Patterson Kent - Westchester County Airport

IMAGES
of America

WESTCHESTER
COUNTY AIRPORT

Major airlines brought their latest aircraft to this late-1940s air show to market their services. Often, 10,000 to 15,000 visitors would drive the remote roads in preinterstate expressway Westchester and jam the field. (Courtesy of Westchester County Airport/County of Westchester.)

ON THE COVER: The American Airlines send-off, November 1, 1949, inaugurated permanent scheduled airline service from Westchester. Westchester County took possession of a rather new 1943-built Army Air Forces airfield in February 1945, but it took some red tape and several years to build the needed accoutrements of a certified airport for commercial use. Leading to 1949, the airport installed hangars and got tenants, a control tower, radar, and other necessities. Two airlines attempted brief scheduled services prior to this event. (Courtesy of Westchester County Airport/County of Westchester.)

IMAGES
of America

WESTCHESTER
COUNTY AIRPORT

Kent Patterson

Copyright 2017 by Kent Patterson
ISBN 978-1-4671-2470-6
Ebook ISBN 9781439659649

Published by Arcadia Publishing
Charleston, South Carolina

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016946139

For all general information, please contact Arcadia Publishing:
Telephone 843-853-2070
Fax 843-853-0044
E-mail
For customer service and orders:
Toll-Free 1-888-313-2665

Visit us on the Internet at www.arcadiapublishing.com

The US Air ForceAir National Guard Monument greeting those entering the airport via Interstate 684 is dedicated to American service members and veterans. A former Navy jet, the Lockheed T-33 trainer was developed during the 1940s, when aviation came of age in the county. This book is dedicated to the service people, employees, first responders, interested parties, and passengers who depended then and now on Westchester County Airport. (Authors collection.)

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was written with the help, knowledge, editorial and graphic assistance, and generosity of many: editors Shelley and Liz; county officials Ned McCormack, Ed Burroughs, T.M. McCormack, Kelly Clare, Victoria Esters, Rob Astorino, Stephen Ferguson, Chris Quail, Prof. Ed Burke, and Peter Eschweiler; Westchester County Archives and Historical Society; White Plains and Pleasantville Libraries; and LoHud.comtodays Westchester Journal News and its predecessor county newspapers. Joshua Stoff and the Cradle of Air Museum contributed with photographs and information. Local historical societies are noted under images. Not all organizations had materials to publish, but they did help with information: Rye, Greenwich, Scarsdale, and North Salem Historical Societies, the US Air Force, New York Air National Guard, TSgt. Sara Pastorello, who generously assisted with most of the Air National Guard images; Mom, Tim, Toby, and John Starace.

Jack Palmieri, my fifth-grade teacher, whom I still consult about history, is a key person who stirred my thirst for history. Barry Farber, a nighttime radio host, further whet that thirst. Alan Staats, aviation photographer and consultant, mentored me in photography. Bruno Graziano is a retired crew chief for the US Air Force and the New York Air National Guard and a former Westchester County Airport employee. He and his father, Gene Graziano, both curated many airport photographs and memorabilia in a scrapbook. These images are now part of the historical Westchester County Collection. They are the primary source for this book. Uncredited photographs, the largest contribution, are courtesy of Westchester County Airport/County of Westchester.

INTRODUCTION

Westchester County Airport is not your big-city airport, but it is New York States fourth-busiest for flight volume. Some folks in the flying trade and older residents call it White Plains Airport, from which todays airport code HPN derives.

HPN is often used in the book as the short abbreviation for the subject. HPNs runways were completed as a World War II area air-defense project in 1943 and the culmination of the want and need for a county airport begun by just a handful of advocates in 1928, when the flying world was barely starting to evolve into a viable industry.

Aviation came to Westchester in a slow, incremental manner over a generation subsequent to the 1903 Wright brothers flight. Had Westchester not been braced by Long Island Sound and the Hudson River, an early 1912 water landing at Croton Point would not have been documented. Nor would the 1922 seaplane operation at Rye Cove have been the countys first regular flying operation. The 1920s soon ushered in two Westchester land-based airports, in Armonk and Bedford.

The author read or heard, anecdotally, of the existence of small landing strips in Scarsdale, Maryknoll Seminary in Ossining, and Grassy Sprain in Yonkers. Historical documentation was sometimes hard to find and sometimes partly contradicted other sources. History can get lost.

Over a century ago, in flyings early days, few people saw aviation as a serious business. Aviation was more of a flying circus, an amusement park attraction, or at best a sport. However, a tiny but gradually growing generation of new aviation backers helped to nurse this hobby and sport into a vital industry. They tended to be amateur pilots, and some businesspeople with a rare vision. A legion of former World War I aviators, including New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, flying ace Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, and aviation staff saw unlimited potential in flying aside from war, becoming vocal voices in all forms of its development.

July 7, 1929, saw the first official mention of a county airport in the Reporter Dispatch newspaper, todays LoHud.com, under the headline Plans on Airport Being Considered, county proceeding carefully with Work at Croton Point, the first proposed airport candidate location.

The 1930s brought some maturity to the infant industry, thus turning some more heads its way. Despite the Great Depression, the decade brought growing interest and massive progress in developing aviation. Record long-distance flights made good newsreels in movie theaters. In the later 1920s, about 60 local airlines existed, but in the 1930s they began to merge and set up longer, more practical routes. These airlines largely relied on US Mail revenue. The addition of passengers allowed some subsidization that kept expensive airmail postage rates in check and provided a greater degree of service reliability and a growing intercity network. Also, aviation news was among the few news sectors that provided optimism and excitement during those morose years.

There were accidents, though many early aviators experienced multiple crack-ups with almost a devil-may-care attitude. Most early crashes were nonfatal due to their slower speeds. Very fortunately, safety was just starting to get a needed look in 1926 under the Civil Aeronautics Act, which created a regulatory body to address aviation function and safety. Airplanes improved and safety progressed rapidly. Stronger and better planes were developed with each passing year, transitioning from wood and fabric to steel and aluminum. Flying aids like instrumentation for poor weather, directional finders, and radio communication became products of the evolving collegiate approach to flight sciences and were among the developing array of new redundancies improving reliability and safety. By the late 1930s, flying was becoming widely accepted as a safe mode of travel.