildings erected for the exposition are liquidated properly at the end of the exposition,
there is good reason to believe that the $75 million investment by the city and the $175 million investment by the state will be completely recovered.

[34:47] They were pleased with the potential to access ready made low income housing that wouldn’t come with an additional price tag.
They projected that leases on the market rate housing would generate $12 million in income for the city annually.
The one thing they wouldn’t comment on was how much value would be added by the floating platforms that were supposed to carry much of the exposed development.

[35:09] Some 400 acres will be created by landfill in a system of peer platforms.
Third System of Land Creation proposed would consist of floating or flexible platforms.
Because of the experimental nature of this latter concept, the commission is unwilling to speculate on its value is real property.
But the rest of the plan is entirely feasible and can add needed new space to the city of Boston.
Of particular importance is the fact that the construction of the grounds will not entail the raising of existing neighborhoods with a resultant displacement of citizens and of existing taxable income producing properties.

[35:48] The commission’s report predicted that even if the expo was held and judged a failure, it would still result in 148,000 new jobs in Boston and $657 million in increased personal income.

[36:03] At the a f L C i o Conference. Gilbert Hood put this in terms of 184,000 man years, meaning one person working for one year and most of that in construction jobs.
The Finance Commission projected $2.2 billion in spending by visitors, which they said would accrue to Boston as meals.
$644 million overnight accommodations.
467 million entertainment and attractions.
$259 million transportation. 118 million retail purchases, 128 million parking, admissions and other $71 million.
They also predicted increases in tax revenue and the hundreds of millions of dollars.

[36:53] While Louise Day, Hicks and her allies were organizing against the Expo plan, the official backers weren’t doing much to change their minds.
In July of 1969 the Globe asked whatever became of Expo 76.
For weeks now, both Boston and Philadelphia have been strangely silent.
Chief freeze and has been to delay in presentations to the nation’s bicentennial commission, which had both cities chafing since April.
That event may be just around the corner, however, because the Commission, recently reconstituted by President Nixon, meets later this week in Washington and may set a date.
But for Boston and Philadelphia, both of whom are sweating on affair, the time factor is becoming crucial.
To succeed, an exposition in either city must have the sanction of the World Exposition governing Body B I E.
In Paris, B I will make its award November 17th.
Thus, if the U. S Bicentennial Commission wants an expo, it now has less than four months to decide.
Both Boston and Philadelphia could soon be out of their agony.

[38:04] Soon after that was published. The date for Boston’s presentation before the bicentennial commission was set for September 24th.
By this time, the Boston Globe’s editorial board was calling Louise Day Hicks the most popular politician in Boston.
And even with their extremist positions on race set of the upcoming City Council election, the biggest surprise will be if she finishes in any other position.
But number one, the racial imbalance law that have been passed at the state level, tied the hands of the sitting councillors on several measures having to do with school funding,
allowing Hicks to run to their right, since she could vocally oppose the measures that they saw no practical way to vote against.
Perhaps that’s why, when the subject of the expo came before the City Council in early September, the counselors lined up against it finally, a vote where they could show what good little Hicks Ian’s they were.
After Miss Hicks had organized the opposition and repeatedly testified against the project.
At the council’s public hearings on Thursday, September 4th, the Urban Renewal Committee proposed a resolution condemning the expo, and the next Monday was put before the full council for a vote.

[39:16] Be it resolved that based on the present record before it compiled in the course of three full days of public hearings on April 8th, June 25th and September 4th, 1969,
the City Council finds that the site proposed for Expo 76 is unsuitable, and the proposed financing of Expo 76 is not in the best interests of the city of Boston.

[39:39] In the end, it was 8 to 0, with one councillor voting present. Things weren’t looking good for the expo plan.
A spokesperson for governor sergeant said that the state wouldn’t be able to support the project without the city and called the outlook grim.
The very next day, however, Gilbert Hood announced that the expo was too important to let little details like public opinion or city government stand in its way,
saying that Expo 76 owes it to the people of Boston to proceed with its plans.

[40:14] The Federal Bicentennial Commission confirmed that Boston was still in the running, whether it wanted to be or not.

