Friday, May 7, 2021 – THE CONTINUING HISTORY OF THE SITE OF LA GUARDIA
FRIDAY, MAY 7, 2021
The
357th Edition
LA GUARDIA
AIRPORT
PART 2
STEPHEN BLANK
MOTHER’S DAY SPECIAL SHOPPING
SEE BELOW
Gala Amusement Park NYPL Source: Curbed
LaGuardia Airport, Part 2
Stephen Blank
The site of the new airport had been earlier occupied by the Gala Amusement Park. Developed by the piano magnate William Steinway, Gala boasted the first Ferris wheel on the East Coast. It was home to saloons, rides, carousels, a zoo, a bowling alley, concert venues, gambling, and a giant beer hall. “Electric lights, amusement piers and thrill rides were added, and fireworks displays, vaudeville acts and ragtime music sweetened the atmosphere,” the New York Times recalls. At night, “single young men and women drank beer, danced and caroused.” Prohibition closed the beer hall, and the amusement park’s beaches were overwhelmed with horrifying water pollution.
TWA DC-2 sitting at LGA in the late 1930s, with American Airlines Hangars 1, 3 and 5 in the background. (Jon Proctor Collection)
Building the airport was an enormous construction project for the time. It required that landfill be brought from Rikers Island and a nearby garbage dump, then laid onto a metal framework. It is said that the metallic presence still affects compass readings on aircraft departing on runway 13.
The airport leapt forward in October 1938 when American Airlines signed a long-term lease to locate its overhaul base and main office, then located in Chicago, at LGA. Finally dedicated on October 15 as New York City Municipal Airport, “La Guardia Field” was tacked on by a hyphen two weeks later. It would become, simply, LaGuardia Airport in 1947. The airport opened officially on December 2, 1939, when a TWA DC-3 from Chicago landed just minutes after midnight.
PanAm moved from Port Washington to a new facility at LaGuardia, the Marine Air Terminal. First called the Overseas Terminal, the art deco structure was designed in 1939 by William Delano and completed a year later. An overhead mural inside the terminal portrayed the history of man’s creation and involvement in flight. Titled “Flight” and created by James Brooks, it would be painted over in the 1950s due to some saying that its use of dark greens and reds gave it too much of a “communist” feel. It would later be restored in 1979-80.
The nation’s five largest airlines — Pan American Airways, American, United, Eastern Air Lines, and Transcontinental and Western Air — began offering flights from the new airport and, within a year, LaGuardia was the busiest airport in the world.
Following the war, the Marine Air Terminal became the airport’s international departure point for land planes, but larger aircraft and a need for more space led carriers to move to Idlewild Airport. In the early 1950s, the Douglas DC-7 and Lockheed 1049 Constellation began flying nonstop across the country but, unable to take off heavily loaded from La Guardia, they flew from Idlewild. Many of us are all too familiar with LGA’s descent into what Joe Biden called a n airport “in some third-world country.”
Still, LGA is easily reachable from our Island – no bridges or tunnels, and many of us (me) became more or less used to it. But it will be fun to see what has happened there.
Thanks for flying with me!
SPECIAL MOTHER’S DAY SHOPPING AT RIHS KIOSK
FRIDAY TO SUNDAY 12 NOON TO 5 P.M.
Great NYC & ISLAND Merchandise
GREAT FOR HIS FEET
A DAY OUT AT THE BALL GAME
FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
SEND YOUR SUBMISSION
TO ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
INTERNATIONAL ARRIVALS BUILDING
JFK 1959
ED LITCHER , MITCH HAMMER GOT IT
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Stephen Blank
RIHS
May 2, 2021
Sources
https://metroairportnews.com/long-islands-roosevelt-field/
https://gizmodo.com/the-forgotten-history-behind-some-of-americas-busiest-a-1744664701
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/24/nyregion/
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/24/nyregion/fyi-730491.html https://classicnewyorkhistory.com/the-history-of-new-yorks-laguardia-airport/FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
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