JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
This is another unexpected find of an urban rooftop airport1/dirigible docking station from 1920. The idea has a certain amount of sense to it, especially here in the still relatively restricted early history of aviation, just 13 years past Kill Devil Hills, and two past the great expansion of flight following the end of WWI. It is an interesting mix of modernity when coupled with growth of the skyscraper2, which is just living through the beginning of its fourth decade. On the other hand…well, there are a lot of obvious problems with an idea like this, too many to go through in a simple post just intending to share an evocative image. It was a tempting peek into the future, and as we can see one of the dirigibles advertisers “transatlantic”, the first of which wouldn’t occur by dirigible uintil the Graf Zeppelin in 1928. The planes are way too big, and so on. (Is that the Plaza Hotel in the foreground?) The rendering itself is very pretty, and has a certain Renaissance-y quality too it, especially with the etching-like rendering of the sky.
If you’re interested there are probably ten posts on such ideas in this blog–just enter “airport” in the Google search box for the site and you’ll find them.
(Source: Popular Mechanics, December 1920, pg 912.)
Notes.
1. “Airport” and “Air port” first appears in the OED in 1902 in the great Brooklyn Eagle, though I’m unsure of its aviation context ( Brooklyn Daily Eagle 10 Apr. 1/2 “I hope New York will be the greatest airport in the world”). There is a clearer usage in 1914 (Times 16 Mar. 5/3 “The time will come when, with the development of aviation, every town of importance will need an air-port as it now needs a railway station”) that leaves no doubt the reference is for airplanes.