David Dunlap has a lovely and very sad article over at the New York Times about the imminent destruction of I. M. Pei’s Terminal 6 at Kennedy International. Dunlap’s last few paragraphs perfectly sum up the stupidity of what is happening.
I flew National a bit during the 70s, while Keith and I were busy destabilizing pro-Batista groups in Florida. I was, even then, a seasoned traveler, but stepping inside that building was a joy, a moment that felt like movie-stardom, like the eye of the camera had followed me in through the doors and into a filmic new age, a shiny world peopled with pert stewardesses and loose boys in tight pants off to catch their big break and movie starlets and dapper-suited businessmen and, of course, the obligatory nuns. There were always nuns. They were usually lugging a guitar, although I did once see one with a tuba on a little trolley.
Everyone would check in early and then lounge around looking gorgeous, watching the earth and its luggage go by. And let me tell you, Pei’s Sundrome was where it was at. I once snuck a sneaky joint in a utilities closet with Truman Capote and Liberace – they dated for a while in the late 60s, and so the only thing thicker in there than the smoke was the cloud of bitchiness that oozed out of both of them. Another time, I wandered into the men’s bathroom by mistake and found out far more about Gore Vidal’s taste in rough trade than any woman needs to know. I swapped lipstick colors with Jackie Collins and had carnal knowledge of a young David Cassidy behind a plant holder. I watched Russian spies pass information to Arab sheiks, and once saw Walter Cronkite passed out in a pool of vomit on the stairs, with a party hat on his head and a funny whistle stuck in his mouth, so that every time he breathed he made a sad, warbling farting noise. The staff had discreetly covered him with a blanket and arranged a few “Do not disturb” signs around him. So considerate.
And yet, with all this, I never missed a flight, except the one time that Truman held an impromptu party airside in Departures that lasted for a week. I had been on my way to Florida to meet with Castro, and ended up being twelve hours late because I couldn’t pull myself away from Lady Bird Johnson’s stash of quite extraordinary coke. People were buying airplane tickets just to go to the damn party. I am told that someone managed to smuggle a small donkey through luggage inspection and Phyllis Schlafly spent several hours riding around on it, shouting “I am the Queen of the May” and flashing her boobs at everyone.
Castro – without the fake beard and therefore almost unrecognizable (he had been flitting in and out of Miami for years pimping his cigar export business) – wasn’t amused when I eventually showed up at Miami International, but I offered him some of Bird’s coke and he perked right up. Bird laughed herself silly when I told her later.
Good times. 
In his article, Dunlap quotes from a letter from Pei’s partner Henry N. Cobb to the CEO of JetBlue, and the response that Cobb received:
In January, Mr. Cobb made what he called a “last-minute plea for reversal of this death sentence” to David Barger, the president and chief executive of JetBlue. “Conserved and reanimated, the Terminal 6 pavilion would further strengthen the distinctive identity of JetBlue as a sponsor of design excellence and an effective advocate for a sustainable future,” Mr. Cobb wrote. “I. M. Pei joins me in thanking you for your consideration of this request.” (That’s as close as Mr. Pei would ever get to joining anything resembling a fray.)
Mr. Barger said in reply, “While I share your passion for classic terminal designs, I have concluded the time has passed for the pavilion building to serve any functional purpose.” Mr. Barger went on to express his gratitude to Pei Cobb Freed “for your influence on JetBlue’s first decade” and concluded:
I personally commit to advocate for a permanent display of the pavilion photographs and other architectural artifacts so future generations can continue to appreciate the beauty of Terminal 6 and the uniqueness it once brought to J.F.K.
Because a photo display and a chunk of ceiling stuck on the wall somewhere over a travelator between the toilets and the fucking Pandora store is clearly an adequate substitute for being able to appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of Terminal 6 by actually visiting it. All those memories torn down, leaving us only memories.
What an arsehole you are, Mr Barger.
Whether Pei’s building makes your loins warm or not (and it makes mine feel positively frisky), destroying something so well made, so representative of a time in our history, should be unacceptable.
That JetBlue and its engineers and managers were unable (or unwilling) to come up with a way to retain this building, and construct the facilities they need around it and through it, betrays a shortsightedness that would make me nervous were I a JetBlue shareholder.
I hope (in vain, I suspect) that Mr Barger might wake up one morning and find Shame perched on the end of his bed, staring at him with fear and loathing in its eyes – a little like waking up next to Michele Bachmann – and he will feel the shame of knowing that he is, and was, a grey numbers man, a nothingness who always took the safe route and failed regardless, a little man who never had the balls to make a visionary decision.
Images: George Cserna / Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library Columbia University, and Pei Cobb Freed and Partners
Cross-posted at Sarah, Proud and Tall
harlana
omigosh, hilarious!
oh, and what was David Cassidy like? (if ya know whut i mean) ;)
beltane
They’re tearing it down? Why? This building was like a little bit of glamour and style for the masses. I guess they don’t want us plebes to feel like Catharine Deneuve even for a few minutes.
