Speaker A
Grand Central Air Terminal was built for aviation's future. But aviation kept moving. For 30 years, the people here moved with it.
Explore the history of Grand Central Air Terminal, LA's lost airport that shaped early aviation before disappearing into the city.
Key Takeaways
- Grand Central Air Terminal played a crucial role in early commercial aviation in Southern California.
- The airport's decline was due to competition and limited expansion space, not lack of innovation or importance.
- World War II transformed the airport's function from commercial to military use.
- Post-war aviation growth favored other airports, leading to Grand Central's closure.
- The terminal building remains a preserved historic landmark, symbolizing LA's aviation heritage.
What the video covers
- Grand Central Air Terminal was built in the late 1920s as a visionary airport for Southern California's aviation future.
- C.C. Spicer and investors expanded the airfield, commissioning a Spanish colonial style terminal to serve Los Angeles.
- The airport became the western base for Transcontinental Air Transport, linking LA to New York via plane and train.
- Famous aviators like Amelia Earhart and Howard Hughes contributed to the airport's prominence and aviation culture.
- Competition with nearby Union Air Terminal and limited space led to a decline in passenger service by the mid-1930s.
- During WWII, the airport was camouflaged and repurposed for military training and aircraft maintenance, including work on engines for Doolittle's raid.
- Post-war, the airport lost its airline role as traffic shifted to Burbank and Los Angeles International Airport.
- The airport gradually shrank amid urban development and closed in 1959, with the terminal building surviving.
- Disney later repurposed the site as a creative campus and restored the terminal to its 1929 appearance.
- Today, the terminal stands as a historic reminder of an airport that once was a gateway to the future of aviation.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Vision for Grand Central Air Terminal
- 00:49Building Southern California's Future Airport
- 01:27C.C. Spicer's Expansion and Terminal Design
- 02:22Launching Air Travel and Transcontinental Air Transport
- 02:58Aviation Icons and Growing Culture
- 04:44Competition and Decline of Passenger Service
- 05:56Military Role During World War II
- 07:32Post-War Changes and Airport Closure
- 11:44Legacy and Restoration of the Terminal
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
The field became something its builders never intended. Then, aviation left this place. The airport disappeared [music] into the city.
Speaker A
But not all of it. How do you build Southern California's airport of the future?
Speaker A
By the late 1920s, Glendale already had a modest airfield beside the Los Angeles River.
Speaker A
C.C. Spicer had something much larger in mind. An attorney, petroleum executive, and investor, Spicer moved among the people shaping Southern California aviation.
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He assembled a group of investors willing to back a much larger vision of the airfield.
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They expanded the property, laid a concrete runway, and commissioned a passenger terminal meant to serve Los Angeles.
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Architect Henry L. Gogerty designed the new terminal in the Spanish [music] colonial style. Even the name was a declaration. [music] Not Glendale Airport, Grand Central Air Terminal.
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Spicer's vision built the airport. Now it had to convince people to travel by air.
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In July of 1929, Grand Central became the western doorway for Transcontinental Air Transport, the Lindbergh Line. Charles Lindbergh was not just a name on the poster. He helped shape the route, made Grand Central its western base, and flew the first eastbound passenger flight.
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Passengers flew by day. At night, they continued by [music] Pullman train. Los Angeles to New York in roughly two days. [music] The airplane made the journey feel modern. The train made it possible.
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Grand Central had to make flying feel routine and safe. The terminal came out to meet the airplane.
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Amelia Earhart's presence gave the operation credibility. If she trusted flying, so could you. Howard Hughes entered the story on 911 [music] Airway, where his H-1 racer was built in Charles Babb's hangar.
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In 1935, the H-1, with [music] Hughes piloting, set a world land plane speed record.
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Howard Hughes was [music] one part of a larger aviation culture growing up around Grand Central.
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[music] Grand Central helped show Southern California what a modern airport could be. But Grand Central was not alone. Another nearby air terminal was building its own version of the future.