[40:22] On September 24th, Boston had its day in court. Governor Frank Sargent.
Mayor Kevin White led a delegation to Washington that also included the governor of Maine representing the other New England states, Mass Historical Society President Thomas Boylston Adams and National Center for Afro American Artists founder Elma Lewis,
in the D.
C streets. Outside the bicentennial commissions Windows, hundreds of Minutemen in Fife and Drum Corps from 19 units around New England paraded in support of the expo plan.

[40:55] Inside the meeting room, Louise Day Hicks, who had been personally invited by Gilbert Hood with a thought that sincere descent also represented the American way, led to city councilors and registering their opposition to the expo plan with the commission.
At the hearing, Washington D. C s presentation was very vague.
Philadelphia presented the 1969 version of a PowerPoint deck, and Boston brought a $50,000 model of the Expo site built on a 20 square foot planning table.
Massive prince of aerial imagery of the city and harbour at the expo site formed the base layer over it.
A three D model of the pier structures and floating platforms illustrated the massive scale of the proposed construction.
Within it, miniature TV screens showed video loops to represent the planned outdoor theaters and tiny Starrcar. Ours ran a model railway tracks.
Boston’s plan was the most audacious. Its presentation was the most animated, but it was also the only city that allowed dissenting voices like Miss Hicks to counter their points during the actual presentation.
Within a few minutes, it was over and the waiting began.

[42:11] Doubts were raised immediately when a member of the bicentennial commission said that the group was taking the opportunity created by the three cities presentations to re evaluate whether a world’s fair was even the right approach to the bicentennial.
Members of the commission reflected on the massive Montreal Expo of 1967 nominally held to celebrate the centennial of Canadian independence.
The hubbub of the world’s fair far overshadowed the centennial commemoration, leaving Canadians from other parts of the country feeling left out and bitter.

[42:44] As the 19 seventies dawned, there was a giant question mark hanging over the very idea of a bicentennial world’s fair.
But as long as the concept was alive, Philadelphia was seen as the favorite to host the Expo.
Then, in March, the 2/100 anniversary of the Boston Massacre in many ways kicked off the bicentennial celebrations for revolutionary events.
Massive celebration was planned, anchored by an American Legion post that was named after massacre victim Crispus addicts and featuring recent Tony Award winner Pearl Bailey as the guest of honor.
That celebration was held at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
It was meant as a double humiliation for the Boston Expo bid by both outshining the Boston celebration and by featuring the black veterans of the Christmas addicts post and a famous and popular black actress.
In contrast to the anti busing activists for Louise Day Hicks Roar, who disrupted Boston’s commemorations, things weren’t looking good for the Boston Expo plan.

[43:49] In April, the state Legislature passed a bill that would have implemented a 10 year ban on using state funds for a fair or exhibition on Boston Harbor.
Governor Sergeant vetoed the bill, keeping the Expo bid alive only barely.
While rumors began swirling, the bicentennial commission was leaning toward a nationwide celebration rather than a massive world’s fair in any one city.
On May 26th, President Nixon was quoted as saying, America’s 50 states, America’s big cities, small cities and small towns.
It’s all the homes and all the hopes of 200 million people.
That’s why we want this celebration of the national. It must go directly to the people and derives its strength from the people.

[44:37] The next day, the Bicentennial Commission officially rejected the Expo plants from Boston, Philly, D. C. And late comer Miami.
Instead, they endorsed the concept of a nationwide bicentennial celebrated in every city in small town in America.
That’s patriotic stuff, and it’s also a great way to get out of spending a half billion federal taxpayer dollars on a boondoggle.
With the federal government shift in focus and funding, the Bicentennial Expo quickly faded from public memory,
when the city of Boston was deep in planning for its own bicentennial event four years later, a glow brighter, who’d extensively covered the Expo plan in 1970 wrote in May 1974.
Who today even remembers how, in the late sixties, Boston and Philadelphia fought for the honor to host Expo 76 with elaborate plans for new many cities. Nothing happened.

[45:34] Today. We don’t remember. The failure of Boston’s Bicentennial Expo is a disappointment because we don’t remember the Expo at all.
Instead, we remember the bicentennial as it was with a celebration.
The New York Times praised as an example of participatory tourism, saying,
Boston has not become like some American cities, a concrete graveyard in the moonlight inhabited by the poor, the predatory and the rats.
Boston’s neighborhoods pulse and breathe, some of them as insular as medieval fiefdoms.
Others opened the ebb and flow of every human tide.
The living past and the living city are the twin threads of the city’s bicentennial effort.

