The Aesthetics of Ascension in Norman Bel Geddes's Futurama Author(s): Adnan Morshed Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural

Historians, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 7499 Published by: Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4127993 Accessed: 21/02/2010 00:55
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=sah. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Society of Architectural Historians is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.

http://www.jstor.org

The

Aesthetics

of

Ascension

in

Norman

Bel

Geddes's

Futurama

ADNAN

MORSHED

National Air and Space Museum

Behold, I am a prophet of the lightningand a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightningis called Superman. FriedrichNietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

Letus lookthen to Norman Bel Geddes,to such men of imagination, our practical visionaries, who can build the world of tomorrow today.

Futurama press release

"I have seen the future" theirvisitto the Futurama-the pon completing
"numberone hit show" of the 1939 New York World'sFair-spectators were presented with a souvenirpin that read "I have seen the future."'Although intended as a memento in keeping with the fair'stheme the Worldof Tomorrow," the pin highlightedtwo "Building and important mutually reinforcing concepts underlying this much-celebrated exhibit. The first is the idea of the future as spectacle,and the second is the process of seeing that spectacle. The exhibit's creator was Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958), the American industrial designer who pioneered the aestheticdevelopmentof streamlining,which is still identifiedtoday as one of the visualhallmarks of 1930s The Futurama was presentedas partof the autoAmerica.2

mobile giant General Motors's Highways and Horizons exhibitin one of the 1939 fair'smain attractions,the Transportation Zone.3 Under GM's corporatesponsorship,Bel Geddes presentedthe futureas a one-acre animatedmodel of an Americanutopia as it might appearin the year 1960 to people traveling in a low-flying airplane (Figure 1). Touted as "the largest and most lifelike model ever constructed,"the Futuramacontainedmore than five hundred thousandindividuallydesignedbuildings,a million trees of thirteendifferentspecies, and approximately fifty thousand motorcars,ten thousand of which careened along a fourteen-lane multispeed interstate highway.4Bel Geddes's the futureinto a grandspectaclein which exhibittranslated an ecological packageof "abundant sunshine,fresh air,and seamlesslyblended with a massive traffic green parkways" streamlined infrastructure, skyscrapers,and futuristicairthe center-oriented geometricalcity planning ports. Fusing of Le Corbusier'sVille Contemporaine (1922) and the decentralistapproachof FrankLloyd Wright'sBroadacre City (1935) with H. G. Wells'sscience-fictionalfantasyof aspiredto be the culmination things to come, the Futurama urbanistthinking.5In tune with of early-twentieth-century the unbridledoptimismof the 1930s, Bel Geddes's"future" was synonymouswith technological progress.6The Futurama prophesied an American utopia regulated by an of cutting-edgetechnologies:remote-controlled assortment multilanehighways,powerplants,farmsfor artificially produced crops, rooftop platforms for individual flying

Figure 1 Spectators gazing down on Norman Bel Geddes's Futuramamodel.

machines and autogyros, and various gadgets, all of which were intended to create an ideal built environment and, ultimately, to reform society. Bel Geddes presented his ideas of the future with a remarkable degree of realism and immediacy, striking a chord with an American audience slowly recovering from the Great Depression and now longing for prosperity. Yet it was not the spectacle of the future itself, but the technique of seeing the future that made the Futurama the sensation of the 1939 New York World's Fair, drawing twenty-eight thousand spectators a day.' Carried above the massive model by means of a suspended, winding conveyor belt that simulated the experience of flight, the spectators attained a bird's-eye view of what Bel Geddes called the World of Tomorrow. The eighteen-minute ride-along with a masterful manipulation of light, sound, and color-created the illusion of an aerial journey over the varied and meticuTHE AESTHETICS

lously crafted terrain of an American utopia (Figure 2). The Futurama's simulated flight offered an effective display technique, as Bel Geddes noted in his book Magic Motorways (1940): "The visitor to a great American city in 1960 approaches it by air, in order to see the layout of the new design more readily."' The conveyor system was huge (Figure 3).9 It carried 552 seated spectators at a time, covering a winding path a third of a mile long over the model at different heights. Moving at a rate of approximately 120 feet per minute, the spectator looked down through a continuous, curved pane of glass toward the model, which consisted of 408 topographical sections. These sections were based on aerial photographs of different regions of the United States provided by the pioneering company Fairchild Aerial Surveys.'0 Bel Geddes and his staff meticulously studied the photographs to establish the scale and environmental effects of various geographic and urban elements as seen from an airOF ASCENSION IN NORMAN BEL GEDDES'S FUTURAMA 75

Figure 2 The Futuramamodel, with spectators on the conveyor belt above. Photographby Margaret Bourke-White Figure 3 Axonometric section of the General Motors Buildingshowing the conveyor path at various heights over the Futuramamodel

76

JSAH

/ 63:1,

MARCH

2004

plane. The designer also strucka deal with Eddie Rickenbacker,a veteranWorld War I pilot, to fly membersof his office over many areason the East Coast so that they could observethe sprawling geographybelow andtakenotes on its variousaspects."1 As the Futurama's conveyor belt moved the spectators along, changingaltitudesallowed close-up views of experimental farms,damsand power plants,universitycampuses, multilevel suspension bridges, and animated seven-lane continental highways filled with aerodynamic cars. The GeneralMotors exhibitionbrochuredescribedthe experience enthusiastically: "Come tour the futurewith General Motors! A transcontinentalflight over America in 1960. What will we see?What changeswill transpire? This magic Aladdin-likeflight through time and space is Norman Bel Geddes'sconceptionof the manywondersthatmay develop in the not-too-distant future. Now we have arrivedin this wonder world of 1960!"12 In the same pamphlet,Bel Geddes describedhis conveyor system, constructedby Westinghouse Elevator,as a surrogate "airplane eye" through which the Futurama appearedas "aspectaclethat unfolds a new kind of civilization in which industry, financeandlaborwill all find greater employment-a vision of new frontiersof progresswaiting to be conqueredby those who will pioneer aroundthe corner of tomorrow.""Bel Geddes self-consciouslyexploited the strategyof aerialviewing as the primarymeansto prove the superiorityof his own vision of utopia to the existing which seemingly sufferedfrom faultyplanning: paradigms, "As the spectator circles high above the city he is able to compare the congested, badly planned areasof the 1930's with the well-organized districts of the newer city."14 By virtue of his elevated position, the spectator grasped the coherence of Bel Geddes'sWorld of Tomorrow,which disclosed multiple scales simultaneously,with city blocks in proportional relation to a highway system as well as minutely observed, artificially controlled trees in glass domes. Was Bel Geddes'sutopia construedas a grandaerial epic, legible only to a heroic, flying spectator? Two issuesare at stakehere:on the one hand,Bel Geddes'snovel theatricaltechnique enthralledthe Futurama's spectators;on the other, it also suggested an active,participatory spectatorship, implicitly manifested in the triumphantpronouncementon the souvenirpin: "Ihave seen The "I"(the spectatorof the Futurama) the future." conveys the heroicizing subtext of the pronouncement and the phraseas a whole underscoresthe process of seeing, while drawingour attentionto the spectacleof the future.In other words, howthe futurewas seen had become as appealingas whatwas seen in it.
THE AESTHETICS

The emphasis on the display process rather than the exhibit itself was one of the guiding principlesof the 1939 fair.As the culturalhistorianWarrenSusmannoted: "The real genius of the exhibitorsat the Fair ... was their understandingthat the machine itself was not to be central,as it had been in all world'sfairssince 1851 and the traditionally Crystal Palace. Rather, they realized that in a consumercentered society people ended up more fascinated with process [of production]than with machines.""During the late 1930s, many corporationsrealized that the profitable way to drawpublic attention to their productswas to "put their factorieson displaythrough dioramas,workingmodand actualworkingexhibitsof segmentsof els, photomurals, their productionprocesses."'16The underlyingassumption was that in the age of mass consumerismthe public would take most interest not in the isolated finished product,but ratherin the efficiency of its manufacture. What appealed to people was how the product would both contribute to and neatly fit into the good life. The Futuramareflected this broadershift in strategiesof displayin the 1930s, serving in significantwaysas a shrewdcorporateadvertisement. When presenting his ideas for the exhibit to General Motors, Bel Geddes reiterated that his project was conceived as a "scientificand educational"panoramaviewed through the eyes of a spectator "as though he were in an airplane.""This notion initiated an immediate and sustainedconvergenceof mutualinterests.The GM executives could not fail to comprehendthe leverageof a displaytechnique in the guise of a simulated"flight"over the model of an American utopia in which their new line of sleek cars would playa pivotalrole.'8The aerialperspectiveofferedby the Futurama would, they assumed,grantspectatorsa synrole of a nationalhighwaysystemin shapof the view optic of Tomorrow, thereby guaranteeing a World the ing manifoldincreasein GM carsales. Furthermore,the Futuvirtuosoengineeringand bold aviationtheme would rama's lend credence to GM's commitment to the future. For his potential sucpart, Bel Geddes anticipatedthe Futurama's cess in terms of its theatrical production of an idealized future and, more important, its creation of an idealized spectator.19 Bel Geddes'ssimulatedairplaneview revealedas much about the contemporaryphenomenon of a culturallyvalorized aviatorhero as it did aboutthe utopialaid out below. The idea of an ascending figure who would usher in the World of Tomorrow was another of the fair's dominant themes, as attestedby the commemorativesilver tray (Figure 4). Nowhere was it more poignantlyexpressedthan in the Futurama,where the aestheticization of aerial vision exemplifieda new kind of aviatorhero who could be seen to
OF ASCENSION IN NORMAN BEL GEDDES'S FUTURAMA

77

Figure 4 A 1939 New YorkWorld's Faircommemorative silver tray, manufacturedby Everlast Metal Products Corporation

resemble the early-twentieth-century modernist planner, seeking to rebuild the world from his high perch of authority.20The aviator's aesthetic experience of altitude appealed to the encyclopedic ambition of the planner, particularly in light of modernism's prescription of rational and geometric reordering of the existing city as a panacea for urban and social pathologies. An investigation of the parallels between the aviator's godlike gaze and the modernist planner's authoritarian desire to survey the seemingly chaotic cities below, whose problems only he can remedy, sheds new light on the derogatory connotations that surround the cliche of "planning from above." The way that the Futurama spectator's experience of aerial viewing was enmeshed in broader conceptualizations of early-twentieth-century modernist visuality reveals the crucial presence of what could be called an "aesthetics of ascension" in the modernist imagination of the future city.21 The aesthetics of ascension suggests the modernist invocation of a new logic of looking at the world, which derived from the Enlightenment ideal of visual clarity. That logic, simply put, implied that if the viewer saw the total picture with all the linkages, separations, and relations among its various parts and components, then he or she would know how to order or even discipline that picture.22 Take, for example, the labyrinth: if the labyrinth's terror lies in its inescapable interiority, then rising aboveit allows one to collapse its meaning and to see its complex internal routes
78 JSAH / 63:1, MARCH 2004

resolve into a mere optical game.23As early-twentieth-century modernist artists, architects, and planners frequently noted, no one better epitomized the possessor of the modernist gaze than the aviator. Bel Geddes deployed this figure-masquerading as the Futurama's spectator-as one capable of reaching both the literal and conceptual vantage from which he could envision his utopia. But how does one transform utopian dreams-dreams that historically often originated in literary forms-into a three-dimensional exhibit, realizable in the near future, without losing the sense of its visionary character?24What type of spectatorship would lend credence to the utopia's buildability and yet retain a spectacularly oneiric and joyful quality? And what sort of scopic condition would not only reveal the utopia in its totality, but also reconstruct the spectator as surrogate of the utopia's creator poised above his invention? To achieve this complex set of objecFuturama's tives, Bel Geddes had his protagonist-the spectator-literally fly to an American utopia. The simulated voyage over the Futurama was intended to resolve the optical limitation of earthbound views and, more important, the philosophical problem of experiencing the utopia that, as an ideal condition, eludes us in reality. Since the turn of the twentieth century, writers of speculative fiction had already employed this type of voyage extraordinaire as a literary or graphic technique to transport a protagonist inside what Frank and Fritzie Manuel have called the geographically and historically problematic, shadowy boundaries of a utopia.25 Bert Smallways, the central character in Wells's novel The War in the Air (1908), for example, explores the futuristic city from the window of his "aircraft." The New York architect and illustrator Hugh Ferriss depicted utopia in his Metropolisof Tomorrow (1929) airthe of a often mysterious, solitary figure through eyes borne between the canyons of vertical cities (Figure 5). Shangri-la, the antimodern utopia depicted in Frank Capra's film Lost Horizon (1937) was reached, ironically, when an airplane crashed in an imagined vacuum of history and geography.26 Seeing the utopia-which perpetually eludes our epistemological boundaries-required, here as in the Futurama, an equally fictional mode of spectatorship. The Futurama, then, constructed a quintessentially modernist viewer who exercised the same idealistic and authoritarian gazes that fueled the early-twentieth-century planner's reformist dreams. The 1930s popular superhero theme--as represented especially by the American icon Superman--offers a useful historical and theoretical vantage from which to explore this phenomenon. By choosing the modern metropolis as the battleground on which to res-

