Marine Air Terminal (LaGuardia)
Built for flying boats, ringed by leaping fish: the oldest airport terminal in America still in use.
At a glance
The Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport in New York was built in 1939–1940 to serve the great flying boats, the Pan American Clippers that crossed the oceans before land planes could. Delano and Aldrich designed it in restrained Art Deco: a low round building with a frieze of flying fish, and inside, one of the largest murals of the federal art programme.
Key facts
- Location: LaGuardia Airport, Queens, New York
- Architects: Delano & Aldrich
- Built: 1939–1940
- Style: Art Deco
- Note: the oldest airport terminal in the United States still in use
History
When LaGuardia opened, the longest air routes still belonged to flying boats that landed on water. The Marine Air Terminal was built for them, with a basin alongside for the Clippers to dock.
Land planes soon made the flying boats obsolete, and the terminal was nearly lost. Saved and restored, it kept its rotunda and its mural, and still handles flights today, the last working terminal from the dawn of commercial aviation.
What you see
The building is a low brick-and-stone drum, its parapet wrapped in a terracotta frieze of winged fish. Inside, the rotunda carries James Brooks’s great 1942 mural Flight, a circular painting of the history of human flight, painted out in the McCarthy years and later uncovered. It is air travel as the 1930s imagined it.
Practical information
- Open: a working terminal (Terminal A); accessible to travellers
- Cost: free to enter the rotunda
- Best for: the flying-fish frieze and the Flight mural
- Time needed: 15–30 minutes
Getting there
The Marine Air Terminal is at the western end of LaGuardia Airport in Queens, reached by bus from Manhattan and the subway, or by road across the Grand Central Parkway.
Nearby
- LaGuardia Airport — the wider airport and its newer terminals
- Flushing Meadows — the World’s Fair park, to the east
Sources
- Wikipedia — Marine Air Terminal
- New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission — designation report
- Wikimedia Commons — image source and licence
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