BOB'S BITS

[Stanley]

Bel Geddes

I have seen the future. Model for the “Futurama” exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, attr. to Norman Bel Geddes.

In retrospect, 1939 was a year for nightmares, as (in September) Hitler’s mechanized legions crashed into Poland. ‘The War’ (which some say began earlier in Spain, China and Africa) would soon envelop the World. But for Norman Bel Geddes the World’s Fair was a chance to put forward his dream of a world designed to function as a streamlined model for life. He was a practical man, and since his client for “Futurama” was the General Motors Corporation, this dream centered on motor transport, in particular the private motor car, with a sprinkling of smallish motor transit vehicles and a very few large trucks. Bel Geddes’s 35,000 square feet diorama emphasized cityscapes, but in 1940, in his Magic Motorways, Bel Geddes saw “how a motorway system may be laid down over the entire country—across mountains, over rivers and lakes, through cities and past towns—never deviating from a direct course and always adhering to the basic principles of highway design: safety, comfort, speed, and economy.” He did pay some attention to suburbs, full of domestic houses with their integral double garages facing the street and emphasizing the home’s dormitory and transport functions. Sounds like a nightmare. Implemented here, it devastated East St. Louis, now a junction for five motorways. But to see the nightmare in action it’s best to visit two Paris suburbs: La Défense to the north and Les Espaces d’Abraxas to the east, the first lived in by corporations and the latter by the workforce. The fact that Bel Geddes was an enthusiast for eugenics makes it all seem sinister. But it’s easier to remember Norman Bel Geddes as a midwestern boy who in Emersonian fashion tried many fields and (nearly) always succeeded. He was born Norman Melancton Geddes, in Adrian, Michigan, on April 27, 1893. He had a tough childhood in several places, and never got beyond 10th grade. But he learned a variety of skills on a variety of jobs (from shipping clerk to magician), changed his surname (to fit his first wife’s middle name of “Belle”), and in 1916-18 landed as a revolutionary theater designer in Los Angeles (the city’s famed Little Theatre) and New York (the Metropolitan Opera, no less). His cool, simple sets shed the excessive detail of Victorian stages and yet seemed to capture the essence of whatever was being performed. They also tended to save money. Suddenly famous, Bel Geddes saw an opportunity to become the da Vinci of design, set up on his own, and began to design everything: cocktail shakers, radios, workdesks, serving trays, water jugs, even ocean liners. Other than the last-named, which never floated, Bel Geddes originals sell today for thousands of dollars and are much more pleasing to the mind’s eye than his 1939 city of tomorrow. ©.