The Aviator as a New Seer and Hero

The aviator as hero was a locusclassicus of the cultural impact of powered human flight in the early twentieth century.28 Cultural historian Robert Wohl has noted that such a depiction captured the popular imagination because it drew on a long masculinist tradition of mythological heroes "who had haunted (and delighted) the Western imagination for hundreds of years."29 Though Jacopo de' Barbari's woodcut View of Venice(1500) simulated a then-impossible aerial perspective of the illustrious city, and nineteenth-century balloonists like the photographer Nadar marveled at Paris from above, never before had the flying man as a new type of seer been so broadly embraced.30 As Anthony Vidler has explained, "What the rational intelligence had acquired in the way of knowledge by analysis, by comparison, by deduction, suddenly becomes a matter of total and firsthand experience for the eye.""31 Solitary in his monoplane, the aviator was the modernist trope par excellence representing a privileged view of the earth and was a catalyst for new models of aesthetic experimentation in literature, science fiction, and the arts during aviation's golden age.32 Robert Delaunay, Le Corbusier, Kazimir Malevich, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Liszl6 Moholy-Nagy, and Wells, in various ways, identified the aviator as the practitioner of the quintessentially modernist gaze." The aestheticization of the aviator'sview operated on two fronts simultaneously;it was an agent of discovery and utopian projection, offering not only the possibility (and associated excitement) of perceiving the world anew from a hitherto impossible and constantly shifting angle, but also an operational vantage point from which to envision vertical, expansive, and geometrically rationalized modernist spaces. On the one hand, it served as an optical method for acquiring and articulating knowledge about geographic forms, urban relationships, and architectural organizations. On the other, it embodied a powerful desire to fix what was thought to be a disordered world below. In his book Aircraft (193 5), Le Corbusier encapsulated this dual ambition: "To-day it is the question of the airplane eye, of the mind with which the Bird'sEye View has endowed us; of that eye which now looks with alarm at the places where we live .., it is as an architect and townplanner--and therefore as a man essentially occupied with the welfare of his species-that I let myself be carried off on the wings of an airplane .... By means of the airplane, we now have proof, recorded on the photographic plate, of the rightness of our desire to alter methods of architecture and townplanning."34 Aerial fantasies and their influence on architecture permeated modernist thinking since the advent of powered human flight.35As early as 1909, in the wake of the French aviator Louis Bldriot's first crossing of the English
OF ASCENSION IN NORMAN BEL GEDDES'S FUTURAMA

Figure 5 Hugh Ferriss, SkyscraperHangarin a Metropolis, ca. 1925

cue laissez-faire modernity from disastrous consequences, Superman and the modernist planner narrated remarkably similar stories of derring-do. Cultural historians view the superhero's rise (from the drudgeries of earthbound existence) as an allegory of escape from America's economic and social plight during the Depression; however, the notion of flight also produced heroic visions that conjured many urban utopias in the fields of city planning, literature, film, and science fiction during the 1920s and 1930s.27 The analysis of the Futurama and its viewing modes can reposition our understanding of interwar modernist visuality as one in which the aesthetics of ascension (and its associated revisions of culture, morality, and even evolution) played a central role.
THE AESTHETICS

79

HeinrichWo1fflin's studentFritz Channel,art historian

Wichert had eloquently anticipated a new dynamic relationship between the aviator'seye and architectural perception: The idea that we can fly has given many people occasion to imagine the consequences of the new discovery .... This fact promises to bringabout a formal revolutionin our architectural Ideas ... the roof of a house gains a totally new significance. We see it from a new angle, and it achieves the importance of a facade. Roofs become facades .... The consequence of this radicalchange will be that our gravitationalarchitecture, with its cornices, turrets, and rooflinefeatures, will seem absolutely senseless. . . . Architecture will then finally take up an absolutely contradictoryposition to all naturalgrowths, in that the last analogy of roots in the earth and organic development will collapse into nothingness.36 Although in hindsight they may seem like hyperbole, observations such as those by Le Corbusier and Wichert undergirded much of the rationale for utopian architecture and city planning after World War I, when the airplane came of age and became a ubiquitous symbol of both modernist high art and popular culture.37 At stake in all these projections was a new type of"aerialized" spectatorship and, consequently, the possibility of new modes of architectural and urbanistic imagination. The fantastic idea that the view from above would somehow

Edward Steichen, who went to Europe as the commander of the aerial photographic division of the U.S. Expeditionary Force during World War I, played a pioneering role during the postwar period in promoting aerial photography as high art.39The rapid growth of sophisticated cameras designed for aerial photography ushered in new and efficient methods of surveying geography, topography, agricultural production, and urban organisms and their evolutionary patterns.40 Publications, both practical and speculative, on the contributions of aerial survey to the analysis of terrain features, mapmaking, and the demarcation of government jurisdiction over land areas abounded during the 1920s and 1930s.41 In an optimistic article of 1927, Sherman Fairchild, the innovative founder of the New York-based Fairchild Aerial Camera Corporation, speculated about the potential uses of aerial mapping, ranging from agricultural forecasting and real-estate value assessment to the upgrading of urban infrastructure. With the "single glance" from an airplane, Fairchild posited, "the city planning and zoning departments can do their work more rapidly and intelligently, because all factors pertaining to their particular problems are registered photographically and to scale, covering the entire city."42Fairchild's confidence in the aviator's "single glance" resolving a wide range of mapping problems was part of a broader fascination with the aviator as a cultural protagonist. The Fairchild Aerial Camera Corporation's 1924 aerial mapping of the five boroughs of New York City signaled the emergence not only of aerial documentation of cities as a full-fledged mapping industry, but also of a lucrative mass market for aerial photographs of urban spaces familiar at ground level. Cities and their architectural landmarks became favorite subjects for aerial photographers, feeding a burgeoning public desire to view (and review) urban spaces and their markers from the aviator's vantage. Companies and agencies specializing in aerial photography, such as Fairchild, Curtiss Flying Services, the U.S. Army Air Service, and the U.S. Navy, frequently supplied aerial photographs of cityscapes and landmarks to such journals as Aerial Age Weekly, Air Travel News, American City Magazine, Aviator, Craftsmen Aero News, Flying, National Geographic Magazine, and Scientific American. In one instance, the cover page of a 1920 issue ofAerialAge Weekly carried a Fairchild photograph showing a segment of what was described in the caption as Manhattan's "airscape" (Figure 7). Aerial photographs in popular aviation, science, and city design magazines were frequently accompanied by laudatory essays on the contributions of the aviator'sview in planning ideal cities. Despite their scientific pretensions,

facilitatethe processof designingthe ideal futurecity

became an enduring fascination among utopian architects, planners, and science-fiction writers. The populist artist Julian Krupa's 1939 depiction "Cities of Tomorrow," published in Amazing Stories (America's first science-fiction magazine) offers a case in point (Figure 6). The city of tomorrow, Amazing Stories prophesied, would consist of an idyllic, vertically stratified urbanscape in which "dwellers and workers ... may go weeks without setting foot on the ground, or the ground level." What was striking in Krupa's image, however, was the angle from which the city was viewed. The artist's airborne gaze, replicating that of the city's flying citizenry, seemed most effective for representing the "vertical panorama" of the city of tomorrow.38 If a gaze from above presumably became indispensable for representing the spatial qualities of the city of tomorrow, did that gaze preempt the artist's imagination? In other words, how do we problematize the aviator's eye as the embodiment of the modernist planner's concomitant double desires-to discover and to imagine? As a material extension of the aviator'sview, aerial photography provides a useful context with which to explicate this phenomenon. The famed American photographer
80 JSAH / 63:1, MARCH 2004

u?i ~-~

Figure 6 Julian Krupa,"Cities of Tomorrow," back cover of Amazing Stories (Aug. 1939)
.:? ,i

Jrgl%

f
r: wi;!

es

od

?:;

`i

iP7;1~ /? . :: _i:l?? -:I

-;-:?-:I:: ?? B~:8 -:

?:.

i.
~:::::?_:.. I-? ::)' -i-.::: i :~,'?.CTlitll 'i;?? of She :: i DC i;:~::r,:::: :::n

; f~~lll~t:lt~is'~i~"~b~:~6~?i~~ ii: i 2?i. ~-~ ~::r::::':c? ?a~sg~8?aaisa ~ ,:i I i: i _$~~::IE:~?~BPBi:~L~liit ~B~i

:-;rge : :~-

:\l:L~j^.::i.l; ???i?:--:~:::;::I:i i:? i i ;i cj:-. = :?-,? ;1..

iii i
:i .. ii.: ~ut si;iin? :..i'i:;::::::-' :;'j,.? grt)ti:'i:::-

I;

i elliniT.:11 :?~::: i :.;Ci;l-,.?`? j-j ::::: :I::I`,`::-:f:^J. ..li.:f rr; ;i

i:. i:
81:a~J~~f~~~T~t~j :lj; rj IC II

""?:~:~ ?? ?-n

i:?;:B-F

::: :g~:":e :la~::: ~8: :?i:i:::::~ L~e~:~'' 4s~

a a,::-;-_?? ~::: : B:::::: I :"::':`:: ::\ T-c`:l:g"?:a "i ?2:?-_:i:i :-;:,?:: ??;?-?j?ri "i" *kl~-~il??:

these texts were often tinged with a moralistic belief that the view from abovewould not only broadenhumanvision for more enlightenedliving,but also, in one way or another, These help remedy all physicalas well as social disorder.43 ratherextravagant contributed to the cultural conportents structionof a Prometheanseer.As the city below shrankto miniaturescale, its disparateurbanelements subsumedin a wholesome picture and its spatialdevelopmentsappearing like layers in a historical palimpsest, the aviator'scommandingview became closely allied with a sense of scopic empowerment. It is with a "marvelousmitigation of altitude,"as RolandBarthesproposed,thatthe aerialeye grants "anincomparable power of intellection,"that is, the ability
THE AESTHETICS

to see the inner logic of a trans-historical The formation.44 for to a new sensiBarthes, "corresponds bird's-eyeview, bility of vision;in the past,to travel.., was to be thrustinto the midst of sensation,to perceive only a kind of tidalwave of things;the bird's-eye view, on the contrary, permitsus to transcend sensation and to see things in theirstructure."45 Was seeing things in their structureintrinsicto the optical unconsciousof the aviator? This notion of the unconscious could hardlybe separated from the evolutionaryideologies circulatingduring the early decadesof the twentieth century.If seeing from a higher stratumdenoted a more advancedform of intellection, it also signified, in one way or another, a tribute to
OF ASCENSION IN NORMAN BEL GEDDES'S FUTURAMA

81

Figure 7 An "airscape"of Manhattan,cover of AerialAge Weekly(13 Sept. 1920)

:?, >.

ii!

VIT

Vo 2

SEPTEMIBER 131 1920

;:*:::

; '

10 CENTS A COPY =
:?WON .. ...

4N,~
?r;

pm

8k~

;7:

Hotoland the Park Strcvt, And 5?vwing Faac~~rfKifth Avvrnue Fifly-nintLh PlB~za Centrnirral South~f
T
*,111 0% 111

nt

panb-d

Ael-lal

ma''.

