The world was changing fast in 1964.
In February, the Beatles came to America, landing in New York, where they appeared on Ed Sullivan’s network TV show and at Shea Stadium in the early stages of a worldwide phenomenon. Just three months earlier, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and Americans were still reeling from the shock and grief.
For many, the New York World’s Fair was a tangible symbol of recovered optimism, offering visitors a glimpse of the technological dazzle they might see in the future.
For The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the fair was an opportunity to try out groundbreaking methods of taking the gospel message to multitudes.
A half-century later, it’s easy to see that the Mormon Pavilion at the fair has left a lingering legacy immediately observable in the art, dioramas and multimedia technology of today’s visitors centers and historic sites.
“Experience obtained from this exposition formed the philosophy and methodology of church visitors centers,” wrote Brent L. Top, dean of religious education at Brigham Young University, in a soon-to-be-published article. “Indeed the huge leap forward initiated by the Mormon Pavilion must be considered a seminal event in the evolution of the church’s use of media in spreading the gospel message to the world. From that time to the present day, the church’s outreach through its use of technology and media has increased steadily and exponentially.”
The Christus statue, copied from Bertel Thorvaldsen’s sculpture at the Lutheran Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, Denmark, has become one of the most recognizable LDS symbols. The Mormon Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair was the first occasion on which an LDS-commissioned copy of the sculpture was publicly displayed.
The film “Man’s Search for Happiness,” for many years a staple of missionary work, was produced expressly for the exhibition at the Mormon Pavilion.
In his article, Top notes that the church’s newly announced feature-length motion picture to be shown in theaters, “Meet the Mormons,” is on a path “that is traceable to ‘Man’s Search for Happiness’ and the Mormon effort at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair.”
By 1964, LDS participation at international exhibitions had been going on for a long time, beginning with the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir won second place in the choral competition. Later, the church would sponsor booths at world’s fairs in Dresden, Germany, in 1930, Chicago in 1933-34, San Diego in 1935-36; and San Francisco in 1934-39.
But nothing even approaching the scale of the Mormon Pavilion in New York had ever been attempted.
The idea came initially from Stanley McAllister, president of the New York Stake. In 1960, he approached church leaders with his idea that a pavilion be constructed for the planned fair in New York.
Initially, they balked at the estimated $3 million cost. But it was known that other religious groups planned participation at the fair, including a Catholic pavilion with priceless art masterpieces, including Michelangelo’s famous statue “Pieta.”
By 1962, church leaders had warmed to the idea. But choice sites for pavilions at the fair were going fast. After an urgent call from President McAllister, LDS Church President David O. McKay responded within a day telling him the First Presidency had approved the proposal.
The first choice for a site was gone, but a personal friend of President McAllister interceded with fair president Robert Moses, and a choice site was secured near the fair’s front entrance, close to a major subway line and neighboring Shea Stadium.
The spot was located next to the World of Food pavilion. At the previous world’s fair in Seattle, Washington, the pavilion had been perceived as an eyesore.
As it happened, the funding for the food pavilion did not materialize and the owners had to back out. That left a vacant lot next to the Mormon Pavilion. Church officials seized the opportunity to work with fair officials to plant a garden on the vacant lot. “Irvin T. Nelson, landscape and pavilion grounds architect for the church, turned the lot into a place of peace and beauty that contributed greatly to the success of the Mormon Pavilion,” Top wrote in an October 1989 Ensign magazine article about the legacy of the pavilion. “The landscaping won praise from the president of the fair and from workers there, as well as a national award for Brother Nelson from the American Association of Nurserymen.”
In 1964, Elder L. Tom Perry, today a member of the LDS Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, was a 42-year-old high councilor in the New York Stake.
“My high council assignment was the stake mission, so that naturally blended into my being called to be on the church committee for the world’s fair,” Elder Perry recalled in an interview. “It was one of the most delightful assignments I’ve had in my life.”
Of the construction of the pavilion, he recounted: “I’ll never forget the day that we went out to drive piles into the marshy soil in that part of New York. The pile driver hit it twice, and the pile was literally swallowed up. So we knew we had a challenge. But the pavilion turned out to be beautiful.”
