Airport geeks and preservationists team up to save JFK’s Pan Am Terminal

If you saw that blessedly short-lived television series called Pan Am a couple of years ago, you probably think, as I do, that the best thing about it was the Pan Am terminal at J.F.K., a cheerful, round structure with a gigantic overhanging concrete roof that seemed to emerge out of the naïve notion that flying could be fun: airport as midcentury modern circus.

… Delta recently moved its operations next door to the equally blandly named Terminal 4, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the airport, has announced its intention to demolish the Worldport—not to build a new terminal, which might be understandable, but to allow for more room for aircraft parking.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation just put the Pan Am terminal on its annual list of the “Eleven Most Endangered Historic Places” in the United States, and so the battle is on.