CCLVIII
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The
Marine Air Terminal (Terminal A) today
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What
was intended to be the crown jewel of all of Pan American Airways’ passenger
facilities was built, unsurprisingly, in New York City just a few miles from
the Cloud Club at the top of Juan Trippe’s Chrysler Building world
headquarters. Purpose-built and with no prefabricated structures, the building
that became known as “The Marine Air Terminal” was meant to be part palace and
part showplace for Pan Am’s Clipper fleet. The airport surrounding them, New York
Municipal, was intended to be the setting for the jewel, a unique airfield with
cutting edge technologies and accommodations both as an aerodrome and a port
facility.
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The Main
Terminal at New York Municipal Airport (LaGuardia) circa 1940
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Led
by Mayor LaGuardia, a team of engineers headed by Robert Moses designed the
airport, which was to be paid for through a combination of Federal, State,
City, and Corporate funding. The final plans were submitted to President
Roosevelt on September 3, 1937, and by September ninth, work began on the site.
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New
York Municipal Airport (LaGuardia) under construction, 1938
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The
old North Field / Glenn Curtiss Field / North Beach Field / Grand Central
Airport / Holmes Airport structures were razed, and significant amounts of
landfill were used to extend the shorelines. At $40,000,000.00, New York
Municipal Airport was the largest, most expensive, and most advanced airport in
the U.S. when it was completed on October 15, 1939, just a few weeks more than
two years after construction began.
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Still
referred to as “North Beach Field” in 1939, what would become LaGuardia Airport
began operations on a low key. Note the very empty parking lots
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The
great airport was designed by William Delano, a cousin of FDR’s (and a nephew
of the Brown of Brown Brothers, Harriman). It covered nine-tenths of a square
mile, and had four miles of runways and taxiways. Delano was also responsible for designing the
impressive Beaux-Arts building for the Clippers.
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A rare
color shot of a Clipper at the Marine Air Terminal, 1940
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Impressive,
but not vast: The small two story structure was outfitted with a circular lobby, a departure lounge, a restaurant
and a bar and grill that was decorated with flying bird and propeller motifs
and chrome signs, most of which remain or have been restored. The Clipper dock
projected from the rear of the building out into Flushing Bay, and was
originally envisioned as the mooring point for not just Pan Am’s flying boats,
but Imperial Airways’ , Air France’s, Deutsche Lufthansa’s, and other nations.
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The first
flight of the Yankee Clipper from the
Marine Air Terminal, 1940
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History
derailed the glamorous fate of the Marine Air Terminal. By the time it was
completed on March 31, 1940, the world
was at war, and most of the prewar carriers had dedicated themselves to
military service. Pan Am, as the carrier of a neutral nation, continued to fly to
Lisbon, and Marseilles, to neutral Ireland, and to Southampton, but service was subject to the
vagaries of the war.
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The
interior of the Marine Air Terminal in the 1940s. Note the huge globe, not
unlike the one at Dinner Key
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It
was not long before the Atlantic Clippers gained the same romantic notoriety as
the China Clippers in the Pacific. As the chief international terminal on the
Atlantic seaboard, the Marine Air Terminal was often in the news --- foreign
diplomats came and went, crisis situations were discussed in the Arrivals area,
and famous and infamous passengers were sighted walking the Clipper dock. Refugee
nuclear physicists came ashore at the Marine Air Terminal as did Jews and
others fleeing Nazi Europe.
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The Marine
Air Terminal today
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On
December 7, 1940, the New York Times rather innocently reported a story under a
banner headline which read:
COL DONOVAN
FLIES OVER ATLANTIC ON SECRET MISSION TIED TO FRANCE
Departs
Incognito on Clipper with Two Others, One a Frenchman - Reported to be Bound
for Africa, Greece, and Spain
Some
secret. The “Colonel Donovan” referenced was “Wild Bill” Donovan, the head of
the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the CIA.
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William J. “Wild
Bill” Donovan, American spymaster nonpareil
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The
paper also noted at one point that a scientist, Henry Tizard, had arrived from
the U.K. It would have meant nothing to most Americans, but sharp-eyed Axis
agents were able to tell their leaders that the inventor of British ASDIC ---
what we call “radar” today --- had arrived in America on a Top Secret mission
carrying the blueprints for his invention. Before the war, the idea of “national security”
still had the quaint trappings of the Gilded Age.
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Sir Henry
Tizard, the inventor of Radio Detection And Ranging
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Regardless
of its all-too-brief reign as the ultimate Clipper facility, the Marine Air
Terminal remains in use today as the oldest remaining active airport terminal
in the United States. The first aircraft
to use the Marine Air Terminal was the Boeing 314 Yankee Clipper in 1940. After the war, the Marine Air Terminal
became the preserve of landplanes like the Lockheed Constellation. As jets came
into use, and grew larger and larger, the Marine Air Terminal faced demolition,
but instead LaGuardia began using it for shuttle flights to Boston and
Washington, and later Chicago. It was added to the National Register of
Historic Places in 1982, ensuring its survival, and was thereafter restored to
its original configuration.
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The
spectacular business failure of the Trump Shuttle (1989-1992) put the future of
the Marine Air Terminal in question for awhile. As Rick Wilson said, “Everything
that Trump touches dies.”
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Even
as LaGuardia Airport is being utterly reconfigured, the Marine Air Terminal
remains in use.
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LaGuardia
Airport is undergoing (as of 2018) a massive reconstruction that has disrupted
air passenger handling in New York City in an epochal manner
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As
of 2018, the venerable Marine Air Terminal is in use (as “Terminal A”) by
JetBlue and Alaska Air.
