John F. Kennedy International Airport opened in 1948, after the realization set in that the newly built LaGuardia Airport was unable to handle the volume of
air traffic for New York City. Pushed through by New York’s Mayor Fiorello
La Guardia, the airport was to be located 14 miles from
Manhattan, in Jamaica Bay, Queens, on the site of the old Idlewild Golf Course. For its first years, Idlewild Airport, as it was originally known, consisted of a low-budget temporary terminal and a series of Quonset huts. A major new building program began in the mid-1950s, and the airport rapidly changed from a ramshackle series of buildings into a glamorous-looking city. Renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1963, it has now grown to cover 5,000 acres.
Background Information
Fiorello La Guardia was elected mayor of New York City in 1933, running as a fusion candidate in opposition to the entrenched Tammany Hall machines. Manhattan Borough is essentially the Island of Manhattan, site of New Amsterdam and the commercial center of New York City. Americans Wilbur and Orville Wright conducted the first heavier-than-air flight and America has led in aviation innovations ever since.
