It’s gone. It was an iconic building-designed for the future of aviation, built at a time of relentless optimism in the nation’s newest technology and with a belief that the appearance of public buildings should reflect they dynamism of those who created them.
Last Friday I returned my rental car to the Hertz lot at Detroit Metro Airport. I walked to the east side of the lot to see if the demolition was complete. It was-the once beautiful, massive original airport hangar was completely gone. I had been there in mid-August and was saddened to see that the process of tearing down the hangar-it never had a name, it was always called either the main hangar or, simply, the hangar-had begun. The gigantic I beams forming the north end of were all that was left of that portion. While the art deco trim had long ago been stripped away, the golden tan and brown brickwork of the airport end was still intact. The the tall, folding doors that used to be slid open to allow airplanes access to every inch of a hangar that could have easily swallowed a football field were in sad shape, with many missing panes. Illogically, I had hoped it would be preserved.
An Art Deco Monument to Aviation
The hangar had meaning to me. I had first seen it as a huge apparition, looming out of the fog when I was parked on the ramp at the old executive terminal at Metro after diverting in there because my destination was below minimums. As the fog burned off, the art deco hangar took on form. I could make out the tall doors that covered nearly every foot of all the walls and the two prism-like greenhouses, one on each end of the roof. It was as big, or bigger, but not as tall, as the more modern, undistinguished hangars the airlines had built near the terminal building to house their jets-yet it was obvious that it was far older. I wondered if it came about as one of the more than 2000 airports FDR’s WPA had built.
After that, the hangar would periodically come up in conversations with pilots based in southeastern Michigan. Perhaps because of its distinctive architecture or maybe because it was so big and with all its doors open, it gave the appearance of a table with very sturdy legs.
It also became the subject of an on-going joke used by instructors preparing students for checkrides. The students were told that the examiner would present the following scenario: “You are flying a T-6 inverted through the main hangar at Metro when you see a flashing red light out of the corner of your left eye. What does that mean?” The answer that was to be given was, “The pop machine requires exact change.”
We always wondered whether anyone had ever flown an airplane through the hangar, inverted or right-way-up. We never did find out.
The Lindbergh Boom
I finally looked into the history of the hangar and found it was older than I had imagined. I learned that it was the product of some County Road Commission visionaries who had the courage to think big. It was built at a time when we recognized that tax dollars could be used to create something that benefited all of us and that buildings for us could be designed with flare and elan-they could be striking and beautiful, and something of which we could be proud.
The hangar came to be, along with the airport it helped define, because of the Charles Lindbergh boom. Our country went aviation crazy following his solo flight from New York to Paris in May 1927. His subsequent tour through every state in the Spirit of St. Louis only added fuel to the fire-when Lindbergh called on the people of the U.S. to build airports, they listened. Communities rightly figured that if they didn’t build an airport, their opportunities for future growth would be stunted.
After the Michigan legislature passed a law that allowed political subdivisions to acquire land for the operation of airports, the Road Commission of Wayne County-which includes Detroit-began a search for an appropriate site and submitted a two million dollar bond proposal to the voters. It was successful. After the airport committee reviewed some 70 proposed sites, a rural location west of Detroit was selected and a square mile of property condemned and purchased. There was criticism that the airport was wastefully big-at the time few airports exceeded 3000 feet on a side.
Just to the northeast of the site was arguably the most modern airport in the world, built and operated by Henry Ford for what had started as a cargo airline between Ford factories and expanded into passenger operations and the site of the manufacturing facility for the Ford 4AT and 5AT Trimotors. In a time when airports were designated on charts as a circle because they were usually nothing but an open grass field, Ford Airport had two paved runways and an instrument approach using what is believed to be the first four-leg, low frequency radio range ever installed-designed, of course, by Ford engineers. It would provide a model for what the new airport should be.
