Airports

efore Herbert Hoover was President, he was Secretary of Commerce in the Coolidge Administration. He was called on to testify before the Morrow Board in 1925. The Morrow Board had been created for the purpose of study­ing the state of aviation and recommending to the president an aviation policy for the nation. Avia­tion, as the newest form of commerce joining maritime and land-based transportation, naturally followed some of the paths previously estab­lished by the older forms. It was also recognized that the promotion of aviation was in the national interest, much the same as it had been acknowl­edged that the nation needed the Post Office, a merchant marine, and the railroads.

Secretary Hoover drew an almost complete parallel between the needs of the fledgling avia­tion industry and the government’s policy toward maritime commerce in the United States. He pointed out that government had accepted the responsibility of providing aids to navigation in the nation’s ports and waterways by establishing markers, buoys, and lighthouses, and by provid­ing surveys and geodetic charting. The govern­ment had provided land grants to the railroads in order to open up the West, in the name of the national interest. Roadways, too, were within the realm of government responsibility in part
to facilitate motor commerce. The analogy was complete. Aviation needed and deserved federal assistance and direction if it was to develop in an organized manner. Otherwise, a fragmented and chaotic system of air transportation could be expected.

Included within the analogy was the need for airports to serve the various cities of the country. In the 1920s airmail service was being provided to some cities but not to others, often based on the fact that no landing fields were available to receive the planes. Airports then were truly land­ing “fields,” sometimes referred to as “all-way air­fields” since landings and takeoff could be made in any direction. Runways were the exception. Notwithstanding the favorable national policy toward aviation, there was no authorization for the direct participation of the federal government in the construction of airports. Municipalities, counties, and state governments recognized that their participation in air commerce was going to be dependent, in large part, on their own financial contributions. The Air Commerce Act of 1926 authorized the Commerce Department to survey and rate airports, and by 1929 some 181 airports had been catalogued. Only half of the airports had some kind of “prepared” runway, ranging from an oil-treated surface to cinders and concrete. Major
cities, including Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Denver, and Boston, had fields acquired and improved with local money. Indeed, prior to World War II, most of the airports of the country were financed, developed, and operated by local or regional government, since no federal airport program had ever existed.

New York’s LaGuardia airport was a local project. It started out in 1929 as North Beach Airport and, when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia began his expansive program of municipal works during the 1930s, including the city’s famous bridges, tunnels, and highways, the airport was included. New York had been a central maritime port for over a century and had developed into a major transatlantic passenger seaport by the 1930s. Its piers, visibly surrounding the island of Manhattan, provided a gateway to the world. They also provided an aviation analogy for the advanced planners of New York.

LaGuardia airport was only eight miles from the center of Manhattan, and Pan American had built its Marine Terminal there. There was a concrete apron for the parking of the new DC-2s and DC-3s, and its runways were a mile long. La Guardia took advantage of a Depression era program known as the Works Progress Admin­istration (WPA—the name was changed to the Works Projects Administration in 1939), which was begun to provide work for the millions of unemployed men during the 1930s. At a time when practically all construction of any kind was stopped by the rigors of the Great Depression, and with commercial aviation just beginning to emerge as a new and viable transportation medium, federal monies expended through the WPA program greatly enhanced the progress of commercial aviation in the 1930s.

The Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 lifted the ban on direct federal contributions for airports. One of the first cities to benefit was Washington, D. C., whose airport, Washington-Hoover Air­port, was described at the time by historian lohn R. M. Wilson: «Bordered on the east by Highway One, with its accompanying high-ten­sion electrical wires, and obstructed by a smokestack on one approach and a smoky dump nearby, the field was a masterpiece of inept siting. Incredibly, the airport was intersected by a busy thoroughfare, Military Road, which had guards posted to flag down traffic during takeoffs and landings. In spite of such hazards, Washington – Hoover had a perfect safety record— for the simple reason that whenever even a slight breeze was blowing, planes refused to land there.1»

By 1941, Washington National Airport had taken the place of Washington-Hoover, hav­ing been literally dredged up out of the swampy ground next to the Potomac. It immediately became the second busiest airport in the country.

Civil airport construction languished, how­ever, largely because of World War II. Dur­ing the war, the federal government had created many airfields for military use under a program known as Development of Landing Areas for National Defense, spending $3.25 billion. After the war, pursuant to the Surplus Property Act of 1944, about half of these bases were turned over to local and state governments. Still, airports of the size and quality for use by growing commer­cial aviation were few, and those few were abys­mal. As reported in Fortune in 1946:2

The half-dozen largest city airports handle millions of people a year. LaGuardia airport with 2,100,000 people, Washington with 757,000, Chicago with 1,300,000, and Los Angeles’ Lockheed Air Terminal with

760,0 give clear indication of the size of the new air traffic. By standards of the huge railroad terminals, such as New York’s Grand

Central, which handles 65 million people a year, a million passengers is not so much. But a million passengers jamming through one small room, such as Chicago’s filthy little air terminal, instantly creates a problem solvable only by a fresh start in new sur­roundings, by new design on functional lines.

Chicago is the worst; its airport is a slum. Chewing gum, orange peel, papers, and cigar butts strew the floor around the stacks of baggage. Porters can’t keep the floor clean if people are standing on it day and night. At almost all hours every tele­phone booth is filled, with people lined up outside; the dingy airport cafe is filled with standees. To rest the thousands there are exactly 28 broken-down seats. One must line up even for the rest rooms. The weary travel­ers sit or even lie on the floor. The drooping grandmothers, the crying babies, the continuous, raucous, unintelligible squawk of the loudspeaker, the constant push and jos­tle of new arrivals and new baggage tangling inextricably with their predecessors, make bus terminals look like luxury.

To say that the airports at San Francisco or Los Angeles are less squalid than Chicago is faint praise, for the difference is so slight that anyone passing hastily through would notice no real improvement. Almost all U. S. airports are utterly barren of things to do. The dirty little lunch counters are always choked with permanent sitters staring at their indi­gestible food; even a good cup of coffee is a thing unknown. The traveler consigned to hours of tedious waiting can only clear a spot on the floor and sit on his baggage and, while oversmoking, drearily contemplate his sins.