TWA Flight Center, JFK, NYC

40° 38’ 44” N   73° 46’ 39” W

The TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York City looks like something out of The Jetsons.  It opened in 1962 - the same year Hanna-Barbera’s animated futuristic family debuted.   The terminal’s white and red interior, sleek curves and soaring ramps evoke the 1960’s vision of our soon-to-come, space-age future.  The fact that that future never arrived makes the TWA building all the more unique and worthy of preservation.

TWA Flight Center under construction in 1961

It was designed by architect Eero Saarinen who made a career out of designing soaring structures that seem to defy gravity including St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, Dulles International Airport, Yale University’s David S. Ingalls Rink, and Kresge Auditorium at MIT.  Saarinen’s intention with the TWA building was to “relate the building to its surroundings, but still have it assert itself as a dramatic accent.  The architecture would express the excitement of travel and reveal the terminal not as static enclosed space, but a place of movement” [1].  Construction of the thin-shell structure proved to be more difficult than first imagined.  As engineers tried to figure out how to build it, Saarinen asked his client for more time to see the project through as designed.  The terminal was dedicated on May 28, 1962, a year after the architect’s death.

TWA Flight Center interior in 1964.
Photo by Balthazar Korab

For four decades, air travelers came and went through the neo-futuristic terminal.  But as the sheer number of travelers through JFK exceeded anything the original designers could have imagined, the TWA Flight Center could not keep up.  TWA’s financial difficulties and the events of Sept. 11, 2001 spelled the end of an era.  It was simply impossible to implement post-9/11 security measures in the old building and so it was closed in October 2001.  Fortunately, its architectural importance was clear and efforts to preserve the building were underway.  The TWA Flight Center had been designated a New York City Landmark in 1994 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.   That same year, construction began on a new 26-gate terminal for Jetblue which would wrap around the tarmac side of the TWA Flight Center.  The 1962 departure lounge, known as the Trumpet, was moved aside to make way for the new terminal at a cost of $895,000.  A year later, the Trumpet was demolished after all [2].  For more than a decade, the TWA building has sat empty.  Many ideas have been floated for what to do with it but none have come to fruition.   The latest rumor is that an unnamed developer has proposed to build a 300-room boutique hotel with the old terminal acting as the hotel’s restaurant and lounge [3].  

Steven Spielberg used the TWA Flight Center in
Catch Me If You Can (2002) with Leonardo DiCaprio

On October 11, 2014, Open House New York provided a rare chance for the public to see the inside of the TWA Flight Center.  With the JFK AirTrain out of commission, my wife and I braved the weather and a crowded shuttle bus to get a glimpse of this architectural gem before it’s “repurposed”.

The exterior resembles a gigantic white bird, wings outstretched and about to take flight.  As we entered the main terminal, I was gob smacked by a thrilling nostalgia for a time when air travel was new and exciting and optimism about the future pervaded the culture.  As one writer put it in 2010, “the faith in the future, the belief that science and technology would bring us a better world, is part of a more innocent era.  Seeing how one architect expressed its hopes and aspirations helps us to recapture the moment.” [4] There are no straight lines to be found.  The eye delights with every viewpoint as shapes and curves give way to one another. The departure and arrival signs are round and streamlined.  Stairways curve on both sides and an overhead bridge arches across the airy interior.  The roof rises effortlessly like a bedsheet in the wind, fooling the mind into believing it has to be made of something other than concrete.  The waiting area is round and red and must have had a spectacular view of the tarmac.  Today, the soaring windows look out on Jetblue’s rather drab terminal.  The two windowless, fallopian-like flight tubes that once connected the terminal to the now-departed departure lounges provide a surreal bridge from this futuristic icon to the reality of today’s crowded, busy, security-obsessed JFK International.  Despite the changes, Saarinen’s building still makes the heart soar like a 60’s jetsetter.  Even the Jetson’s never had it so good.

1.       Idlewild: New York International Airport. Architectural Record, Sept. 1961.

2.      Margaret Foster, Moved Once, Saarinen's TWA Trumpet To Fall. National Trust for Historic Preservation, Mar. 27, 2008.

3.      Evan Bindelglass, Touring Saarinen's Iconic TWA Terminal Before Redevelopment, Curbed NY, Oct. 12, 2014.

4.      Ada Louise Huxtable on Eero Saarinen, The Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2010.

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