Marine Air Terminal  The Marine Air Terminal (also known as Terminal A) is an airport terminal located at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York City. The Marine Air Terminal, an Art Deco building opened in 1939 by William Delano of the firm Delano & Aldrich, is the only active airport terminal dating from the first generation of passenger air travel in the United States. Terminal A was the airport's original terminal for overseas flights, and it had originally been built to handle seaplanes, namely Pan American Airways' fleet of flying boats, or Clippers. After World War II, technological advances made the Clippers obsolete, and the Marine Air Terminal was converted for the newer airplanes and was used mostly for non-scheduled airlines. When Clippers stopped serving the terminal in 1952, it was closed to passenger traffic and fell into disrepair. In 1966, it was renovated and reopened as a terminal for corporate jets. In 1986, Pan Am restarted flights at the terminal. The terminal consists of a central circular core of two stories with an attic, from which a rectangular entrance pavilion and two symmetrically opposed one-story wings project. The terminal has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1982. By the early 1930s, commercial airlines and airports began to be developed in the United States as a result of the Federal government's use of private contractors for postal transport, inspired by Charles Lindbergh's famous transatlantic flight in 1927. New York was in dire need of a new airport by 1934 when Fiorello H. La Guardia was elected mayor. Angered that a flight on which he was a passenger landed in Newark even though his ticket said "New York," LaGuardia pushed New Yorkers to support an airport within their city. Plans for the airport, which was to be federally sponsored and funded through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), were approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on September 3, 1937. Just six days later, the Mayor presided over groundbreaking ceremonies and construction proceeded rapidly. At and with nearly of runways, the $40 million airport was the largest and most expensive in the world to that time. New York Municipal Airport–LaGuardia Field opened on October 15, 1939 and the Marine Air Terminal was dedicated in March 1940. The waterside terminal was designed to serve the fleet of flying boats, or Clippers, of Pan American Airways. When a Clipper landed in Long Island Sound, it taxied to a dock where passengers could disembark into the terminal. The first flight from the Marine Air Terminal by a Clipper departed on March 31, 1940, carrying a crew of 10, nine passengers and over 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of mail.