Amelia Earhart

Long Beach Airport Closes its Historic Terminal. Temporarily

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Long Beach Airport Terminal circa 1962 – Courtesy of the airport

Over the past week, the Stuck at the Airport team has shared news of how Kansas City decided to replace an old terminal with a brand new one at Kansas City International Airport (MCI). And of a new museum in Atchison, Kansas dedicated to iconic aviator Amelia Earhart.

Today we share some news about Long Beach, which is keeping and preserving its historic Long Beach Airport (LGB) terminal. The airport, also known as Daugherty Field, is where Amelia Earhart took her first airplane ride in 1920.

Long Beach Airport Historic Terminal

The terminal building at Long Beach Airport was built in 1941 in the iconic Streamline Moderne Style. It is the oldest municipally-owned airport in California.

Designed by William Horace Austin and Kenneth Smith Wing, the groundbreaking for the Historic Terminal took place on Jan. 11, 1941, with the building scheduled to open on Dec. 8 of that year.

The Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7 delayed the opening, led to the cancellation of all commercial flights, and resulted in the building being painted in camouflage and used as lodging for soldiers and military equipment.

The formal opening occurred on April 25, 1942.

Now a Long Beach Historic Landmark, the terminal building is also home to recently restored mosaic masterpieces created by Grace Clements under the Works Progress Administration Federal Arts Project.

LGB Terminal Renovation Project

Starting this week, Long Beach Airport (LGB)’s Historic Terminal temporarily closes for a year-long renovation that will include a seismic retrofit and restoration of many of its classic 1941 design elements.

Preliminary renovation efforts began while the Historic Terminal was partially open to the public. But now, airport officials say, a full closure of the building is necessary to complete the renovation of the restrooms and building infrastructure, restoration of covered mosaic tiles, and other Art Deco design elements.

The restored terminal building is expected to reopen in early 2024 and is one piece of a multi-part terminal improvement program. Two major components were completed in the spring of 2022, including the new Ticketing Lobby and Checked Baggage Inspection System (CBIS) facility. A new Baggage Claim is currently under construction and scheduled to open in the coming months.

Phase I of the Terminal Area Improvement Program created an award-winning indoor-outdoor passenger concourse in 2012.

Museum Monday: Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum

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Famed aviator Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas on July 24, 1897, and lived there until 1908, when her family moved to Des Moines.

Today Atchison honors its most famous hometown hero with a wide variety of attractions.

Those include the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum, a life-size statue of Earhart in the arboretum known as the International Forest of Friendship, and the annual Amelia Earhart Festival, held the third weekend of July.

Atchison is also home to the Amelia Earhart Earthwork, a one-acre portrait created by Kansas artist Stan Herd in 1997 using plants, stone, and other materials.

Courtesy Kansas Tourism

New: Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum

The general aviation airport in Atchison is, no surprise, called the Amelia Earhart Memorial Airport.

And it now sits adjacent to the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum which will have its grand opening on April 14, 2023.

The museum centerpiece is the world’s last remaining Lockheed Electra 10-E airplane.

And this plane is named Muriel, in honor of Amelia Earhart’s younger sister, Grace Muriel.

The fully restored Lockheed Electra is identical to the plane Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan were flying in 1937 when they disappeared during their ill-fated attempt to fly around the world.

Surrounding the plane are 14 interactive STEM-inspired exhibit areas and activity stations. Visit them all and you’ll learn about Amelia Earhart of, course, but also some history, culture, science, technology, aviation, engineering, mathematics, and more.

Museum visitors can scroll through digitized images of Earhart’s mechanic logbooks, compare the inner working of airplane engines then and now, learn about celestial navigation, practice packing the plane, and squeeze into the full-scale replica of Muriel’s cockpit.

After listening to recordings of radio interviews with the real Amelia Earhart and watching an uncanny computer-generated Amelia Earhart video, museum visitors can try ‘being’ Amelia Earhart.

Museum admission includes a chance to fly Earhart’s red Lockheed Vega 5B in a virtual reality simulator. And the flight programmed includes the same route and challenges (bad weather, mechanical problems, etc.) Earhart faced during her 15-hour flight on May 20-21, 1932 when became the first woman to fly nonstop and alone across the Atlantic.

The Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum in Atchison, Kansas will have its grand opening on Friday, April 14.

(Read more about the museum in our story on Runway Girl Network).

Airports celebrate Amelia Earhart’s Birthday

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July 24th was Amelia Earhart’s birthday and over the weekend many airports marked the day with some great images and historical tidbits. Here’s a sampling.

Courtesy International Women’s Air & Space Museum

Amelia Earhart at Union Club Hotel in Indiana

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Here’s a nice way to celebrate the life and legacy of Amelia Earhart during Women’s History Month.

In West Lafayette, IN, Purdue University’s recently renovated Union Club Hotel now has an installation with 14 different images of Amelia Earhart projected on the two-story bookcase behind the reception desk.

Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean and the first person ever to fly solo from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland.

She also earned money from product endorsements: her “real aeroplane” luggage was a big seller.

Courtesy Purdue University Libraries, 

The installation at Purdue’s Union Club Hotel is especially appropriate. Earhart served on the university faculty as a career counselor and an adviser in aeronautics. The University helped to finance her first airplane. And today there is digital access to the Amelia Earhart Collection.

The collection is a treasure-trove of photographs, artifacts (luggage, goggles, smelling salts), postage stamps, letters, and papers.

We’re looking forward to checking into this hotel and spending time in the library learning more about Amelia Earhart.

Museum Monday: Amelia Earhart’s Goggles

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Courtesy Children’s Museum of Indianapolis

Here’s proof that you never know when you’ll come across something cool in an unexpected place.

Case in point: the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. The sprawling museum is not just the largest children’s museum in the world. It is also home to more than 130,000 artifacts, many of them true treasures.

One example: these aviator goggles that belonged to Amelia Earhart. According to museum notes, Earhart “supposedly didn’t enjoy wearing goggles, and would only put them on at the end of the runway and would take them off as soon as she landed.” The museum says these goggles were given to Earhart by a friend who also gave her a leather jacket and a flight cap.

No word on what happened to the leather jacket and the flight cap. But the goggles are on display at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis right now as part of an exhibit called Barbie You Can Be Anything: The Experience. In addition to telling the story of the iconic doll, the exhibit highlights more than 200 careers Barbie has had over the years. Airline pilot is one of them.

Mattel’s Amelia Earhart Barbie doll and the museum’s Amelia Earhart goggles are part of the exhibit.

Barbie as Amelia Earhart