A Huge Hangar is Built
What became Wayne County Airport began construction in 1929 and opened in 1930. In the process, miles of drainage and sewage lines were laid to help drain the nearly table-flat site; all power and telephone lines on or around the airport were buried for safety and, on the north end of the site, the main hangar and an electrical powerhouse were built. A National Guard hangar was built on the south side.
Supported from the corners, the steel structure of the main hangar was designed so that virtually all of the over 20-foot tall wall space consisted of sliding doors. Airplanes could be moved directly in to and out of the hangar from almost any point.
Atop each end of the hangar was a greenhouse structure-the one on the south end became the control tower while the one on the north end was used by the Weather Bureau.
In what may have been an early version of “build it and they will come,” the main hangar featured substantial office space. It attracted the aeronautical branch of the Department of Commerce (which did what regulating there was in aviation). It moved in an engineering division. It handled pilot and aircraft certification; which helped attract more business to the airport-manufacturers in a multi-state area who wanted to certify a new aircraft design had to make a pilgrimage to the main hangar at Wayne County Airport.
Air Mail service began at the airport even before it was officially open-and the Postal Service opened an office in the main hangar. There was a parachute loft and repacking facility. The main hangar also contained an airline terminal-service began as soon as the airport opened to Chicago and Cleveland via Thompson Aeronautical Corporation-which, after a series of mergers, became American Airlines. As befit an airline terminal-even if airliners could carry fewer than a dozen passengers-the main hangar contained a public lounge, showers and restrooms. The designers believed that airliners would get bigger.
When the airport was dedicated in 1930, thousands of people packed the airport and swarmed through and atop the main hangar-aviation and airplanes were excitement, the wave of the future.
The Wayne County Road Commission, which was responsible for the creation of the airport, sent a letter to every person who had had to sell his or her house for the airport to be built, offering an airplane ride during the dedication ceremonies. A Stout Airlines (subsidiary of Ford, based at Ford Airport) Ford Trimotor was used to give the rides-a reflection of a time when employees of the government perhaps recognized that they were beholden to those who employed them.
In the book, Images of Aviation, Detroit Metro Airport, by Daniel W. Mason, there is a photo of the Stout Airlines Trimotor used to give the rides, parked in the main hangar. It is dwarfed by the structure.
Speed Course
Immediately to the north lay a long, straight stretch of Wabash Railroad tracks (the tracks are still there). They proved to be the perfect spot for setting up a precisely measured and monitored speed course-drawing pilots from around the country to attempt speed records in hideously over-powered, tiny airplanes that pushed the edges of engineering knowledge of stability, control and high-speed flight.
The hangar was still young when Lowell Bayles tucked his diminutive Gee Bee Model Z into one corner in the late fall of 1931. He’d arrived having won the two main events at the National Air Races, and having replaced the 525-HP power plant with a monstrous 750-HP Pratt & Whitney Wasp Senior engine for an assault on the world speed record, which stood at 278 MPH.
A film record shows the airplane being pushed out of the hangar on December 5, 1931 and Bayles being closed into the Gee Bee. It goes on to show the takeoff and turnaround as Bayles set up for the first of the required four passes for any record to be official. The film cuts to Bayles diving past the hangar onto the course, and then leveling out while smoking along at what may have been the highest speed the aircraft had ever reached. Then, before horrified spectators, the right wing folds up and aft, probably as a result of aileron flutter-a phenomena not well understood at the time-and the Gee Bee and Bayles snap-roll into oblivion.
The hangar was the centerpiece of an open house each year through the 1930s as aviation entered its golden age and airplane photos were everywhere one looked, even on the cover of small-town high school yearbooks. Despite the Depression, aviation activity grew in southeastern Michigan, and the hangar and its airport were easily big enough to handle the growth.
The Army Arrives
In 1941, the newly renamed Army Air Force leased the entire airport beginning operations that would cram the hangar with airplanes and people over the next four years. The airport was renamed Romulus Army Airfield and it became a Civilian Pilot Training (CPT) center as well as the home of the 345th Air Transport Command-and aircraft movements reached a peak of 1800 per day, making the hangar’s airport the fourth busiest in the nation.
