Marine Air Terminal

As part of the Open House New York weekend back in October (before I visited the Treasures in the Trash collection), I finally got to see inside of the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport. Originally built for seaplanes, the Marine Air Terminal is the only remaining active airport terminal in the US from the Golden Age of Flight. LaGuardia (a WPA project) opened in 1939, and the Marine Air Terminal opened the next year. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982, and since 1985 it has been used for shuttle flights between New York and Boston and Washington DC (currently through Delta).

The terminal is very small—especially compared with the current-day airport experience—but it's dripping with flight-themed Art Deco details. While certainly not as grand or unique as Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center masterpiece at JFK, the Marine Air Terminal still feels fancy in a way modern airports will never be able to replicate. Illusions to the miracle of flight are everywhere—in the outside tile work, on the entry doors and on nearly every surface of the lobby.

The lobby contains the largest mural curated under the Works Progress Administration—a 12-feet-tall, 237-feet-long painting depicting flight in various forms. It was painted over in the '50s by the Port Authority, but was thankfully restored in the '80s. The Art Deco lettering over the doorways indicating Departures, Restaurant and Telephones proves that lettering doesn't have to be overly complicated to be striking and that utilitarian signage can be beautiful as well as functional. I'm so grateful for Open House New York weekend, and the chance to be able to peek inside such a gem—if only I could go back to 1940 and hitch a ride on the Pan American Clipper.