MattF
So, I betcha that one of the ‘problems’ with the Pei terminal is that it would be hard to ‘securitize’. “Serenity, generosity, clarity, spaciousness, simplicity and dignity.” Har-Dee-Har-Har-Har.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@harlana:
Rock me baby. There was a lot of David in those tight jeans.
IrishGirl
Brilliantly funny, thank you! The part about Walter Cronkite made me spew coffee on my monitor…..
eemom
eleventy-infinity kinds of awesome. Thank you Mrs. Sarah.
fwiw, iirc, there was once a time when Jacqueline Kennedy et al successfully blocked plans to demolish Grand Central Station.
Culture of Truth
Speaking of the NY Times, this is some MVP level, Olympian whoring
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/business/some-unemployed-find-fault-in-extension-of-jobless-benefits.html?pagewanted=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
eemom
aha
Back in the days when the US Supreme Court was, occasionally, a heroic institution. RIP.
Montysano
That’s how we role here in the USA!®. I work in the construction business and am constantly aghast at the destruction of perfectly good buildings, only to erect a soul-less POS in its place.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@MattF:
True in both senses of the word. They can’t “securitize” it like a bundle of mortgages either. No such thing as collateralized elegance and style. And god forbid the little people should get to enjoy something like that. It isn’t enough that these corporate scum have to destroy our present, they have to destroy whatever tiny scraps of something worth having we might have been able to hand down to our children and grandchildren too. Bunch of fucking Orcs, the lot of them.
Guster
Goddamn. When you’re hot, you’re hot.
Ken
@beltane: Why? The official reason from the article is:
I suspect however the unofficial reason appears a few paragraphs before:
Hard to put a bunch of Starbucks, Cinnabons, McDonalds, Hot Topics, and so forth in a building like that.
celtidragonchick
This post wins the internets today. Funniest thing I have read in a month… :D
Gilles de Rais
Putting a Starbucks and a Pizza Hut in such a place makes them look like the cheapshit worthless facades that they are. You just don’t notice in most airports because they have about the same level of architectural awesomeness as a prison.
Gilles de Rais
@Culture of Truth: You tried, but damn, there are no adequate words for the level of whoring that article manages to reach in the first two paragraphs.
Yutsano
@Culture of Truth: Yep. Eliminate all jobless benefits because one crank in Houston thinks they’re a bad idea. Opinions differ, both sides do it, etc etc etc…
The NYT needs a big towel after that.
Summer
While I celebrate the giddy fun of the post, this news makes me sick to my stomach. What a beautiful building. What a waste.
c u n d gulag
Awsome!
But, if they could destroy the beautiful old Penn Station and replace it with what looks like a domino on a toilet bowl, with none of the Guggenheim Museums (which shares some of the same characteristics) charm, then who are we peons to complain about them replacing another thing of beauty with what’ll probably look like a Soviet sardine packing plant?
Sloegin
People get the
governmentsbuildings they deserve.Roger Moore
@Ken:
Not really. You just have to build a bunch of kiosks inside the building. Each one of them can hold a shop. They may uglify the space by blocking the sight lines, and you may need some utility upgrades to support them, but there’s no reason you couldn’t do it.
Yutsano
suzanne is on mourning over this.
Linnaeus
At least they kept Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center. But yeah, demolishing this building is a tragedy.
Ken
@Roger Moore: Well, it was kind of the “uglify the space” that I was getting at. The architecture was designed for those graceful sight lines. It would be like turning the National Mall into a shopping mall and running power lines down the middle of it.
enplaned
T6 at JFK was built for a different age and is now completely obsolete. Here’s just one reason: the pre-security and post-security areas are in two separate structures. Between them are just two narrow skybridges. Anyone who used T6 in the post-9/11 era had a lot of experience in long lines over those bridges while waiting to go through security.
Air traffic is massively larger than it was pre-deregulation when buildings like T6 were built. Passenger volumes have close to tripled since the last year of the regulated era, security requirements are vastly more onerous, passenger needs are different — with little food in the sky, there’s a need for more food service on the ground, for instance.
The Saarinen building (TWA’s old terminal) was not able to be re-used either, because it’s so small (relative to passenger requirements today). In that case, the building was preserved for non-aviation purposes, and a new terminal built behind it (i.e. closer to the runways). At the time, some preservationists said that wasn’t good enough, that a way had to be found to push passengers through it. It’s like requiring that preservation of an old DC-3 requires that airlines use it to transport passengers.
You obviously can’t preserve all the old terminals, and in particular, it’s not an option for T6. That space is needed for a future expansion to the JetBlue terminal. There is no other space for them to expand into next to their existing facility.
Davis X. Machina
WTC architect Minoru Yamasaki’s Terminal A at Logan met the same fate a while back.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@enplaned:
Everything you say may be true, but I don’t care.
You just down tear down your architectural treasures when they cease to be useful.
