Dulles International Airport is one of only two federally owned airports in the country (National Airport being the other). Some find it to be an ugly monstrosity. Others find it to be an architectural masterpiece — I am firmly in this camp — however, many functionality compromises were made in the name of aesthetics.
Eero Saarinen, the notable Finnish architect, known for his sweeping designs, was responsible for the design, but unfortunately died a year before John F. Kennedy presided over the opening on November 17th, 1962. Saarinen was an architectural badass (call him the Sprinkle of architects), designing the TWA terminal at JFK and the St. Louis Arch. Maybe you’re familiar with these?
So, my post last week about Concorde‘s first arrival at Dulles (and first in the U.S.) piqued my interest in digging up some archival footage of the airport.
The footage I found is archival film of Dulles Airport that I came across while trolling YouTube. It was a professionally produced marketing film from 1962, the year Dulles opened. The music is awesome and so 60s. I feel like the Pink Panther will show up at any minute.
Everything else must fall before an airport can arise. Five hundred eighty demolished buildings, twelve hundred acres of uprooted woods, 11,500,000 yards of excavated earth, dissolved into 31,00 feet of concrete runways.
It’s amusing that the narrator mentions how modern and integral the people movers were, surmising that they would be critical to airports all over the world. At the time, Dulles certainly was innovative — it was the first airport constructed exclusively for jets.
The only airport in the world, ready today, for the supersonic age of tomorrow.
It’s hard to believe the film when they state that a deplaning passenger would on their way after, exiting the airport, only 9 minutes and 57 seconds? Feels more like 59 minutes and 57 seconds today. I only fly out of Dulles if I’m going to California or Tokyo.
Take me to DCA any day. And that’s National … not the actor dude that was the 40th President of the United States.
Esthetics of Architecture aside, I long ago wearied of the Dulles double rush -the rush to get the front seats in the transporter to the midfield terminal (if you’re a little bit late you have to climb over everyone else to get to the back seats) followed by the second rush to the actual gate. Baltimore (BWI) was comparative heaven until they moved the rental car pickup/dropoff far away from the terminal to accomodate luxury services. None of these airports were designed with modern convenience in mind.
This film must have been released much later the October 1962 opening of the airport. There is TWA 727 shown taking off at 14:38.The first flight of the 727 was in February of 1963. And it go into service until a year later with Eastern Airlines. Don’t know when TWA started flying this model but its safe to say it was after February 1964.