The preceding text is from the National Registry of Historic Places Registration Form - "Houston Municipal Airport Terminal", approved March 6, 2019.
Summary of Significance
"The Houston Municipal Airport Terminal opened in 1940 to replace a wood-framed administration building that could no longer adequately serve the needs of the expanding airport. Houston architect Joseph Finger designed the building
in the popular Streamline Moderne style using a steel frame system with a curved masonry and concrete facade to create one of the most attractive modern buildings in the city. The building retains its original steel windows, a formal entranceway with modernistic freestanding aluminum lettering above the door spelling “Houston Municipal Airport,” decorative carved stone panels depicting modes of air transportation, and large relief stone carvings by Dwight C. Holmes over the east and west entrances featuring a semi-nude winged male figure representing flight. The building is nominated at the state level of significance under Criterion C in the area of Architecture as an excellent example of Streamline Moderne design with a very high degree of integrity, and Criterion A in area of Transportation for its role in the development and functioning of the Houston Municipal Airport during a period of rapid expansion. The period of significance is 1940-1954, marking the year of its dedication through the year that a new administration building opened at the airport’s north side. The property is nominated at the state level of significance for its association with the early evolution of commercial aviation in Texas, as the most intact example of late 1930s modernistic airport architecture in Texas, and as an exceptional example of the artistry of architect Joseph Finger and sculptor Dwight C.Holmes."
Establishment of Houston’s Airport
"Several airports sprang up around Houston before and during the 1920s to serve a growing number of private and commercial flyers. These included the South Houston airfield, the Bellaire field, and Main Street Airport. The Houston business community quickly grasped the capacity of aviation to enhance competitiveness, with its ability to deliver mail, express packages and personnel by air much more rapidly than rail or road transportation. During the early 1920s more than a score of small commercial planes capable of carrying one or two passengers operated from Houston fields. By 1924, businessmen sought Houston’s inclusion in the U.S. Post Office’s coming assignment of air mail routes, and prodded the city to acquire an airport suitable for hosting and servicing air mail planes. Mayor Oscar Holcombe, however, “was not interested in any city administration support for the development of an airport, saying it is just as logical for the city to help build a Southern Pacific Railroad Station as an airport.”
"The Kelly Act of February 1925 provided for the transport of air mail by privately-owned air lines.19 The National Air Transport Company (“NAT”) was created by Henry Ford and his associates to carry mail and express between U.S. cities in May of that year. Banker A. D. Simpson continued to lobby for the acquisition and equipping of an airport to convince NAT to extend its airmail line to Houston. By the Autumn of 1926, the Houston Chamber of Commerce appointed an Aviation Committee, which inspected every airfield within a reasonable distance of the post office and rejected them all either as unsuitable or because the land was prohibitively expensive. Though the committee had lobbied the city for several years, no city funds would be supplied for an airport acquisition. In June 1927, the city council authorized the mayor to negotiate to obtain the land necessary for the construction of an airport, but no financing was approved."
Criterion C: Art Deco and Streamline Moderne
"The Houston Municipal Terminal is a rare surviving example of Streamline Moderne airport architecture, rarer still that it remains in its original site, facing active taxiways and runways on an operating airport serving commercial airline traffic, as it was intended. Many contemporary modernistic airport terminals around the United States have either been demolished (Meacham Field, Ft. Worth, Texas; Washington Airport, Wash., D.C.; Imeson Field, Jacksonville, Florida; Baltimore Airport, Baltimore, Maryland; Great Falls International, Great Falls, Montana; Greater Pittsburgh Airport, Allegheny, Pennsylvania; Nashville International, Nashville, Tennessee, etc.), moved to another site at the airport (Newark Liberty Airport, Newark, New Jersey; Manchester Airport, Manchester, New Hampshire), or the building has survived but the airport that the terminal served has ceased to exist (Grand Central Terminal, Glendale Airport, Los Angeles; Wichita Municipal Airport, Wichita, Kansas; Pan American flying boat terminal, Miami, Florida), or the airport still exists, but the context of scheduled commercial airline service and its passengers has moved to another airport (Lunken Field, Cincinnati, Ohio; Shushan (Lakefront) Airport, New Orleans, Louisiana). The terminal is completely authentic in its context, and has a high degree of integrity of location, feeling, setting and association."
"The integrity of setting is enhanced by the presence nearby of aircraft hangars and maintenance workspaces that were present during the terminal’s heyday. Among these, the original art deco hangar designed by Joseph Finger and constructed at the same time to accompany the terminal is near the building and still occupied by the successor to the airline to whom it was originally leased in the 1940s. The integrity of association has been maintained by the utilization of the renovated Terminal as an aviation museum featuring the history and artifacts of the airlines that used the building from 1940 to 1954, and by the continued hosting of aeronautical aids to navigation in the form of the ADS-B antenna and transmitters. The high level of integrity of feeling, workmanship, design and materials has been maintained by the careful series of interior and exterior restoration efforts undertaken by the city and by HAHS."
"Professionals in a variety of disciplines believe the terminal to be nationally significant and the best extant example of its type. Oliver James, a student of the flow of people through physical space, says, “The best surviving early airport terminal is the 1940 Houston Municipal Airport.” David Gebhard, writing in his book, The National Trust Guide to Art Deco in America, says, “One of the few that have survived…this terminal offers a rare glimpse of what a late 1930s airport was like.” Architect Howard Hill puts it succinctly: “This is the best example of 1930s air terminal architecture left in the United States.”
