The Marine Air Terminal (also known as Terminal A) is an airport terminal at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York City, United States. Its main building, designed in the Art Deco style by William Delano of the firm Delano & Aldrich, opened in 1940. The terminal was built to handle Pan Am's fleet of flying boats, the Boeing 314 Clippers, which landed on the nearby Bowery Bay. Technological advances after World War II made the Clippers obsolete, and the Marine Air Terminal was renovated in 1946 to serve conventional planes. , the terminal is vacant following the cessation of operations by Spirit Airlines, its sole tenant.
The Marine Air Terminal was LaGuardia Airport's original terminal for overseas flights. It was highly popular in the 1940s, when LaGuardia was the only major airport in the U.S. which offered regular flights to Europe. Traffic dropped drastically after the larger Idlewild Airport opened in 1948, and Clippers stopped serving the terminal in 1952. The terminal then served as the airport's general aviation terminal for more than three decades, except for a short period in the 1950s, when it was used by Northeast Airlines. The Pan Am Shuttle service started operating from Marine Air Terminal in 1986. Delta Air Lines took over the service in 1991, operating Delta Shuttle flights from the terminal until 2017, after which it was used by various carriers. The terminal has been renovated multiple times throughout its history.
The main terminal building consists of a two-story circular core with a projecting entrance pavilion and a pair of two-story wings. The brick facade is painted buff, with black details, and contains a frieze that depicts flying fish. The three-story rectangular entrance pavilion contains a canopy and a set of doors leading to the terminal's main rotunda. The rotunda contains marble floors and walls, as well as the Flight mural by James Brooks. Both the interior and the exterior of the main building were designated as New York City landmarks in 1980, and the structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. In addition, there was a hangar for seaplanes next to the main building, which has been converted into a garage for snow-removal vehicles.
History Following Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight in 1927, commercial air travel in the United States increased during the 1930s. New York City was in dire need of a new airport by 1934, after Fiorello H. La Guardia was elected mayor. Angered that a flight on which he was a passenger landed in Newark, New Jersey, even though his ticket said "New York", LaGuardia pushed New Yorkers to support the construction of an airport in New York City itself. The city did have a public airport, Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, but it was further from Midtown Manhattan than Newark Airport was. After commencing several studies on the feasibility of a new airport in New York City, the La Guardia administration decided to redevelop the existing North Beach Airport in Queens. The city government leased North Beach Airport in 1934.
Development La Guardia's administration presented plans for a renovation of North Beach Airport (now LaGuardia Airport) in August 1937. The plans included a terminal for seaplanes along Bowery Bay, on the western side of the airport, as well as a terminal for land planes along Flushing Bay, on the eastern side. The seaplane terminal, to be known as the Marine Air Terminal, was to contain four hangars, an administrative building, and a machine shop. The administrative building was to be a circular brick-and-steel edifice measuring tall and about across. A baggage check, customs and immigration offices, an air traffic control tower, and various other offices would be centered around a main waiting room, and there would be access ramps for seaplane passengers. The seaplane and land-plane terminals, both designed by the firm of Delano & Aldrich, would operate independently of each other. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) would provide federal funding for the project.
U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt approved plans for the airport on September 3, 1937, and La Guardia participated in a groundbreaking ceremony for the airport six days later. The airport was originally projected to cost $15 million and be completed in time for the opening of the 1939 New York World's Fair. By July 1938, the WPA employed 7,800 workers on the project, and workers were expanding the airport site through land reclamation. The number of workers had increased to 11,500 by that November, and the cost had increased to $29 million. Prior to the opening of the seaplane terminal, in early 1939, The New York Times reported that flying boats from England, France, Germany, and the United States would be using the terminal. The terminal had been planned with two seaplane hangars, but only one hangar was built at the time; that hangar was nearly complete by April 1939.
The expanded North Beach Airport opened on October 15, 1939, and was officially renamed the New York Municipal Airport–LaGuardia Field later that year. Covering with nearly of runways, the airport cost $40 million, making it the largest and most expensive in the world at that time. The seaplane terminal comprised $7.5 million of this cost, and the hangar alone cost $2 million. The land-plane section of the airport opened for commercial flights on December 2, 1939, but the completion of the marine terminal was delayed until March 1940. This was in part because construction in Bowery Bay had prevented seaplanes from landing there. Seaplanes instead traveled to bases in Port Washington, New York, and in Baltimore, Maryland.
