i want to start out by saying something you have probably never heard of it at the beginning of a history lecture, which is that it's okay to laugh. as the curtain on the screen suggests, there are some laughable moments to the story that we will be thinking together about tonight. some of it is going to strike you as a little bit funny, and it is from our vantage point. tonight we are thinking back to the years 1944 through 1946, the end of the second world war and the transition to peace. in the midst of the transition, there are many pressing issues for the world to face. i will cover in the story a fantastic idea that there should be a capital of the world. a place that would be the center for diplomacy. a place that would be grand. but it might be its own identity, its own city, or at least an expansive suburb. it might sort of be like a world's fair, or it might be like a compound of national embassies. sometimes i get the impression that people were thinking of the emerald city from the land of oz. [laughter] especially as they were thinking about the capital of the world in 1945. but this is the story that we are entering into today. if there were to be capital the of the world, where would it be? this was a proposition that civic boosters in american cities and towns could not resist, including philadelphia, but also many others as well. no one announced a competition, least of all the united nations. but the race began. even before it is officially existed, they were trying to get the attention of the world's diplomats and two when the price of becoming the capital of the world. it was a race of civic boosters and a race of newspaper reporters were covering the story. in many cases, often creating the story. so as to boost the campaigns for bringing the united nations to their own localities. the race went to san francisco where the u.n. charter was drafted. he went to london where they met for the first time. it went to mackinac island or the nation's governors had their conference in 1945. went to new york, which contained the base of operations for the site searching teams who would determine the outcome. it went to potential sites, especially in the northeast, including philadelphia. while the civic boosters were running their own race race to win a private no one had announced, the world's diplomats were on their own parallel track, a more deliberate of course of determining whether the balance of power would lie in europe or the united states of trying to get an international organization off the ground in dealing with a very serious issues of transitioning from war to peace, all the while with the american boosters nipping at their heels. we have had some serious substantial lessons learned from all of us, and it is about the ways that local and national and global identities are formed and it is about the way that ideas and time and space change as communications technology changes and transportation technology changes. it's also a great story as the screen suggests. as the boosters were racing onto the world stage, and as the world's diplomats try to negotiate local politics and the american real estate market. to begin at the beginning, i am often asked how i became interested in this topic. so this is a story from the archives. it begins in philadelphia. at a time when i was researching an entirely different subject, although i came to discover it was not entirely separate. was working in the archives of the independence national historical park going through the screen trying to assemble a history. and i came across this clipping. philadelphia, home of the united nations. from the front page of the record in 1945. my only response was what. i have lived in philadelphia for a while. i thought i knew something about philadelphia's history. this was news to me. i wanted to find out more. just on the little investigation, i found the philadelphia, in addition to san francisco, was among the earliest and most assertive and longest lasting of the competitors for the honor of becoming the host location for the united nations. the inspiration was come as you can see, independence hall, which was seen by philadelphians is in integration to the nation and therefore presumed to be an integration to the world. what better reason could there be to locate the united nations within the passivity of the cradle of liberty. i came to discover that this kind of attachment to local history was embedded in many of the competitors that came forward. those offering themselves to be the capital of the world. often they were acting from a basis of local history, which they saw as contributing to the nation's history, which they saw then as having international significance. it was especially true of places that had historic connections to the american revolution and to the founding fathers. in addition to philadelphia, there were many others including new jersey, saratoga, new york, charlottesville, and williamsburg, virginia, just to name a few on that basis. here we see philadelphians on the steps of independence hall looking forward to their future. they are holding a map of the city. if we could see the other side of this, we can see an aging commercial district that had yet to become independence national historical park and they are imagining that the future will build from on the past that they already have in place. i love this as if they are seeing the future or this was true of other cities as well. in detroit that was another competitor for the boosters really saw the potential of the world capital is being a step forward into the future. this is intriguing. then i read about the history of the united nations and gone into the records of the early organization and saw some references that there may be 30 to 50 of the self acclaimed world capital competitors. that seemed enough to look a little harder. i came to understand there were many more. a great variety in every region of the country. not only large cities that you might expect like boston and chicago and st. louis and new orleans and denver and san francisco, but also smaller places i never would imagine. that they would be in a contest to become the center of the world. sault ste. marie, michigan. now, clearly i needed to find out more about this. so far as i know, there were at least 248 localities they became involved in this episode to 1 degree or another by either making a suggestion or issuing an official invitation or embarking upon a full-blown campaign to make their home towns the capital of the world. so here i could see that there would be a wide variety