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24 AIRLINERS MAY/JUNE 2002

TWAsTerminal of TomorrowAn Architectural ShowpieceStory by Matt Mcphee Photography by Michael BoldenBy Ian Duncan

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I can imagine passengers arriving at Idlewild Airport in 1963, the year I wasborn, bound for destinations across a great ocean. Driving down the entrancehighway, they saw a great white hawk of a building just touching down at theedge of the airport. Entering the sunlit halls created beneath the arched wingswas certainly a grand way to start a trip from the Trans World Airlines (TWA)Flight Center at Idlewild, now John F. Kennedy International Airport. Each ofTWAs New York passengers began their adventure by passing beneath thebreast of this glorious creature. The terminal had already played a role in mygrandfathers life. Did he ever think his grandson would work in the magicalbuilding he helped construct?

An employee contest winner produced the name TWA FlightCenter for the airlines new terminal, seen shortly after itsopening. Its peak activity was in the early evening, with transcontinental flights arriving from the West Coast while trans-Atlantic aircraft were prepared for departure. (TWA)


An employee contest winner produced the name TWA Flight Center for the airlines new terminal, seen shortly after its opening. Its peak activitywas in the early evening, with transcontinental flights arriving from the West Coast while trans-Atlantic aircraft were prepared for departure. (TWA)

I can imagine passengers arriving at Idlewild Airport in 1963, the year I wasborn, bound for destinations across a great ocean. Driving down the entrancehighway, they saw a great white hawk of a building just touching down at theedge of the airport. Entering the sunlit halls created beneath the arched wingswas certainly a grand way to start a trip from the Trans World Airlines (TWA)Flight Center at Idlewild, now John F. Kennedy International Airport. Each ofTWAs New York passengers began their adventure by passing beneath thebreast of this glorious creature. The terminal had already played a role in mygrandfathers life. Did he ever think his grandson would work in the magicalbuilding he helped construct?

TWAsTerminal of TomorrowAn Architectural Showpiece

By Ian Duncan


Also photographed during construction, the interior ceiling reveals skylights between the four roof sections. This view faces the streetentrance to the terminal. (Alistair & Beverly Duncan)

An upper level view faces the area to be occupied by TWAsAmbassador Club. (Alistair & Beverly Duncan)

This artists rendering appeared in a 1958 TWA brochure. Sadly, the rooftop observation decks never came to fruition. (Jon Proctor Collection)

The old Idlewild control tower is visible in this picture of the cantilevered, concreteshell of what would become the TWA Flight Center. (Edgerton Aikman)

Iarrived at New Yorks John F. KennedyInternational Airport in the summer of 1989 as anewly hired 727 flight engineer For TWA. Formany years I had dreamed of coming to this airfield, buzzing with enormous aircraft from

exotic locations. L-1011 TriStars, DC-10s and 747sbound for destinations around the planet; in mymind, this was the place to be. What better companyto work for at this marvelous airport than TWA, anairline which dispatched dozens of flights each nightfrom this very place? To walk out on the tarmac andgaze upon all the widebodies bound for places I hadonly imagined was heady stuff for a new flight engineer. Now, I would not only imagine but alsoparticipate in these journeys. And all these journeysbegan in a remarkable building.

Although I had never been to JFK before, I knewa little about it. At least about one building there. Mymother was raised in New York, and her father hadbeen in the construction business. During my ownchildhood I occasionally heard about some of themore the interesting projects in which Grandfatherhad participated. The wooden building blocks Iplayed with as a child, for example, had been recycled following construction of the BelmontRacetrack by my grandfathers company. I alsorecalled Mother mentioning the fact that her fatherhad helped build the TWA Flight Center at JFK,designed by Eero Saarinen.

A Finnish architect known for his sculpture-likebuilding designs, Saarinen created other notablestructures, including the St. Louis Arch and terminalbuilding at Washington-Dulles Airport. He described


Flight Wing Two was actually the first to be completed, along with the original terminalconstruction. The ceramic-trimmed, cylindrical fixtures on the floor are ashtrays. (Alistair & Beverly Duncan)

The some of the gates in Flight Wing Two originally offered parallel parking, permittingseparate Jetways for first-class and coach passengers. Note the seat chart behind one of the gate agents. Seat tabs were pulled from the chart and stapled onto each customers ticket jacket. (TWA)

Facing airside, the upper walkway is naturally illuminatedby a skylight in this photo taken shortly before construc-tion was completed. The brushed-aluminum railingswere designed to present a graceful pattern throughoutthe building. (Alistair & Beverly Duncan)

The unique flight display pod and information desk dominates the ticket lobby, adorneddaily with fresh-cut flowers. The Solari arrival and departure board was updated byremote control from TWAs operations office. The information system was installed atother TWA cities, including Los Angeles and Chicago. (TWA)

the challenges of designing a terminal for TWA asbeing twofold. First, he wished to create a building for TWA that would be distinctive andmemorable. He also wanted the architecture itselfto express the drama, specialness and excitementof travel; a place of movement and transition.Saarinen met these two challenges well, and indoing so created what must be considered hisfinest work.

