This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by psa188@juno.com. /-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ Enjoy new investment freedom! Get the tools you need to successfully manage your portfolio from Harrisdirect. Start with award-winning research. Then add access to round-the-clock customer service from Series-7 trained representatives. Open an account today and receive a $100 credit! http://www.nytimes.com/ads/Harrisdirect.html \----------------------------------------------------------/ Slow Return as Hub for Aviation April 27, 2002 By GLENN COLLINS NEWARK, April 26 - The little building moved millions of passengers during two pioneering decades of commercial aviation before falling into obscurity, though never disuse. Now, at the brink of abandonment, the historic Art Deco terminal itself has moved - more than half a mile, on dollies fitted with 1,408 truck tires - and once again finds itself at the center of things at Newark International Airport. For much of its 67-year existence, the seemingly modest structure with the greenhouse-like control-tower bubble was known perfunctorily as Building 51. In recent years, few knew that Amelia Earhart was present for its dedication, that a Who's Who of aviation legends passed through its silvery revolving doors and that it was the center that coordinated the landing of swarms of fighter planes that were then shipped out of Port Newark to win air supremacy in World War II. Fewer still had any idea of its pivotal role in the development of air transportation: for metropolitan New York, Building 51 served as the first passenger terminal, airmail center, administration building, air traffic control tower and meteorological bureau. It also had built-in hotel rooms for pilots, a terrace luncheonette and baggage facilities. In fact, the configuration of the original wing-shaped terminal was conceived as a total design experience intended to celebrate the excitement of flying. Building 51 "is the single most important and historic passenger facility in the world," said Geoffrey Arend, an aviation preservationist and magazine publisher who campaigned for decades to save the building. "It is an example of coordinated architecture and design that has rarely been achieved in any airport passenger facility." Mr. Arend said its control tower was the first to be under the auspices of the Civil Aeronautics Authority. "The things we learned about air traffic control procedures were born in that control tower," said Mr. Arend, who publishes Air Cargo News and whose book "Great Airports Newark: 1928 to 1988" spurred a campaign to save Building 51. "Not only did Building 51 open up the metropolitan area to the modern aviation era, but it was also a prototype for major airports around the country," said Richard Southwick, the partner in charge of the reconstruction project for Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners. After a $6 million relocation and renovation, Building 51 will become the centerpiece of the new $70 million Newark Airport Administration Building when construction is completed at the end of May. In its new incarnation - and in its updated location adjacent to the airport's Runway 11/29 - the old terminal will furnish the public entrance for airport administration offices of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and its police, air rescue and firefighting departments. Preservationists are by now inured to the reality that most early airport buildings - overrun in the utilitarian rush for more speed, more passengers and more square footage - have been demolished, obliterated or runwayed over through the years. Yet to aviation historians, they are shrines to America's first love affair with flight, and many are improbably historic. For example, the terminal at Newark welcomed aviation stars like Earhart, who kept her blood-red Lockheed Vega at Newark; Charles Lindbergh, who kept his Lockheed Sirius at Newark; Wiley Post, who frequently flew out of Newark with Will Rogers; Billy Mitchell; Jimmy Doolittle; and Howard Hughes. Building 51 "was the first place where passengers were treated like passengers," said Paul B. Wood, who heads the Newark Airport redevelopment program that includes Building 51. Interestingly, the cost of the relocation is the same as the $6 million originally spent to build Newark Municipal Airport in 1928. In the early days, passengers relied on shoe leather to get to hangars of competing airlines to buy their tickets; afterward, it was not unusual to stroll to the plane along with Pilot Bob. "For the first time, the terminal kept the passengers away from the propellers and the gas trucks," Mr. Wood said. The original terminal was billed in 1935 as "the only one of its kind in the world." Its two wings permitted eight planes - an unheard of number at the time - to taxi right up and disgorge passengers. Building 51 was at the margin of what Mr. Arend said was America's first paved runway, "since," he explained, "all the prior ones were grass or cinders." Some 50,000 people attended the terminal's dedication on May 15, 1935, and Earhart dedicated a new seaplane. In only two years, Newark became the world's busiest commercial airport, serving as the principal passenger and airmail center for New York City, nine miles to the northeast. Until 1939 - the year New York City's La Guardia Airport opened - Newark was the busiest airport. But in the 1940's, New York's passenger air traffic grew and Newark's declined. World War II, however, gave Building 51 a chance to enter the history books again when the War Department took over Newark exclusively for military use. Some 51,000 aircraft were flown to Newark from their factories, disassembled and then shipped overseas. Ultimately, Building 51 was replaced by a new Newark terminal in 1953, which later became known as the North Terminal. The current Terminals A and B were completed in 1973, and Terminal C was fully opened in 1988. In its later years, Building 51 was subdivided for office space. But it faced extinction thanks to the expansion of Runway 22R. The choices were to demolish the building, mothball it or move it from the path of the runway and find a new use for it. The relocation course was chosen by the Port Authority, after the New Jersey State Historic Preservation Office granted permission. And so, in October 2000, the building began its five-month move. It was cut into three pieces; then lifted on hydraulic jacks to a height of eight feet, the sections were lowered onto rubber-wheeled dollies. Then they rolled westward for seven-tenths of a mile, and were reassembled at the new site. The load moved at half a mile an hour. "I think it's fairly extraordinary for something built in the middle of the Depression to have so much detailing," Mr. Southwick said, referring to the structure's fluted Botticino marble columns and wall cladding, ornate inlaid terrazzo flooring and decorative ceiling plasterwork, all of which have been restored. "The fact that they were able to save this building is a miracle," Mr. Arend said. The original terminal carried the designation of Building 1 until the 1970's, when the opening of new terminals brought a renaming. But now, in its new location, Building 51 has reclaimed its premiere designation. "From now on," said Mr. Wood of the Port Authority, "it is designated as Building 1." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/27/nyregion/27NEWA.html?ex=1020945195&ei=1&en=b03ce230e4c82da0 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@nytimes.com. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company