TWA Hotel Inside Eero Saarinen's JFK Airport Terminal Open for Reservations | Hacker News Reader

TWA Hotel Inside Eero Saarinen's JFK Airport Terminal Open for Reservations

dezeen.com

97 pointscurtis22 comments

I visited the terminal a few years ago as part of the Open House New York weekend -- it's amazing, simultaneously feels like you're time-traveling to the past (an actual Mad Men-era cocktail bar that hadn't been restored yet) as well as the past's idea of the future (like you're on a Star Trek set). It was such an imaginative space, so earnestly futuristic without a trace of irony or embarrassment.

Apparently Open House New York was instrumental in preventing the terminal from being abolished -- once the public was able to see it for the first time, there was then enough public pressure to keep it.

I find it strange that the photos in this article only show the terminal itself (used as a lobby) and the inside of the hotel rooms, but not a single photo of the exterior of the hotel towers.

Here's a gallery that gives a much better idea of the hotel itself, under construction:

https://ny.curbed.com/2018/3/26/17164804/twa-hotel-eero-saar...

The main buildings are just big blocks, maybe nothing to show. But they must contain all these restaurants etc, not just rooms -- so guests will probably only walk through the lobby a few times. Have a drink there, I guess.

Still, it's really great that they kept the building. Super hard to imagine this being the right scale for an airport, where would you put the endless snaking queue for the x-ray machines?

At the time that the terminal was being closed down, I mentioned it to someone at my company who had been a higher-up at an airline (very post-TWA) which used that terminal. His comment was basically that it was a really awful terminal :-)

I had to check but it only closed in 2001, I'm sure it was really awful to use by then! Never went there, but can confirm air travel was not very Mad Men by that point.

You throwing the date out there made me realize I was confused. I was a bit surprised to read TWA when I was thinking that it was Pan Am's terminal. And, indeed, that was the one I was thinking of and that one was actually demolished a few years back. [1] It was also quite iconic.

I probably flew through there at some point. My dad used to travel internationally on Pan Am all the time and he told me that that's where he always got his hair cut.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldport_(Pan_Am)

The old Pan Am terminal was truly atrocious. There were tarps, hoses, and buckets everywhere for the leaking roof. Also there was limited seating for any of the gates because there of course had to be tons of Hudson News shops. I’m definitely one to feel airline nostalgia but that place definitely needed to go.

Well, it was a fine scale for a 1960’s airport, when there were no x-ray machines, or security of any sort, really, theater or otherwise. Without a ticket or even an ID, you could walk right up to a gate and meet your arriving friend, no problem. The only lines were at the check-in counters.

The article doesn’t have a picture of one of the most striking features of the TWA terminal: its iconic Tunnel to the gates. Walking through it really made you feel like you were leaving one world and entering another, futuristic, one.

Here’s one image that doesn’t quite do it justice — the bottom of http://edgeofthecityblog.blogspot.com/2015/04/jfk-twa-termin...

Thanks for that reference, I was sure I've seen that tunnel somewhere before. It was used in Catch me if you can.

https://untappedcities.com/2013/11/19/film-locations-leonard...

I'm just happy the gorgeous building is being used again, not being demolished.

Opened up the article to look at the pictures, and I have to say that they exceeded my expectations. It’s a really nice looking building!

Good quality 1960s buildings made of concrete with stone flagging and wood paneling inside are nice spaces. I always remember the feeling of light and space in the 1960s blocks I worked in at University (1980s, buildings then 20 years old)

Hopefully they've got a good supply of that TWA-logo-embossed glasswear, because those are definitely going to go missing.

One picture shows a rotary phone on a side table. I really hope that is the actual phone model that each room will have!

The rooms at The Ned in London (a restored 1920s Bank, complete with a vault turned into a cocktail bar) also has Bakelites as phones in every room.

I suspect the TWA hotel ones are not bakelite telephones (cf. images from https://www.google.com/search?q=bakelite+telephone ).

The bakelite phones had some edges and were really heavy. The photo seems a later 70s/80s model with a softer plastic shell that would not really hurt if tossed at you. I think they had to weigh those down with some metal inside,

Eero Saarinen had amazing neo-futuristic style.

IBM, Thomas J. Watson Research Center is another example of his work with similar style.

Sans the asbestos and lead paint these buildings are amazing.

For anyone in the Boston/Cambridge area, there are a couple nice examples at MIT as well. (Kresge Auditorium and the Chapel.) He also did the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

It just occurred to me that the chairs are a very similar color to the chairs in the space station Hilton in 2001 A Space Odyssey:

https://filmandfurniture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/2001...

That was basically what everyone agreed the future would look like in the 1960s. :) In fact I seem to remember reading somewhere that Kubrick was inspired by this terminal, but I can't find that now, so my mind may have made that up.

I don't know if Kubrick ever traveled through the terminal since he apparently had a serious fear of flying. It seems likely that some of the people involved with the production of 2001 would have, though. And it would have been brand new at the time.

It's nice that this has been saved, but it is unfortunate that the arguably more interesting Pan Am Worldport wasn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldport_(Pan_Am)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com