Seeing the TWA Flight Center at JFK for thefirst time, I understood why my grandfathersassociation with this buildings construction wasreferred to with a note of pride. It was unlike anybuilding I had ever seen. Mother had said thebuilding suggested a bird in flight, and this imagewas readily apparent to me as I stepped off thecrew bus. I saw in the roofline two great wingsspreading out. It was as if a huge concrete birdwas about to land and was checking its descentwith its outstretched wings. Two curving legsreached forward to grasp a perch, while a cementhead and beak arched over the roadway in front. Abroad tail fanned out toward the ramp in the rear,steering the structure towards its nest on the airport.

Today, I find it hard to believe the buildingsarchitect did not specifically design the terminalthis way. During a 1959 interview about the ter-minal project, Saarinen said, The fact that tosome people it looked like a bird in flight is real-ly coincidental. It is such a striking and gracefulimage that it does not to me seem accidental.


The sunken nest in the tail area of the building offered passengers an increasingly rareopportunity to rest between flights while enjoying a panoramic view of the ramp area.(Ian Duncan)

The Paris Caf occupied the second level above TWAs original ticket counter area. TheLisbon Lounge is to the left, just out of this picture. (Ian Duncan)

Photographed from the then-new control tower building, the TWA Flight Center is seen in full operation during its early days. Flight Wing One would beadded to the left and beyond the main structure, opening in time for the inauguration of 747 service in March 1970. (TWA)

He went on to say, The shapes of these vaultswere deliberately chosen in order to emphasizean upward-soaring quality of line, rather thanthe downward gravitational one common tomany domed structures. We wanted an uplift.All the curvatures, all the spaces and elements,down to the shape of the signs and counters,would have to have one consistent character.Indeed, when entering the terminal one is achallenged to find a straight line anywhere inthe structure. All lines curve, join together andpush upward, drawing the viewers eyes aroundthe interior in an aerial ballet.

Ticket counters peel off in great arcs to theleft and right of the entrance. A marvelous flightdisplay fountains upward in the center of thelobby, gracefully encircled by an informationdesk. To the rear, under the tail, an ovaldepression forms a nest where travelers maypause and rest, or contemplate the view of theramp and the aircraft on which they are toembark. Two upper-level terraces grace thesides beneath the wings; one contains the TWAAmbassadors Club while the Lisbon Loungeand Paris Caf occupy the other. A walkwayspans the space between the two locations, gen-tly soaring over the center of the terminal in agentle arch. A clock dangles like an ornamentfrom the center point of the ceiling where thefour roof sections converge.

I began sharing my impressions of the TWA Flight Centerwith my parents after experiencing it firsthand. My father, nowretired from a career as a civil engineer, recalledGrandfathers description of frustrated engineerswho were reduced to bending paper clips over amodel to determine the shape of the reinforcingbars to be placed within the relatively thin con-crete shell. He spoke of the difficulty in buildinga form to cast the great concrete shape in place asa single unit. Mother unearthed old boxes ofslides my Grandfather had taken, showing thebuilding during its construction. It was in theseslides that secrets of the terminal became appar-ent to me.

My fathers engineering background gavehim a special appreciation for this structure. Twoof Grandfathers pictures showed the building asa concrete shell. Dad pointed out the cantileveredwing, not yet draped with a canopy of glass

below. Did you realize the windows that make up the sides ofthe terminal provide no support? he asked. I had to admit myignorance, never having imagined such an enormous, thin shelllike that, jutting out into space, could support itself. Mom drewmy attention to the gap between roof sections in another image,starting at one of the four legs and terminating at the center ofthe roof. The roof is not one piece, but four, she explained. Eachsection is balanced on two legs, with one end touching theremaining sections at the roofs center, while the opposite endprojects out into space. Saarinen said his design consists essen-tially of four interconnecting barrel vaults of slightly differentshapes, supported on four Y-shaped columns. Together, thesevaults make a vast concrete shell, 50 feet high and 315 feet long,which makes a huge umbrella over the passenger areas. Thebands of skylights that separate and articulate the four vaultsincrease the sense of airiness and lightness.

