Lambert Field Dedicated 1930
Lambert Field, now Lambert International Airport, was dedicated on this day in 1930. At the time it was way out in the countryside.
Nearly 20 years later the impact
Within a decade air transport has become a major consideration in the planning of the urban areas. The volume of traffic, passenger, freight and express, will increase manifold during the next twenty years.
It is reasonable to assume that the developments in air transportation during the next few decades will parallel that of automobile transportation, which really started about three decades ago. St. Louis must be prepared to accept and make the most of conditions that will arise. Provision of the several types of airfields required must be on a metropolitan basis. The recently prepared Metropolitan Airport Plan proposes thirty-five airfields. (1947 Comprehensive Plan)
Thirty-five? Because the city is so small only three of the thirty-five would be located within the city limits: two minor fields “for non-scheduled traffic, commercial uses and for training” and one private airport for, logically, private aircraft. See a diagram of all 35 airports here.
A lot has changed since 1930 and 1947. I’m traveling now by not by air, by train.
— Steve Patterson
I’ve never heard of this before. Thanks, Steve! So how many airports ARE in this area on the map? 5? 6?
35 makes sense if everyone has a flying car, I guess. At one time that may have seemed a realistic future goal.
I chuckled when I first read this several years ago – it shows just how wrong “experts” can be when it comes to planning for / predicting the future!
Aerotropolis though is now a new iteration.
Runway 11-29 (STL) is another example of bizzaro decision making by the local airport authority. That said, the main terminal building at STL is a bloody marvelous mid century monument.
Ryley — You must not have been in St. Louis in the mid-late 1990s. TWA had over 500 daily flights out of St. Louis. Anytime there was bad weather, planes would be in holding patterns for up to 30 minutes. I can’t count the amount of time I spent circling over Vandalia, IL.
Hindsight is, of course, 20/20 — but based on the experiences of the time, an additional runway was CLEARLY needed in St. Louis.
From the reading I have done, it seems to me that before the lions share of the over 1 billion dollars was spent, it was clear that 11-29 was no longer needed. But ya, this all predates my arrival in the USA.
American bought TWA in 2001 and — at the time — was committed to keeping the vast majority of the flights at Lambert. The first cutbacks by American took place late in 2003 and the runway was completed in 2005.
By the time it became evident that we would not need a new runway in the immediate future, the vast majority of the land purchases had already been completed and much construction was underway. Yes, construction could have been stopped in 2003 but there would be little to show for the money that had been spent to that point.
Lambert was amazing back then. I barely remember it but there was direct flights everywhere and those huge L-1011’s!
My opinion is the worse mistake made by St Louis re: air transport has to be the stupid fight between Illinois and Missouri over the proposed Columbia Airport in Illinois. Lambert is a mish-mash of add on buildings, ramps, parking, etc that looks like it was (and probably was) designed by a committee. Just another decisiom over the past 80 years that have contributed to our second (hopefully) rating.
Lambert here and Stapleton in Denver both date/dated to the ’20’s and both are/were surrounded by a growing metropolitan region. Denver “bit the bullet”, built DIA and closed Stapleton. Today, Denver has a state-of-the-art (and busy and growing) airport and a great in-town development, while we have a new runway and few(er) flights. Who had the better vision?!
JZ, in some fairness to StL, there are some geographical issues that worked in Denver’s favor and to StLouis’ disfavor.
Denver is constrained only to the west, that by the Immediate rise of the terrain while the entire east half of the compass is generally good to build into. Heck, Denver is relatively free to expand and develop all the way to the Missouri River. That land for Denver’s new airport probably was a piece of cake to obtain if compared with any attempts St Louis might have had dealing with thousands of individual land owners.
St Louis is constrained by that same Missouri River, The Mississippi, and an awful lot of serious foothills every other direction.
I’m guessing the biggest constraint here is/was political – the logical place for a new airport would be in Illinois, where land assemblage would be easier, but much like Mid-America illustrates, we Missourians have a hard time crossing the river to use regional amenities, much less directing any tax dollars to support them. In contrast, both DIA and DFW are nowhere near any arbitrary, but very real, state boundary lines.
I would also add to the fact that lot of people have strong opinion on how TWA came in a position of being an easy take over target. St. Louis/Lambert is and will always be a central location. However, its location doesn’t make up for executing a business plan or what investor(s) desire from the business they invest in.
Wow! Reminds me of the interstate road network planning, except that a larger proportion of those got built.
As JAE notes, the 1947 Comprehensive Plan was a product of its time, before airline deregulation, interstates, the TSA or Amtrak. It was created when the DC-3 was the state of the art for airline travel, much interstate travel occurred on privately-run passenger rail, we still had streetcars and the Greyhound and Continental Trailways buses served most small towns. Route 66 was the major road, not I-44, and manufacturing was concentrated in urban areas, not suburban areas. So, while 35 local airfields may seem either quaint or ludicrous, from our perspective in 2012, what if that were actually our reality? Would we be less autocentric? Would we have, or even need, I-270 and I-255? Would we have air taxis / frequent shuttles connected to local transit systems? Our “choice” to focus on the private motor vehicle as the primary transportation option has informed and shaped our built environment in multiple ways since World War II; it would be interesting to revisit both the assumptions and the conclusions of the 1947 Comprehensive Plan, to play the what-if game, and not just look at it as an historic relic.