Indeed, the exterior was a commanding sight, its façade replicating the east spires of the Salt Lake Temple. That was suggested by Elder Richard L. Evans of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and his brother, advertising executive David W. Evans, who was responsible for the design of the pavilion and was inspired by the memory of growing up in the Avenues area of Salt Lake City and seeing the temple spires as they walked down the hill.
Elder Bernard P. Brockbank, who held the general authority position of Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve, was assigned to supervise the pavilion, Elder Perry remembered. “He moved to New York and had an apartment very near the World’s Fair, and I was one of his assistants as the fair developed. I had two nights a week that I was responsible for supervising the pavilion, so we were at the fair a great deal.
“And it was a nice assignment, because they gave us a family pass, and we could go to the fair anytime we wanted. My family loved the fair. And that pavilion turned out to be a great inspiration to all who attended.”
Depicted in art and dioramas was Mormon doctrine pertaining to Jesus Christ organizing the church and calling his apostles, the apostasy and latter-day restoration, the events pertaining to the organization of the LDS Church, the 1844 martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith in Carthage, Illinois, the westward trek of the Mormon pioneers, and the commission to church members to take the gospel to all the world.
Some of the pavilion elements would later be displayed in the soon-to-be-finished visitors center on Temple Square, including a diorama of Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove during his vision of the Father and the Son.
Full-time missionaries were engaged as tour guides, and the Book of Mormon was featured prominently.
“I think I sold more copies than any of the elders because I would offer to buy a copy for a visitor if the visitor would take it and read it and report back to me that he had read it,” Elder Perry recalled. "I had the 50 cents right there, but it was such a small amount, they’d pay the 50 cents and take it and go.”
Among the missionaries assigned to work at the fair was Richard Eyre, who today, with his wife Linda, is a Deseret News columnist and author of best-selling books on family relationships. A Deseret News archival photo shows young Eyre talking to a group in front of the Christus statue at the pavilion.
“Talk about a life change!” he recalled. “One day I was tracting in New Jersey and the next day I was at the world’s fair with people coming to me in droves.”
He remembered the location next to the Catholic pavilion where Pieta was displayed, depicting Mary holding the slain Christ.
“I remember thinking how beautiful and lifelike it was. And candidly, the Christus is great because it is the resurrected Christ, but artistically, it can’t hold a candle to Pieta.
“But one night, I was closing up the pavilion, and I thought we had everyone out. I was about to lock the door, and I noticed a man standing at the other end of the pavilion in front of the Christus statue.
“I hated to disturb him, but I put my hand on his shoulder from the back. He turned around, and it was then I realized he was a Catholic priest.”
Eyre told him it was time to close the pavilion, and the priest said: “That’s all right. I was just worshiping Christ.”
John Garbett, who today is a product manager for media with LDS Welfare Services, was 10 years old when the fair opened. His family lived in nearby Chappaqua. His father, William, was on the high council with Elder Perry and worked closely with him at the Mormon Pavilion.
“You think that you’re a small part of a fairly small organization that doesn’t have much of an international reach,” he said of his youth. “And then you go to the world’s fair and you see our pavilion next to the Catholic pavilion and with all the other corporate sponsors. It totally changed my mind forever about how I viewed our faith and myself as a member of our faith.”
He added, “The fun thing about the fair, for a 10-year-old kid, was this: You know the ride at Disneyland called ‘It’s a Small World’? That was built for the fair. Now, every time I go to Disneyland and take that ride, to me it’s going back to the world’s fair in 1964.”
He recalls the performance at the fair by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and by a regional choir of LDS Relief Society women who, like similar Relief Society choirs around the church in that day, went by the name of “the Singing Mothers.”
But, growing emotional even now, after 50 years, Garbett said the thing he remembers best is seeing his father come home after working at the pavilion and telling of people he had met and talked to, who had gone through the exhibits and had been touched.
“They had learned a truth or an idea they had never thought about: that we have a loving Heavenly Father who has a plan for us. I think the decision to focus on the plan of salvation was totally inspired.”
Indeed, the theme of the pavilion was “Man’s Search for Happiness,” the title of the movie produced expressly for it, with narration by Elder Richard L. Evans, longtime announcer for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s weekly broadcasts.
“Sometimes in your search for happiness,” the film begins, “you ponder the meaning of your life. You sift your memory for beginnings. You send your mind ahead for directions. But all you really know is now, and you are lost in the present.”
