In 1994, the terminal was declared a city landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, which prevented its demolition. In 2005, the National Park Service listed it on the National Register of Historic Places. The boarding gates were demolished following the construction of Terminal 5, which is occupied by JetBlue Airways. In April 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported that JetBlue and its partner, a hotel developer, were negotiating for the rights to turn the head house into a hotel. In July 2015, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo confirmed that the Saarinen building would be converted into a new on-site hotel for the airport’s passengers. Groundbreaking took place on December 15, 2016, in a ceremony attended by Governor Cuomo, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, and former employees of Trans World Airlines. A topping out ceremony for the hotel’s first tower was held in December 2017, followed by the topping out of the second tower in March 2018. The next month, a model hotel room built inside a JFK Airport hangar was shown to the press. That October, a Lockheed ConstellationL-1649 Starliner was shipped to the hotel site for conversion into a cocktail bar. The Starliner arrived at the hotel site at the end of November 2018. In March it was displayed in Times Square. The hotel started taking reservations in February 2019 in advance of a May opening. The hotel opened on May 15, 2019.
Morse Development developed the site along with MCR, which operates middle-to-budget hotels in the United States. It is the only hotel operating within the boundaries of JFK Airport. Beyer Blinder Belle is the architectural firm responsible for renovating the terminal, while Lubrano Ciavarra Architects is the firm designing the two new buildings.
The two buildings contain a total of 512 rooms between them, as well as conference space, six to eight restaurants, and an aviation history museum. There is a rooftop infinity swimming pool and an observation deck with 10,000 square feet (930 m²) of floor space. The developers have a 75-year lease with the state. Many of the TWA Flight Center’s original details, such as the custom ceramic floor tiles and the 486 variously-shaped window panels, were replaced with replicas of the originals. These details were intended to give the hotel a 1960s-era vibe, and include brass lighting, walnut-accented furnishings, and rotary phones. The hallways contain red carpeting, evocative of the color of the furniture in the original TWA lounge. However, the rooms also contain modern amenities such as blackout curtains and multiple-pane soundproof windows. The large departure board, a split-flap display made in Italy by Solari di Udine and which has been a feature of the building since the Flight Center’s opening in 1962, was fully restored as part of the hotel project. The TWA Hotel also includes a cocktail lounge made from a retired Lockheed L-1649 Starliner, the last model of the Lockheed Constellation line of airliners; the lounge is nicknamed “Connie”. The hotel includes the Paris Café, a Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant, as well. During construction, a sales office and exhibition center, located on the 86th floor of One World Trade Center, was occasionally opened to the public.
[caption id="attachment_214542" align="aligncenter" width="491"] Christopher Columbus by Sebastiano del Piombo[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and navigator who completed four voyages across the ...
