Marine Air Terminal
The Marine Air Terminal is an airport terminal located at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York City. The Marine Air Terminal, an Art Deco building opened in 1939 by William Delano of the firm Delano & Aldrich, is the only active airport terminal dating from the first generation of passenger air travel in the United States.
Terminal A was the airport's original terminal for overseas flights, and it had originally been built to handle seaplanes, namely Pan American Airways' fleet of flying boats, or Clippers. After World War II, technological advances made the Clippers obsolete, and the Marine Air Terminal was converted for the newer airplanes and was used mostly for non-scheduled airlines. When Clippers stopped serving the terminal in 1952, it was closed to passenger traffic and fell into disrepair. In 1966, it was renovated and reopened as a terminal for corporate jets. In 1986, Pan Am restarted flights at the terminal.
The terminal consists of a central circular core of two stories with an attic, from which a rectangular entrance pavilion and two symmetrically opposed one-story wings project. The terminal has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1982.
History
Construction
By the early 1930s, commercial airlines and airports began to be developed in the United States as a result of the Federal government's use of private contractors for postal transport, inspired by Charles Lindbergh's famous transatlantic flight in 1927. New York was in dire need of a new airport by 1934 when Fiorello H. La Guardia was elected mayor. Angered that a flight on which he was a passenger landed in Newark even though his ticket said "New York," LaGuardia pushed New Yorkers to support an airport within their city.Plans for the airport, which was to be federally sponsored and funded through the Works Progress Administration, were approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on September 3, 1937. Just six days later, the Mayor presided over groundbreaking ceremonies and construction proceeded rapidly. At and with nearly of runways, the $40 million airport was the largest and most expensive in the world to that time. New York Municipal Airport–LaGuardia Field opened on October 15, 1939 and the Marine Air Terminal was dedicated in March 1940.
Pan Am use
The waterside terminal was designed to serve the fleet of flying boats, or Clippers, of Pan American Airways. When a Clipper landed in Long Island Sound, it taxied to a dock where passengers could disembark into the terminal. The first flight from the Marine Air Terminal by a Clipper departed on March 31, 1940, carrying a crew of 10, nine passengers and over 5,000 pounds of mail. It landed in Lisbon, Portugal 18 hours and 30 minutes later. The Pan American Clippers – with a wing span of 152 feet, a cruising speed of 200 mph and a capacity to carry 72 passengers – were luxurious. The two-deck interior featured dining rooms, private compartments and sleeping sections.However, with the outbreak of World War II, new four-engine land planes were developed, and flying boats stopped carrying scheduled passengers out of New York after 1947. The Marine Air Terminal was converted for the newer airplanes and was used mostly for non-scheduled airlines. The last Pan American flight left the terminal in February 1952, bound for Bermuda. The terminal was closed for airline traffic and it fell into a state of disrepair. In 1966, it was renovated and reopened as a terminal for corporate jets.
Current use
Since 1986, the terminal has been used primarily for shuttle services between New York and Boston and Washington D.C. In 1986, Pan American World Airways began the Pan Am Shuttle service between New York and Boston from the Marine Air Terminal. In 1987, the company took advantage of the terminal's proximity to water and started a water taxi between Wall Street and the terminal to attract customers from the Eastern Shuttle which operated from the landside terminals at La Guardia Airport. Delta Air Lines acquired the service from Pan Am in 1991 and used the terminal for operating the Delta Shuttle. Several commuter airlines, air taxis, private aircraft, Sheltair Aviation Services, and the Federal Aviation Administration Contract Weather Observatory for the airport also use the terminal.A $7 million restoration was completed in time for the airport's 65th anniversary of commercial flights on December 2, 2004. On August 12, 2009, it was announced as part of a slot-swap transaction that Delta Air Lines would vacate the terminal, with US Airways commencing service with their US Airways Shuttle operation starting in early 2010. This, however, did not take place and Delta continued to operate the Delta Shuttle from the Marine Air Terminal until December 8, 2017.
On December 9, 2017 as part of the LaGuardia Airport Redevelopment Project, Delta Air Lines ceased shuttle operations out of the Marine Air Terminal, and additional airlines relocated. Effective December 9, 2017 American Airlines consolidated all of their operations to Terminal B, while Alaska Airlines and JetBlue relocated their operations from Terminal B to the Marine Air Terminal. On October 27, 2018, Alaska Airlines ended all service from LaGuardia Airport, leaving JetBlue as the terminal's only tenant.
Mural
Inside the terminal hangs Flight, a mural measuring 12 feet in height and 237 feet in length; it was the largest mural created as part of the Great Depression-era Works Progress Administration. Completed by James Brooks in 1942, Flight depicts the history of man's involvement with flight.During the 1950s, many WPA artists were thought to be in collusion with Communists. Several works of art that had been created for post offices and other public facilities were therefore destroyed. Likewise, Flight was completely painted over with wall paint by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, possibly because some saw left-wing symbolism in it. In the late 1970s, Geoffrey Arend, an aviation historian and author of Great Airports: LaGuardia, mounted a campaign to restore the mural to its original splendor. With the help of Brooks, LaGuardia Airport manager Tim Peirce, and donations from Reader's Digest founders DeWitt Wallace and Laurance Rockefeller, the mural was rededicated on September 18, 1980.