Marine Air Terminal (LaGuardia)

The round Art Deco Marine Air Terminal with its flying-fish frieze, LaGuardia, New York — The Marine Air Terminal, LaGuardia, New York. Photo: karla kaulfuss via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Photo: karla kaulfuss, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

New York City, United States · Delano & Aldrich, 1939–1940 · Art Deco air terminal

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
Protection: New York City Landmark (1980); National Register of Historic Places (1982)

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 over in the McCarthy years and uncovered and restored in 1980. 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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Record researched and written by Luigi De Marchi for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.

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