Hundreds of aviation enthusiasts, architecture fans, former TWA employees and a few NYCAviation’ers (including myself) spent a few hours exploring the TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport this past Sunday.
It was all thanks to Open House New York, an annual two-day event showcasing hundreds of architecturally and historically significant sites around New York City. Relative to many of the other OHNY venues, this was one of the more distant and harder-to-access locations. Nonetheless, an impressive number of visitors—many of whom would probably cringe at the thought of trekking to the airport without flying somewhere under other circumstances—attended the four hour event.
Built in 1962 and closed since 2001, the terminal recently underwent a renovation which restored much of its original golden-age-of-air-travel glory. The Eero Saarinen-designed masterpiece is now a government-protected landmark which cannot be demolished or significantly altered, but it sits on valuable real estate that the airport would like to make use of. Recent proposals have involved building a hotel either inside or above the terminal, but the terminal’s fate remains undecided.
