My Midcentury Airport

On June 25, 1961 a front page article in the Los Angeles times announced Jet Age Air Terminal
Dedicated Today. It quoted Vice President Lyndon B Johnson as declaring the airport as second to
none in the world!
That was a long time ago, back to the time now described as midcentury and a whole continent from
where I am now. A continent that could be described in colors; blue of the Pacific to the blue green of
mountains and the green of forests, to golden wheat fields and tawny deserts giving way to green again
and ending with the blue of the Atlantic. Sound familiar? Well it might if you have travelled the mosaic
tiled tunnels of the Los Angeles Airport.
To a young artist/designer, the days from 1959 to 1961 were a wonderful and creative time. I seemed to
have all the time and freedom in the world to design major art features for the new airport. Looking back
on it now, it seems like play. My boss, Charles D. Kratka, who with me worked for the architectural firm
Pereira and Luckman Assoc, handed me the assignments. They were exciting and challenging projects
which I designed on paper, three dimensional models and some into preliminary drawings. There were
four major projects.
The first may have been the light-standards-as-sculpture for the outdoor courtyards in the satellite
buildings (the oval buildings for boarding and arrivals at the end of the passages from the ticketing
buildings.) They were to be eight to ten feet tall and double as lamp posts and sculptures. It was a bit of
subterfuge to get around the cancellation of the originally proposed sculptures that would have more
appropriately conformed with our ideals of the time, of art in architecture. My designs were well along
when the courtyards were eliminated altogether.
I was then asked to come up with something for the dome ceilings in the terminal buildings. My solution
was ceiling sculptures of suspended metal rods or tubing connected in a tetrahedral system. I worked up
the design by building a scale model in balsam wood sticks. It didnt make it to the drawing stage
because of a cutback in federal funding. It was a big disappointment, but looking at those dome ceilings
on my last trip to the airport, I realized our sculpture would have been too visually delicate for todays
airport.
These cutbacks in funding that aborted my projects so disappointingly actually gave me my one fulfilled
project the mosaic murals in five of the seven tunnels. The moving sidewalks originally planned for the
tunnels connecting the terminal buildings to the satellite buildings were scratched, creating concern about
the long distance passengers would have to trek. I was asked to design something to work as a
distraction. With Italian glass mosaic tiles as the material, I settled upon the experience of flying from
ocean to ocean to be the theme as expressed in color and lineal shapes on one entire wall of each tunnel.
With that approved, I set about developing the design using actual tiles before putting anything on paper.
(That was where I got to play!). I built a scale, one inch to a foot, mock-up of the longest tunnel which is
over 500 feet. After I referenced it for my design drawings, the mock-up decorated my work space for
almost a year before ending up as baseboards for my apartment.
Working on the drawings I had to contend with the varying length of the tunnels. Separate drawings were
necessary for each, so that the progression of colors and shapes made a smooth transition. As I did not do

the working drawings I cannot be sure how carefully this was followed. I was not there for that phase of
the work or the installation, as I had left the firm for work in Latin America.
There was a period after I finished my phase of work on the tunnels when I had other projects but none so
satisfying I was asked to design mosaic murals for the two large curved walls in the satellite buildings. I
protested that that would be an over-use of tile in the area and worked up some alternative concepts. My
mistake! Alas, the walls are now clad with a medley of mosaic tiles.
When I first saw a finished tunnel I was returning to Los Angeles in the middle of the night. I can
remember being delighted by the colors as they infused the almost empty passageway. About midway on
the tunnel I encountered a couple who had stopped and were pointing at the tiles as they talked. I
interrupted, Oh, do you like it? I did it! They looked startled and quickly moved on. They didnt
believe me.