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Just five miles to the northwest, Union Air Terminal was making its own claim on Los Angeles.
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The two airports were close enough to compete for the same airline traffic. Grand Central had glamour, visibility, and a head start. What it didn't have was room to grow.
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By 1936, passenger service was beginning to shift towards Burbank. Spicer's gateway to Los Angeles had lasted less than 10 years.
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The airport was losing the purpose it had been built to serve. Major Corliss Moseley had not chosen Glendale. The Curtiss Airport Corporation sent him to run the field after purchasing it from Spicer's investment group in 1929.
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He understood aviation from several perspectives: military flying, airlines, manufacturing, training. As passenger traffic faded, Moseley saw another future for Grand Central.
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In 1939, the Army Air Corps contracted with his Grand Central Flying School to train aviation cadets. [music] The program quickly expanded beyond Glendale.
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Moseley had found a new role for Grand Central. Then came Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor, Grand Central was camouflaged from the air. Made to resemble a housing tract, complete with false streets. The field that had welcomed passengers was now camouflaged, guarded,
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and put to work. Training expanded. Pilots, mechanics, cadets. And then came the P-38s. The P-38 Lightning was fast, powerful, and demanding. It exposed the airfield's limits.
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Sonora Street was closed, and the runway was extended towards Western Avenue. From the air, the camouflage tried to make the field disappear.
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On the ground, the P-38 operation was impossible to hide. Inside the shops, another kind of work was underway.
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Mechanics were assigned to inspect and modify 40 Wright R-2600 engines. They were told what to do, but not why. Those engines would power the B-25s of Doolittle's raid, the carrier-launched strike that gave America its first answer to Pearl Harbor.
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Today, nothing here tells that [music] story. Grand Central had answered the call. In 1944, Moseley's Cal-Aero organization purchased the airport from Curtiss-Wright.
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The operator had become the owner. But after the war, aviation did not return to the world this field was built for.
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After the war, Moseley had the field, the shops, and an aviation workforce. But the airline world Grand Central had been built for was gone.
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I'm walking on what used to be the runway. Grand Central Avenue aligns almost exactly with the center line. The geometry of the airfield is still here, if you know what to look for.
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After the war, the field continued to find work. Aircraft maintenance, engine overhauls, training programs. It wasn't finished. It just wasn't the front door to Los Angeles anymore.
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The airlines had moved on. Burbank had more room. Mines Field was becoming Los Angeles International. The future.
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And this piece of ground, which had already given everything it had, was running out of reasons to stay an airfield.
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The wartime runway extension was removed. Grand Central returned to its tighter pre-war footprint, now surrounded by a city that had grown further around it.
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By the mid-1950s, industrial development was beginning to consume the field. The airport grew smaller as more land was taken out of airport service.
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Some residents lobbied the city of Glendale to buy what remained and preserve Grand Central as a public airport.
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The city did not pursue it. Glendale had already moved on from being an airport city.
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On July 15th, 1959, the last airplane cleared the Grand Central runway. The rotating beacon went dark and the runway was torn up. Grand Central Airport was closed.
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The terminal building survived, but its original purpose became harder to see. It no longer looked like the front door to anything. Painted over, stripped down, altered, emptied out.
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In 1961, Walt Disney's design organization began moving into the Grand Central Business District. Over time, much of the old airport became Disney's Grand Central Creative Campus.
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Then, between 2012 and 2015, Disney restored the terminal to its original 1929 appearance. The runway did not return, but the terminal became Grand Central again.
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High on the tower, four-winged pilots, propellers in hand, face the points of [music] the compass.
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They have stood there since 1929, when Grand Central was built on a bet that aviation's future would come through this place. For a time, it did. Then the future moved on.
Speaker A
The airport disappeared. The terminal remained. [music] Mhm.
Topics:Grand Central Air TerminalLos Angeles airportsaviation historyC.C. SpicerAmelia EarhartHoward HughesWorld War II aviationDoolittle raidairport closureDisney Grand Central Creative Campus
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