Darwin's theory of evolution concerning the progress of species. In ascending above the common folk and seeing what they could not, the aviator took on a superhuman cast, becoming a godlike voyeur of the earth who seemingly had trekked along a longer evolutionary path than most homo sapiens. Distilled from Social Darwinism, popular utopianism, and Nietzsche's idea of the Ubermensch,the eugenicist concept of the New Man had already gained wide currency in modernist thinking by the early 1920s.46 Aided by then-novel technologies, physically evolved, and standing on a high moral ground, the New Man was projected as the harbinger of a future Western industrial society. With
82 JSAH / 63:1, MARCH 2004

all its loaded associations of transcendence, evolutionary advancement, and optical power, the ascending body of the aviator offered the modernists an appealing mold from which to cast the New Man. Witness the example of the American aviator Charles Lindbergh, whose aerial heroics fascinated modernist artists and designers, including Bel Geddes (who received from Lindbergh a signed copy of his autobiography as a gift).47 Lindbergh's maiden transatlantic flight in 1927 drew widespread public and media attention on both sides of the ocean. Almost overnight, Lindbergh became a cult figure and was chosen as Time magazine's Man of the Yearin 1927. While it

representedmankind's victory over physicalbarriers,Lindalso bergh'sflight symbolized the ascendancyof the ideal Americantype.48As John Wardwrote in "The Meaning of Lindbergh's Flight,""Lindbergh gavethe American people a of what liked to think themselves be at a time to glimpse they when they fearedtheyhaddeserted theirown visionof themselves. ... The wild medleyof publicacclaimandthe homeric strivingsof editorsmakeone realizethat the responseto Lindbergh involved a mass ritual in which America celebrateditself more than it celebratedLindbergh."49 A critical look at what appeared to be a masscelebrationof the aviator in an eraof unbridledoptimismrevealsa startlingsocialsentiment. Slender,alone, indomitable,and apparently without materialistic in his any goals pursuit,Lindberghcrystallized the imageof the New Man:revoltingagainstgravity by sheer physicalprowess,with eyes fixed,as it were, on nothing but the future."0The New Man soared while the ordinary gawkedat him with awe. It was hardly a coincidence that the 1930s witnessed the arrivalof popular American icons-Superman, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon-who were all flying heroes, creaturesendowed with a moralisticGod's-eyeview of the Equippedwith the then-fantastical abilityto fly at world."S will, they navigatedthe crevassesof verticalmetropolisesor galactic colonies and policed the boundariesof good and evil. George BernardShaw'sterm of 1905, "superman" (a translationof Nietzsche's Ubermensch), was frequentlyused during the 1910s and 1920s in popular aviation and city design magazinesto describethe aviator-well before DC Comics coopted the term for their hero, in 1938. Wells's science-fictionnovels, such asMenLikeGods (1923) and The

August

gEgy

IT

Figure 8 FrankPaul, "FlyingMan," cover of Amazing Stories (Aug. 1929)

man.'... As a comic book hero, Supermanis nothing less than a rocket ship in humanform, a man of steel able to fly toCome science-fic- by sheer will power anywherein the universeand equipped (1933),or suchpopular Shape ofThings tion magazines as Amazing Storiesand Air Wonder Stories with X-ray vision and all kinds of internal Star Wars the consciousness of with the In other words, the flying man, the aviator, frequentlyequated flight pos- weaponry.""4 of a new breed of ethereal and sibility supermoral beings (FigSupermanwere pop equivalentsof a philosophicalsysure 8).52 One of Wells'searliestessays-"The Adventof the tem of future-gazing. The aviatorepitomizeda type of specFlying Man, An Inevitable Occurrence,"published in the tatorshipthat conjuredthe possibilityof imaginingan ideal new categoriesof aesthetic PallMall Gazette (December 1893)-had alreadypostulated futureas well as conceptualizing a triangularrelationshipbetween the "flyingman,"evolu- practices.Such practicesanimatedthe interwarculture of tionary principles, and utopian (and dystopian) imagina- envisioningutopias,including the Futurama. tion.53For Wells, the ape and the "flyingman"represented two extremesin the evolutionarycontinuum:one primitive Bel Geddes and the Aesthetics of Ascension andthe otherhighly advanced. To thinkof the "flyingman," litthen, was to hypothesizean evolutionarylimit, a hypothet- Bel Geddes'sinterestin ascension-orientedavant-garde ical condition that also allowed a glimpse into what was erature is confirmed by the presence of specific booksbeyond our lived experience.As the science-fiction writer such as those by Ferriss, Le Corbusier, Marinetti, and criticThomas Disch notes: "The anxietiesprovokedby Moholy-Nagy, Nietzsche, and Wells-in his personal Darwiniannature,in which mankindis only a superiorkind library." In his own book Horizons(1932), Bel Geddes of ape, are dispelled by the vistas of outer space, through viewed the phenomenon of flight in at least two divergent which whilom ape can soar in his new aspect as a 'super- ways. First, he embracedthe concept of the aerialvehicle's
THE AESTHETICS OF ASCENSION IN NORMAN BEL GEDDES'S FUTURAMA 83

presenting "the same organic problems in terms of design as do architecture, sculpture, and literature."56Second, the flying machine was at the apex of the modern industrial society with its ability to widen the "horizon that [would] inspire the next phase in the evolution of the age."57The first concept implied that the airplane was the consummate expression of the modern era because "the latest generation has been born to the air, as others of us have been born to the railroad, steamship and automobile.""8Like many of his contemporaries, Bel Geddes viewed the airplane's aerodynamic design as the fulfillment of the modernist dreams of functionality and aesthetic clarity: How out of place the moldings and gadgets that we see on our automobile would appear if we saw them on an airplane!When the airplane was developed, it was an all new problem. Its requirements were such that it never occurred to any one to base its design principles on, for Instance, a carriage with wings. One may say that when the design of an object is in keeping with the purpose it serves, it appeals to us as having a distinctive kindof beauty. That is why we are impressed by the stirringbeauty of airplanes.The underlyingprincipleof the emotional response that the airplanestirs in us would seem to be the same as that which accounts for the emotional effect of the finest architecture-the form, proportion, and color best suited to that object's purpose.59 In a curious parallel to Le Corbusier's earlier analogy, Bel Geddes's juxtaposition of the rose window of Rheims Cathedral and an airplane motor sought to demonstrate that an aesthetic 6lan propels all great human endeavorsfrom antiquity to the modern era-toward functional and aesthetic perfection.60 In Art and the Machine (1936), art historian Sheldon Cheney, Bel Geddes's close friend, included images of airplane motors with the same theoretical premise and endorsed them as "abstract compositions arrived at without [the] benefit of [an] artist."61 According to Bel Geddes, Cheney, and others, the airplane's aerodynamic formwhich met its specific functional needs so effectively that it took flight-proffered a crucial site for a multitude of earlytwentieth-century modernist attempts to correlate aesthetic development with human evolution.62 Aesthetic phenomena, they reasoned, evolved parallel to human development and, therefore, the finest aesthetic expression would be the one that reflected the most advanced condition of the human species. In this sense, the airplane with its aerodynamic, streamlined form was, like the perfect man, the epitome of its species, the result of natural selection. Bel Geddes's colleague, the industrial designer Raymond Loewy, presented an "evolution chart of design" in 1930
84 JSAH / 63:1, MARCH 2004

that put both humans and transportation machines (including the airplane) in the same quasi-Darwinian evolutionary ladder, arguing that the most functional and aesthetic machine, like its human counterpart, reflected nothing but its inexorable evolutionary climax (Figure 9).63As the culmination of functional and aesthetic perfectibility, the airplane symbolized the most evolved man: the genius artist or a sort of superman, who blazed the evolutionary trail so far ahead of the rest that he resembled a flying machine in human form, a phantasmagoric hybrid aptly evoked by the familiar DC Comics exclamation, "It's a bird, it's a plane . . . it's Superman." The airplane, for Bel Geddes, was more than a mechanical analog to the evolved body, which shared its functional and aesthetic superiority.64It was also the signifier of a visual field expanded by a new "horizon," to which the title of Bel Geddes's 1932 book alludes. Such a visual field, Bel Geddes added, enabled modern artists to "[batter] down the limitations of the new materials and ideas of When the horizon limits one's vision, a pertheir time."''65 son, Bel Geddes claimed, "is too likely to be influenced in a transaction by the immediate consequences than to see it in perspective as a part of his life as a whole."66 Against this claustrophobic experience of "immediate consequences," the designer explained an aesthetics of ascension: "Standing on the shore of the ocean and looking out to sea, his [the artist's] horizon is two and one half miles away. Leaning on the rail of the promenade deck of an ocean liner and looking out to sea, the horizon is eight miles away. If he climbs to the crows' nest, his horizon has increased more than six times what it was when he stood on shore."67 A widening horizon, in Bel Geddes's formulation, was the primary attribute of the visionary artist-or the Man of Tomorrow-whose functional and aesthetic design would help bring about an efficient society.68Ascending to a higher consciousness would endow the Man of Tomorrow with clairvoyant faculties.69 Climbing to the crows' nest-an apt analogy for the airplane's trajectory-could then be viewed as a doubly operative metaphor for the Man of Tomorrow, simultaneously scaling the evolutionary ladder and leveling a commanding gaze at the future. It seemed natural that Bel Geddes would view his own design in the idealized image of the Man of Tomorrow. His interest in flight exploited the dual symbolism embedded in the concept of the Man of Tomorrow: an advanced evolutionary condition predicated on new forms of seeing, and vice versa.70But he also expanded this dual symbolism into the broader theoretical concerns of his spatial designs as well as the social progress they foretold. In this context, three designs by Bel Geddes are particularly important: a

EVOLUTION CHART OF DESIGN-

1930

rrgou
'?-

-~

0,00

L" U
p?

'1u

120 0400741ooo &7 1

/1~

''1

7-A

% ?W& TTQ

22VZ02~

r'1

2';L

__________ ________~_~

____

Figure 9 Raymond Loewy, "EvolutionChartof Design-i 930"

transoceanic airplane called the Air Liner Number 4; an and the eating establishmentnamed the AerialRestaurant; City of Tomorrow,an advertisingcampaignfor the Shell Oil Company.As I shall explain,the theoreticallessons Bel Geddes learned from these projects informed to a great extent his conceptualizationof the Futurama. In 1927,the yearLindberghflew acrossthe Atlantic,Bel Geddesabandoned theaterdesignto pursuea careerin indusTHE AESTHETICS

trial design. Within two years, he tackled the problem of transatlantic flighton a grandscalefromthe viewpointof luxury travel.With the technicalhelp of the New York-based Germanaeronautical engineerOtto Koller,he designedthe Air LinerNumber 4, an undertaking thatdealtwith a host of from basic aerodynamicprinciplesand challenging issues, interiorarrangement to broader questionsof spatial designin terms (Figure 10).71 The craft'sshape and capacity "avian" were impressive:a V-winged leviathanaerialvessel with a for 606 wingspanof 528 feet and sleeping accommodations The betweenBel Gedpersons. professional correspondence des and Koller revealsthat Bel Geddes, despite his lack of wasseriousaboutbuildprofessional trainingin aeronautics, the Air Liner Number 4 and the necessary coring procuring Of in wake of the 1929 stock poratesponsorship.72 course, the marketcrash,no corporate promiseloomed on the horizon, but Bel Geddessteadfastly held on to his fantasyproject.His interestin aeronautics firedby somethingmore was,however, than an aspiringindustrialdesigner's longing to producean airplane.Following in the footstepsof some of the contemporarymodernistdesignershe venerated,such as Le Corbusier, Erich Mendelsohn, and Bruno Taut, Bel Geddes viewed aeronautical design as a protractedinquiryinto the fundamentals of aestheticphilosophy. The architecture of the Air Liner Number 4 addressed the issuesof compactplanning,efficientspatialdistribution, and avian formal expression.Inside, it featureda compact nine-story architecturalhoneycomb that provided all the amenities of a modern hotel: a three-story-high atrium located at the front and center of the plane, flanked by a windows that ran promenadewith large shatterproof-glass the entire length of the main wing. The layout of the multiple dining rooms, dance floors, cocktaillounges, a recreation deck with tennis courts, a gymnasium,a solarium,a a verandacaf6,androws of privatesuitesrevealedits library, spectacularspatialprogram. In one way or another,the Air Liner Number 4 represented Bel Geddes's conception of an energy-efficient, smoothly functioning, self-sufficient city-a utopia that heightened the drama of its autonomy by literally taking the Air Liner Number 4 flight. By aerializingarchitecture, instantiated a conceptual shiftthat,asPaulVirilioput it, tilted the concept of architectureout of its age-old gravitational Bel Geddes's aeronauticsproduced the illusion of axis."73 to the ground. architecture freedfromits organicrelationship If the earthwasthe foundation of architectonic knowledgesymbolized by the post-and-lintel spatial coordination of Marc-AntoineLaugier'sprimitivehut-then Bel Geddes's Air Liner Number 4 moved into a categoryof architecture for which earthwas now literallya recedingmemory.74
OF ASCENSION IN NORMAN BEL GEDDES'S FUTURAMA 85

