Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum - Burlingame, California
Posted by: 
DougK
N 37° 36.900 W 122° 23.310
10S E 553967 N 4163275
Located in the International Terminal, the Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum is an architectural adaptation of the Airport's 1930s passenger lobby.
Waymark Code: WMN1MV
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 12/08/2014
Views: 1
Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum is a collecting institution for research and exhibition programming,with its purpose being to enrich our understanding of past, present, and future achievements in air transport.
The collection focus is on the history of commercial air transport, the airline industry, and San Francisco International Airport with a regional emphasis on the West Coast and the Pacific Rim. The collection includes models of commercial airliners, airmail flight covers, airline uniform insignia, clothing accessories, airline bags and photographs.
When the Nut Tree Restaurant closed in 1996, the majority of the Eddie Chavez model collection was then acquired by SFO Museum. Eddie had created twenty-seven one-off scratch built models for the restaurant representing aircraft of historic importance.
Captain John B. Russell flew for Pan American World Airways from the days of the flying clipper ships to the wide body jets. He was familiar with developments in commercial aviation during the twentieth century. His daughter donated his large collection of an expansive range of objects, most of it Pan Am related, to the museum.
An aviation library and archive includes 8,000 books, 600 periodical titles, and 58,000 archival objects related to aeronautics dating from the eighteenth century to the present.
The San Francisco Aeronautical Society was founded in 1997 as a nonprofit membership organization to serve as the affiliated support group of the San Francisco Airport Commission Aviation Library and Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum.
The Museum is open Sunday through Friday (closed on Saturday), while the Library is open by appointment only.