Quick, what was New York City’s first municipal airport? If you answered Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, give yourself a pat on the back as not many people would know that. Fewer still appreciate the patina that the former airport, located at the southernmost tip of Flatbush Avenue, has accumulated over the past 80 years. As a teen I lived less than a mile from the site, and I scarcely knew anything about it. Let's hope that this obscurity will all change now that the defunct airport’s terminal and control tower were reopened to the public earlier this month and are now known as the William Fitts Ryan Visitor Center, named after the late New York congressman who was considered the father of the Gateway National Recreation Area, a series of parks and environmental areas that includes Floyd Bennett Field. A $6 million, three–year restoration sponsored by the Department of Defense and the National Park Service saw the terminal’s interior (formerly a dreary mess of peeling paint and crumbling plaster) returned to its elegant 1930s art deco appearance, including murals, polished tile and furnishings based on the building’s original plans. To step inside its doors is to step back in time, a sensation only strengthened by the sound of big-band swing and the period automobiles parked out front for the rededication.
Construction of the airport began on Oct. 29, 1929, a date more widely remembered for the stock-market crash that launched the Great Depression. Originally an island, the site was connected to Brooklyn with landfill, and Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn’s main artery, was extended to provide access. At a time when most airfields were literally fields, Municipal Airport Number 1 had paved concrete runways. Its large hangars could shelter any airplane in existence at the time, and it had a ramp for seaplanes and flying boats.
A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined AIN in 2007, Curt came to the publication from the broadcast industry where he was a national science and technology television reporter and producer. He writes on the FBO field, aviation finance, and sustainable aviation and occasionally contributes to AIN sister publication Business Jet Traveler. Curt was a member of the AINtv reporting staff that won the 2008 Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for Best Airshow Daily. That same year, he was a finalist for another AJOYA award. He earned an AJOYA for Best Business Aviation Submission in 2018 and was a finalist in that category in 2021. He received the National Air Transportation Association’s Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.
Before joining AIN, Curt worked with Consumer Reports’ television division, CRTV, and for several local television news staffs. An honors graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University in 1995. Curt lives in New York State with his wife and two young sons.