Figure 10 NormanGel Geddes and Otto AirLinerNumber4 Koller,

Many early-twentieth-centuryavant-gardedesigners viewed architectureas havingbeen perpetuallycondemned to heavinessand being rooted to the ground.The discourse of lightnessthatpermeateddesignthinkingofferedan alternativelogic of spatialmodulation." Lightness did not simstructuresless heavy;rather, ply mean makingarchitectural it signifiedfindingnew waysof conceivingthe form/ground relationshipthrough a visual representationof antigravity. If gravitywas a euphemism for dependence, tradition, or even history,then conqueringit implieda triumphof autonomy, individualism, and the future. Observing the Perisphere and the Trylon-two daring realizations of the concept of "hovering"architecturein the 1939 New York World's Fair's theme complex-the Russian avant-garde artist El Lissitzkycommented:"The liberatingof foundations from being tied to the earth goes even further and demandsthe conquest over gravityitself. It demandsfloatEmbodying ing bodies, a physico-dynamicarchitecture."76 architecture while dispensingwith the tenets of "hovering" habitualdependenceon the ground,Bel Gedarchitecture's des'sAir Liner Number 4 equated antigravitywith a sense of heroic ascension. was Bel Geddes's1929 proposalfor an aerialrestaurant similarin this respect. Designed for the 1933-34 Chicago World'sFair(andnot builtfor functionaland economicreasons), the project presentedwhat could be called an avian reinterpretationof architecturalform (Figure 11).77 Sus86 JSAH / 63:1, MARCH 2004

and floatingatop a 278-foot-highverpended,cantilevered, revealedarchitecture's tical shaft,the triple-deckrestaurant with the earth. The Aerial Restaurebaptizedrelationship rant'sarchitectureappearedbirdlike,simulatingflight and separatingitself from the "nativeground"-to use Martin Heidegger's term-or from an originary ground "on If Heidegger'searth which . . . man bases his dwelling."78 and a primal ground that signifies stable, immovable, anchors and orients architecture within the coordinate visual field of our upright posture, the Aerial Restaurant's architectural typology defies the earth's significance. Despite being supportedby a shaft on a low, three-tiered base, the AerialRestaurant appearedto take flight, providthe hero'sescape from earthbound another allusion to ing limitations.79 The sameyear Bel Geddes designedthe AerialRestaurant,FrankPaul,an architectandwell-knownscience-fiction Storieswith a illustrator,illustrateda cover of Air Wonder in Air" While scientificfanthe speculative "City (Figure12). Paul's airborne remained its city brought guidingforce, tasy to the fore a trademark fascination-beyond the funniesand a reconstruction pulp fiction-with aerializedarchitecture, of the ascending human body itself.80If gravity oriented in certaintelluricspatialrelationships, then the architecture AerialRestaurant disclosed City in the Air and Bel Geddes's as well as its the possibilitiesof reconfiguringarchitecture, within a new type of visualfield. inhabitants,

& ,,.. L N|,,N.S.E.

PI WRITvPUL I ? YOUCANOWERSTND N
....... .......

ICS

W.R)^TTEN

00UOG

CA

JltrDERTN5

T';

HIM

Z 3

al.

WANTED-

VA
i;i

'NY

er

",I

x`

asip

~~8~p?~~~?'p

SEEJ

Figure 11 AerialRestaurant,cover of PopularMechanics (July 1930)

Figure 12 FrankPaul, "Cityin the Air,"cover of Air WonderStories (Nov. 1929)

By offering an "aeroplaneview"--as the news media the lake,and the city at large, dubbedit-of the fairground, Bel Geddes'sAerialRestaurant probed the theoreticallimmade restaurant its of this new visualfield.As the triple-deck a completerevolutioneverythirtyminutes,the patronswere treatedto a 360-degreevista,a noveltyextolledby the architects Harvey Corbett and Raymond Hood during the Commission's reviewof ChicagoWorld'sFairArchitectural the project.81 Bel Geddes himself highlighted the rotating aerial view in the Chicago Daily News: "I think this aerial restaurant is practicable, beautiful and worth while for Chicago to have, if for no other reasonthan to give its visitors a beautiful view of the city during the course of a The significanceof such a view beyond the lure of meal."82 commerceand entertainment,however,must be pondered. patrons to an altitude of 278 By elevating the restaurant's Bel Geddes to feet, sought providethem with a grandaerial
THE AESTHETICS

view of the fairground's"masterplan" that expressedthe In other words, an progressiveideals of the Chicago fair.83 expansivevista was intended to create an optical analog of the fair'spropheciesof progress,by visualizingthem in an ordered,axial,and functionalgroundplan. Bel Geddes'sflirtationwith the exaltedviewpointfrom above found a systematic testing ground in the City of Tomorrow(1936-37).84 At the behestof Shell Oil Company, Bel Geddes began developingideas for a metropolisof the The contractwith Shell requiredhim to producea future.8" scale model (eventually to be photographed for a Shell advertisement) depictingthe pivotalrole of interstatehighin way systems the City of Tomorrow.Bel Geddes characteristically commandeered the ad campaign to look far beyond the corporatevision of "thetrafficconditionsof the future"and flesh out his own ideas for an Americanutopia basedon mobility,efficiency, hygiene,andan aestheticvision
OF ASCENSION IN NORMAN BEL GEDDES'S FUTURAMA

87

Figure 13 NormanBel Geddes, Cityof Tomorrowmodel, aerialview

befitting the machine age. He produced an intricate model, triangular in plan, with each of its six-foot sides approximately the width of Manhattan in scale. Drawing on the urban circulation proposals of Corbett, Ferriss, Le Corbusier, and others, Bel Geddes's project offered a vision of multilevel urban circulation through a skyscraper city.86 What makes Bel Geddes's proposal intriguing, however, is its filtration through another layer of representation: the photographic medium. From the beginning, Bel Geddes conceived the scale model for the City of Tomorrow as though it were viewed through the camera lens. The
88 JSAH / 63:1, MARCH 2004

city's photogenic qualities, as seen from the air, became the project's overriding consideration. The model was photographed in an empty warehouse so that a camera could maneuver freely above it in a replication of Bel Geddes's own heroic vantage as he gazed down at the City of Tomorrow.87Peering down from a high platform or acrobatically perched at the top of a stepladder, Richard Garrison, a commercial photographer who knew Bel Geddes's penchant for showmanship and spectacle, created from the model a series of sublime utopian views (Figure 13). Smoke bombs created the illusion of urban haze as well as clouds, which

Figure 14 Bel Geddes, "chess player"

would testify to the camera'ssupposed airborne position. FromJuly to November 1937, such well-circulatedmagazines as Lifeand the Saturday EveningPostcarriedthe Shell advertisement,presenting Bel Geddes'sCity of Tomorrow Garrison'shovering accompaniedby ebullient captions.88 camera persuasively captured Bel Geddes's godlike gaze seeking to solve the entire gamut of urbanproblems. During the course of the model's construction, the designer utitlized a set of variously sized rectangular wooden blocks to represent skyscrapers, moving them aroundfrom abovelike a chess playerintent on winning his game (Figure 14). A year later, in 1938, when working on the more ambitiousFuturama project,Bel Geddes wrote to his wife about his quasi-divine experience of "walking aroundwith pockets and handsfull of skyscrapers" and laying them out for a "whole effect"from a bird's-eyeview.89 In her reply, his wife wished she had seen him "playing god ... plunking down skyscraperswhere you want and Behind this heightened spendingmillions as you choose."90 dramaof "playingGod" lurked a persistent and enabling sense of self-aggrandizement thatpropelledmodernistplanners' imaginations.
THE AESTHETICS

The Futurama's Spectator as a SupermanPlanner

Bel Geddes's idealization of the Man of Tomorrow, "playing God" in materializing the ideal world of the Futurama, was logically analogous to that of a contemporaneous aviating pop-hero: Superman. A worthy successor to Lindbergh, Superman entered the American popular imagination at the same time that the Futurama was being conceived. Superman was in fact an integral part of the 1939 New York World's Fair's popular iconography.91 He graced the covers of both issues of World'sFair Comicsand made his first public cameo (played by actor Ray Middleton) as part of the fair's Superman Day. Superman, who is "able to leap tall buildings in a single bound," invariably resides in, or flies above, the metropolis. Equipped with a magisterial gaze and X-ray vision, he negotiates increasingly complex urban spaces that expand both vertically and horizontally.92 As a ubiquitous metropolitan performer, Superman became a towering monument to the modern city itself. In fact, it was against the foil of the Depression-when distrust of the establishment permeated all walks of life and the old social verities no longer
OF ASCENSION IN NORMAN BEL GEDDES'S FUTURAMA 89

A NEW MENACE I -A sQuADRoN OrF AERIALWIN* "To THE ATTACK,< 9OMPS

<UPERMAN

sTRUsJGLING wITH HUGe EIFOCE WHICHREFUSES tM FALL WH-EN. .

rs

/o669N IT
COO ARL' TO 81AST HIM THE FACE ,OFF 1
-

ITr'

r-r WHitrATs pRO

WON'Tr--

\OMEERS/!

L ToFHE EARF.

THE STREETS, NIMILY, tE EACES TMPu EXPIoSS DDoGIN HIS FOOTSTEPS AS

TrhE FRANTIc AVIATORS TO P~RIEwLY EUTMINATmE SEEK HMi . DES. .

onsRUPmyY SUPERmHAN VANISHES FROM W6OT. E8bHIrNDHIM HE LEAVES WHAT FORMEIRLYWNRe "lE SLUMS, BUT NOW. SLk A sAaLE

kVP uP, tH AT WHs RArTE a JrLL Br FINISHED SooNER THAN I EXPIECTiSA.WrrH , 0YUR ASSS TANCEr

rr gIoyF s

THE NEXT WEERS, THE WRECKAW6E D)URITNG Is CLEAREDC SULIADS COMMENclt EHEFR-ENClY ERECTING L&UGE APARrTMENTIN THE SLUMS ARE PRCECTS.. AN0D TIME REPLACEDo By SPLENOID
HU4OUSIN6 CtlNoNDTOrro

W IT4HINTH1E POLICECHIEIS OFFICE ... CHIEF BURKE I INTERVIEWED BY CLAk R

YOU CAN TELL YOUR READERS THAT WELL SPARE NO I-F FORT TO APPREIHENCD SUPERMA A/ - - BUT OFF THE RECOKRA,... THJIN< HE DID A SPtENDfI THING AND)

0T

YOu 4-Oyw, C)4;ir -STRAN$rLy I FwEL HaOUeH, QE S&AHEWAy!

a)D , ?UUrEF -514AN~

HA

Tw

ENND

"ACQUIRING SUPER- STRENGTH "

S

SUPE.RV/l.OcN AN Tl EXERCIFE ACQUIRE UNUSUAL VISWoNIS AS FOLLOWS :

A ,

l(4-4 A/

oAp-FT GILANCE AT A 1ISrANT OCJECT

SETHN GLANCE AT A CLOPT - R PitEPEAT0PJr)G QOEV6IJPEc

.=.

