Idlewild (John F. Kennedy) International Airport, New York
AA-2026-26974D
On the image
Someone in the back of a hotel courtesy bus or rental car snapped this through the glass, and the glass won. What survives is the International Hotel at Idlewild, New York's answer to the new problem of the Jet Age: travellers who needed to sleep somewhere between one aeroplane and the next, preferably without leaving the airport at all.
The building does the talking a hotel of this era was built to do – a long slab of stacked windows, a discreet marquee, and a name that promised nothing local and everything convenient. Below it, a car park is filled with the low, finned saloons of the period, parked with the confidence of people who believed a car this size was simply what a car was.
A bus marked for one of the major carriers idles near the curb, proof that even in the golden age of flying, the last hundred yards were still handled by a man driving a bus. Nobody in this lot is thinking about history. They are thinking about check-in, and whether the connecting flight will be on time.
The historian's note
The International Hotel opened at New York's Idlewild Airport in the early 1960s as one of the first hotels in the United States built specifically to serve airline passengers rather than tourists visiting a city. Its location inside the airport perimeter, alongside terminals operated by carriers including Eastern Air Lines, reflected the era's belief that air travel would soon require its own self-contained infrastructure of hotels, restaurants, and services independent of the surrounding city.
Idlewild itself was renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport in the mid-1960s, and the years surrounding that change saw rapid construction of terminal buildings, parking structures, and hotels to accommodate the boom in commercial jet travel following the introduction of aircraft like the Boeing 707. The International Hotel, with its long banks of guest-room windows facing the tarmac and parking areas, stood as a physical symbol of that transition from air travel as a novelty to air travel as routine infrastructure.
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Visually related — by likeness
International Hotel, Idlewild (JFK) Airport, New York, 1960s. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-26974D. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/international-hotel-idlewild-jfk-airport-new-york-1960s.
@misc{aaAA202626974D,
title = {International Hotel, Idlewild (JFK) Airport, New York, 1960s},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-26974D},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/international-hotel-idlewild-jfk-airport-new-york-1960s}
}TY - ART TI - International Hotel, Idlewild (JFK) Airport, New York, 1960s PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-26974D UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/international-hotel-idlewild-jfk-airport-new-york-1960s ER -
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