Grand Central Palace Hero Land , WWI Homefront Poster

ca 1917

J.C.Muller

For 19 days in 1917, the Grand Central Palace in New York City was transformed into a military and entertainment extravaganza with the purpose of raising funds for the war effort. Titled “Hero Land,” a term used to describe France, the event’s goals were twofold, to raise awareness of the situation in Europe, and to raise money for over one hundred charitable societies including the Red Cross. Newspaper advertisements read “Hero Land is the Greatest Spectacle the World has ever seen, for the Greatest Need the World has ever seen.” The steering committee boasted the most prominent names in New York Society. The patron list included judges, elected officials, and foreign dignitaries. The British, French, Italian, and Belgian governments sent exhibitions.

Staged in the Grand Central Palace in New York City, the event featured recreations of “actual scenes of conditions of warfare” from the eastern and western fronts of the war, including battlefields, fortifications, camps, and fieldworks. Military focused exhibits included war relics, art created by prisoners of war interned in Switzerland, a British armored tank complete with its full crew who conducted demonstrations as to how this new instrument of war was used in modern warfare, and a reproduction of the underground trenches captured from the German army near Hindenberg. There was also a naval display where divers attached bombs to a miniature warship (which then exploded, to the delight of the crowds).

Rare and impresive graphic.