of materials that would allow me to see what happening in the united states and society and culture and in this transitional moment. how it is related to local identity and how it makes us feel a connection to the world. off i was on my adventure in search for the capital of the world. one of the places i'd like to introduce is a sort of counterpoint to the story of philadelphia because it is also one of the earliest and most long lasting competitors. the black hills of south dakota. meet paul bellamy. he is in the driver seat. he appears in histories of the united nations. this is all sort of the throwaway line, the shorthand for expressing the ridiculous lengths that the american booster campaign went to. however, i spent little time in south dakota and a little bit of time getting to know paul bellamy and his campaign. i came to have some different ideas about it. it seemed a little out there and wacky for being on the potential capital of the world. can see paul is driving fdr and they are on their way to a dedication on mount rushmore. he was the owner of a transportation company. so often told him to drive the celebrities that came to mount rushmore or other sites in the region. and he organized tours for other visitors. he was a big local booster of tourism and locally beneficial projects. he was always in him. always part of major projects the reason why the black hills of south dakota were a contender, at least so far as they were concerned, during the second week of september of 1944, the united states army air force submitted a telegram of tragic news in rapid city, south dakota. just a few days short of their 40th wedding anniversary, they learned that their younger son, paul bellamy had died in a collision. he was 22 years old and had been lead of two groups of flying fortresses. they observed a plane hitting too close to their own ship. the engineer raced to the cockpit intending to grab the controls and command the plane. the plane was colliding with the other, and they went down with the ship. half a world away from his son, his search for channels include racing over his son's short life, the baby, the playful boy and the boy in training on the outskirts of rapid city, perhaps a future father or partner in business. we find him at the local chamber of commerce meeting proposing that the black hills issue an invitation to the united nations to bring its headquarters there to that region. it was a memorial act to others who had died in the war. the people who are pursuing this dream come although it seems perfectly reasonable to them, i think of them as the parent generation of world war ii. people who were born at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. by world war ii, they are the civic leaders of their communities. many of them had served in war. for paul it was the war. they were committed to ensuring peace for the future and supporting united nations as a way of doing that. this was a motivation for many of them to be involved. he was really in the race. .. with the toyota headlines came more competitors and i put this slide back up to you in order to describe the way that this wave hits the diplomatic world in 1945. i call this chapter blitz because i think that is about how it felt to the diplomats. the competition to become the capital of the world which no one had announced reached london in the fall of 1945 with the bombardment of invitations that no one had solicited. a resolution from the town board of hyde park new york, letter from the chamber of commerce of deloitte wisconsin and promotional brochures from boston st. lucie and newport rhode island petitions from oklahoma and suggestions from saratoga valley forge monticello and williamsburg. bizarre communication signed by chase osborne in's lane somewhere in georgia. south dakota and photographs from philadelphia. starting with a smattering of five suggested capitals in september of 1945 locations increase by 13 in october 17 more november and 85 and december. a few suggestions arrived to locations outside the united states but most of the correspondence came from american public officials publishers business leaders and other individuals promoting their own hometowns. the appeals became more and more elaborate. these are some examples of the promotional materials that landed in the mail in london. philadelphia is at this point still promoting its historic significance as its main appeal. chicago is situating itself at the center of the planet and on the right what san francisco called a brochure is clearly much more than that. it's being displayed by a flight attendant who was sitting on a crate of these that were headed off to london. so here you see the promotion being built around the promotion so this is growing and growing and growing. once they got to the diplomats in london, the response they received only encouraged more because diplomats are diplomatic. no one said no. no one said go away. the response was your materials will be considered by the appropriate parties at the appropriate time. if your civic booster what does that sound like to you? yes, you were still in the running. try harder and i think this was part of the spirit of americans at this time. having helped the allies win the war, that anything, they could accomplish anything only if they tried hard enough. no one was giving up, even though such as the people from the black hills who really never stood a chance. they didn't know that because no one said no and they were in the game all the way. if there was to be a capital of the world what might it look like? not only did we have civic boosters producing brochures, we had architects devising plans for what the new united nations might become. this was the first plan created in san francisco at the time of the conference there and this is from a newspaper or so it's not very easy to see. but this plan reminds me a little bit of the dry lawn -- from the world's fair in many of these plans reflect that sensibility of worlds fairs either through their design or through their architects who had connections with worlds fairs or through their settings. some of them were literally on sites of worlds fairs. the other thing i see in these plans and i'm going to show you two or three more of them is a developing idea that a city, an existing place might not be the best location for a new world for this organization, that maybe it should be its own place. maybe it needs a more pastoral setting in order to do the work of peace. here is a second design for san francisco. this is actually in marion county on the bay in here you