Traffic & Transit

PHOTOS: The Old And The New At Rebuilt LaGuardia Airport

A multibillion dollar makeover has kept alive LaGuardia's past.

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Passengers move about a spacious Terminal B of New York's LaGuardia Airport, Wednesday, March 24, 2021.
Passengers move about a spacious Terminal B of New York's LaGuardia Airport, Wednesday, March 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

NEW YORK CITY — A multibillion dollar makeover of New York City's LaGuardia Airport isn't completely wiping away the airport's storied past.

Quietly functioning on the nearly 700 acres of the evolving transport hub are some of the oldest continuously operating airport facilities in the U.S.

Just west of the gleaming hull of the airport's new Terminal B stand two American Airlines airplane hangars that date back more than 70 years, to the earliest days of civil aviation and the advent of cross-country flights.

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Farther west are Hangar 7 and the Marine Air Terminal, known as Terminal A, where terra cotta flying fish symbolize the Boeing 314 Clipper flying boats that skimmed across nearby Bowery Bay in 1939.

A terra cotta flying fish, representing a Boeing 314 flying boat, endures on the facade of New York's LaGuardia Airport's Hangar 7, Wednesday, March 24, 2021. Built in 1939, the hangar was a maintenance facility for Pan American Airways' fleet of seaplanes, known as flying boats or Pan Am Clippers. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
Snow removal and other equipment rests inside New York's LaGuardia Airport's Hangar 7, Wednesday, March 24, 2021, built in 1939 as a maintenance facility for Pan American Airways' fleet of seaplanes, known as flying boats or Pan Am Clippers. Among the largest aircraft of their day, the Boeing 314 Clippers were used for overseas flights out of the Marine Air Terminal, adjacent to this hanger, that is still in use today for limited flights. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

Hangar 7, once a facility for the flying boats, now houses snow removal equipment. The Marine Air Terminal continues to serve passengers, and the hangers are being upgraded and will continue to serve as an aircraft maintenance facility.

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Those old facilities might be noticed by relatively few of the passengers returning to LaGuardia after the pandemic downturn.

The airport is in the midst of an $8 billion modernization effort that involves constructing 72 gates and two new main terminals to replace notoriously cramped corridors and ticketing areas. The work has been done even as flights continue to come and go.

Pedestrians pass an art installation by Sarah Sze, right, and a mural depicting New York City themes by Laura Owens, that adorn the open areas of the recently opened Terminal B, Wednesday, March 24, 2021, at New York's LaGuardia Airport. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

It has been a swirl of construction activity for years, but the new facility has gradually emerged, in some places decorated with art and an indoor fountain that resembles a continuous light show.

One of two colorful 25-foot-tall indoor fountains greets passengers, Wednesday, March 24, 2021, at New York's LaGuardia Airport Terminal B. The fountains, part of an enhanced passenger experience, circulate 4,000 gallons of water through 450 individually controlled valves, which form the falling water into curtain-shaped floor-to-ceiling cylinders. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

Beyond the steel and glass of the new passenger halls, there are links to past and present.

Brilliant colors of massive murals from contemporary artists Laura Owens and Sabine Hornig depicting New York City scenes illuminate Terminal B's interior. The human connection to flight and travel is honored in these modern narratives and in a restored Art Deco classic canvas inside the circular hall of the Marine Air Terminal that dates to 1939.

A mural, once covered by paint and then restored, highlights the main hall of the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport, Monday, March 29, 2021, in New York. The historic building, where Pan American Airways' fleet of seaplanes known as flying boats or Pan Am Clippers unloaded passengers, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and remains the only active terminal in the nation that dates back to the first-generation of air travel. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

They allow us to visualize where we've been and where we're going, all in one glance.

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