Following
Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight in 1927, commercial air travel in the United States increased during the 1930s. New York City was in dire need of a new airport by 1934, after
Fiorello H. La Guardia was
elected mayor. Angered that a flight on which he was a passenger landed in
Newark, New Jersey, even though his ticket said "New York", LaGuardia pushed New Yorkers to support the construction of an airport in New York City itself. After commencing several studies on the feasibility of a new airport in New York City, the La Guardia administration decided to redevelop the existing North Beach Airport in
Queens. The city government leased North Beach Airport in 1934.
Development La Guardia's administration presented plans for a renovation of North Beach Airport (now
LaGuardia Airport) in August 1937. The plans included a terminal for
seaplanes along
Bowery Bay, on the western side of the airport, as well as a terminal for land planes along
Flushing Bay, on the eastern side. The seaplane terminal, to be known as the Marine Air Terminal, was to contain four hangars, an administrative building, and a machine shop. The administrative building was to be a circular brick-and-steel edifice measuring tall and about across. A baggage check, customs and immigration offices, an
air traffic control tower, and various other offices would be centered around a main waiting room, and there would be access ramps for seaplane passengers. The
Works Progress Administration (WPA) would provide federal funding for the project. The airport was originally projected to cost $15 million and be completed in time for the opening of the
1939 New York World's Fair. By July 1938, the WPA employed 7,800 workers on the project, and workers were expanding the airport site through
land reclamation. The number of workers had increased to 11,500 by that November, and the cost had increased to $29 million. Prior to the opening of the seaplane terminal, in early 1939,
The New York Times reported that flying boats from England, France, Germany, and the United States would be using the terminal. The terminal had been planned with two seaplane hangars, but only one hangar was built at the time; that hangar was nearly complete by April 1939. The expanded North Beach Airport opened on October 15, 1939, and was officially renamed the New York Municipal Airport–LaGuardia Field later that year. Covering with nearly of runways, the airport cost $40 million, making it the largest and most expensive in the world at that time. The land-plane section of the airport opened for commercial flights on December 2, 1939, but the completion of the marine terminal was delayed until March 1940. This was in part because construction in Bowery Bay had prevented seaplanes from landing there. Seaplanes instead traveled to bases in
Port Washington, New York, and in
Baltimore, Maryland. Pan Am leased the Marine Air Terminal from the New York City government the following month. Pan Am also allowed foreign airlines to use the terminal, including
Imperial Airways,
Air France, and
KLM. This flight landed in
Lisbon,
Portugal, 18 hours and 35 minutes later, setting a record for an eastbound transatlantic Clipper flight. The first flying boat to arrive at the Marine Air Terminal arrived from Bermuda on April 1, 1940. At the time, the terminal served three transatlantic trips per week. Originally, members of the public were allowed to visit the Marine Air Terminal's observation deck, The deck was closed for security reasons during World War II. The
New York City Planning Commission approved the proposed hangar in April 1941, allocating $389,000 to the project. LaGuardia attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the second hangar on August 4, 1941, and work on the hangar began that December.
James Brooks completed his
Flight mural inside the main terminal building in September 1942. The following year, in April 1943, an expansion to the original Pan Am hangar was completed. By then, the Marine Air Terminal had more than one transatlantic trip per day. American Export's new hangar opened in July 1943, and the terminal's observation deck reopened in June 1945. A
New York Herald Tribune article in 1942 noted that Clipper flights came from as far as "Capetown, Lisbon, New Zealand, the Orient, Alaska and other remote places". During the Second World War, many soldiers would fly to Europe and Africa from the terminal, and political figures such as U.S. first lady
Eleanor Roosevelt and British prime minister
Winston Churchill also flew from the terminal. Even so, the Marine Air Terminal lasted as a seaplane terminal for less than a decade. When the terminal opened, seaplanes were generally more technologically advanced than traditional land planes; the earliest four-engine aircraft, capable of flying long distances, had been seaplanes. However, they were also more prone to disruption, particularly during the winter months and in poor tidal conditions, when they could not operate. Land planes were not affected by these issues, and land-plane technology was also improving quickly. With the outbreak of
World War II, new four-engine land planes were being developed, making these seaplanes obsolete.
