Bill, when Seattle beat New York to the "World's Fair" designation, I think the New York backers just decided to go ahead and call New York's exposition a world's fair and hoped that nobody called them on it, which, as far as I know, nobody ever did. It wasn't the NY backers who were trying to trash Seattle's fair. In fact, they probably didn't want to call that much attention to it. Where the trashing came from was Ed Sullivan, who was pissed at Seattle's backers for having the audacity to think they could get along without him and his show. I doubt that Sullivan had much, if any, real influence with the NY backers.

From here, Sullivan's snit was pathetically amusing and without significance. Even without Sullivan's blessing, Century 21 let a lot of people know that Seattle wasn't just a cross between a logging camp and a fishing village, we got a terrific civic center out of the deal (theaters and exhibition halls, a couple of sports arenas, the opera house, other performance venues, etc.), and I wound up singing somewhere on or near the fairgrounds several days and/or nights a week for six months. It was a blast!

Don Firth