The Army, planning for the future, made changes to the hangar, adding more rooms and offices to handle the expected influx of personnel. The airport became a hub for the delivery of new aircraft built in nearby states. Scores of temporary buildings were erected and the National Guard hangar was enlarged, but the main hangar was so large that it was able to provide for the needs for indoor aircraft storage and maintenance on its own-no other hangars were built. The foresight of the designers paid off, the hangar was large enough, had enough clear space and wide enough doors that it could house almost any airplane built during the war.
The beginning of the second World War brought a Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) squadron to Romulus Army Airfield and into the hangar as they ferried everything in the Army Air Force inventory, although at Romulus it was principally Bell P-39 Airacobras and later P-63 Kingcobras. They were being flown across the United States on the first leg of their journey to the Soviet Union as a part of the lend-lease program.
The work done by the ferry pilots and their ability to get airplanes where they needed to be despite weather and mechanical problems became the stuff of legend. A Romulus-based WASP, Barbara Donahue, landed the P-39 she was ferrying on a road in Idaho when it developed a glitch. Not hesitating to get her hands filthy, she repaired the problem and took off again, but not before incurring the anger of the driver of a cross-country bus because her airplane was blocking the road. He didn’t offer to help, just complained that she was making him late.
The airport and hangar were handed back to Wayne County after the war, and the airport got its third name, Detroit-Wayne Major Airport. Plans were immediately made to expand the airport and turn it into the sole airline airport for Detroit.
Three more square miles of land was acquired and the airport was expanded to the south and west, moving its center of gravity away from the main hangar. The new airline terminal was built nearly a mile to the southwest of the main hangar. Although still the largest structure on the airport, it was no longer the center of attention, but it remained in heavy use for aircraft maintenance and for freight operations.
Airline Hangars
The airlines eventually built maintenance hangars that were large enough to handle the newest jets. Although taller, they were not quite as big as the old main hangar; they were just in a more convenient location. They were plain, slab-sided affairs, seemingly designed by bean counters. Without distinction, other than having the current name of the airplane writ large on the sides, the new hangars seemed almost embarrassed to be there, afraid to make a statement for fear that someone would complain that money was being wasted on frivolity. The main hangar aged with stately grace, showing that public art doesn’t have to be a statute in a fountain to enrich the lives of onlookers; it can be an integral part of a functional building.
At some time after I moved away from the area, the County decided to move the rental car agencies to the northeast side of the airport, on what was the ramp area of the original airport. A service road was built for them, south of the main hangar. Suddenly, there was no access to the main hangar from the airport itself. The hangar was leased to the Hertz rental car company. For a time it was used for storage, but maintenance was no longer performed and it deteriorated. Over the last 10 years of so, I would travel through Metro Airport on business from time to time and my eyes would always be drawn to the main hangar. I watched as trees grew on the roof and knew that the future, which had been its reason for being, and its friend, had turned to a cruel foe.
I thought the main hangar be a magnificent air museum, had there been the money to keep up 1920s structural technology and had not one of the world’s finest small aviation collections already been nearby in the Henry Ford museum. Plus, the hangar was built by people looking to the future-and it presided over an airport that always seemed to be looking forward as well. Somehow, turning it into something that looked backward wouldn’t have been right.
It’s gone now, as are so many other icons of aviation-most of the taxi-the-airliner-inside-to-load-the-passengers United Airlines hangars, the airway beacons, the low frequency range stations. We in aviation are richer for the decisions of those who came before us and had the courage to think big and build for the future-to design hangars and terminals that were monuments to human dreams and aspirations. We can hope that some of those who are now building for aviation’s future will have the fortitude to build magnificently as well.
Rick Durden is the features and news editor of AVweb. He holds an ATP with type ratings in the Douglas DC-3 and Cessna Citation 500-series and is the author of The Thinking Pilot’s Flight Manual or, How to Survive Flying Little Airplanes and Have a Ball Doing It, Volume I.