If I.M. Pei can stick a glass pyramid next to the Louvre, someone could have come up with a profitable plan to include at least the Arrivals and Departures pavilions of Terminal 6 in a new building that would enhance them all.
magurakurin
It doesn’t look all that awesome to me. I guess I have poor taste, but it just looks like another concrete and glass box built in the 60’s. It isn’t even really all that old. I always lamented much more all the old roadhouse and farmhouses that were systematically destroyed in Southeastern PA as I grew up. Many of those old buildings were from the 18th century. But I suppose someone felt the same way I do about this Terminal 6. Just another old stone farmhouse. To each his own I guess. None of them are better looking than the forest and meadows which no doubt were there first and destroyed to make way for a building. We’ve made ourselves a world of crap and not a one of our finest buildings equals the beauty of anything in nature.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@magurakurin:
No, just different. I feel the same way about someone who wants to destroy anything beautiful that someone has built.
trollhattan
@Gilles de Rais:
Please Gawd, personally punch Herr Tolleson in the neck, with righteous vigor. He’s worse than a Social-Security-hatin’ gummint-supplied-Hoverround-drivin’ teabagger. At least they have the excuse of being proudly ignorant.
As to bulldozing that lovely bit of ’60s architecture, well, corporations are people too. Vile, loathesome people in this case. Maybe they’ll loop “Mad Men” episodes in the new joint.
Linnaeus
@enplaned:
Good point.
enplaned
Sarah — there’s one more thing that needs to be preserved in the NYC region, which is airport capacity. LaGuardia, Newark and JFK are all close to capacity. It’s unfortunate that we can’t keep everything, but the most iconic relic of the 50s/60s at JFK has been kept (the Saarinen building). Beyond that, NYC needs airspace capacity.
Yes, there should be more train service, I get that. But until that occurs, airport capacity needs to be preserved.
T6 is a nice old building, better than average, I personally liked it, but it’s certainly not the top of the pile and people need to continue to be able to get in and out of NYC.
r€nato
apparently the powers-that-be at JFK won’t be happy until they’ve turned it into the most godawful major airport in the country.
c u n d gulag
@r€nato:
LaGuardia’s already right up the road.
Jay C
@Linnaeus: @enplaned:
IIRC, there was a plan to demolish Saarinen’s TWA Terminal Building a few years back (on the usual grounds of “too small”), and the outcry led to it being saved by Landmark designation: I suppose no airline exec is going to let that happen again….
Sarah Proud and Tall
@enplaned:
I’m not sure we are going to convince each other, dear, but that’s ok. It may indeed be necessary, but it’s still very sad to lose something that I find so beautiful.
trollhattan
It might could be the new terminal will have a rabbit. A really, really big rabbit.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/09/12/3904698/sacramento-airports-new-terminal.html
Upper West
@Sarah Proud and Tall: Well, Sarah, your unique and extraordinary memories make it a special place for you. I’m sure that if Mr. Barger had witnessed Phyillis’s Godiva donkey ride and trash-talked with Truman and Liberace he would have had a different view.
rikryah
this makes me sad. it was beautiful
Upper West
@Culture of Truth: A prime example of Times phony equivalence. Find an asshole taking unemployment who says he shouldn’t be getting it and the real issue is “regulations” and make him somehow representative.
Tone in DC
trollhattan – October 7, 2011 | 12:30 pm · Link
It might could be the new terminal will have a rabbit. A really, really big rabbit.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/09/…..minal.html
That is one of the most hideous things I have ever seen.
I am talking Tet Offensive, shot at point blank range hideous.
BBA
From a traveler’s point of view, the new Terminal 5 is a great improvement over old T6, simply because it was designed for current levels of security and passenger traffic instead of needing clumsy retrofitting. I never saw it as particularly iconic – that would be the Saarinen TWA terminal (old T5, still standing in front of the new one) and the Pan Am Worldport (now Delta T3, ruined by an even more clumsy retrofit). To me, T6 just felt outdated.
It is an airport terminal, after all. I’d prefer ugly and functional (new T5) to pretty and unusable (practically any Frank Gehry building). Sadly too often we end up with ugly and unusable (new Penn Station).
jimmy higgins
Christ, this will just ramp up my paranoia. I already tend to believe that flight delays are caused by them (you know, Them) having to pack up the departure airport and ship it to the destination city for reassembly ahead of my flight. How else to explain the identical character of the buildings, shops and facilities?
Surabaya Stew
Wow, haven’t commented here in a couple of years!
Seriously, as a native New Yorker and as an Architect, Terminal 6 ain’t worth it. It’s an ok building by a pretty good architect, that’s it. Not worthy of awe and preservation like Terminal 5 (which can be found in any decent architectural history book), while Terminal 6 is absent from any book I’ve ever read.
Were it a better building, I’d be strongly inclined to keep it. (Heck, absent a plan for anything else I’d say keep Terminal 6!) But it would seem that a worthy plan is in for a new building to replace Terminal 6 that while may or may not be esthetically better than what is about to be demolished, is economically and logistically an improvment to JFK.
Point is, not all buildings by famuous architects deserve preservation. Terminal 6 is such a building.