The Marine Air Terminal (also known as Terminal A) is an airport terminal at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York City, United States. Its main building, designed in the Art Deco style by William Delano of the firm Delano & Aldrich, opened in 1940. The terminal was built to handle Pan Am's fleet of flying boats, the Boeing 314 Clippers, which landed on the nearby Bowery Bay. Technological advances after World War II made the Clippers obsolete, and the Marine Air Terminal was renovated in 1946 to serve conventional planes. As of May 2026, the terminal is vacant following the cessation of operations by Spirit Airlines, its sole tenant. The Marine Air Terminal was LaGuardia Airport's original terminal for overseas flights. It was highly popular in the 1940s, when LaGuardia was the only major airport in the U.S. which offered regular flights to Europe. Traffic dropped drastically after the larger Idlewild Airport opened in 1948, and Clippers stopped serving the terminal in 1952. The terminal then served as the airport's general aviation terminal for more than three decades, except for a short period in the 1950s, when it was used by Northeast Airlines. The Pan Am Shuttle service started operating from Marine Air Terminal in 1986. Delta Air Lines took over the service in 1991, operating Delta Shuttle flights from the terminal until 2017, after which it was used by various carriers. The terminal has been renovated multiple times throughout its history. The main terminal building consists of a two-story circular core with a projecting entrance pavilion and a pair of two-story wings. The brick facade is painted buff, with black details, and contains a frieze that depicts flying fish. The three-story rectangular entrance pavilion contains a canopy and a set of doors leading to the terminal's main rotunda. The rotunda contains marble floors and walls, as well as the Flight mural by James Brooks. Both the interior and the exterior of the main building were designated as New York City landmarks in 1980, and the structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. In addition, there was a hangar for seaplanes next to the main building, which has been converted into a garage for snow-removal vehicles.
History Following Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight in 1927, commercial air travel in the United States increased during the 1930s. New York City was in dire need of a new airport by 1934, after Fiorello H. La Guardia was elected mayor. Angered that a flight on which he was a passenger landed in Newark, New Jersey, even though his ticket said "New York", LaGuardia pushed New Yorkers to support the construction of an airport in New York City itself. The city did have a public airport, Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, but it was further from Midtown Manhattan than Newark Airport was. After commencing several studies on the feasibility of a new airport in New York City, the La Guardia administration decided to redevelop the existing North Beach Airport in Queens. The city government leased North Beach Airport in 1934.
Development La Guardia's administration presented plans for a renovation of North Beach Airport (now LaGuardia Airport) in August 1937. The plans included a terminal for seaplanes along Bowery Bay, on the western side of the airport, as well as a terminal for land planes along Flushing Bay, on the eastern side. The seaplane terminal, to be known as the Marine Air Terminal, was to contain four hangars, an administrative building, and a machine shop. The administrative building was to be a circular brick-and-steel edifice measuring 38 feet (12 m) tall and about 136 feet (41 m) across. A baggage check, customs and immigration offices, an air traffic control tower, and various other offices would be centered around a main waiting room, and there would be access ramps for seaplane passengers. The seaplane and land-plane terminals, both designed by the firm of Delano & Aldrich, would operate independently of each other. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) would provide federal funding for the project. U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt approved plans for the airport on September 3, 1937, and La Guardia participated in a groundbreaking ceremony for the airport six days later. The airport was originally projected to cost $15 million and be completed in time for the opening of the 1939 New York World's Fair. By July 1938, the WPA employed 7,800 workers on the project, and workers were expanding the airport site through land reclamation. The number of workers had increased to 11,500 by that November, and the cost had increased to $29 million. Prior to the opening of the seaplane terminal, in early 1939, The New York Times reported that flying boats from England, France, Germany, and the United States would be using the terminal. The terminal had been planned with two seaplane hangars, but only one hangar was built at the time; that hangar was nearly complete by April 1939. The expanded North Beach Airport opened on October 15, 1939, and was officially renamed the New York Municipal Airport–LaGuardia Field later that year. Covering 558 acres (226 ha) with nearly 4 miles (6.4 km) of runways, the airport cost $40 million, making it the largest and most expensive in the world at that time. The seaplane terminal comprised $7.5 million of this cost, and the hangar alone cost $2 million. The land-plane section of the airport opened for commercial flights on December 2, 1939, but the completion of the marine terminal was delayed until March 1940. This was in part because construction in Bowery Bay had prevented seaplanes from landing there. Seaplanes instead traveled to bases in Port Washington, New York, and in Baltimore, Maryland.
Pan Am use At a hearing before the Civil Aeronautics Board in April 1939, Pan American Airways indicated that it planned to use North Beach Airport as the main U.S. terminal for the transatlantic flights of its Boeing 314 Clippers. Under this plan, Clippers would fly to Baltimore if there was bad weather in New York City. Pan Am leased the Marine Air Terminal from the New York City government the following month. Pan Am also allowed foreign airlines to use the terminal, including Imperial Airways, Air France, and KLM.
Opening and early years
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