When JFK Airport Was a Shining Beacon of Industrial Design
When JFK Airport Was a Shining Beacon of Industrial Design
2 minute read
Caption from LIFE. Under construction for more than two years, TWA terminal swoops over two acres of Idlewild. Four buttresses support the 11-million-pound concrete roof. Designed by architect Eero Saarinen.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Travelers today might not think of New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport as the most impressive travel hub out there. In 2012, Travel and Leisure ranked it one of the nations’s worst airports, and travelers this summer may be in for delays as one of its runways gets a rehaul. But when it was featured in a LIFE photo essay in 1961, the airport—then still called Idlewild after the golf course it displaced—was a shining beacon of modern architecture. As the magazine wrote:
For eight of 11 international travelers presently arriving in New York, the warming symbol of journey’s end no longer is the stately, green copper Statue of Liberty seen from a boat deck, but a glistening complex of low-lying architecture—strongly suggestive of a world’s fair site—seen from the window of an airplane.
The airport had been open since 1948, but it experienced a major growth spurt between 1957 and 1962, when United, American, Pan American, Northwest and TWA all opened new terminals. LIFE praised its innovative meeting of form and function and its well-oiled logistical operation:
Idlewild is more than the handsomest, highest-geared air terminal in operation; it is several terminals, each attuned to the newest advances in the technology of getting people and freight on and off airplanes as fast as possible. Its every feature bespeaks speed and function. Yet, for the disembarking passenger Idlewild offers vivid and lasting impressions of one of America’s most imposing displays of artistic and industrial design.
JFK’s terminals are showing some cracks in their advanced age, but Dmitri Kessel’s images offer a reminder that today’s outmoded dinosaurs are often yesterday’s architectural triumphs.
Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.
Caption from LIFE. Under construction for more than two years, TWA terminal swoops over two acres of Idlewild. Four buttresses support the 11-million-pound concrete roof. Designed by architect Eero Saarinen.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesStained glass windows, designed by Robert Sowers, decorating the facade of American Airlines terminal at Idlewild, 1961.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. The Port of New York Authority and the airlines that use Idlewild's facilities wanted a show place of lasting aesthetic value and their success can be marked by the startling contrast between the sweepingly cantilevered, saucer-shaped roof of Pan American's Idlewild terminal, in itself a major tourist attraction, and the dingy, domino-game sprawl of most other big American airports.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesIdlewild Airport, 1961.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Variegated plumes of the Fountain of Liberty—ranked with the big jet planes as an Idlewild attraction—partly screen a walkway, control tower and an arch of the International Arrival Building (right).Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesIdlewild Airport, 1961.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesIdlewild Airport, 1961.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. The International Arrival lobby is dominated by this huge Alexander Calder mobile, entitled "Flight." The lobby is ringed with ticket service counters. In 1960 more than a million travelers passed through customs here.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesIdlewild Airport, 1961.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesIdlewild Airport, 1961.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. In the low light of late afternoon, sculptured zodiac figures are silhouetted on the 200-foot glass screen of the Pan Am terminal. More than a mere decoration, the screen shields a doorless, air-curtain entrance.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Doubling as a sun-breaker, American Airlines' stained-glass abstraction—extending 317 feet along the terminal's south face, imparts bizarre interior illumination. Colors change with the sun's position.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesIdlewild Airport, 1961.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesIdlewild Airport, 1961.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesIdlewild Airport, 1961.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesIdlewild Airport, 1961.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. As multicolored lights signal evening's onset, Idlewild's Terminal City assumes near-abstract patterns. In the foreground the ribs of the giant Eastern terminal rise in sharp relief. Just beyond is the stark steel skeleton of the uncompleted Northwest-Braniff-Northeast building. Above is Pan Am's cantilevered saucer, and at left, west wing of the International Arrival Building.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesIdlewild Airport, 1961.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesIdlewild Airport, 1961.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Under construction for more than two years, TWA terminal swoops over two acres of Idlewild. Four buttresses support the 11-million-pound concrete roof. Designed by architect Eero Saarinen.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesIdlewild Airport, 1961.Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
