Exhibiting Modern Turkey in the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair

• In Event: Monuments of and to the Past: The Politics of Heritage in Interwar Balkans, Russia, and Turkey

Abstract

The interwar period was a critical phase of nation-building for Turkey, founded in 1923. In the two decades following the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution, architecture played a key role in shaping a modern Turkish identity, emphasizing a national essence distinct from its imperial past. Continuing the late Ottoman tradition of participation in world’s fairs, Turkey used international exhibitions to present its modernization while reaffirming its cultural and historical heritage.
This paper examines Turkey’s display at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, The World of Tomorrow, designed by Sedat Hakkı Eldem. Eldem, who defined the Turkish House as central to national architectural heritage, designed the pavilion as a complex of two buildings connected by a courtyard fountain and pool. Drawing from Anatolian and Ottoman residential forms, he reimagined the Ottoman elite’s yalı (waterfront mansion) as the main exhibition space, positioning it as the authentic representation of Turkish architecture, amid the neighboring pavilions of Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Japan.
This study explores continuities and shifts in Ottoman and interwar Turkish representations of national architecture at world’s fairs. It also analyses the pavilion’s exhibits, including archaeological sites and restorations of Byzantine and Seljuk buildings. Government-commissioned photography albums reinforced an institutional agenda to both historicize and modernize Turkish architecture. Ultimately, the pavilion embodied the tension between constructing a modern national identity and preserving Turkey’s diverse architectural heritage within the vision of the World of Tomorrow.

Author

• Semra Horuz, Bilkent U (Turkey)