The Beautiful LaGuardia Marine Air Terminal

I was in the LaGuardia Marine Air Terminal coming back from New York with my cousin. The Marine Terminal is wholly different from the main airport and is not even connected to it. In fact, it is a much smaller and older terminal, and thus quite unimpressive: The outside is made of the gray stone and cement that was so popular in the seventies, something out of which my high school was constructed many years ago.

The name of the terminal stands above the main entrance in dull metal looped into a bland font, which compounds the appearance of outdatedness. Having passed under this sign and entering the front door of the terminal, I came upon a similarly boring, though renovated, room that does not have a purpose at all, other than showing it has been recently renovated. It has new, blue desks with no one behind them and LED signs that display nothing, though I suspect that they were meant to display airline and flight information.

Needless to say, my cousin and I were equally bored and surprised, on the brink of contemptuousness, with the terminal, now that we were used to the shine of new glass skyscrapers in New York City and the rather post-modern domestic terminal at Boston’s Logan Airport.

However, the next room of the Marine Air Terminal is something amazing. The room is a small rotunda and its doors and windows, which stretch from the floor to the tops of the doors, are inset into the walls halfway up the sides of the room. This leaves a large circular space of wall that is painted with beautiful pictures of the human history of flight. I specifically remember Icarus, with his wings of feathers and wax strapped to his back (though this may not be a good image to paint in an airport). His face can be accurately described as a mixture of amazement and fear. While I hope he is on his ascent to the sun, it is a feeling that is common amongst all fliers, whether during take off, while hitting turbulence, or feeling the plane skid and jump as the wheels burn on the runway.

Leonardo da Vinci can be seen with his ridiculous and ingenious flying machine. He is in a mechanical and contemplative pose, which one comes to expect from so scientific and methodical a man. One wonders what Leonardo is thinking, this man of thought and innovation.

Leonardo and Icarus (man’s dreams of flight) come to fruition in the portrayal the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk with their flying machine. And further down the line the viewer is presented with the modern aviators: the commercial pilots, businessmen, and airline workers as they plan flights across the country and world, bringing the dream of flight, once a seemingly impossible pursuit, to millions across the globe.

Further research into the terminal (via Wikipedia) when I returned home and I uncovered a brief history of the terminal. It was the only work commissioned and finished by the WPA under President Roosevelt and its artwork was covered with a grey paint for many years because its imagery was seen as being socialist. Recently, it was renovated and restored after many years in hiding and obscurity.

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