That a remarkable 85 percent of national transatlantic traffic crowded through New York in 1946, mostly on stately ocean liners, did not necessarily guarantee anything. Experts working for the city estimated that by 1955, as a result of airport growth in other cities, New York would retain just 67 percent of transatlantic passengers. The Commerce and Industry Association of New York identified Idlewild as postwar project number-one “insofar as New York’s prestige and commercial supremacy are concerned.”33
The war proved essential to the new airport’s development. Speedy condemnation of land for Idlewild, for instance, was justified on the basis of the national war emergency. The judge who enabled the condemnation remarked that “great new airfields with long ribbons of runways” would be needed for the war.34 The biggest subsidy of the time came directly from the federal millions that flowed in from the sale of Floyd Bennett Field to the navy. This purchase helped pay for additional land sought for the new airport. A 1941 estimate of the total cost of Idlewild properties was $8.25 million that could conceivably be paid out of the navy’s purchase of Floyd Bennett Field for $9.75 million.35 Federal government officials also provided an initial grant of about $860,000 toward landfill and runway development in the Idlewild area. The federal government even subsidized hangar development and an administration building.36
The commercial aviation business got its biggest boost from federally funded aviation research. The U.S. Postal Service’s airmail service continued to quietly subsidize airlines, but without the war, large-scale postwar commercial aviation would have grown more gradually. The massive bombers pioneered during the war proved easily remodeled for civilian conversion. With the addition of seats and other creature comforts such as bathrooms, they offered dependable commercial air travel. Planes that could safely fly thousands of miles under attack could pretty easily and safely ferry people from one city to another in peacetime. Government construction of extensive airfields in Europe also proved crucial. Seaplanes had been very popular before the war (in spite of high operating costs due to the fact that seawater was terrible for planes) for international travel because many crowded cities abroad lacked sufficient land or capital for runways, “but the exigencies of war made nations forget about expense. Big runways were laid down to support 4 engine bombers and big new land-based transports built for the military.”37 Radar systems developed for expertly detecting airborne enemies also simplified operations in dense urban airspace. By the late 1950s, a radar tower at Idlewild had the capacity to monitor planes at up to thirty thousand feet in the air and up to two hundred miles away.38
Airport construction at Idlewild gained speed as the war wound down. By 1945, 1,100 existing structures had been demolished and the site as a whole included 4,495 acres. Mayor La Guardia had condemned the first Idlewild area on December 30, 1941, and paid $723,000 in condemnation awards.39 These were, in retrospect, modest down payments on a vast enterprise. The other properties condemned from 1941 to 1944 included 3,533 vacant lots and 1,867 improved sites. An estimated 500 acres of the site came directly from Jamaica Bay itself as the city undertook a massive pumping program to raise low marshlands to functional levels, an act of environmental destruction that would be unthinkable today.40 Despite the fact that most of the land acquired was unimproved, by 1945 the city had spent about $9 million acquiring property (with a few parcels still desired at a cost of about $3 million more). Even marshland that one day might be filled was valuable in New York City; in fact, city officials rejoiced that they got their thousands of acres “at so modest a cost.” In condemnation letters, the city frequently relied on a “defense” justification despite the remote chance that the airport would actually be brought into service during the war itself.41
In 1945, Mayor La Guardia boldly predicted that his new airport “will be one of the best investments the city ever made. It will pay for itself.” Yet the dawning realization of just how much infrastructure a modern airport required made the promise of self-financing a more complicated proposition.42 The visionary terminal plans favored by La Guardia and designed by architects Delano and Aldrich included “a monumental circular administration building, a three-mile long, two-story arcade, 2 hangars and miscellaneous utility structures.” The price of constructing such a grand edifice, in an era when air travel was not yet profitable, raised serious questions about feasibility. Railroad companies, for instance, had built their own stations on a grand scale (at great cost to themselves), so why should the airlines not shoulder expenses for their airports?43
By 1945 city officials predicted that the total city investment in the field would eventually balloon to $90 million, most of which would have been funded out of long-term city bond sales. The city planned to ask for a federal grant of $25 million; to charge high rents for warehouse facilities, airline buildings, and retail facilities; and to provide concessions (food, shops, and so on) for visitors. But the rapidly escalating upfront costs were a reason for concern. The generous leases granted to the airlines (based on aircraft operations), only agreed to under threat that the airlines would move to Newark if they did not get their way, in no way covered future expenses.
For many onlookers, the airport program thus appeared to be another of La Guardia’s many extravagant public programs. Mayor William O’Dwyer, who succeeded La Guardia in 1946, endorsed Robert Moses’s plan for a City Airport Authority in 1946 out of financial desperation and his obvious admiration for Moses. O’Dwyer had inherited a budget deficit from La Guardia and was eager to both restore financial stability and rebuild the city’s housing and other social infrastructure. The state legislature passed a provision to give the city the power to create its airport authority.
An airport authority promised to solve a number of problems inherent in large and complex public programs from both a managerial and financial perspective. New York was just one of many cities that sought to shift municipal airport management from the city to public authorities. Authorities theoretically circumvented messy political battles and patronage while adding much-needed managerial talent to complex urban functions. Authorities simultaneously created the possibility, as Robert Moses had demonstrated with the Triborough Bridge Authority, for additional long-term financing. Moving airport financing to an authority removed a major liability from the city’s books and meant that the city did not surpass its state limit on borrowing. New York Times editorialists, in thrall of Moses at this time, came out for this airport authority plan in the short term to get the place built. The authors, however, hedged their bets by suggesting that the Port Authority might be the best organization to manage New York’s airports because of its experience in transportation and its regional vision.44
Moses’s plans, however, ran into a number of snags. The first was that many people were simply skeptical of giving Moses another set of responsibilities. O’Dwyer had already made him construction coordinator, giving him control over every major postwar project in the New York area, in addition to his continuing roles as parks commissioner, chairman of the Triborough Authority, and many other appointed positions. Even Mayor La Guardia, in a radio address after he left office, came out against Moses’s plan because it was going to give Moses even more power. The second and more pressing issue was that the new City Airport Authority possessed limited borrowing capability because of banker skepticism. While the city signed over millions in airport improvements (estimated at $90 million) at no cost to the new authority, which some objected to as a giveaway, the unknown returns of airport investment meant that Airport Authority bonds were still a risky bet. More risk meant that financiers would demand higher interest. To some, this looked like another gift to the wealthy who would, by buying bonds, consume most of the future airport’s profits.45
Moses, in a desperate attempt to bring airport costs in line with the debt capabilities, did make a number of changes in the plans that he thought would mollify critics and maintain the mayor’s support. La Guardia’s elaborate plan for the airport terminal, created by architects Delano and Aldrich, was scrapped with the encouragement of Mayor O’Dwyer. Unfortunately for Moses, the replacement plan was also elaborate: there was simply no inexpensive way to build a major terminal for a world-class airport.46
A leading
