The Historic TWA Terminal and Lockheed Constellation at JFK

As I passed the curb-parked convertible and entered the doors of the Eero Saarinen-designed TWA Terminal with its winged, flight-suggesting roof at JFK International Airport on a mid-September day, nothing, I noted, had changed, except that the passenger check-in counters flanking either side were refreshingly devoid of lines. Perhaps that should have been a hint.

Mounting the dozen stairs and then redescending those that led to the familiar Sunken Lounge, I eyed the Solari split-flap arrivals and departures board, its panels periodically flipping and clacking like stacking poker chips, but they only revealed blank squares. There were no flight numbers, no times, and no destinations.

Yet by views of the vintage airliners on the ramp through the floor-to-ceiling angled glass displaying TWA’s red-and-white livery, but lacking a single jet engine, my destination today could only be labeled “history” or, even “aviation history.” Perhaps that was appropriate for the “luggage” I brought: a carry-on consisting of a clipboard and a pen.

The scene before me was a suspended one. The period music and the announcements echoing through my head transported me to the one I was not in.

“TWA Starstream Flight 802 to Paris, now boarding at gate one,” they said.

My eyes, scanning past the location of the once famous and familiar Brass Rail Restaurant toward the dual, main terminal connecting tubes still covered with chili red pepper carpeting to the departure area, I fully expected to take in one or more Boeing 707-320Bs with their bluntly pointed, radome noses, 35-degree swept wings, and Pratt and Whitney JT3D-3B low bypass ratio turbofans.

Yet the Lockheed L-1649A Starliner Constellation, representing the pinnacle-of-piston development, indicated that the era preserved and depicted “out there” was not the one my mind tried to convince me still existed “in here.” Instead, it was two decades earlier, of the 1960s, and I had entered a preserved pocket of time.

The TWA Terminal
As an expression, representation, and development of the post-WWII-fueled, technology-facilitated commercial airline industry and the then-named Idlewild International Airport whose evolution resulted from it, the TWA Terminal was and is an architecturally aesthetic symbol of it all. It captures the sensation of flight with its wing-resembling shell and the fluid, open interior beneath it.

Unlike many of today’s single-building, multiple-airline facilities, it traces its origin to 1954 when the Port Authority of New York devised its terminal city concept. Anticipating the need for infrastructure to cater to increasing travel demand, it implemented a plan in which each major carrier would design, build, and operate . . .