In an iconic airport terminal, the last vestiges of a bygone era

“Come fly with me,” Frank Sinatra encouraged his listeners in the hit title song of his 1958 album. “Let’s take off in the blue.” “Once I get you up there,” he crooned, “where the air is rarefied, we’ll just glide.”

Such an optimistic view of air travel could have only been imagined at mid-century. And it was with similar buoyancy that the Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen (perhaps best-known for St. Louis' Gateway Arch), designed the epic TWA terminal at New York City’s John F Kennedy Airport, then known as Idlewild Airport.

Now, after sitting unused for nearly 15 years, the building is slated to be transformed into a new hotel proposed by JetBlue and MCR Development LLC.

In a way, the iconic terminal’s rise, fall and planned repurposing have mirrored the ways air travel has changed over the past 50 years.

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