One Last Look at the TWA Flight Center

Posted on October 20, 2015 by PANYNJ PORTfolio

By Roz Hamlett, Portfolio Editor

The iconic TWA Flight Center opened recently to the public for a last and intimate look at the terminal before it’s adapted into a conference center and hotel by a private developer.

Designed by celebrated Finnish architect, Eero Saarinen, a mention of the flight center is enough to make airport history buffs and fans of architecture applaud its enduring symbol of an upward bound America during the dawning of the jet age.

Closed since 2001, the fantastical flight center, now a national landmark, opened in 1962, the same year not coincidentally that the Hanna-Barbera futuristic-inspired cartoon, The Jetsons, was broadcast in living rooms throughout the nation.

Just the opening lyrics to its catchy theme “Meet George Jetson. . .” is enough to trigger a flashback of childhood memories for fans of the cartoon series and the feature-length movie, a couple generations later.  Who among us hasn’t known a grouchy, but good-hearted boss like Mr. Spaceley?

Still, it’s a little surprising that the world of Orbit City – where George, Jane, Judy, Elroy, Astro and Rosie dwell in a skyhigh penthouse – can claim legitimate architectural roots to no less than the venerable and historically significant TWA Flight Center through the school of futuristic architecture known as “Googie.”

Googie architecture, which later became widely known as the Mid-Century School of Modern Architecture – was named after Googie’s Coffee Shop in West Hollywood – a style that was influenced by car culture, jets, the Space Age and the Atomic Age.  Its features included upswept roofs, geometric shapes and the bold use of glass, steel and neon.  Its legacy of design can be seen in rocket ship designs, tailfins, boomerangs, flying saucers, atoms and, most notable of all, the dramatic and glamorous interior and exterior of the TWA Flight Center.

Posted in airport terminals, airports, historic photographs, history, history buffs, history of aviation, Saarinen, TWA Flight Center, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

The Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia: The Age of the Flying Boat

Posted on October 15, 2015 by PANYNJ PORTfolio

By Gregory Quinn, Special to the Port Authority

The Yankee Clipper was a sight to behold. One of nine active Boeing 314 Clippers, the Yankee was a massive flying boat—one of the largest aircrafts of its time—made so that passengers could enjoy the transatlantic commute in style: two decks, opulent dining rooms and private compartments.

The Yankee has the distinction of making the inaugural flight from the LaGuardia Airport’s historic Marine Air Terminal, taking off from the Long Island Sound and touching down in Lisbon. The first generation of passenger travel, an era marked by an unprecedented convergence of sea and air, was underway.

In its heyday, there was nothing more impressive than the flying boat.  Americans had just begun to comprehend the very notion of flying when they arrived, these gargantuan vessels with massive hulls; to think that they could sustain flight seemed an impossible dream. But they did fly. And for a moment they ruled the sky.

Flying boats reached their apex on November 2, 1947, when Howard Hughes took flight in his Hercules. Hughes’ white whale, the undertaking in which —according to him—he would invest his “life sweat,” the Hercules remains the largest flying boat in history, with the longest wingspan of any plane that has ever taken flight. Her maiden voyage captivated the world.  But she would never fly again. Alas, the golden age of the flying boat was coming to an end.

During World War II, the U.S. used flying boats regularly for military operations, but after the war, as passenger air travel boomed and more and more land runways were built, flying boats became obsolete. They survive, but as a niche—used primarily to travel in and out of archipelagos and other areas where land space is limited. (Flying boats differ from the much smaller floatplanes, which are still in wide use. Floatplanes use long, thin pontoons to achieve buoyancy; the flying boat uses its fuselage.) Today only vestiges from the flying boat’s era remain, yet one remnant survives right here in New York, in the aforementioned Marine Air Terminal at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s LaGuardia Airport.

As its name would suggest, the Marine Air Terminal was built specifically to cater to the influx of these marvelous, massive seaplanes that inundated the skies in the mid-20th century. An Art Deco building designed by the firm Delano & Aldrich in 1939, the Marine Air Terminal is the only active airport terminal in the country that dates back to the first generation of passenger travel. (Befitting this stature, the terminal was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.)