With images of a family experiencing birth, joy in relationships, the death of a grandfather and his emergence into the spirit world to await the resurrection, the 15-minute film depicts doctrines of the premortal existence, mortality and man’s eternal destiny.
“The other thing that stands out for me is the Christus,” Garbett said. “I remember seeing it again and again. It countered the notion that our faith is not Christian. When people came into the pavilion, they would know this is who we worship.”
Some think the church’s first copy of the sculpture was commissioned expressly for the fair. Actually, the first copy was already in the church’s possession, in a crate at what would become the North Visitors' Center on Temple Square, which was then still under construction.
According to a brief history written by Matthew O. Richardson, a BYU professor of church history and doctrine, the sculpture was a gift from President Stephen L. Richards, a member of the First Presidency, to the church. President Richards had seen it in Denmark and had seen a copy of it at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in California. He commissioned the work, but did not live to see it placed on display.
When the time came, it was determined that it would be less expensive to commission a new statue and have it shipped from Italy than it would be to remove the existing one from the uncompleted visitors center in Salt Lake City.
After the world’s fair closed in 1965, the Mormon Pavilion Christus was shipped to the Los Angeles California Temple visitors center, where it is on display today. Other copies have since been made for display at visitors centers in Laie, Hawaii; Mesa, Arizona; Mexico City; Washington, D.C.; Oakland, California; St. George, Utah; Nauvoo, Illinois; and Palmyra, N.Y. A smaller statue is displayed in connection with new temple open houses, most recently in Ogden, Utah.
But perhaps the most important legacy of the pavilion is the convert baptisms that came of it.
“We watched the miracle of people being introduced to the church,” Elder Perry said. “A large number of converts came as a follow-up to that experience. I was asked, along with Ken Beesley, to be the high councilor responsible for organizing the Rego Park Branch. It was a brand new branch created as a result of world’s fair converts.”
Top wrote, “David W. Evans remembered that the year previous to the fair there were only six convert baptisms in (New York, New Jersey and Cumorah stakes) but a thousand baptisms in each of the two years the fair was open and ‘in the succeeding several years, there were six to eight hundred per year.’ ”
Nancy McNail Campbell of Provo said she was one of those converts that resulted from visiting the pavilion.
“As we finished signing the book at the exit door, a big, burly, red-headed missionary stood behind a glass case, and he said, ‘Would you like to buy a Book of Mormon for 50 cents? If you read and pray about it you will know it is true, and in 60 days you will want to be baptized.’”
That seemed impossible to Campbell, an active Methodist at the time.
But 17 days after missionaries contacted them subsequent to their visit at the fair, she and her husband were indeed baptized and became part of the new Rego Park Branch.
Her husband died in 1997, and she married Jim Campbell. As a ward mission leader at a baptismal service, he asked his wife to bear her testimony. She told of the missionary, a burly farm boy from Montana, who had challenged her at the fair to read the Book of Mormon. Afterward, an elderly couple approached her and said that missionary was their son.
“Six months later,” Campbell said, “he came, and I gave him a big hug and told him, ‘It didn’t take 60 days for my husband and me to know the fullness of the gospel and be baptized; it was only 17 days.’ I thanked him for opening his mouth.”
Because of its effectiveness in conveying the message, the pavilion’s features and approach would be emulated time and again.
Martha Marshall Sloan recalled that her father, Richard J. Marshall, was deeply involved in the pavilion’s creation as an account executive at Evans Advertising in Salt Lake City.
“He went on to develop pavilions at the Montreal World’s Fair, San Antonio Hemisfair, the Japanese World’s Fair, and put in visitors centers throughout the United States and virtually every temple, including New Zealand and Hawaii,” she said.
“I have always felt a connection to the World’s Fair, because I was born in April 1964,” she said. “My father left his work in New York to be present at my birth. He remained at home for two weeks and then flew back to continue his work on the pavilion.”
Top concluded: “The church’s innovative involvement in the New York World’s Fair can be inarguably characterized as seminal for the church in the New York City area in the 20th century. However, its influence reached beyond the borders of New York, and its legacy continues to be felt into the 21st century and beyond.”
Email: rscott@deseretnews.com