TWA Flight Center

As part of the annual Open House New York weekend, Jim and I spent Saturday afternoon touring the TWA Flight Center at JFK International Airport. I had never been to JFK before, but through Jim I knew about the Flight Center and was eager to get a peek inside of such an iconic building.

The Flight Center opened in 1962 and ceased operations in 2001. The interior and exterior are designated landmarks and over the years both have undergone renovations—some of which restored portions of the original design that had at one time or another been changed. The building is not currently in use but there are plans to turn it into a hotel lobby, so this may have been the last time to see it in its current state.

You might recognize parts of the building from Catch Me if You Can—Frank(Leonardo DiCaprio) first reports for duty as a pilot inside of the Flight Center and then at the end of the movie Carl (Tom Hanks) chases Frank down one of the entrance tunnels (although with gray carpeting).

Immediately upon stepping into one of the two concrete, red-carpet-lined tunnels connecting the Flight Center to the rest of Terminal 5, you feel completely transported back to an era when flying somewhere was an actual event. Instead of the horrible, sweatpants-and-flip-flops-and-Auntie-Anne's-Pretzels nightmare that airports are today, the Flight Center had the Paris Cafe, the Lisbon Lounge, a Noguchi fountain, a shoe-shine station and the coolest red-on-red seating pit that you never knew you were missing.

The entire floor is covered in the most adorable penny tiles, some of which continue upwards on the sweeping surfaces and curving walls. Speaking of the swoops and curves—the entire building is a gleaming white endorsement of the beauty of flight and it seems impossible that anyone would be able to envision such a space, let alone actually construct it out of concrete. Everything about it feels vintage yet futuristic, and it is certainly leaps and bounds above any public space I've ever been inside of before.

Like any great historical building, the TWA Flight Center made us yearn for the ability to experience it in its heyday—to watch flights taking off and landing while we sipped martinis—a full year before Idlewild Airport would be renamed JFK in honor of the fallen President. Of course, we also left saddened by the fact that not only is time travel not possible (yet!) but that current-day air travel is so dreadfully mundane and ugly—unnecessary evils that Eero Saarinen so beautifully ignored more than 50 years ago.