History

The field is named for Floyd Bennett (1890–1928), a New York-born Naval aviator who piloted Commander Richard Byrd on his 1926 flight over the North Pole — a feat that made both men national heroes. Bennett died two years later of pneumonia contracted during a rescue mission in Canada, before the airport that would bear his name broke ground. Construction began in 1929 as the city's response to the booming aviation industry: hundreds of acres of Jamaica Bay marshland were dredged and filled to create four runways radiating from the central terminal complex.

The terminal building, completed with the Hangar Row in 1931, is a long, low structure in the Art Deco industrial style: horizontal concrete massing, recessed window banding, and geometric ornamental detailing at the entrance pavilion and cornice line. The six hangars running parallel to the main runway are larger volumes, their scale calibrated for the long-range aircraft of the 1930s, with the same Art Deco geometric detailing at the facade parapets. Within a year of opening, the field became the preferred departure point for headline-making flights: Wiley Post flew his solo around-the-world record in 1933, Howard Hughes departed on his 1938 around-the-world speed record, and Amelia Earhart used Floyd Bennett as her departure point for several transoceanic attempts.

Commercial passenger traffic never materialized at the expected scale — the Brooklyn location was inconvenient for Manhattan-based travelers — and when LaGuardia Airport opened in 1939 on the Queens waterfront, Floyd Bennett's civilian chapter effectively ended. The US Navy took over the field that year and operated it as a naval air station for three decades. After the Navy's departure in 1971, the National Park Service acquired the property and incorporated it into the newly established Gateway National Recreation Area, preserving the 1931 structures as a National Historic Landmark ensemble.