New York's 1964 World's Fair drew 51 million visitors and still lost $21 million

The 1964 New York World's Fair was the grand project of powerbroker Robert Moses, who steered it outside the international bureau's rules and planned it as a two-year celebration of American industry and optimism. It was one of the largest fairs ever staged.

Attendance was enormous — about 51 million people came over its two seasons — but the finances never matched the crowd. Moses had forecast far larger gate numbers and a substantial profit, and the fair's own arithmetic fell short of those expectations from the start.

The gap became a permanent loss. The organizing corporation, New York World's Fair 1964 Corporation, ran the fair on borrowed money, and when revenue fell short the debt could not be repaid from the gates.

An official audit put the fair's total loss at $21,159,660.30, a figure that made headlines in late 1967. The bondholders who financed the enterprise covered the major share of the loss, receiving pennies on the dollar for a spectacle that had been a triumph of attendance and a failure of finance.