"The term “Art Deco” did not come into use until the 1960s, deriving from a retrospective of design and architecture of the 1920s and 1930s that owe their origin to the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes. The exposition was widely publicized and the taste for Art Deco style in the arts and architecture spread throughout the United States. Art Deco is the antecedent of Streamline Moderne. The event that separates high Art Deco from Streamline Moderne is the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Prior to that, the exuberance of the Jazz Age was exemplified in high Art Deco architecture by vertical skyscrapers with ziggurat motifs, setbacks, geometric ornamentation, sunrise patterns, the use of expensive materials, and the rich use of ornament in public interiors with accompanying murals. Afterward, the excesses of the 1920s gave way to the austerity of the 1930s, during which the City of Houston at least briefly turned off its street lights due to the lack of public funds to pay for the electricity. Streamline Moderne architecture in the 1930s began to emphasize “simpler, aerodynamic lines and forms” and the use of “smooth surfaces, curved corners” and horizontal lines that mimicked movement, the flow of air, and symbolized industrial progress. Rich ornamentation with expensive materials was replaced with the use of simpler, less expensive and utilitarian machine-made materials such as aluminum and linoleum. Joseph Finger’s career spanned both decades, and he produced both high Art Deco and Streamline Moderne civic and corporate structures in Houston and the region."
"There are references to “WPA Modern” architecture with respect to contemporary modernistic airport terminals, but it was the Public Works Administration (“PWA”) funding that would play a role in large-scale public construction projects such as the development of the Airport. David Gebhard wrote that:"
"From the mid-1930s to the end of the decade the PWA sponsored the design and construction of several new airport terminals throughout the country. Befitting their commitment to the airplane, most of these terminals and hangars were Moderne in design, and most of them adopted a Streamline Moderne image. With rare exception, these terminals were superseded by larger facilities in the years after World War II… this Houston airport… remains primarily because a new municipal airport (terminal) was built in an entirely different location (on the same airfield)."
"Beginning in the 1920s the design and construction of airports and the structures upon them opened up as an entirely new field of endeavor for architects, designers, and engineers. There were initially no standards for the design and layout of airfields. Numerous airports sprang up around the country that would eventually become obsolete and close, either because of insufficient landing space without obstructions, or the inability of the ground to handle newer, heavier planes. In many cases, structures built to handle passengers were originally wooden shacks constructed without a thought to passenger flow or comfort. As the decade progressed, opinions began to be formed concerning what worked and what didn’t. As experience was gained, efforts were made during the 1920s and 1930s to share knowledge and best practices through government bulletins, books and periodic literature. During the fifteen years between 1922 and 1937, more than 230 articles on the subjects of airport buildings, construction and design appeared in general, professional and trade periodicals."
"The pervasiveness of articles on the subjects of airport buildings, construction and design in the fifteen years leading up to Finger’s selection as architect for the terminal in August 1937 means that it would have been unlikely for him not to have been influenced to some degree by the literature. Among the literature that might have had an influence on Finger, one publication in particular stands out, American Airport Designs."
"It is not known whether Finger took notice of it or not, but something of a guidebook did exist in the form of a slim volume titled American Airport Designs, which was published for the Lehigh Portland Cement Company in 1930. In 1928, Lehigh had conceived and sponsored the first Lehigh Airports Competition with the goal to “stimulate airport development, create standards to guide future work…to encourage the establishment of permanent structures and facilities and to plan for the future.” American Airport Designs published the designs of the prize winning and honorable mention designs, which were predominantly art deco and streamline moderne. Several of the designs included in the book featured a balanced design of a central tower flanked by symmetrical wings, and in that respect at least superficially resemble the terminal."
Architect Joseph Finger (1887-1953)
"Born in Austria, Joseph Finger was educated in Bielitz, immigrated to the U.S in 1905, and settled in Houston in 1908. He arrived in Houston in 1908 “with a cancelled railway ticket, $10 in his purse and looking for a job.” A versatile and prolific architect, Finger is perhaps best known for his design of office, hotel, retail, and industrial buildings. Early in his career. Finger had designed the Panama Hotel (1912-13), the 11-story American National Insurance Company Building (1912-1913; demolished), and the Model Laundry Building (1913; Galveston Central Business District, National Register, 1984), all in Galveston. The American National Building was designed for W.L. Moody, Jr., the brother-in-law of Sealy Hutchings. In 1923, Finger also designed the Broadmoor Apartments in Galveston for Moody. By 1929 Finger’s Houston commissions included the Bender Hotel, South Texas Commercial National Bank, First Church of Christ, Scientist, the Plaza Hotel, Auditorium Hotel, and William Penn Hotel. Other notable works include the American National Insurance Building of Galveston, the 10-story Charleston Hotel in Lake Charles, LA, and the Vaughan Hotel in Port Arthur. His residential work included the James Marion West mansion in Clear Lake, about 25 miles south of downtown Houston."
"Finger was one of the first architects in Houston to experiment with the stark, abstracted, and stylized forms of modernistic architecture, beginning with his Congregation Beth Israel Temple (1924; NRHP 1984). During the 1920s, he produced Houston masterpieces of what the historian David Gebhard has termed the zig-zag phase of modemistic design with the Houston Turn-Verein clubhouse (1929; NRHP 1978; demolished), the A.C. Burton Company auto agency (1929, demolished), and the interiors of the West Ranch House at Clear Lake (1930; NRHP 1994). Beginning in 1930 with the design of the Houston Paper Company Building (1930, demolished). Finger began to produce a more restrained version of modemistic design that Gebhard designates as stripped classical. The Temple of Rest at Beth Israel Cemetery (1935), the Montgomery County Courthouse in Conroe (1936; extensively altered), Houston City Hall (1939, National Register, 1990), and the Houston Municipal Airport Terminal (1940) are examples by Finger of this phase. Finger died on February 6, 1953. At the time of his death the Harris County Courthouse was under construction, a building he designed with George W. Rustay, his business partner since 1944."