Figure 15 Superman as a modernist planner,Action Comics (Jan. 1939)

90

JSAH / 63:1, MARCH 2004

Figure 16 Modernist planners (at table, left to right)HarveyWiley Corbett, Raymond Hood, John R. Todd,Andrew Reinhard,and Dr.J. M. Toddfixing the future city

held sway-that the concept of an Americanhero shifted from the rugged frontiersmanof the nineteenth century, such as the folk figures Davy Crockett and Mike Fink, to the urbanoperative,such as Superman.93 Insteadof yanking the tree with bare hands or crossing the river in a single stride, heroes like Supermanare almost always seen correcting urbanproblemsand pursuingthugs with the aid of their lofty vantage point, as well as navigating the secret in a 1939 issue alleysof tenementsand offices.Interestingly, of ActionComics, Supermaneven personifiesthe modernist planner(Figure 15). Convincedthat congested,squalid,and disorderlytenements spawn juvenile delinquency,Superman destroys an entire slum to force the government to build ultramodernlow-cost housing!94Superheroeswere not just watching the world from on high. They also gravitated towardit and cured its ills. The omniscient downwardgaze on the futurist city, offereda metonymicimage of the analogousto Superman's, modernistplannerhimself,intent on rectifyingthe physical as well as socialdisorderbelow.Such an analogyseems plausible because both the modernist planner and Superman steadfastlysaw their own heroismas contingent on mastering and reshaping the modern metropolis.95In evoking these popular manifestationsof fictional urban amelioration, we confrontthe issue of whetherthe Futurama's spectator might also epitomize similar superheroicambitions. Was Bel Geddes'sconveyorbelt in the Futuramaan assembly line for mass-producingSupermen?Against the backdrop of the exhibit's heady conjecture of an exuberantly
THE AESTHETICS

sanitizedworld, the viewer in his or her mobile aerie looking down on an Americanutopia evoked a familiarimage in which Supermanglides over his embattled metropolis intent on restoring order,or the modernistplannerfixates his self-righteouseyes on his model of the futurecity (Figure 16). In the chiaroscurointerior of the Futuramashow, the spectator summoned the image of a superhero, who appearedconvincing as the builderas well as the guardian came Just as superheroesoccasionally angel of that utopia.96 down to the earth to rectify its faults, at the end of their eighteen-minute ride, the Futurama visitors likewise descendedtowardthe heartof the futurecity (Figure 17).In one way or another, "the exit into the world of tomorrow"-as Bel Geddes put it-was the heroic finale of the Futurama'svoyageextraordinaire. Whereas on arrivalthe a life-size, spectatorsexperiencedonly verticallystratified traffic intersection (filled, not surprisingly,with General Motors cars),the sense of "arrival" itself ralliedtheir esprit de corps behind Bel Geddes'sutopian ambition:to achieve the perfect World of Tomorrowas early as 1960. It was as if this realm awaitedthe hero'striumphalhomecoming in order to experienceits own magicalbirth.97 "The hero is the true subjectof modernism,"claimed WalterBenjamin,and the idea of an architect-hero, seeking to redeem a fallen world from the heights of authorityhe has claimed, has been an enduringmodernistmyth.98 The modernistplanner's eyes filteredthe messyworldbelowinto a utopiansimplicity,affordinghim the illusionthathe could first impose a neat physicalorder-"un espace propre,"to
OF ASCENSION IN NORMAN BEL GEDDES'S FUTURAMA 91

view of a street intersection inthe Futurama model, Figure17 Aerial MotorsBuilding showingthe General

matics of the Ville Contemporainesignified not only the literalembodimentof the modernistplanner's gaze, but also a magical unveiling of an impending state of infinite progress, harmony, and happiness. Hovering over the giganticmodel of the Futurama, spectatorsoccupieda position fraught with similar projections:they emblematized the heroic viewpoint of the modernistplannerand mimicked the descent he makesto applyhis Midas touch. For Bel Geddes, the "above"denoted the exclusive domain of society'selite, the ruling regime, as well as the upper echelon of planners,who often viewed the world as a diagramand privilegedthe spatialblueprintof a unified development over indigenous human intervention from below. The realm of the above, as de Certeau put it, was detached from the "ordinary practitioners" steeped in the of the In pathologies ground.102 significantways, Bel Geddes's creation was self-referential,a sort of auto-construction. In the Futurama's he attempteda narcissistic spectator, (mass) reconstructionof his own self: the Man of TomorIn other row, the visionaryplannerof an ideal America.103 Bel Geddes's words, trompe-l'oeil choreography of an Americanutopia also included an idealized spectatorwho was conceivedto play a cavaliercharacter similarto the one Bel Geddes himself assumedin shapingit. Did Bel Geddes merely lend his visionarycapacityto the spectator?It was, in any case, through his master-planner eyes that the Futuramaspectatorwitnessedthe harnessingof all Americainto a manmade Elysium. Consider, for instance, this official Futuramapublicity:
With the imaginationof a practicaldesigner, the shape of the new world is spread out before you. Mother earth is the same, of course, as to mountains and valleys, and the streams that go down to the seas. But here and there are evidences of how she has been harnessed and made to do man's work so as to increase his wealth, add to his comfort and give him more leisure. Great water projects, flood control stations, terrace lands to prevent erosion and intensified farming under glass. And connecting all this is the Norman Bel Geddes Motorway,a system of shining threads stretching across the continent.104

cite Michel de Certeau-on the world and effect an ideal The modernist apologists of the early twentieth society.99 century consistentlychampionedthe visionaryarchitectas a sort of secularizedGod-most famouslyimmortalizedin (1943)-able to bring Ayn Rand'snovel The Fountainhead The same year about a veritable paradisein this world.100 the Futuramaforetold the advent of the World of Tomorrow, Sigfried Giedion theorized modern architecture's A new millengrandaspirationsin eschatologicalterms.101 nium was dawning, Giedion claimed, one that manifested itself throughthe visualculminationof a functional,socially beneficial, and universal architecture. Lurking behind Giedion's adumbrationwas none other than the largerthan-life architectwho would wage a protractedaesthetic battle againstdisorderand effete traditionalism in architecture and city planning, ultimately delivering an ideal city attuned to modern science and technology. Le Corbusier's famous "hand-into-the-picture-frame" offers a poignant visual case in point (Figure 18). The symbolic extension of the architect'spowerful hand over the paradisiacal mathe92
JSAH / 63:1, MARCH 2004

of the time machine,the FutuEvokingthe phantasmagoria rama's conveyor ride represented a twenty-four-hour odyssey acrossthe Americancontinent.'osAudio commentary emanatingfrom an ingeniously devised sound system concealedinside the chairs,individuallysynchronizedwith each spectator'srelative position over the model, further dramatizedthe unfolding of the grand aerial epic.'06The voice of the "disembodiedangel,"as Business Week dubbed the sound system, was in many ways an auralanalog of the

Figure 18 Le Corbusier'shand over the VilleContemporaine

spectator's hyperfunctional eyes that scanned objects, places, and regions.10' Cleansed of filthy slums, marooned fringes, or any visual anomalies that would short-circuit the viewer's expectations of collective beauty and cohesion, an airbrushed vision of America came alive. The visitor's eyes became a conceptual stage set on which the modernist drama of producing a veritable paradise was rehearsed: ahead is a modern experimentalfarm and dairy. The fruit Directly trees bearabundantly underindividual glass housings .... Here is an aerationplant purifying the lake water and distributing it hundreds of miles throughoutthe countryside ... 1960's motorists speed along in comfort and security as they approacha modern center ... Here,inbuildings of simplebutfunctional archiuniversity tecture, the youth of 1960 study for and envisiontheirfuturein a worldof stillgreaterprogressand achievement ... [andthere is]an amusement parkinfullswing. A merry-go-round-aferriswheelwith glee on a pretzel-like boys and girlsshrieking sky-ride.... Just as improvedhighways have benefited the farmer,so have they added to the comforts of livingand economic welfare of those in industrial communities. Here is a prosperous and thrivingsteel with efficient and safe access to all advantages within dritown, ving distance. . . . Now we are traveling highabove the mountains and valleys below-a bird's-eye view of a paradiseforvacationers. Withthe fast, safely-designedhighwaysof 1960, the slogan "See AmericaFirst"has taken on new meaningand importance.108 Finally, the City of Tomorrow burst forth before one's eyes: "Now we near the great metropolis of 1960. We will bank
THE AESTHETICS

high over the city for a spectacular view of its many wonders. . .. The city of 1960 has abundant sunshine, fresh air, fine green parkways, recreational and civic centers-all the result of thoughtful planning and design."109Monumental skyscrapers, "sheathed in glass, the thin shafts of the tallest ones reaching more than a quarter of a mile in the air,"dazzled below. Mimicking the geometricizing tenets of the Ville Contemporaine, these structures (equipped with landing pads for helicopters and autogyros) were arranged so as not to cast shadows on each other, thereby guaranteeing abundant sunshine and airflow. One third of the total city area, as the spectator witnessed, was devoted to urban breathing spaces or parks. In short, the Futurama's aerial narrative was a stunning visualization of the common modernist gospel of total planning, a master grid of terrestrial morphology reorganizing the entire country. While as an example of a modernist utopia it drew on a wide spectrum of planning principles, the Futurama's unique purpose was fully apprehended only by the spectator's theatrically orchestrated, aerialized, and mobile eyes. If the Futurama was an epic parable of modernist planning, then visualizing it in the span of an eighteen-minute ride bordered on what James Gibson would call a divinely omnipotent act. Gibson noted: "Seeing the world at a traveling point of observation, over a long enough time for a sufficiently extended set of paths, begins to be perceiving the world at all points of observation, as if one could be everywhere at once. To be everywhere at once with nothing hidden is to be all-seeing, like God.""o To be godlike was to
OF ASCENSION IN NORMAN BEL GEDDES'S FUTURAMA

93

Figure 19 Inthis photograph, Bel Geddes replaced the heads of the Futurama's"ordinary" spectators with those of the power-wielders of the New Yorkpoliticalscene

also inhabit an exclusiverealm, detachedfrom earthbound mortals. This detachment ultimately made it easy for the modernistplannerto recommendwholesale demolition of existing cities and to propose grandspatialblueprintsfrom which civilizationwould ariserenewed,phoenixlike.Interestingly, searching for an originary point for his "new" coastal America,Bel Geddes focusednot on hyperurbanized cities such as his hometown and host to the World'sFairNew York-but on America'sgeographic center, the relativelyunderdeveloped city of St. Louis, "onesituatedinland to be awayfrom the peculiarconditions appertainingonly to port towns."'111 Coastal cities, in Bel Geddes'sformulation, had long been polluted by the shiploadsof Old World colonialistsand immigrants; civilizingthe New World (figthe Futurama's World of Tomorrow)would now uratively, entail reachingthe heartof the continentwithout havingto endurethe corruptinggermsof the ground.The Futurama's replicationof a godlike viewpoint proposedan easy resolu- Notes I would like to thank Leo Marx, Stanford Anderson, and Mark Jarzombek tion of the searchfor a mythicalAmericancenter. In one photograph of the Futuramareproduced in a for their stimulating intellectual discussions on this topic. The article was written during the residency year of my Wyeth Fellowship (2002-3) at the GeneralMotors publicitybooklet, Bel Geddes-in a charCenter for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, acteristic manipulation-replaced the heads of the Futu- Washington, D.C., where I presented it and received many helpful suggesrama's"common"spectatorswith those of power-wielders tions from Elizabeth Cropper, Caroline Elam, Peter Lukehart, Therese
94
JSAH / 63:1, MARCH 2004

of the New Yorkpoliticalscene, such as the New YorkCity John D. Rockefeller,Jr.; the mayor, Fiorello La Guardia; New York City parks commissioner, Robert Moses; the 1939 fair'spresident, Robert Whalen; and others (Figure There could be no more telling evidenceof Bel Ged19).112 des's association of the Futurama spectators with modernism'sprotagonistplanners: with their commandinggaze and high vantagepoint, these powerfulmen could contemplate their role in shaping an Americanutopia, just as Bel Geddes could envision his own. The hovering conveyor belt, then, can be seen as a theatricalreconstructionof the modernist planner'sdownward gaze at a tabula rasa that awaitedhis grandand moralizingintervention. The cultural dynamics of Bel Geddes's aesthetics of ascension underscoredan ongoing series of conceptual,or even ideological, shifts:from the earthboundfocus on the to the encyclopedic visionof the total;fromarchiparticular tecture's weightiness to aesthetic lightness; and from the banalcrowdin the streetto an exclusivebandof messiahsin the sky."' While aerialperspectivewas an effectiveoptical method for synoptic world watching (aerialphotography, for instance, ushered in new ways of understandingand spatialknowledge),the viewpointthat Bel Gedarticulating des deployedin the Futurama was the sameeye of self-servand dreams that would often tinge the utopian ing quixotic of master aspirations planning."14 The Futurama canbe viewedas a Zerrspiegel, a refracting cultural mirror that both dramatizedand distorted 1930s Americansocialreality.On the one hand,therewas an innocent self-assurance about the Futurama and the grand of America thatit promised its spectators (re)vision duringthe On the other the Futurama is a crucial culhand, Depression. turalartifact thatrevealsan affiliation betweenaviationanda modernistlogic of looking at the world.The self-aggrandizas ing, detachedgazeof the modernist planner, masquerading the Futurama's workedto dispelthe anxieties of the spectator, at the same time, it ren1930s as well as of prewarAmerica; deredmost effectivelythe fantasyof anidealworldof tomorrow.The heightenedexpectations of the heroicgaze enabled thusoffereda populistmanifestation of modby the Futurama ernistpromisesof cultural renewalthroughspatialdesign.

