TWA Flight Wing 1 — terminal improvement work
Joseph's second TWA entry catches the famous terminal after the Jet Age dream had already become a traffic problem: Flight Wing 1 was only eight years old when TWA was modifying the complex again.
Construction at the TWA terminal, 1956–62. Kelly's later improvement work is a separate scope and is not what this photograph shows.
1962 · Balthazar Korab · Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons · Source
Why this project matters
- Project identity
- Very strong
- Kelly connection
- Family source
- Masonry scope
- Probable
Rita’s list
Transcription: TWA Flight Wing #1 — 1978
Recorded by Rita Bartscherer · Bartscherer family record
KM-131
2 of two
“TWA Flight Wing #1 — 1978”
Flight Wing 1 opened in 1970. In 1978 TWA rerouted terminal traffic and added a 330-foot passenger canopy carried by 11 Y-shaped precast-concrete columns; the exact Kelly package is still unconfirmed.
One of the best repeat-client stories in the archive: the family list may place Joseph at TWA during the original Jet Age build-out and then again in 1978, when the same celebrated terminal was already being altered to cope with the passenger volumes and larger aircraft it helped usher in.
What Kelly did here
Family source
Probable
Likely: selective masonry alteration: likely CMU/block partitions and fire-rated walls, infill or enlargement of openings, patching/rebuilding of existing masonry, and localized brick/stone work rather than the building's original structural frame.
This scope is recorded as probable, not documented. It is a disciplined reading of the building and the trade practice of the period, not a contract-level record of Kelly’s work.
The construction team
- 01Architect
Roche-Dinkeloo (Flight Wing 1, 1967–70); Witthoefft & Rudolf (1978 roadway/canopy project)
What happened to it
Flight Wing 1 demolished / TWA headhouse preserved and reused as TWA Hotel
Flight Wing 1 no longer survives. The Saarinen headhouse is preserved as the TWA Hotel, while the surrounding airport functions as JetBlue's Terminal 5 complex.
TWA Flight Center / Terminal 5 complex, John F. Kennedy International Airport, Queens, NY
Sources
3 citedOpen →
- 01panynj.gov
TWA Flight Cente EA FONSI ROD 083116
- 02architecture-history.org
Designing TWA, Eero Saarinen's Airport Terminal in New York
- 03commons.wikimedia.org
File:Trans World Airlines Terminal, John F. Kennedy (originally Idlewild) Airpor
- Balthazar Korab · Public domain — no known restrictions on publication · Library of Congress, Balthazar Korab Archive, via Wikimedia Commons · 1962
The Trans World Airlines terminal at Idlewild under construction, photographed by Balthazar Korab. Construction context for the site, not the terminal improvement work recorded on the list.
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