A TECHNICAL COMMUNITY-DESIGNED AIRPORT

On Sunday, November 25, 1934, a front page article in the New York Times was headlined: “LaGuardia Won’t Land in Newark and Insists Liner Fly Him to City Airport From Rival Field.” “My ticket says New York, and that’s where they brought me,” said the beaming new mayor as he got off the TWA plane at Floyd Bennett Field.64 The whole incident was a carefully planned publicity stunt by Fiorello LaGuardia and his staff who wanted to announce dramatically his intentions to build a major airport in (not near) New York City. Five years later, 325,000 people joined the mayor to dedicate New York City Municipal Airport (renamed LaGuardia one month later) and another 1.5 million people plunked down a dime to inspect the airport operations during subsequent years, lured by the opportunity to see the world’s most modem airport.65

LaGuardia was seen as a kind of “crown jewel” in new national airport plans developed through the joint efforts of the Bureau of Air Commerce and WPA engineers. Describing the development of the LaGuardia, Fortune magazine noted that: “There is no such thing as an ideal airport. It doesn’t exist because the ideal geographic location for it doesn’t exist inside or adjacent to the metropolis it is intended to serve, symmetrical in all directions, possessing full wind coverage, and free from obstructions in its entire periphery. Most airports are a compromise.”66

Still, the site Mayor LaGuardia found in Queens on North Beach, the old Curtiss Airport, was considered nearly ideal. It fit into the city’s massive highway and parkway constmction program; it was on the water; the weather conditions were favorable; and the travel time into the city was projected to be nearly identical with Newark’s. Aero Digest added that “Instead of fitting the airport to its surroundings, handicapped by the terrain or the nearness of buildings, it was possible there to plan runways of ample length to meet the increasing requirements of the modem airliner and a rapidly-expanding air transport industry.”67

The WPA, under the direction of Brehon Somervell, had overall responsibility for the project. The main plans originated with the engineers, architects, and planners of the Design Section of the WPA Division of Operations, but the engineers of the city’s Dock Department were full partners in the effort. For the landfill portion of the project, a special board of consulting engineers from the Army Corps of Engineers was brought in. Private airport engineering firms were also consulted. Bureau of Air Commerce engineers laid out the field design, including lighting and other electrical signal device plans. WPA engineers conducted all the soil borings and topographic surveying. Delano and Aldrich were hired to design all the buildings and develop a landscaping plan.68

There were many contemporary descriptions of the various systems of mnways, drainage, heating, lighting, fire prevention, as well as of the designs for the administration and passenger terminal buildings plus the hangers. Above all, however, the greatest attention was accorded to the control tower and radio equipment. “The electrical wiring and controls in this room comprise one of the most intricate and efficient systems ever installed,” wrote Samuel Stott. There were 21 receiver units which were described as “elaborate as that of any airport in the World, and considerably more flexible.”69

LaGuardia Airport is significant not because the individual technological components represented the “newest” or the “best” of their class (although some were) but because it was the first to integrate these systems (and to do so in the design phase, rather than after the airport was built). This level of integration was only possible through the combined efforts of engineers, architects, and city planners as well as a host of federal, state, and local officials. The potential for chaos was quite high but all agreed that one entity had to have final say.

In the case of LaGuardia, the temptation is to identify the airport’s namesake, the mayor, as a driving, dictatorial force that brought about cooperation by coercion. Fiorello LaGuardia was certainly the local power behind the New York airport’s creation. The mayor assumed day-to-day responsibility for oversight of the airport (it was perhaps one of his proudest boasts that his rival Robert Moses, head of the New York Parks Department, had nothing to do with the airport). But LaGuardia Airport was not simply a local project. President Roosevelt was equally interested in the construction of this airport as were a bevy of federal officials. They saw New York’s new airport as the first of many major new metropolitan airports which would form the crucial links in the nation’s air transportation system. Right on its heels was the construction of Washington National Airport. Newark, Chicago, Los Angeles had all undergone major transformations compliments of New Deal relief dollars. All of these projects (and several hundred others) turned to the federal government for more than money. The airport sections of the WPA and the Bureau of Air Commerce working in tandem were, in fact, the main organizing force behind a national system of airports. It is these organizations that truly coordinated the design and construction of LaGuardia.

Airports were not islands unto themselves. They were part of a national system of airports. Air transportation was about the purposeful movement between geographically separate locations. Creating one “perfect” airport was of little value unless there were many others just like it. The federal airport engineers, especially W. Sumpter Smith, Jack Gray and Alexis McMullen, helped communities throughout the nation coordinate their efforts with each other. The federal engineers tapped into the new professional identity of engineers, architects, and city planners. During the opening decades of the 20th century the professional associations representing these three groups fashioned strong bonds that transcended local associations. The Commerce Department under the Coolidge, Hoover and Roosevelt Administrations all encouraged associational activities (albeit for different reasons and under different names).

No one wanted airplanes to crash but until the mid-thirties this happened with shocking regularity. Federal aviation officials used the fear-and-safety factor as initial leverage to promote the coordination of efforts among design professionals. All three groups were responsive to this appeal. However, it was also used to extract funds from Congress for the development of a radio-based air traffic control system. That system helped make the Bureau of Air Commerce, and its successor agency the Civil Aeronautics Authority in particular, the focal point for every airport project.

For small communities this was often the only technical consultation accomplished. For major airport projects like LaGuardia or Washington, the participation of the Bureau of Air Commerce representatives was considered vital. The centrality and importance of the federal leadership initiatives in airport development became apparent during the Congressional hearings for new civil aeronautics legislation in 1937 and 1938. Members of Congress were taken aback by the emphatic pleas of aviation advocates to strike out the airport exclusion clause of the Air Commerce Act of 1926.

Despite considerable trepidation, Congress was ultimately responsive to these concerns and the resultant Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 expanded federal authority over the airways to include the development and operation of air navigation facilities at airports. Following the completion of the National Airport Survey in the spring of 1939, it was clear that a new era had begun. “Normal” airport design meant a process undertaken by several different types of technical specialists whose work on a specific local technological system was coordinated by the federal government (specifically the new Civil Aeronautics Authority) with responsibilities for the creation and maintenance of a national system. The role of the Federal government has endured to this day, as has the core design concept of both the airport and the network of airports and the tripartite relationship of airport engineers, architects, and city planners.