Pan Am use At a hearing before the Civil Aeronautics Board in April 1939, Pan American Airways indicated that it planned to use North Beach Airport as the main U.S. terminal for the transatlantic flights of its Boeing 314 Clippers. Under this plan, Clippers would fly to Baltimore if there was bad weather in New York City. Pan Am leased the Marine Air Terminal from the New York City government the following month. Pan Am also allowed foreign airlines to use the terminal, including Imperial Airways, Air France, and KLM.
Opening and early years
The Marine Air Terminal officially opened on March 31, 1940, when a Clipper carrying ten crew members, nine passengers, and over 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of mail departed from the terminal. This flight landed in Lisbon, Portugal, 18 hours and 35 minutes later, setting a record for an eastbound transatlantic Clipper flight. The first flying boat to arrive at the Marine Air Terminal arrived from Bermuda on April 1, 1940. At the time, the terminal served three transatlantic trips per week. A brochure distributed on the terminal's opening day proclaimed it as "an enduring terminal linking the air routes of the old world with those of the new". Originally, members of the public were allowed to visit the Marine Air Terminal's observation deck, which became a popular place to observe seaplane and airplane landings. The deck was closed for security reasons during World War II.
In July 1940, American Export Airlines and city officials began discussing the possibility of constructing a second seaplane hangar next to the Marine Air Terminal. American Export wanted to operate a transatlantic passenger route from LaGuardia Airport, but Pan Am did not have any more space in its existing hangar. The New York City Planning Commission approved the proposed hangar in April 1941, allocating $389,000 to the project. LaGuardia attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the second hangar on August 4, 1941, and work on the hangar began that December. James Brooks completed his Flight mural inside the main terminal building in September 1942. The following year, in April 1943, an expansion to the original Pan Am hangar was completed. By then, the Marine Air Terminal had more than one transatlantic trip per day. American Export's new hangar opened in July 1943, and the terminal's observation deck reopened in June 1945.
A New York Herald Tribune article in 1942 noted that Clipper flights came from as far as "Capetown, Lisbon, New Zealand, the Orient, Alaska and other remote places". During the Second World War, many soldiers would fly to Europe and Africa from the terminal, and political figures such as U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill also flew from the terminal. Even so, the Marine Air Terminal lasted as a seaplane terminal for less than a decade. When the terminal opened, seaplanes were generally more technologically advanced than traditional land planes; the earliest four-engine aircraft, capable of flying long distances, had been seaplanes. However, they were also more prone to disruption, particularly during the winter months and in poor tidal conditions, when they could not operate. Land planes were not affected by these issues, and land-plane technology was also improving quickly. With the outbreak of World War II, new four-engine land planes were being developed, making these seaplanes obsolete. Pan Am stopped operating the 314s into the terminal in June 1945 but continued to operate other service into the terminal.
Use as international terminal
By the mid-1940s, the small capacity of LaGuardia Airport could not handle the increasing demand for international flights. Despite the obsolescence of seaplanes, LaGuardia Airport was the only major airport in the U.S. which offered regular flights to Europe. To address increasing congestion at the Marine Air Terminal, the city government and representatives of several airlines agreed in June 1946 to spend $50,000 on upgrading the customs facilities at the terminal. Although the terminal had begun to serve land planes, it could only fit one plane at a time, and passengers frequently had to wait three to four hours before passing through customs. The Daily Boston Globe wrote that the rotunda often saw as much traffic as a New York City Subway station during rush hours, with up to ten overseas flights trying to land nearly simultaneously at the busiest times. The Marine Air Terminal served 14 airlines; the overcrowded conditions had prompted one airline owner to purchase an old ferryboat and moor it next to the Marine Air Terminal.
The improvements included the addition of a covered walkway, three gates for arriving passengers, and two gates for departing passengers. After the terminal reopened on November 7, 1946, it was renamed the International Air Terminal, serving all of LaGuardia's transatlantic flights. Meanwhile, Idlewild (now JFK) Airport was being built in southern Queens to accommodate international and transcontinental flights. The Port of New York Authority took over operation of LaGuardia and Idlewild airports in June 1947. That September, Port Authority officials suggested extending one of LaGuardia's runways by infilling an unused plot of land next to the International Air Terminal. The terminal served 314,000 passengers a year in 1948, many more than it had been built to accommodate.