Afternoon at Logan (Boston, Massachusetts)

Dear Urban Decay readers, Happy New Year! Let us all hope that 2022 is a better year all around than 2021, which was pretty horrible for many people. At least the US stock market was happy, but that does not help millions of Americans. Maybe the pandemic will wane in the coming year and we can sort-of return to normal travel and mixing unsocial gatherings. 

In the meantime, here are some photographs from my archives of Boston and Logan Airport.

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Panorama of Boston and Logan Airport from Hilton Hotel, May, 1988. (4 Kodachrome frames from a Rollei 35S camera; click to enlarge and see details)

I have flown in and out of Logan Airport too many times to remember, starting sometime in the 1950s. 

The US Army built the original landing field, then named Boston Airport, in 1923 on tidal flats in East Boston. The fill at that time consisted of cinders, meaning coal clinkers. Many of the 1800s fills in and around Boston were a convenient way to dispose of clinkers. The term then used was reclamation, as if humans were "reclaiming" land from the sea. I remember during the 1973 oil crisis, some people suggested burning coal at home as a source of heat. My uncle, an old-timer, told me that was an absurd idea. Where would we take the ash and clinkers? He was right; it would be difficult to dispose of the coal waste for a city the size of Boston and its suburbs. 

The Army operated Boston Airport until 1928, when they transferred it to the State of Massachusetts. As the years progressed, the state added more landfill, expanded runways, and built terminals. The field was renamed the General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport (IATA: BOS). Today, Logan is a bustling transport hub, the 16th busiest airport in the USA, with many daily international flights.

Typical 1988 afternoon on the Southeast Expressway, waiting to transit to the Callahan Tunnel and to Logan Airport

Logan is also a topographic confusion (OK, total mess) of twisting roads, buildings seemingly perched haphazardly all over the place, one-way streets, and choked traffic. It is often a nightmare getting in an out of Logan, especially by car. Decades ago, the State should have purchased another location for their main airport, a site inland that was not as constrained by water and had easier access. 

The photograph above shows a typical afternoon on the old (now demolished) Southeast Expressway en route to Logan Airport. The Southeast Expressway was one of the grandiose 1950s projects to build high speed roadways through American cities, regardless of the environmental and societal cost. Opened in 1959, it was instantly hated because it partly cut off the Italian North End from the rest of the city. As you recall, these highways often cut through low-income neighborhoods (usually meaning African-American) as if the continuity of their neighborhoods was of no value. Also, those people usually did not have the access to high-power lawyers or political friends to argue their situation. But this sordid topic of corruption and giveaways to the construction industry is for a future blog article. 

In 1988, I attended a training class in Cambridge and stayed a few nights at the Hilton Hotel at Logan Airport. Surprisingly, my room had an interesting view west towards downtown Boston (see the panorama) and overlooking some of the Logan hangars. Not bad for an airport hotel. This older building has been replaced by a modern and larger Hilton. In 1988, some operators still used propellor planes. Eastern Airlines was still operating, before being absorbed into PanAm and thereafter disappearing into bankruptcy oblivion.

In the photograph with the Eastern Airlines hangar, the long building across the water is the former Army Supply Base, also known as the Boston Quartermaster Terminal. In the late 1930, my father worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers in that building. 

These are Kodachrome slides from a Rollei 35S compact camera with a 40mm ƒ/2.8 Sonnar lens. I scanned the slides with a Plustek 7600i scanner and created the panoramas with Photoshop CS6. 

UPDATE. (Extra information in response to a comment left by Jim Grey below.) 

Issue 1: The MBTA Blue Line stops at Airport (appropriate name). The problem with this stop is that it is too far from the terminals for most people to walk. Therefore, a surface bus runs on a loop to the terminals, car rental center, and Airport station. Decades ago, the bus cost 25 cents, cash only. I always wondered, a tourist steps off the plane from Paris or Lagos and he is supposed to have 25 cent coins ready to drop into the coin box? At least now, the bus no longer requires a fee. 

Issue 2: In almost every European city that I have visited, plus Bangkok and Hong Kong, the train comes literally under the terminal. Go through passport control, pick up your bags, and take the escalator down to the train station. No need to fight snow or rain with your luggage. In 60 years, the MBTA has not been able to reroute the Blue line into a subterranean station the would be convenient for passengers? Seriously? And Boston likes to think it has a world-class airport?

Issue 3: In Airport station, you use a vending machine to buy a transit pass for one ride or various time periods. OK, that is easy. But a sign states that there is a reduced fare for senior citizens. However, this fare machine will only refill or validate an existing senior pass. You need to acquire the senior card downtown at another station. Seriously?

From the Archives: Washington-Hoover Airport, Arlington, Virginia 1941 or 1942

Eastern Airlines DC-2.

The Washington-Hoover Airport served Washington, DC, from the mid-1930s until 1941, when it was closed and replaced by the modern National Airport (now Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport). Hoover was located about where the south parking lot of the Pentagon is situated. Construction of the Pentagon began on on November 8, 1941, dating these photographs a few months earlier.

When I first looked at these negatives, I thought they depicted National Airport. But a friend (a gent in his 80s) from Alexandria, Virginia, was highly certain that this was not National. The Wikipedia web page describes the closure of the older airport: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington-Hoover_Airport. That would date my dad's pictures to late-1941, which is possible because I read in one of his 1941 diary entries that he was thinking of buying a 35mm format camera. He bought an American-made Perfex camera, made by the Candid Camera Corporation of Chicago. I assume this roll of film was one of his early tests. The Cameraquest web page describes the Perfex cameras if you are interested.

The film was in terrible condition. Whoever developed it used the brush method, which was described in older photography magazines. No wonder it fell out of favor. My Silverfast Ai scanning software has anti-scratch software, but it could only do so much with these. Still, I am surprised how much detail is visible. The film edge said Kodak Safety Film Plus-X ("Safety" meaning not nitrate-based film, which was unstable and highly flammable).

Unfortunately, there were only 5 frames on this roll with air field photographs. The other frames were rather mundane tourist scenes in Washington (statue of heroic soldier on horse, etc.). This serves as a lesson that as the years pass, scenes or topics that seem ordinary often take on historical importance, or at least interest. But standard tourist sites are rather unchanging unless you include cultural artifacts, such as parked cars or signs.

Framed photograph in the Mayflower Hotel, photographer and date unknown.

The old Washington-Hoover airport was soundly criticized by pilots and almost everyone as being dangerous and hopelessly inadequate as the airport for the nation's capital. The runways were short, a nearby dump that was on fire made plumes of thick smoke, nearby radio antennas were a hazard, and Military Road had to be blocked by guards when planes landed or took off. At one time, there was a swimming pool, which children reached by crossing the runway.

Gravely Point, Virginia, with dredging underway to prepare artificial land for National Airport. From the Historic American Engineering Record, Library of Congress; United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division  digital ID hhh.va1677/photos.368605p. 

Construction of the new National Airport was mired in the standard political and budgetary malarky (nothing has changed in 75 years). There was even controversy about the boundary between Virginia and the District of Columbia. Read the sordid history in the link above. The new National Airport opened just before our entry into World War II. This was fortuitous timing because the world war resulted in a tremendous increase in air traffic into Washington and Virginia. 

From the History of Reagan National Airport:

When it opened, National Airport was considered the “last word” in airports – a concentration of the ultramodern developments in design of buildings, handling of planes, air traffic and field traffic control, field lighting, facilities for public comfort and convenience, and surface vehicle traffic control. 

Well, not quite. Across the ocean, in Berlin, the spectacular Templehof Airport was under construction and almost complete in 1941. Please see my 2016 article on Templehof.