[46:19] Instead of a geodesic dome that was never built on Thompson Island, we remember how the Boston Pops performance on the Esplanade set a new Guinness World record instead of the absence of automated Starrcar ours.
We remember the vision of Queen Elizabeth gazing out at the crowd from the very balcony at the Old State House, where Boston first heard the words that declared independence from her great great great grandfather.
There were spectaculars like Where’s Boston? A multi image, quadraphonic sound show on a graphic display of Boston today.
There was also a grand exposition of progress and invention, with an outsized emphasis on safety razors.
Thanks to Gillette’s financing, the newly renovated Quincy Market hosted an exhibit on the revolutionary generation, allowing visitors to register their opinions on controversies of the 17 seventies and the 19 seventies.

[47:14] On the evening of April 18th, 1975 on the 2/100 anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride, President Gerald Ford visited Old North Church.
The choir sang, the vicar presided, and two great great great grandsons of Robert Newman the Sexton in 17 75 who displayed the lantern signal that night carried the lanterns to the steeple as the crowds in the street below cheered.
In his remarks, President Ford emphasized that the American dream was still worth working for and that it could be available to all Americans.
If we work together with a new sense of unity, the American dream is not dead.
It simply has yet to be fulfilled.
America has yet to realize its greatest contribution to civilization.
To do this, America needs new ideas and new efforts from our people.
Each of us, of every color, creed or part of the country must be willing to build not only a new and better nation, but new and greater understanding and unity among our people.

[48:19] Vicar Robert College struck a similar tone as he dedicated a third lantern to America’s third century and a renewed hope in the American promise,
the two lanterns which once shown from this steeple, led us to two centuries of progress and reason in liberty and in faith, but not enough to some fulfillment in mind, body and spirit.
But not enough to some gains and thinking, acting and trusting in freedom, but not enough.
Now, after two centuries, who will say that the American promise has come true?
The American promise has not come true, but we believe in it and we will not be discouraged. And that is why we will send out a new signal from the Old North Church.
Tonight we will light a third lantern, a new signal that will call us to a new spirit and a new hope in our third century, a signal that we hope will be repeated in homes and farms and schools and factories all across America.
The steeple of the Old North Church will shine with a third lantern tonight, a new signal that will call us to renewed effort and renewed hope. In our third century.
It will say we will yet make the American promise a reality.
We will yet make it the truth. Every day, everywhere for everyone, we will go forward and we will stumble. But we will try again and again and again.

[49:49] Since then, the lantern lighting has become an annual tradition. Lantern 2021 will be a virtual family friendly events celebrating the heroic actions of April 18th 17 75 and Old North’s legacy of active citizenship.
The Third Lantern Award now honors those who embody the spirit of the original iconic signal lanterns.
This year’s third Lantern will be presented to Dave McGilvray, the longtime race director of the Boston Marathon, whose skills were pressed into service this year to operate the mass vaccination sites at Gillette Stadium and Fenway Park.

[50:25] The program will feature Governor Charlie Baker, Hub history, co host of Merida. Nicky, a dramatic performance of Paul Revere’s Ride and original music by Ryan All Work, formerly of the Acapella Group. Straight No Chaser.
Let’s Call Lantern 2021 are featured Event of the week, and you can find a link to more information in the show. Notes.
Hub history dot com slash 219 While you’re there, you can learn more about Boston’s audacious plans for a Bicentennial world’s fair.
Whatever you do, make sure you look at the artist’s rendering to the landfill plan and the futuristic city they were going to build On top of it, it’s a fever dream of mid century optimism.
I’ll also have a digital copy of the Starrcar proposal from the Alden Corporation.
Gilbert Hoods comments at the 1969 A. F l, C i O Convention and the original proposal for World Freedom Fair 75.
I’ll link to plenty of Boston Globe articles that trace the rise and fall of Boston’s prospects for a World’s Fair as well.
Plus, I’ll have more information about the people’s history. Podcast and lantern. 2021 hour Boston Book Club pick and featured event.

[51:37] If you’d like to leave us some feedback, you can email us at podcast at hub history dot com.
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[52:36] Apple podcasts is still the most popular podcast app.
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