O'Malley,Dennis Doordan, Sheryl Reiss, GregoryMaertz, Nancy Yeide, Carla Yanni, and Al Acres. I also thank the staff at the Harry Ransom HumanitiesResearchCenter (HRC) at the Universityof Texas,Austin;the WolfsonianMuseum,Miami Beach;and The National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., for greatly facilitating my research. Cathy Leff, directorof the WolfsonianMuseum, was an exceedinglygracious host when I was there. While I was in Austin,JeffreyMeikle offered many insights that helped me better understand Bel Geddes's career. Shorterversionsof the paperwere presentedat the annualmeetings of the Society of ArchitecturalHistorians and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.Finally,I thank Nancy Stieber for her insights, which refinedthis article. 1. Accordingto the Galluppoll in April/May1939, the Futurama's popularityfar outrankedall other exhibitsof the 1939 New YorkWorld'sFair. The mediawas unanimousin calling it the "numberone hit show"of the fair.Amongthe forty-five millionvisitorsoverthe fair's two seasons,twentyfive million saw the Futurama. The mile-long queue, slowly climbing the serpentinerampto the GeneralMotors Building,which housed the Futurama, became part of the fair'siconography.See General Motors press release, 30 May 1939, and file 381.48, Norman Bel Geddes Collection, Harry RansomHumanitiesResearchCenter, University of Texas,Austin NBG Collection, HRC). (hereafter 2. Bornin Adrian,Michigan,Norman Bel Geddesis knowntodayas one of the key industrialdesignersof the 1930s and 1940s. He was also a pioneer in the new field of three-dimensionalstagecraftdesign in the 1920s. Bel Geddeswas a self-taughtartist,architect,and planner.His autobiographical notes were published as Miraclein the Evening: An Autobiography, ed. WilliamKelley (New York,1960);"Profiles: Design for a Living--I, II, and III,"New Yorker, 8, 15, and 22 Feb. 1941, 24-28, 22-29, and 26-30, 33, 34; andJeffreyL. Meikle, "NormanBel Geddes:A Portrait," andArthurPulos, 60 (winter 1994). For Bel Geddes'scomplete "DesignHorizons,"Rassegna An Exhibition body of work,seeJenniferDavis Roberts,NormanBel Geddes: andIndustrial (Austin,1979). of Theatrical Designs 3. For a general discussionof the Futurama,see Donald J. Bush, "Futurama:World'sFairas Utopia,"Alternative 2 (fall 1979), 3-20; BarFutures bara Hauss-Fitton, "Futurama,New York World's Fair 1939-1940," 60 (spring 1994), 54-69; and RolandMarchand,"The Designers Rassegna Go to the FairII: Norman Bel Geddes,The GeneralMotors' 'Futurama,' and the Visit to the FactoryTransformed," DesignIssues8 (spring 1992), 23-40. 4. File 381.48, NBG Collection, HRC. 5. On the possible influenceof these modernistprotagonistson Bel Geddes, see Meikle, "Norman Bel Geddes," Pulos, "Design Horizons," and New YorkWorld'sFair 1939-40." Bel Geddes Hauss-Fitton, "Futurama, was an avidreaderof these visionaries. His personallibrary(now partof the NBG Collection, HRC) containsimportantbooks by Le Corbusier, H. G. Wells, and FrankLloyd Wright (whom he came to know personally).His customary orangepencilmarksin them suggestthatsince the late 1920sBel Geddes absorbedthe utopianplanningideas of these thinkers.The Futucontinentalplanning-breaking free from the conventionaldistincrama's tion between the city and country by means of an interstate highway planningprinciple. system-resonated with Wright's"away-with-the-city" in See George R. Collins,"Broadacre City:Wright'sUtopia Reconsidered,"
Four Great Makers of Modern Architecture(New York, 1970). Two instances

des ArtsD6coratveau, an importantpartof the ExpositionInternationale New York Modernes.In the essay "Worldof Tomorrow," ifs et Industriels likened his vision Wells Fair section World's (Mar.1939), Times, inaugural for the future world to Bel Geddes'sFuturama.No doubt Wells saw the that he of the "worldof tomorrow" as the closest approximation Futurama had earlierdescribedin TheShapeof Thingsto Come(New York, 1933), a book Bel Geddesresearched extensivelyandkept in his library. America'sfaith in the with 6. Literaturedealing early-twentieth-century CharlesA. Beard, for is vast. and instance, See, future,progress, technology Civilization TheRiseofAmerican (New York,1928), 831. Writing aboutthe idea of progress in contemporaryAmerican society, Beard stressed that eman"mankind, by makinguse of science andinventioncan progressively the and social from itself disasters, subjugate mateplagues,famines, cipate rial forces of the good life." See also CharlesA. Beard, ed., A Century of 1644-2001 Pattern The E Clark, York, 1933); I. Expectation of (New Progress (New York,1979); Sheldon Cheney and MarthaCandlerCheney,Art and America An Account theMachine, (New of Industrial Designin 20th-Century Men and Stuart York, 1929); and Machines (New Chase, York, 1936); and Technological A Century Genesis: Thomas Hughes, American ofInvention 1870-1970 (New York,1989). Enthusiasm, 7. See "St. Louis:A Model City of the Future,"2, file 381.48, NBG Colthe GeneralMotors Buildinghad been forcedto lection, HRC. Reportedly, extend its daily hours of operationto accommodatelong lines of spectators. Clandestineactivitiesensued. People who did not want to wait long paidas muchas five dollarsto get a spot nearthe entranceto the GM pavilion. 8. Norman Bel Geddes,MagicMotorways (New York,1940), 211. 9. For the construction details of the conveyor system, see "Spectator's System"and "Descriptionof the ConveyorRide Models," Transportation files 381.30 and 381:31, NBG Collection, HRC. 10. File 381.42, NBG Collection, HRC. Instructedby Bel Geddes, the FairchildAerial Surveysof New Yorkshot 119 aerialphotographsin different partsof the U.S. The many areasthat were photographedfrom the includedCentralParkandmid-Manhattan (New York), JerseyCity airplane (New Jersey),Mount Wilson (Illinois),YosemiteValley (California),and St. Louis (Missouri).Notes such as the following providedguidelinesfor makingthe model as a series of bird's-eyescenes:"Whenyou see roadsat certainanglesin the fardistance,no matterwhatthe roadsaremade of they of activitywhichwe sawat 500 feet: "Examples appearto be grayish-white;" aroundhim, cows drinking, clustered which to chickens food Man throwing cows lashingandswingingtails,anda horseandwagonmovingslowlyalong with a man walkingbeside it;""Redis the predominantcolor in both city and country;""There is an appallinguniformityof houses and appalling densityand quantityof buildingsin the city-they stretchout as faras you can see without thinning out at all;"and "Oncethe city stops it ends quite suddenlyand real countrystarts-the city doesn'tgraduallythin out." See file 381.7 (2 Nov. 1938), NBG Collection, HRC. 11. "GeneralCaption,"file 381.48, NBG Collection, HRC. Also see Marchand,"The Designers Go to the FairII," 33. 12. File 381.19e, folder 51, NBG Collection, HRC. file 381.48, NBG Collection, HRC. 13. "CaptionMaterial," 14. File 381.48, 6-10, NBG Collection, HRC. of a Con15. WarrenSusman,"The People'sFair:CulturalContradictions
sumer Society," in Helen Harrison, ed., Dawn of a New Day: The New York World'sFair, 1939/40 (New York, 1980), 22.

suggestthat Bel Geddeswasinfluencedby Le CorbusierandWells. During a trip to Paris in 1925 to design stage sets for the celebratedplayJeanne Bel Geddesmight have met Le Corbusieror seen his Ville Contemd'Arc, porainealongwith the PlanVoisinexhibitedat the Pavilionde l'EspritNouTHE AESTHETICS

16. Marchand,"The Designers Go to the Fair II," 24-25. For an analysis as social and culturaldocumentsduring the 1930s, see of advertisements
Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Wayfor Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley, 1986).
OF ASCENSION IN NORMAN BEL GEDDES'S FUTURAMA

95

17. File 381.3, 6, NBG Collection, HRC. 18. The GeneralMotors executiveswere so thrilledwith the projectthat they eventually allocated $7 million for the construction of the project insteadof the originallysanctioned$2 million. in termsof 19. Bel Geddesplayedup the importanceof aerialspectatorship moral fortitude, visual clarity, and encyclopedic aspiration. See "The World'sLargestRendering" and"GeneralCaption,"file 381.48, 1-2, NBG Collection, HRC. 20. The idea of the modernistplanneras an all-seeing"elevated" creature, a guardianangel, or a sort of "dieuvoyeur,"is discussed,for instance,by in the City,"ThePracMichel de Certeau.See Michel de Certeau,"Walking ticeof Everyday trans. Steven Rendall Life, (Berkeley,1984). M. Christine vision inherent roots of "Godlike" Boyerhas noted the nineteenth-century
in unified modern planning in The City of CollectiveMemory, Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments (Cambridge, Mass., 1994), 15. 21. While "ascension" has a specific religious meaning, here I am more con-

Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 (Cambridge, Mass., 1983); and C. R. Roseberry, The Challenging Skies: The ColorfulStory of Aviation's Most Exciting Years,1919-1939 (New York, 1966). 29. Wohl, A Passionfor Wings, 261.

30. Althoughtodaywe view the airplaneprimarilyas a means of public or military transportation,the popular passion for early aviation revolved aroundseeing the world from a high vantagepoint and the notion of the (1984;reprint,London andNew joyride.See PaulVirilio, WarandCinema BeauYork,1989), 17;Wohl,A Passion for Wings,255; and,more generally,
mont Newhall, Airborne Camera: The Worldfrom the Air and Outer Space

(New York,1969). 31. AnthonyVidler, "Photourbanism: Planning the City from Above and to the from Below,"in GaryBridgeand SophieWatson, eds., A Companion City(Oxford,2000). 32. For the Italian Futurists,the new visual field opened up by powered human flight supplied the possibilities for "l'immaginazionesenza fili" withoutstrings)thatin turnhelpedtheorizemanytenetsof the (imagination
Futurist Manifesto. R. W. Flint, ed., Marinetti: Selected Writings (London,

cernedwith the word'ssense of risingfrom a limiting,inferiorcondition to one of superiority, empowerment,andvision. I also use the word in a Nietzschean sense, that of an "ascensional" philosopher in whose work mountains, summits, heights, verticality, antigravity, lightning, wings, air, and, most important, flight abound. The plethora of such words points us to Nietzsche's perpetual pursuit of an aerial life where "the weight of all things must be determined anew." In many ways, Nietzsche's rebel prophet Zarathustra's scaling of summit after summit was a peculiar metaphysics of ascension-an abstruse advocacy of flight as a philosophical form of defiance and higher vision. See Friedrich Nietzsche, "Zarathustra's Prologue," Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York, 1961). 22. The Enlightenment roots of such optical logic were discussed in Jean le Rond d'Alembert's Preliminary Discourseto the Encyclopedia of Diderot (1751), trans. Richard N. Schwab and Walter E. Rex (New York, 1963), 43-45. 23. For an analysis of the labyrinth from this angle, see Hubert Damisch, Skyline: The Narcissistic City, Cultural Memory in the Present, trans. John Goldman (Stanford, 2001), 11-15. 24. Utopias, from those of Thomas More's Utopia (1516) through Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) to Wells's The Shape of Things to Come

for 1971), 88. For a generaldiscussionof this theme, see Wohl, A Passion
Wings;Kern, The Cultureof Time and Space;and John Elderfield, Peter Reed,

People, Mary Chan, and Maria Del Carmen Gonzalez, eds., Modernstarts: Places,Things(New York, 2000), 253-57. The aviator'sgaze collapsed, claimedGertrudeStein, the "oldwaysof seeing"things and foreshadowed world. Gertrude the Cubist breakupof the post-Renaissance perspectival
Stein, Picasso:The Complete Writings (1938; New York, 1984), 49-50.

accuse, L'Avion 33. The English translationof Le Corbusier's publishedas Aircraft(London, 1935), was the first volume of a series titled The New Vision, dedicatedto an approachenabledby the adventof variousoptical pedagogueLiszl6 technologies.The phrasehad been used by the Bauhaus 1928 New The his book for York, 1947), in (New Vision, Moholy-Nagy which he probed the possibilities,both literal and semantic,of a modern conception of space through aerialviewing. Drawing on the notions of simultaneityof events and of time as the fourth dimension,Moholy-Nagy an views aremacrophotographs: 'spacecompressors,' opined that "airplane extension of observation. They reveal the large-scale relationships, as revealthe smallest"(26). microphotographs
34. Le Corbusier, Aircraft, 11.

