Westchester County Airport: La Guardia North?

Located 33 miles from Midtown Manhattan, 22 from La Guardia, and three from White Plains, Westchester County Airport occupies some 700 acres, sharing the New York-Connecticut state line on its eastern perimeter.Unlike the other two secondary New York facilities, which include Islip’s Long Island MacArthur and Newburgh’s Stewart International airports, it offers more than just low-fare flights to Florida. Instead, it fields — and has fielded — major carrier, turboprop commuter, and regional jet service, often aligned with those majors under two-letter code-share agreements,to a variety of major hubs and leisure destinations. For that reason, it has often been called "La Guardia North," not only because of its geographic location, but because of the number of flights it has offered and the number of flights area residents sometimes wish that it did not to limit noise and overexpansion.

Armonk Airport and the Early Airfields
As had occurred throughout the country, the post-WWI period in Westchester County was characterized by the occasional sputter of biplanes, which alighted on the numerous farm fields, introducing the public to flight by means of barnstorming, as their pilots hoped to attract sufficient interest to exchange rides for revenue. Several surfaces, both aquatic and sedentary, served as early airports — in the case of the former, Dobbs Ferry, Peeksville and Port Chester, and in the case of the latter, Bedford, Courtland, Scarsdale, Valhalla, and Armonk. It was this last field that developed into a significant facility and, perhaps, more than any, predated Westchester County Airport.

Located on a flat parcel of land along Old Bedford Road and established in 1922, it initially consisted of a single building, whose roof alerted pilots of its existence with the words "Armonk Airport." Dirt parking lots and ramps, separated by a fence, respectively constituted its "landside" and "air side"
sections.

"The site of the old Westchester (Armonk) Airport, now partially covered by the new Route 22, a motel, a stable, and several businesses, is no longer distinguishable, but in its heyday, barnstorming, stunt flying, parachuting, weekend plane rides, and flying lessons were some of the activities that attracted pilots and visitors alike to this popular country airport," according to Barbara S. Massi in her "Armonk’s Adventure in Aviation" article in North Castle History: A Publication of the North Castle Historical Society (Volume 6, Number 1, 1979.)

"The property on which the airport was situated lies opposite MacDonald Avenue along Bedford Road (now Old Bedford Road). Some of the buildings that stood on either side of that quarter-mile stretch are still standing while others, including the hangars, are gone–victims of the highways that engulfed the area in the 1960s."

Clifford Payton, perhaps one of its earliest pilots, served to establish the area’s aviation roots.

"The era was launched in a field surrounded by an apple orchard and cornfield in 1925 when Clifford Payton, who was using that flat part of Schmaling’s property as a landing strip, began a barnstorming business venture of giving plane rides and lessons in his Curtiss Jenny biplane," Massi continues (ibid).

Attraction sparked both interest and expansion, with visits by the likes of Eddie Rickenbacker, Howard Hughes, Jimmy Doolittle, Amelia Earhart, Clarence Chamberlain, and Colonel Patrick J. Hurley, President Hover’s Secretary of War. On August 5, 1928, or a little over a year after Charles Lindbergh won the Orteig Price for his 33.5-hour solo transatlantic crossing in the "Spirit of St. Louis," he also touched . . .