It’s a grand sight, the Marine Air Terminal; on the interior walls of the rotunda, a remarkable mural captures the entire history of aeronautical conquest. Painted by abstract expressionist painter James Brooks, the 235-foot-long mural, titled Flight, traces human interaction with the sky to its earliest roots, to the mythical Greek craftsman Daedalus and his son, Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. From there, the mural continues, depicting the flying devices of Leonardo Da Vinci, the historic Wright Brother’s flight at Kitty Hawk and, of course, a flying boat—a Pan American Clipper. In an airport often maligned for its lack of aesthetical beauty, Flight sticks out: a marvelous work of art surrounded by Spartan buildings of industry.

Eventually, flying boats were phased out at the Marine Air Terminal. Today, it mainly serves the hourly shuttle flights between New York and Boston. But all over the terminal are reminders of its grand history. There’s the mural, of course, but some much more subtle. Lining the terminal’s exterior roof is a frieze of terracotta fish, a pair of wings on their dorsals. These flying fish look odd from a distance—they almost appear to be giant dragonflies—but they are a deliberate affectation: They are made to resemble the grand Pan American Clippers of yesteryear. Every passenger who enters the Marine Air Terminal walks under them, perhaps not even noticing these symbols of a bygone era, when the famous terminal in LaGuardia was the hub of the most magnificent airplanes in the world.

Posted in airport terminals, international flight, LaGuardia Airport, Marine Air Terminal | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mohawk Ironworkers Footloose on Port Authority Infrastructure

Posted on October 12, 2015 by PANYNJ PORTfolio

By Roz Hamlett, Portfolio Editor

Photos and Audio by Stephen Nessen, WNYC Public Radio

During a recent meeting on the 23rd floor of 4 World Trade Center, a Port Authority colleague of mine was discussing the results of a research project when she abruptly stopped mid-sentence and stared out the window.

A couple workers appeared to be fixing a crane on 3 WTC, the tower under construction next door. They were not inside lift buckets, but stood balanced mid-air on the operating arm of the crane.  They appeared to be untethered.  We all just gawked, speechless at the sight.  Were they just plain crazy?

Another colleague said the men could be Caughnawaga (Kahnawake), a band of Christian Mohawks, who for years have worked on every major Port Authority bridge project, including the George Washington Bridge, the Bayonne Bridge and various other bridges and skyscrapers in the region, including the Empire State Building as well as World Trade Center construction projects.

Portfolio was intrigued. Wow. . . it’s hard enough for anyone living in the New York region to go about his or her day without crossing a bridge, riding an elevator or traveling by air. How can anyone with acrophobia commonly known as a “fear of heights”  even function? A Mohawk ironworker to an acrophobiac would be like SuperMan, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

This ability is not innate in Mohawk Indians.  Working hundreds of feet in the air, they must be careful too, like anyone else. But the pay is good, and some Mohawks got involved in the trade during the late 1800s and promoted it in the community or got their friends hired onto the crews.  That’s when the urban myth began that American Indians have no fear of heights because a large percentage of bridge and skyscraper crews were Mohawk.

The story of the Caughnawaga began in Canada when the Dominion Bridge Company began to build a cantilevered bridge over the St. Lawrence River for the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886.  Because part of the bridge lay in the Mohawk reservation, they demanded jobs on the project. The company planned to use them as unskilled labor until officials discovered that members of the tribe would climb all over the bridge “for fun” at night.

According to one witness, “they would walk a narrow beam high up the air with nothing below them but the river.  It wouldn’t mean anymore to them than walking on solid ground.  They seemed immune to the noise of the riveting, which goes right through you and is often enough to make newcomers to construction feel sick and dizzy.”

Some Mohawk men displayed such remarkable aptitude for height that by the end of the project there were 70 iron and steel riveters from the Caughnawa band.Their story continued to New York with a man named John Diabo, who came to the city to work on the Hell Gate Bridge in 1915.   Others of his tribe followed, eventually forming a settlement during the 1920s of about 400 men, women and children in the North Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn.

A 1949 New Yorker article described Mohawks as “the most footloose Indians in North America,” and quotes an official of Dominion Bridge as saying “putting riveting tools in their hands was like putting ham with eggs.”  By 1950, 80 Caughnawa were members of the Brooklyn local of the International Association of Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Iron Workers union and others belonged to the Manhattan local.

For more than 50 years, the Mohawks of Quebec, Canada have occupied a 10 square block area in the North Gowanus section of Brooklyn, which became known as Little Caughnawaga. The men brought their wives, children and often, extended family with them.  At its peak in the late 1950s, there were 800 Mohawk ironworkers living in North Gowanus.  They made up about 15 percent of ironworkers then.  Today they make up about 10 percent.

Posted in history, history buffs, New Jersey, New York, NY/NJ region, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments