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Mayor La Guardia Announces the Opening of
Municipal
Airport (La Guardia), 1939
(Source: La
Guardia and Wagner Archives)
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A fortnight ago, Governor Cuomo, flanked by Vice President Biden announced a $4 Billion reconstruction of La Guardia Airport, a project that will be undertaken by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Why the Governor, the Vice President and the Port Authority? Why not the Mayor?
The announcement seemed to beg for some historical context
from those of us here at the La Guardia and Wagner Archives. In the 1940s, Mayor La Guardia too envisioned
big airport plans. But back then, La
Guardia’s dream was a grand new airport on Jamaica Bay, and it was the city,
not Albany or Washington, who took the lead in planning its own future. For La Guardia, the new airport at Idlewild (JFK) was an investment to secure New
York City’s future dominance in world trade and travel in the emerging aviation
era. Today, in contrast, many New
Yorkers think of the airports as a regional enterprise largely divorced from
the city rather than one purposed for the city’s benefit.
Our story of the transition of New York’s airports from
municipal to regional is set in the 1940s and begins with the early inadequacy
of the airport that bears La Guardia’s name.(1) Then
as now, the airports have reflected the tension between New York as a place of aging
infrastructure and jostling crowds, and its demand for grand facilities
befitting a great metropolis.
Vice President Biden’s depiction of La Guardia Airport as overcrowded
and outdated is a recurring complaint, dating back almost to the Airport’s
origins.