Now the architectural importance of the building wasbecoming clear to me. To fashion such a concrete structure 40years ago, balancing each enormous barrel-shaped vault of con-crete on just two legs was a remarkable feat. Building the formsto pour the concrete must have been an accomplishment in itself.One pilot I flew with early in my career, who after having seenthe terminal prior its completion, remarked that the building lotlooked like a saw mill with all the lumber stacked up, waitingto be built into the forms for the concrete. To this day, by look-ing carefully at the surface of the terminal, one can see theimprints left by the individual pieces of lumber used to build theform into which concrete was poured. For many years, I haveheard TWA employees telling each other that the TWA FlightCenter is on the Register of Historic Places, providing the recog-nition this remarkable building certainly deserves. However,most of them seem unaware of what makes the structure soimportant. Im afraid Ive bent the ear of more than one crewmember as we walk down the steps inside the terminal, explain-ing some of the features that make it so remarkable.


The 747 gates in Flight Wing One were first equipped with three Jetwayseach, thought to be necessary to efficiently board and deplane morethan 300 passengers. The airlines own Customs and Immigrations facili-ty was a strong selling point. (TWA)

Tunnels leading to the flight wings were part of the futuristic design thatmade the TWA Flight Center unique. (Ian Duncan)

Display cases on the upper level of the ticketing structure displayed vintage TWA uniformsand memorabilia. A Ford Tri-Motor propeller replica and marker commemorated the airlines early transcontinental plane/train service (Up, Up and Away!, July/August 2001).(Ian Duncan)

FlightWingOne

FlightWingTwo

Ian Duncan

On October 6, 2001, TWA flight 481became the last flight to operate from thebuilding, leaving its future up in the air;how appropriate! American Airlines hadpurchased TWA several months earlier.Because American had already embarkedon a multibillion-dollar reconstructionproject on its own facility, it announcedthe termination of operations from theTWA Flight Center. The Port Authority,arbiter of the buildings fate, faces challenges with Saarinens building.Modern terminals today segregate trafficwith separate levels for arrivals anddepartures, while the TWA Flight Centerhas only one level through which all passengers must funnel. Though thebuilding served widebody aircraft, itssmall waiting areas around the gates werefrequently overcrowded. I can also speakfrom personal experience and state thatthe buildings air-conditioning is notnearly up to the task during a blazingsummer afternoon.

To date, no plans have been finalizedfor the TWA Flight Center, although pro-posals seem to recognize its importanceand attempt to minimize the impact ofany future construction. United Airlinesis a likely tenant, and has worked with thePort Authority to create a design thatincludes the TWA Flight Center. A C-shaped terminal would be built behindthe existing structure, with airside con-courses radiating outward. The new

building would connect to the originalterminal through the tubes that presentlyconnect the flight wing gate areas to themain building. A roadway would passbehind the existing terminal and underthe tubes, providing separate departureand arrival levels. The new terminalwould maintain as low a profile as practi-cal so as not to dominate the much small-er TWA terminal. Airside accretions thatare not part of the original design, such asthe baggage handling area, would beremoved. The TWA Flight Center itselfwould be preserved for new use, perhapsserving the airport as a conference center,restaurant or even museum.

There is an increasingly vocal groupof opponents to plans for altering theTWA Flight Center. Some believe that tofully appreciate the building it must beemployed as designed; an airline termi-nal. An airline terminal, they claim, can-not possibly function in another mode,and therefore must be preserved as it wasoriginally intended. Indeed, the grandwindow that makes up the back wall ofthe terminal was designed to bring theview of flight in for all to behold, not togaze on yet another structure. Concernhas also been expressed about the twoflight wings, the pods at the end of thetwo tubes out the back of the terminalfrom which the passengers actually boardaircraft. While plans incorporate the connecting tubes, the flight wings

themselves would have to be demolishedto accommodate proposed new struc-tures. Since the flight wings are part ofSaarinens design, some feel they shouldbe afforded the same consideration giventhe main terminal itself.

Eero Saarinen last visited the siteshortly before his death in 1961, whenonly the concrete vaults had been completed. He remarked, TWA is beginning to look marvelous. If anythinghappened and they had to stop work rightnow and just leave it in this state, I thinkit would make a beautiful ruin, like theBaths of Caracalla.

While I dont think anyone wouldwish to see the terminal in ruins, thiscomment provides an interesting viewinto the designers perception of his ownwork and just how much was physicallyrequired to capture the magic containedwithin his plans. Although I am saddenedby the fact that I will no longer work in this marvelous structure that my grandfather helped build, I am pleased bythe efforts currently underway to preservethis most important building. I hope theTWA Flight Center will still be aroundwhen I am a grandfather, as I would beproud to pass on to another generation not only an appreciation for this buildings remarkable features, but my familys small role in its constructionand use.

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