Use as international terminal By the mid-1940s, the small capacity of LaGuardia Airport could not handle the increasing demand for international flights. Despite the obsolescence of seaplanes, LaGuardia Airport was the only major airport in the U.S. which offered regular flights to Europe. Although the terminal had begun to serve land planes, it could only fit one plane at a time, and passengers frequently had to wait three to four hours before passing through customs. The
Daily Boston Globe wrote that the rotunda often saw as much traffic as a
New York City Subway station during rush hours, with up to ten overseas flights trying to land nearly simultaneously at the busiest times. The Marine Air Terminal served 14 airlines; the overcrowded conditions had prompted one airline owner to purchase an old ferryboat and moor it next to the Marine Air Terminal. The improvements included the addition of a covered walkway, three gates for arriving passengers, and two gates for departing passengers. After the terminal reopened on November 7, 1946, it was renamed the International Air Terminal, serving all of LaGuardia's transatlantic flights. Meanwhile,
Idlewild (now JFK) Airport was being built in southern Queens to accommodate international and transcontinental flights. That September, Port Authority officials suggested extending one of LaGuardia's runways by infilling an unused plot of land next to the International Air Terminal. The terminal served 314,000 passengers a year in 1948, many more than it had been built to accommodate. The terminal was renamed the Overseas Terminal in August 1949 because passengers frequently confused it with Idlewild, which was formally known as New York International Airport. In the years after Idlewild opened, most transatlantic flights at the Overseas Terminal were moved over to Idlewild. The terminal had become empty most of the time, and Pan Am,
American Overseas Airlines, and
Trans World Airlines were the only airlines still operating international flights from the terminal. and the last transatlantic flight from the Overseas Terminal departed on April 28, 1951. Afterward, only flights to Bermuda continued to operate out of Marine Air Terminal. Brooks did not learn that the mural had been painted over until after the fact.
1950s to 1970s According to
The Wall Street Journal, the terminal was "quickly forgotten" after Clipper service stopped. U.S. presidents
Dwight D. Eisenhower and
John F. Kennedy sometimes used the terminal when they landed at LaGuardia Airport. The terminal also contained the offices of flight simulation company
FlightSafety, founded in 1951 by
Albert Lee Ueltschi. The Port Authority announced its plans to renovate most of LaGuardia Airport in 1957, but the Marine Air Terminal was excluded from these plans. The terminal reopened for commercial aviation on June 27, 1957, when
Northeast Airlines leased the terminal for its shuttle services between New York and Boston. The swap took place because Gate 11 at the domestic terminal was too small for the four-engine
DC-6Bs that were used on the Florida flights. By then, the Marine Air Terminal was no longer an important part of LaGuardia's operation; only five percent of the airport's 5.4 million passengers in 1959 came through the terminal.
The New York Times described the terminal in 1960 as having "an air of decay and desolation", with a dirty skylight, broken equipment, peeling paint, and almost no passengers. In 1964, American Hydrofoils agreed to operate a shuttle
hydrofoil service from the Marine Air Terminal to
East 25th Street and
Pier 11/Wall Street in
Manhattan. After the
Federal Aviation Administration banned
non-scheduled airlines from operating regular flights and selling tickets in the 1960s, the Marine Air Terminal sat nearly empty for several years. The Butler Aviation Company, which managed LaGuardia's
general aviation operations, had divided the walkway adjoining the terminal into a waiting room and an office, and there was a pilots' lounge next to the walkway. The terminal was then known as Butler Marine Air Terminal. The main building's rotunda was repainted in the 1960s and was again supposed to be repainted in the 1970s. That February, philanthropist
Laurance Rockefeller and magazine publisher
DeWitt Wallace agreed to partially fund the restoration of the
Flight mural, which was projected to cost $75,000. and it was rededicated on September 19, 1980. During that time, the
New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) considered protecting the terminal as an official New York City landmark Arend supported the designation, but the Port Authority expressed opposition because such a designation would severely restrict what the agency could do with the terminal. The main building was also listed on the
National Register of Historic Places on July 9, 1982.
