Big Airport Plans Today and Yesterday: Governor Cuomo, Mayor La Guardia and the Shift from City to Metropolitan Scale

Mayor La Guardia Announces the Opening of

Municipal Airport (La Guardia), 1939

(Source: La Guardia and Wagner Archives)

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Vice President Biden’s depiction of La Guardia Airport as overcrowded and outdated is a recurring complaint, dating back almost to the Airport’s origins. 

Fiorello La Guardia Takes a Sledge Hammer to Slot Machines: Let's Go to the VIDEO!

Steven A. Levine

Coordinator for Educational Programs

When Fiorello La Guardia became mayor of NYC in 1934, organized crime and gambling racketeers were his particular bugbears and he went on campaigns to wipe them out. During Prohibition in the 1920s, organized crime had spread from liquor to gambling, narcotics, and the “service of outlawed desires.” One of La Guardia’s earliest public acts as mayor, shown on the following video, was to swing his hammer to smash slot machines and ceremoniously dump them in the Long Island Sound on October 13, 1934.

In the 79 years since Fiorello smashed and dumped those slot machines, a sea change in government’s relationship with gambling has occurred as racetracks, like Aqueduct and Yonkers, have become “racinos” filled with the slot machines La Guardia loathed because he believed they took money from families that should go to feed their children.  New York State voters will also be voting on November 5 on whether to approve a constitutional amendment, backed by an alliance of gambling interests, Indian tribes, and Governor Andrew Cuomo, to allow casinos to open in the Catskills, the Southern Tier and the Albany area.   The New York Times reported yesterday that the gambling industry has spent “more than $59 million on lobbying and political contributions in New York” since 2005.  We know that they are betting a big return on their investment.  I am sure if La Guardia were here today he would be shouting to the rooftops against it.   What do you think?