see this is on the waterfront. this space-age sort of design there. these are businesses of the future and what will the poorest -- post-war world to be like? thislike? this is northerly like? this is northerly iowa chizik peninsula near the downtown and what you see here is the proposal for the world capital built on northerly aisle. what i find interesting about this is you really can't see chicago. it is as if the city is not there. there is some idea here that the peace organization needs to be more peaceful surroundings. often there were proposals for islands. this is saint sue marie michigan. there's a similar design for niagara falls. the worse for border patrols is that join towns on both sides of the border. this is salt solved same marie michigan and the same with niagara falls. modern buildings symbolic traffic signals linking roads from both continents are part of the designs. finally back to our friends in south dakota. this is the design for the world capital of the black hills. this would have been in a valley in the black hills. what you are seeing here is the central tower structure and this, it looks like a sickle but it's actually a spiral to allow the united nations to grow and grow and grow in perpetuity. here you see a small office structure in the delegations. it looks to be a little bit like a suburban cul-de-sac development. in the hills there would have been villages for nationalities and straight through the middle is the world highway that would allow you to drive around the world which of course would go straight through south dakota. so this was their proposal for the black hills. the philadelphians did not create an architectural design. part of their pitch was we are not going to tell you what to do. just please come here. they did recognize that the idea of the city as a location was falling out of favor and they needed to change the idea of putting it close to independence hall even though they didn't intend to create that expansive plaza there. they moved as charles said earlier their aspirations to belmont plateau and this is a current picture of belmont plateau which is a "field of dreams" because it's all baseball diamonds out there now and you can see the city skyline in the background there and you can barely see a memorial hall from the 1876 worlds fair. also it's visible from this location so they propose this location as well as an additional acreage in northwest philadelphia and into montgomery county. they put together is much acreage as they could to try to entice the united nations to come to philadelphia. so here is a question. you have to put the capital of the country somewhere. where do you decide the center is in 1945? among the diplomats the debate was between europe and the united states. with the united nations be the traditional center for diplomacy or would it move to the united states to make a fresh start? the idea of center, this very transitional sort of concept at this time, ideas of time and space were being transformed by transportation, by communications technology. the world was coming closer together but not everyone was thinking of it that way so there are interesting discussions where people are talking about distance. some people talk about it in terms of miles but other people talk about in termsur and in hours distance was changing. commercial aviation was about to takeoff and for that reason anyplace could make the argument that when i got there fabulous new airport they were going to be the center of the world and they could very easily accommodate the united nations. they make this point with maps as you see here. this is the black hills campaign and you see the concentric circles moving outward and you see the airplanes coming in from each continent. no problem. everyone can get to rapid city. here is a similar promotion from atlantic city, which was very sort of in competition as well and this is them connecting everywhere. here is the st. louis promotion. weldon spring was the site outside of the city that they were putting forward and here is tosca houma oklahoma. again with the concentric circles there at the center and they are offering this very modern structure and the airplane is arriving to bring the world and into tosca houma and you can see here they are measuring air miles in order to show how accessible to ask a houma might be. tosca houma is another one of those stories that at first glance seems like one of the crazy places on the list. but there is also a richer story behind it. some of you may know that tesco houma was the capital of the choctaw nation and it was proposed to the u.n. as a place where the diplomats could locate a statement about social justice by being in the land of an oppressed people. so there is much more going on to the tosca houma campaign than might appear. so there are all these promotions about air travel and how easy it will be, how swift it will be to travel to any location that might want to be the capital of the world. but then there is a wrinkle. brewster's were posting about this as roosters well but in the fall of 1945 there were 16 groups of roosters who decided they had to go to london in person in order to make their pitch. here are the philadelphians on the airplane getting ready to go make their appeal to the united nations and one of the reasons we know about their trip is that kept a detailed journal. it's now in the digital collections of historical society pennsylvania to go on line and take a look. it was really hard to travel from philadelphia to london and our team -- 1945. first of all they may be sitting on an airplane getting ready to leave but they are not in philadelphia. they are in new york. you cannot get on an airplane in philadelphia and fly in 1945. that would come along pretty soon for philadelphia but they had to take a train to new york and then wait for the weather to be right in order to get on the airplane and day after day they would wait for a phonecall to tell them where to go and sometimes they would get a phonecall they guess they could go and a few minutes later it's called off. at 1.1 of them tried to go on the queen mary thinking would be faster to get to london than it would be to take the plane but they did finally fly. so did the mayor of chicago and so did the governor of massachusetts and each one of them is a tale of adventure and difficulty and long, long journeys to get to london. they were going to have a little bit of a hard someone had to listen to them. it was a formality. the diplomats were there down the field pretty quickly and it was a matter of geography.