formsthanin realexper(1933),residedmore often in literary(andgraphic) imentalcommunities.See KrishanKumar,"UtopiaandAnti-Utopiain the TwentiethCentury," in RolandSchaer,GregoryClaeys,andLymanTower

Sargent, eds., Utopia, The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World

urbandesign for Rio de Janeiro 35. For Le Corbusier's aviation-inspired see AdnanMorshed, "The CulturalPolitics of AerialVision: (unrealized),
Le Corbusier in Brazil (1929)," Journal ofArchitectural Education 55 (May

(New Yorkand Oxford,2000), 251-52. 25. For instance,FrankE. and Fritzie P. Manuel providedthe exampleof More's Utopia:"Thomas More himself could not get straight the exact length of the bridge that spanned the River Anydrusas Amaurotumin
Utopia." Frank E. and Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western

2002), 201-10. TravelandArchitecture," 36. Fritz Wichert, "Airship Zeitung, Frankfurter Peter 21 Mar. 1909; reprinted in Tilmann Buddensieg, Industriekultur:
Behrens and the AEG, 1907-1914, Mass., 1984). trans. Iain Boyd Whyte (Cambridge,

World Mass., 1979), 5. For an excellentanalysisof the role of (Cambridge, the utopiannarrator-hero, seeJeanPfaelzer,"The Impactof PoliticalTheon Narrative in KennethM. Roemer,ed.,America as Utopia Structures," ory (New York,1981), 117.
26. Even Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda film, Triumph of the Will (1934), demonstrates that the Nazi dream of an Aryan utopia began with the downward gaze of an aviating Hitler. 27. This was noted, for instance, in Folke Kihlstedt, "Utopia Realized" in and the American Joseph Corn, ed., Imagining Tomorrow: History, Technology, Future (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 97, and Anthony Sutcliffe, ed., Metropolis, 1890-1940 (Chicago, 1984), 169. 28. For aviation's broad influence on culture and the aesthetic imagination, see Joseph Corn, The Winged Gospel: America's Romance with Aviation, 1900-1950 (New York, 1983); Robert Wohl, A Passionfor Wings: Aviation and the WesternImagination, 1908-1918 (New Haven and London, 1994);
96 JSAH / 63:1, MARCH 2004

see 37. For a cross-sectionof early-twentieth-century utopianarchitecture,

Ulrich Conrads and Hans G. Sperlich, The Architecture of Fantasy (New

York,1962).
38. Sutcliffe, Metropolis, 169 (see n. 27). Sutcliffe argued that the flying ability of comic-strip superheroes such as Superman was developed in part to represent the complex vertical spaces of modern metropolises. 39. See Allan Sekula, "The Instrumental Image: Steichen at War," PhotographyAgainst the Grain: Essaysand Photo Works,1973-1983 (Halifax, 1984), 33-51. 40. See C. H. Birdseye, "Aerial Mapping by the Geological Survey," Aerial Age (May 1923), 23-32;James H. Hare, "Aerial Photography: ANew Art," Flying (May 1914), 101-5; Guy Hayler, "The Aeroplane and City Planning," American City 23 (Dec. 1920), 575-79; and Nelson Lewis, "A New Aid in City Planning," American City Magazine 26 (Mar. 1922), 209-12.

41. It became readilyapparentthat in regions where difficultiesof topography,climate, and accessto waterhinderedthe maneuveringof land surAs late as 1923, veyors,mappingcould be expeditedby aerialphotography. 60 percent of the United States landmass remained unmapped, a fact promptingthe Congress to propose the Temple Bill, which requiredthe aerial survey of 1,800,000 squaremiles in twenty years. See Crockett A. MIT Technology Review Harrison,"Making (Dec. 1930), Mapsfromthe Air," 127-30, 149-50. 42. During World War I, varioustypes of camerasfor aerialphotography existed,but the photographsthey producedfrom an airplanein flight were highly distortedby their slow shutterspeeds. In 1920, ShermanFairchild (1896-1971) developed the first high-speed, between-the-lenses-shutter and"hands-free" aerialphotography; camerasfor distortion-free they soon becamestandard. In 1926, Fairchilddevelopedan advanced monoplanefor reconnaissanceflights;its stable cameraplatformprovidedexcellent visibility. ShermanM. Fairchild,"AerialPhotography,Its Development and American Aviation131 (1927), andSocial Future," Science, Academy ofPolitical Is Doingfor Aerial What 50-51; andFairchild,Winged Surveyors: Photography (New York,1922). Industry 43. See Mary E. Burt, "Aeronautics Will Develop a BroaderVision,"Flying 4 (1915), 697, 711; Clayton D. Russell,"SeeingThings from Above," AeroNews 1 (1937), 2, 7-8; and MarcellaHoltkamp, "A Bit of Craftsmen News3 (1929), 21-22. Philosophyon Flying,"Air Travel 44. Roland Barthes, TheEiffel Tower and OtherMythologies (1979), trans. RichardHoward(Berkeley,1997), 8-9. 45. Ibid., 9. 46. Influencedby the evolutionaryphilosophiesofJean-BaptisteLamarck x1 I ,- Is2 ,. I I 1i r t (1820-1903), (1744-1829), CharlesD.iiu S,- ,c, ,r .l in 1883, and FrancisGalton (1822-1911), who coined the term "eugenics" eugenicistsardentlybelievedin engineeringa perearly-twentieth-century fect future masterrace devoid of all genetic defects, moral turpitude,and social/sexualdeviance.The naturalselection of the "fittest," accordingto the eugenicists,could easilybe substituted by scientificselectionto control, manipulate,and enhance the breeding of a new healthy, hygienic, functional, and superiorrace. During the 1920s and 1930s, popularmagazines, scientificjournals,films, and science fiction relentlesslypromulgatedthe image of the New Man. Magazines such as Fortune,Life, and Popular Mechanics were filled with brigadesof New Men (sometimeswith wings) civilizationby hammeringit againstthe anvilof reshapingthe "degenerate" idealizedmale strength.The conceptof the New Man appealedimmensely to modernistdesignersseekingto createan analogousconcept in architecture. For an explorationof this theme, see Wolfgang Pehnt, "The 'New Man' andthe Architecture of the Twenties," in JeannineFiedler,ed., Social Bauhaus,Kibbutzand the Dream of the New Man Utopiasof the Twenties: (Dessau, 1995). Christina Cogdell has cogently analyzedthe eugenicist impetus behind Bel Geddes'sFuturamaand, more generally,streamlined design, providingan excellent accountof the eugenic movementin interwar America. See Christina Cogdell, "The FuturamaRecontextualized: "American Norman Bel Geddes'sEugenic 'Worldof Tomorrow,' Quarterly 52 (June2000), 193-245. For generaldiscussionson eugenics,see Marouf in Anglo-American ArifHasian,Jr., TheRhetoric (Athens, Thought ofEugenics Ga., 1996).For detailedaccountsof the concept of the New Man in American cultureduringthe interwarperiod,see RalphE. Flanders,"The New Civilization (LonAge and the New Man,"in Charles Beard,ed., Toward Manhood: Transfordon, 1930), 21-37; andAnthonyE. Rotundo,American to the ModernEra (New York, mationsin Masculinity from the Revolution 1993). For overt New Man themes in novels, see StanleyWeinbaum,The New Adam (Chicago and New York, 1939); and William Olaf Stapledon, Odd John (London, 1935).
THE AESTHETICS

47. Bel Geddes'spersonallibrarycontains CharlesLindbergh'sautobiog(New York,1927). raphy,"We" Flight,"in Ward,Red,White, 48.John Ward,"TheMeaningof Lindbergh's Culture andIdeasin American andBlue:Men,Books, (New York,1969), 26. 49. Ibid. 50. By the late 1930s, Lindberghhad become a sort of antiheroin America for the on accountof his overtlyanti-Semiticandracistviews.His sympathy drewwidespread criticism,andhe gradNazi espousalof Aryansuperiority (New York, uallybecamea recluse.See Dixon Wecter,TheHeroin America 1941), 422-44. 51. For discussionson Superman,see Les Daniels, Superman Masterpiece First SuperHero (New York, 1998); Edition:The Golden Age of America's James S. Hans, The Originsof the Gods(New York, 1991);Umberto Eco, 2 (spring 1972), 14-22; and Sam Diacritics "The Myth of the Superman" Fiction (Clevelandand ofScience Shapers Moskowitz,Explorers of theInfinite, New York,1957). and other popularscience 52. During the 1920sand 1930s,AmazingStories ideas in America. for Wellsian conduits effective became magazines ran twenty-sixnovels, novBetween 1926 and 1930 alone,AmazingStories elettes, and short stories by Wells. On the intersectionbetween flight and of Science and eugenicsin science fiction, see BrianStableford,"Marriage Science Fiction in Robert (London, Holdstock, ed., of Encyclopedia Fiction," 1978), 20-27. in evolutionary 53. Wells'sindoctrination philosophiescame directlyfrom vociferous one of CharlesDarwin's champions,the biologist and ethicist Thomas Henry Huxley,at the London School of Normal Science.Wells's debt to Darwinand Huxley has been exploredby Leo Henkin, Darwinism Fiction on Victorian in theEnglish Novel,1860-1910: TheImpact ofEvolution (New York,1963). Fic54. Thomas M. Disch, TheDreamsOurStuffIs MadeOf:How Science the World tionConquered (New York,1998), 62. 55. Bel Geddes's entire personal libraryis part of the NBG Collection, HRC. Bel Geddes'scustomaryorange underlinesand marginalnotes are evidenceof his carefulstudy of books by these authors.Some of the books Zarathusin his librarythat I examinedareFriedrichNietzsche, ThusSpake Commom Thomas trans. All and York, 1911); (New None, tra:A Book for to Come (see n. 5);Moholy-Nagy, TheNew Vision Wells, TheShape of Things andIts Planning,intro. by (see n. 33); Le Corbusier,TheCityof To-morrow a NewArchiFrederickEtchells (New York,1929);Le Corbusier,Towards intro. by FrederickEtchells (New York,1927); and Hugh Ferriss, tecture, TheMetropolis (New York,1929). of Tomorrow 56. Norman Bel Geddes,Horizons (Boston, 1932), 8. 4. 57. Ibid., 58. Ibid., 292. 59. Ibid., 19-20. 60. Ibid., 276-77. Elsewherein this publicationBel Geddes noted: "The qualitiesthat accountfor the appealin experiencinga paintingby Manet, a dancing, Shakespeare's score by Beethoven, the Great Pyramid,Pavlova's stirus deeply,linger writing,those qualitieswhich invadethe subconscious, in the memory,can only be definedas emotional.The qualitiesthat make or skyscraper one steamship, appealto us, while anotherdoes vase, airplane, not, are of the same nature"(20-21). 61. Cheney and Cheney,Art andtheMachine,16 (see n. 6). haveexploredthe linksbetween andarchitects 62. Art historians, urbanists, ideas.See CheneyandCheney, andevolutionary machinesof transportation 1644-2001 (New I. E Clarke,ThePattern Art andtheMachine; ofExpectation, (New York, 1929); Erich York, 1979); Bruno Taut, ModernArchitecture MendelMendelsohn,"The Problemof a New Arch,"in Mendelsohn,Erich trans.AntjeFritsch(New York,1992); Works of theArchitect, sohn,Complete
OF ASCENSION IN NORMAN BEL GEDDES'S FUTURAMA 97

and Raymond Loewy, Industrial Design (New York, 1979). More recent studies include Jeffrey L. Meikle, Twentieth Centuiy Limited, Industrial Design in America, 1925-1939 (Philadelphia, 1979); and Donald J. Bush, The Streamlined Decade (New York, 1975). 63. Loewy, Industrial Design, 74-76. 64. Bel Geddes's superimposition of a cutout airplane on a photograph of the Futurama revealed that the airplane was intended as a sort of surrogate for the spectator. The photomontage is located in file 381, NBG Collection, HRC. 65. Bel Geddes, Horizons, 280. 66. Ibid., 280.

