New York's first airport is being brought back from its ruins — and we checked it out
Hollis Johnson
About as far southeast as one can go in Brooklyn, at the very end of Flatbush Avenue, the site of New York City's first municipal airport bakes in the sun — its original purpose now just history.
These days, Floyd Bennett Field is part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, a place where locals come to fish or camp, schoolchildren take tours, and disused hangars are transformed into sports complexes or public kayak storage space.
Far across the field from the terminal building, the colossal Hangar B houses the Historic Aircraft Restoration Project, a largely volunteer organization working to restore a significant collection of vintage aircraft to museum condition.
When it opened in 1931, the airport was a state-of-the-art facility designed to accommodate a rapidly expanding aviation industry.
It would host some of the best-known aviators of the period, people like Howard Hughes, Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post, and Roscoe Turner.
The field is named after Floyd Bennett, who earned the congressional Medal of Honor after he and partner Richard E. Byrd became the first men to fly to the North Pole. While their claim is now disputed, at the time it was a highlight of the "Golden Age of Aviation."
Eventually, the airport lost business to Newark Airport, which was much more convenient for traveling New Yorkers. The field would be turned into a naval air station just a decade after it opened, serving as a base for training and patrol and antisubmarine aircraft for much of the Cold War, Lincoln Hallowell, a park ranger who has served as a de facto historian of the field for 16 years, told Business Insider.
Hallowell led us on a tour of the field. Here's what we saw.
This is the terminal building. Through the Great Depression, it greeted the very few people who could afford to fly.
Hollis JohnsonBut Newark Airport proved much more convenient, and Floyd Bennett lost business.
Hollis JohnsonWhen the military took over, the beautiful art deco interior was ignored. The National Park Service restored it to match old photographs.
Hollis JohnsonSee the rest of the story at Business Insider