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THE NEW YORK TIMES, MAY 20, 1934.

1934 WORLD'S FAIR BIGGER AND BETTER

Preview of This Year's Version Indicates It Will Be in Quieter Taste

IT WILL OPEN ON MAY 26

Colors Are Softer, Jazz Will Be Replaced by Classics--New Exhibitors Are Added

CHICAGO, May 17.--The 1933 first edition of A Century of Progress, Chicago's startling departure from exposition precedents, evoked a response in which criticism vied with praise.

The second edition will open to public inspection next Saturday. A private preview disclosed the fact that, however much managerial ears were gratified by adulation, they were no less heedful of complaint. In many respects the 1934 world's fair will be better, if not bigger. It will display more of the meritorious and less of the meretricious. It will give ampler room to things worth seeing and clutter itself less with the trivial. It will make more effective use of its landscape possibilities. It will remain startling, but avoid the shocking.

Last year many artistic souls raised loud outcry over the color scheme of the architecture. Others liked it. Nobody disputed the claim that it carried a kick. It was vivid, blatant, challenging under the Summer sun. Its reds and greens and blues were raw; its orange and yellow shrieked.

Colors This Year Are Quieter

This year the fair will be colorful, but not so loud. The raw reds have been tempered to a purple red. The blues are quieter, the greens less strident. White has been used much more extensively. The need for smoked glasses when touring the grounds is not so painfully obvious, and one of the most profitable trades of 1933, indulged by gateway peddlers with baskets of glare-reducing spectacles, is going to suffer. The effect of this sensible modification of the color scheme is to preserve the atmosphere of gayety while eliminating the jazz.

That reference to jazz suggests another major improvement. Last year thousands of music lovers railed against the cacophany that escaped from innumerable loudspeakers and flooded the grounds. Auditory nerves were jangled incessantly by saxophonic squeals and groans. However stimulating it may have been for the first hour, it became cruelty to the assembled ear drums as the second and third hours elapsed without relief.

This year from two open-air concert stages the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony will offer the music of the masters of classic composition and light opera. Thousands of free seats will be provided for those who want to listen quietly while they rest their exposition feet. For those who prefer to perambulate, the concerts will be broadcast. Two big exhibitors have made this contribution, for which multitudes should be grateful.

Midway Has Been Moved

A third big improvement is the vanishing of the cheap and tawdry midway that last year held conspicuous place on the main artery of the fair. It was notorious for its nudities, less lovely than vulgar. There will be an amusement section, but it will not flaunt itself. It has been banished to the northeastern corner of the grounds, where, to be found, it must be sought. The management solemnly promises that the decencies will be observed and that the entertainment will be of greater excellence. A previewer can only record the promise. Its keeping is a matter for future demonstration.

But where the old midway stood has arisen a new and most intriguing display. It may well be called a village concourse of nations. Last year's Belgian village remains. There have been added villages representing early America, Elizabethan England, the Black Forest, Switzerland, Ireland, Tunisia, Spain and Italy. Five of them I visited on my preview.

Built to a scale large enough to be convincing, they are, for the most part, synthetic portraits of the architecture and life of their times and countries. In the early American village, for example, I found, among other things, Mount Vernon, the home of Paul Revere, the shop of Betsy Ross, the House of Seven Gables, the Old North Church and the village smithy. The Italian village, an enterprise sponsored by the Chicago Italian community, is a charming assemblage of typical structures and historic replicas. In the Irish village a reconstruction of Tara's Hall, for the design of which much laborious research was necessary, will thrill all visitors who love the Auld Sod.

For the rest, the fair will repeat with many variations its comprehensive portrayal of achievement in science, in industry, in agriculture and in art. All the major exhibitors of 1933 have returned, and there have been conspicuous additions of once skeptical concerns that needed a demonstration and are now convinced. The most notable new exhibitor is the manufacturer of automobiles who dared General Johnson to crack down on him. He has taken ten acres and put up a building that is a distinct and impressive contribution to the architectural scene.

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