1939 World’s Fair: New Jersey Pavilion Mural – Flushing NY

Description

The New York Times wrote the following in 2003 in a retrospective article of New Jersey-based artist Michael Lenson:

“[Mr. Lenson] moved to Newark and applied at the W.P.A. office on Halsey Street … Soon, Mr. Lenson was designing and executing murals for the state W.P.A. program. He went on to become assistant state supervisor in charge of the other muralists in the agency.

By the time the federal W.P.A. closed in 1943, Mr. Lenson had created six murals and supervised the execution of 15 more in New Jersey by other artists. He also made one mural in West Virginia.”

“Three of Mr. Lenson’s New Jersey murals still exist, all in Newark… The three other New Jersey murals are gone. ”The History of New Jersey,” a 16-by-75-foot mural for the dining room at the Essex Mountain Sanatorium in Verona, was destroyed when the building was renovated, as was a mural for the New Jersey Pavilion of the 1939 World’s Fair. Mr. Lenson’s mural at the Charlton Street School in Newark was demolished with the building.”   (www.nytimes.com)

The 1939 World’s Fair New Jersey Pavilion was located in the Court of States, on the east side of the exhibition along and just east of the Flushing River. Located roughly 500 feet north of World’s Fair Boulevard — now the Long Island Expressway — the land formerly occupied by the New Jersey Pavilion now lies underneath the Van Wyck Expressway.