Jet-Age Chic

Eero Saarinen’s soaring TWA terminal was an icon of mid-century cool. Now it’s being reincarnated as an airport hotel.

- Henry Grabar

IT WAS the world’s most famous airport terminal 1 , and the most beloved project of the mid-century architect Eero Saarinen 2 . Likened to a bird taking off, the TWA Flight Center at New York’s Kennedy airport comprises four vaulted concrete shells perched lightly on the ground. There are few walls; instead, the exterior is dominated by canted banks of windows.

“Most people are blind,” Saarinen said after his extravagant design was unveiled 3 . “If you get too subtle about architecture,people come in and walk through it and never notice the difference.” They noticed the Flight Center. Its form was inseparable from the thrill of transatlantic air travel. For a generation of international travelers, it was a memorable first impression of America, an Ellis Island for the jet age.

In 1962, when its opening was broadcast on national TV, the Trans World Flight Center was the most distinctive example of corporate show piece architecture, a movement led by Saarinen himself, with projects such as the General Motors Technical Center, in Warren, Michigan, and IBM’s research center north of New York City. “Like a good advertising agency,” the critic Reyner Banham wrote of Saarinen that year, “he bestowed status, improved the image.”