76. Quoted in Conrads and Sperlich, The ArchitectureofFantasy, 18. El Lissitzky's Wolkenbiigel (Cloud Hanger) (1924) had already expressed this dream of architectural flight. 77. For the design development of the Aerial Restaurant, see file 169.1, NBG Collection, HRC; and Roberts, Norman Bel Geddes,23 (see n. 2). 78. Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," in Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought (New York, 1975), 17-87.

architecture mustbe to create"flying" 79. BelGeddes's aspiration avant-gardist

examined against the fantasy world of science-fiction magazines that began to saturate the American mass market in the 1920s. Hugo Gernsback, the first and most influential publisher of science-fiction magazines in America, and Frank Paul, an architect better known as an illustrator, together created some of the most enduring images of floating cities that represented a phantasmagoric parallel to the interwar utopianism of Bel Geddes, Ferriss, Le Corbusier, and others. For the introduction of science-fiction magazines in America in 1926 by Fifty Yearsof Hugo Gernsback, see Paul A. Carter, The Creationof Tomorrow: Magazine ScienceFiction(New York, 1977), 3-5. 80. Kathleen Church Plummer has shown that modernist designers nourished their own brand of utopian thinking by drawing on science-fiction imagery during the interwar period. Kathleen Church Plummer, "The Streamlined Moderne," Art in America 62 (Jan.-Feb. 1974), 46-54. 81. Minutes of the review meeting (21 Jan. 1930) are in file 169.1, NBG Collection, HRC. Present at the meeting were Bel Geddes and architects Harvey Wiley Corbett, Paul Cret, and Raymond Hood. 82. Quoted in Tom Mead, "Revolving Caf6, 278 Feet in the Air, Is Plan for Fair: Unique Structure Designed for Century of Progress," Chicago Daily News, n.d., file 169, NBG Collection, HRC. 83. The 1939 fair's ground plan also became the object of highly idealized spectatorship from above. Harry Petit, well known as the illustrator of the futuristic airship-filled "Dream of New York" published by Moses King in 1908, used an aerial view of the 1939 fairground in the official guidebook as a panegyric to modern planning. See The Museum of the City of New York, Drawing the Future: Design Drawings for the 1939 New York World's Fair (New York, 1996), 12. 84. File 356, NBG Collection, HRC. See also Jeffrey Meikle, The City of Model 1937 (London, 1984). Tomorrow: 85. As a master showman well known in the caf6 society of New York, Bel Geddes had already struck up a personal friendship with Stanley Resor, president of the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency, who provided him with various commissions for product design throughout the 1930s. It was Resor who made a deal for Bel Geddes to develop an advertising campaign for Shell Oil. See Meikle, The City of Tomorrow,5-8. 86. Since he first began to think about the complex relationship between the future metropolis and urban circulation, Bel Geddes had followed the urbanistic works of these planners. 87. Meikle, The City of Tomorrow,22. 88. Ibid., 23. 89. Quoted in Meikle, Twentieth Century Limited, 208 (see n. 62). 90. Ibid. The 91. Larry Zim, Mel Lerner, and Herbert Rolfes, The Worldof Tomorrow: 1939 New YorkWorld'sFair (New York, 1988), 226. 92. For an excellent analysis of this phenomenon, see Scott Bukatman, Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century (Durham, N.C., 2003). See also Sutcliffe, "The Metropolis in the Cinema," in Sutcliffe, Metropolis, 169 (see n. 27). According to Sutcliffe, "one may reasonably presume that the flying abilities of these heroes were developed in the original comic-strips to facilitate a three-dimensional relationship with the skyscrapers of the New York location which (albeit thinly disguised as 'Metropolis' or 'Gotham City') pervaded these stories."

67. Ibid., 281.

68. Bel Geddes spelled out his concept of the Man of Tomorrow in an autobiographical essay, "The Man of Tomorrow ... Today," Info, no. 4, 7 Apr. 1939. In Futurama press releases, Bel Geddes described himself as "visionary," "a contemporary man of tomorrow," "man of imagination," and even "a specimen of health." 69. This concept of higher consciousness was closely allied with an important theoretical development during the early decades of the twentieth century: the Fourth Dimension, a discourse in spatial psychology that, as Linda Henderson has shown in The Fourth Dimensionand Non-EuclideanGeometryin ModernArt (Princeton, 1983), exerted considerable influence on the artists of Europe and America, including Bel Geddes. A quasi-scientific idea that space might possess a "higher space," an unseen fourth dimension in a non-Euclidean system, the Fourth Dimension offered artists and literati radical ways to escape the conception of space measured in the coordinates of length, width, and height. The American architect and mystical philosopher Claude Bragdon introduced Bel Geddes to the concept of Fourth Dimension. In his most important work on the subject, A Primer of Higher Space (Rochester, N.Y., 1913), Bragdon attempted to define consciousness in spatial terms or, in other words, consciousness as the fourth coordinate of a "higher" spatial system. As Robert Williams demonstrated in Artists in Revolntion:Portraits of the RussianAvantGarde, 1905-1925 (Indiana, 1977), Bragdon's writings, translated into Russian by the mystic philosopher Peter Demianovich Uspensky, also influenced the Russian painter Kazimir Malevich, an artist who interpreted the liberating symbolism of the airplane from the viewpoints of both theosophy and the Fourth Dimension. 70. A colleague of Bel Geddes's even described him in aerial terms: "His head is in the clouds, but his feet are certainly not on the ground." See "Profiles: Design for a Living-I," 24 (see n. 2). 71. For the design development of this project, see file 328: 17, 1-3, NBG Collection, HRC. Archival evidence does not explain why the airliner was called Number 4; such a number was probably used for indexical purposes. 72. File 328.1, NBG Collection, HRC. 73. Paul Virilio, Open Sky, trans. Julie Rose (London and New York, 1997), 1-2. For examples of utopian architecture that defied gravity, see Conrads and Sperlich, The Architecture of Fantasy (see n. 37); and Christian W. Thomsen, VisionaryArchitecture: From Babylon to Virtual Reality (Munich and New York, 1994). 74. Escape from architecture's earthly confinement has histories as old as those of architecture itself. Architecture imagined as a flying machine was part of post-Renaissance utopian thinking reflected in the fantastic island of Laputa in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), Jules Verne's nineteenth-century aerial vessels, and the flying cities of early-twentieth-century Expressionist architecture and science fiction. Bruno Taut introduced a synthesis of the aerial vessel and architecture in 1920 in his hypothetical Cosmic-comical Aerial Pleasures, a fantastic floating sphere in space. 75. Italo Calvino claimed that the conquest of gravity (and the attainment of lightness) became one of the great utopian dreams of the twentieth century. Italo Calvino, Six Memosfor the Next Millennium (New York, 1988), 7.
98 JSAH / 63:1, MARCH 2004

93. See LawrenceW. Levine, "American Culture and the Great DepresReview 220-21. 74 Yale sion," (1985), 94. For a probing analysisof Supermanin Americanculture,see Thomas Andrae,"FromMenace to Messiah:The History andHistoricityof Superman," in Donald Lazure, ed., American Media and Mass Culture: Left Per-

spectives (Berkeley,1987), 124-38.

95. Bukatman, Matters of Gravity, 286-87.

96. Although the spectatorsoccupiedallottedseats (fromtime to time the seats rotatedto align the visitor with the view along the trackof the conveyor belt), the analogyseems unmistakable. 97. One recallsthe frenziedmassreceptionaccordedto CharlesLindbergh flight. The upon his return to New Yorkfollowing his solo transatlantic mediaprophesiedthat the watershedevent would redefinenot only American manhood,but also what Americameant as a nation. 98. For examinationsof this theme, see Julian Petley, "The Architect as
Ubermensch," in Philip Hayward, Picture This: Media Representations of

andArtists VisualArt (London, 1988);andAndrewSaint,"TheArchitectas Hero and Genius,"in Saint, TheImageof theArchitect (New Haven, 1983). 99. De Certeau,"Walking in the City,"94-95 (see n. 20). 100. Ayn Rand'sTheFountainhead (New York,1943), modeled on the realsalutes"thegreatprofession life sagaof FrankLloyd Wright, reverentially of architecture and its heroes"(14).
101. Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New

New York.Apartfrom a largenumberof photomontages,the bookletconA copy audio commentary. tained a verbatimtranscriptof the Futurama's can be found in the EdwardJ. Orff World's Fair Collection, National Museum of AmericanHistory,Washington,D.C. 113. Even though the Futurama's conveyorbelt had a decidedlydemocratic effect in terms of accessibility,the photomontage described earlier of the spectatorsas heroicplanners-exclurevealedBel Geddes'sportrayal sive, detached,and abovethe common folk. 114. Futureresearchcan explorethe relationshipbetween the Futurama's sanitizedworld andpostwarAmericanzeal for espousalof an extravagantly low-income neighborhoods, and inner-city crime-ridden slums, erasing technologiesof aerialreconnaissance, congestion.Armedwith sophisticated postwarurbanAmerica-occurring well within Bel Geddes'stwo-decade the Futurama's time framefor materializing prophecies-unleashed a camto cosmetic of cleansing, seeking impose both visual and social paign unfetteredoptimismdid not, however, interwar-era The planner's hygiene. have much effect on the nation. Yet the self-appointedplanner-heroconsuch as New York tinued to define postwarAmerica's worthy "surgeons," modernist the Brazilian even or Robert commissioner Moses, City parks Lucio Costa, who during the 1950s designed Brasilia,a brand-newcity hinterlandand diagrambased on extensiveaerialsurveysof the Brazilian maticallymeant to look like an airplane.

Tradition Mass., 1959). See also Colin Rowe, TheArchi(1941; Cambridge,

tectureof GoodIntentions: Towards a PossibleRetrospect (London, 1994), 30-43.

Illustration Credits
60 (winter 1994), 55, 61, 60. Figure 1, copyright Figures 1, 2, 17. Rassegna @ Licensing Media Archives,General Motors Media Archive;Figure 2, copyright@The Norman Bel GeddesCollection,HarryRansomHumanities ResearchCenter, University of Texas,Austin, by permission of the Edith Lutyens Bel Geddes Estate;Figure 17, by permissionof the Edith LutyensBel Geddes Estate
Figure 3. Bush, The Streamlined Decade, 160.

102. It is not my intention to glamorizethe pathologiesof the ground,nor to offer an apologiafor the superiorityof a ground-levelvision. 103. In numerousFuturama pressreleases,Bel Geddes fanciedhimselfthe Man of Tomorrow.See clipping "Norman Bel Geddes, Designer of the Number One Hit Show"andpressrelease, 17 Apr. 1939, file 381.48, Fair's NBG Collection, HRC. 104. File 381.48, 2-3, NBG Collection, HRC. file 381.48, 2-3, NBG 105. See clipping"TheWorld'sLargestRendering," HRC. Collection, 106. Hailed unanimously by the mediaas a technicalmarvel,the soundsystem wasbuilt by WesternElectricat a cost of $250,000. See clippings"Proposed System for GeneralMotors Exhibit at N.Y. World'sFair of 1939" SoundDescriptionof the City of Tomorrowand Superand"Synchronized file highwaySystem," 381.32, NBG Collection, HRC. 9 Sept. 1939, 27-28. 107. "Motoringat 100 M.P.H.,"Business Week, can be foundin Futu108.Verbatim of the auditorycommentary transcript rama,publicitybrochure,NBG Collection, HRC. 109. Ibid.
110. James Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston,

Copyright@ the Edith LutyensBel Geddes Estate Figure 4. Courtesy Wolfsonian-FloridaInternationalUniversity,Miami Beach
Figure 5. Jean Ferriss Leich, Architectural Visions:The Drawings ofHugh Fer-

riss (New York, 1980), 77. Courtesy Avery Architecturaland Fine Arts Library,ColumbiaUniversity Design,76. By permissionof LaurenceLoewy, Figure 9. Loewy,Industrial Loewy Design 110-11, 115 Figure 10. Bel Geddes, Horizons, Figures 11, 19. By permissionof the Edith LutyensBel Geddes Estate 13. By permissionof the Edith Figure 13. Meikle, The Cityof Tomorrow, Estate Geddes Bel Lutyens Limited,208. By permission of the Century Figure 14. Meikle, Twentieth Edith LutyensBel Geddes Estate New York (New York,1994), 179 Figure 16. Rem Koolhaas,Delirious
Cities of the Future (New Yesterday's Figure 18. Howard Mansfield, Cosmopolis:

1979), 197. 111. See clipping "St. Louis, A Model City of the Future,"file 381.48, 1, NBG Collection, HRC. 112. Issuedin a limited edition of 1,000 copies, the bookletwas distributed
on 16 Oct. 1939 at a Futurama celebration party at the University Club in

Brunswick, N.J. 1990),vii. Copyright? 2001 ArtistsRightsSociety(ARS),

New York/ADAGP, Paris/FLC

THE AESTHETICS

OF ASCENSION

IN NORMAN

BEL GEDDES'S

FUTURAMA

99