Shuttle use Pan Am Shuttle Pan Am announced its
Pan Am Shuttle service from New York to Boston and Washington in 1986, having purchased the rights to
New York Air's shuttle service. The airline initially planned to operate from two gates at the main terminal, but these gates were too small to fit the
Boeing 727 and
Airbus A300 fleet on the route, so Pan Am built new gates at the Marine Air Terminal. Pan Am spent $23 million to build a prefabricated structure next to the main building. The structure was completed in 41 days, as Pan Am was contractually obligated to begin shuttle flights by October 1986. Local politicians and preservationists were irate at the changes. Rocco Manniello, who operated a small Italian restaurant at the rear of the main building, renovated his restaurant during this time. Pan Am Shuttle flights started operating from the Marine Air Terminal on October 1, 1986. The terminal was relatively remote, being about from the other buildings at LaGuardia Airport. and taxi drivers were hesitant to pick up passengers at the terminal, prompting Pan Am to sponsor giveaways for taxi drivers who drove there. To attract passengers, Pan Am started operating a ferry line between Wall Street and the terminal in August 1987 and added an intermediate stop at the
East 34th Street Ferry Landing to the route in July 1988. This improved ridership to the point that Pan Am Shuttle was one of the airline's only profitable routes. Nonetheless, by 1990, Pan Am sought to sell the shuttle. Delta also inherited the ferry route to Manhattan, which was unprofitable despite receiving large subsidies from Delta. By 1995, the Port Authority was considering restoring the facade and interior of the terminal's main building. Architectural firm
Beyer Blinder Belle was hired to restore the terminal building to its original design, including light fixtures, canopies, and signage, at a cost of $600,000. Harbor Shuttle, which operated ferry service from the Marine Air Terminal to Manhattan, was sold in 1998 to
NY Waterway, which discontinued the service in 2000. The Port Authority unsuccessfully attempted to revive the ferry service in subsequent years. Delta started renovating the terminal in early 1998 at a cost of $7.5 million. The Marine Air Terminal formally reopened in November 1999 with a new business center and concession stands. At the time, 80 percent of passengers at the terminal were business travelers, As part of the project, all of the tiles in the main building's frieze were removed for restoration. LaGuardia's general manager at the time called it the "crown jewel of the airport". The Port Authority voted to install vehicular bollards in front of the terminal in 2007 due to security concerns following the
September 11 attacks. In 2009, it was announced as part of a
slot-swap transaction that Delta Air Lines would relocate to LaGuardia's Central Terminal, while
US Airways would start operating its
US Airways Shuttle out of the Marine Air Terminal. The swap would have allowed Delta to operate hourly flights between LaGuardia and
O'Hare International Airport. The proposed swap between US Airways and Delta never took place. Delta Shuttle continued to operate from the Marine Air Terminal until December 8, 2017. Meanwhile, in 2010, the
New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission introduced a pilot program that allowed Delta Shuttle passengers to share a taxicab between the Marine Air Terminal and Manhattan, but this program was unpopular.
LaGuardia redevelopment In 2015, New York governor
Andrew Cuomo and vice president
Joe Biden announced a $4 billion plan to rebuild most of LaGuardia's terminals as one contiguous building. The Marine Air Terminal was preserved as part of the plan because it was an official landmark. On December 9, 2017, Alaska Airlines ended all service from LaGuardia Airport on October 27, 2018. JetBlue used the Marine Air Terminal for flights to
Boston,
Orlando,
Fort Lauderdale, and
West Palm Beach. The airline renovated the terminal as part of a project completed in early 2019. On April 28, 2021,
Spirit Airlines started service from the Marine Air Terminal for its flights to Fort Lauderdale, although the airline's other destinations were still located in Terminal C. Spirit moved its remaining LaGuardia services to the Marine Air Terminal the following March. JetBlue moved all operations to Terminal B on July 9, 2022, after having previously split its operations between Terminal B and the Marine Air Terminal. In mid-2023, JetBlue announced that, if its merger with Spirit was permitted to go through, it would sell Spirit's six gates and 22
landing slots at the Marine Air Terminal to Frontier Group Holdings during 2024. The JetBlue–Spirit merger did not go through. Frontier Airlines relocated to Terminal B in April 2024, leaving Spirit as the only airline at the Marine Air Terminal. In November 2025, as part of its 2026–2035 capital plan, the Port Authority announced plans to replace the passenger facilities at the Marine Air Terminal while preserving the main building's rotunda. In response to preservationists' concerns that the rotunda might be demolished or modified, the PANYNJ stated that the rotunda would remain unchanged and that only the later additions to the terminal would be removed.
BermudAir also began flying out of Terminal A in November 2025 but suspended its LaGuardia operations five months later. Following the immediate shutdown of
Spirit Airlines—Marine Air Terminal's sole tenant at the time—on May 2, 2026, the carrier vacated the terminal. Spirit's departure left the terminal without an active carrier. == Main building ==