TWA Flight Center (TWA Hotel)
60A John F Kennedy Airport | also 154-68 Brookville Boulevard | John F. Kennedy International Airport | built 1994
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1961
Eero Saarinen dies before his TWA terminal is finished
Architect Eero Saarinen died in 1961, before the TWA Flight Center was done; like his CBS headquarters on Sixth Avenue and Dulles Airport, it was finished after his death. The landmark report calls the TWA building probably his best-known work. His colleagues went on to found the successor firm Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo.
- 1962
The TWA Flight Center opens after three years of intricate concrete work
Construction started in June 1959 under project engineer Kenneth P. Morris of the contractor Grove Shepherd Wilson & Kruge and resident architect Ralph Yeakel, with fourteen engineers and 150 craftsmen. The concrete was poured as one monolithic structure with no control joints above ground, its formwork held up by steel-pipe scaffolding set out on a grid. By May 1962 the work was far enough along for the terminal to be opened officially as the TWA Flight Center.
- 1962
Saarinen's terminal rests four concrete shells on Y-shaped piers and sends passengers through tubes
The main hall is made of four intersecting vaults divided by thin strips of skylight and carried on four Y-shaped piers, with broad window-walls contrasting with the concrete. Low curving wings, whose concave walls extend as canopies sheltering travelers at the curb, echo the main hall. Windowless concrete tube walkways lead to a satellite gate building, an early example of a layout later standard at airports, with the airline's control tower perched on one remote gate.
- 1963
Saarinen shrugs off the bird comparison as his terminal wins an architects' award
From its unveiling, critics said the building looked like a huge bird spreading its wings, but Saarinen insisted the resemblance was coincidental and the last thing on the designers' minds. New York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable judged it by far the best building at an airport she otherwise found disappointing. In 1963 the American Institute of Architects gave the terminal an Award of Merit.
“…in 1963 the TWA terminal received an Award of Merit from the American Institute of Architects…”
- 1994
The city landmarks the TWA terminal despite misgivings from the airline and Port Authority
The Landmarks Preservation Commission first heard the case on June 15, 1993, when TWA and the Port Authority both voiced uncertainty and the airline asked that the hearing be continued. At a second hearing that September a representative of Queens Borough President Claire Shulman welcomed the proposal. The commission designated the Flight Center, then called TWA Terminal A, on July 19, 1994.
- 2008
JetBlue's Terminal 5 opens around the empty Saarinen building
TWA went out of business in 2001 and the Flight Center stood empty until 2005, when JetBlue joined the Port Authority in financing a 26-gate terminal wrapping partly around it. That Terminal 5 opened on October 22, 2008, connected to the Saarinen building by the original passenger tubes that once led to its outlying gates. The old head house was later turned into the TWA Hotel.
“…the new terminal opened on October 22, 2008. T5 is connected to the Saarinen central building through the original passenger departure-arrival tubes…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2018
A 1950s Lockheed Constellation arrives to become the hotel's cocktail bar
During the hotel conversion, the Lockheed L-1649 Starliner N8083H, named Star of America, was shipped to the site in October 2018 and arrived at the end of November. The plane, the last model in the Constellation line, became a cocktail lounge called Connie. In March 2019 its fuselage was put on display in Times Square before the hotel opened.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2019
The TWA Hotel opens in the old terminal, and its food hall soon fails an inspection
After groundbreaking on December 15, 2016, MCR Hotels added two seven-story wings with 512 soundproofed rooms around Saarinen's head house. The TWA Hotel opened on May 15, 2019, the only hotel inside JFK's boundaries. Shortly afterward its TWA Food Hall was shut when it did not pass a food inspection, then reopened before long; Time named the hotel one of the World's Greatest Places of 2019.
“Shortly after the hotel opened, its TWA Food Hall was shuttered after failing a food inspection, though it reopened not long thereafter.”
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- TWA HotelWikipedia
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