Allegheny County Airport Celebrates 95 Years of Aviation Leadership

Editor’s Note: This is the first of two stories celebrating the 95th anniversary of Allegheny County Airport, the region’s first major commercial airport.

It still gleams – 95 years after opening.

“Allegheny County Airport has truly been an aviation leader in the industry since it was built and continues to be a key economic driver for the region,” said Lance Bagnoff, the airport’s director. “It really tells the story of aviation in Pittsburgh. It’s an historic building. It’s a very attractive building and a very well used building.”

Opened four years after Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight, the airport was cutting edge – it was among the first in the nation with a fully paved airfield with lighting. In the 1920s, airport sites were picked in areas with enough open grass for landing and not many nearby trees.

Located 10 miles southeast of Downtown Pittsburgh, the airport was designed by Stanley Roush, whose other projects – Pittsburgh’s County Office Building and the Clemente, Carson and Warhol bridges, known as the three sister bridges – are all Pittsburgh landmarks. The airport opened Sept. 11, 1931.

Art Deco Masterpiece

What catches the attention of so many, including a number of filmmakers, is the airport’s sleek Art Deco design.

Indeed, it was built amid an explosion of Art Deco projects in the United States. New York’s Empire State Building opened the same year. That city’s Chrysler Building, considered the most famous example of Art Deco anywhere, opened in 1930. Philadelphia’s William H. Gray III 30th Street Station opened in 1933, and New York’s Radio City Music Hall, part of Art Deco colossus Rockefeller Center, opened in 1932.

Big Attraction

The airport was “formally dedicated … in the presence of a throng of close to 100,000 persons. The greatest gathering of nationally known speed and stunt fliers, Army and Navy planes and commercial craft … with races, stunting exhibitions, parachute jumps, and formation flying filling the day’s program,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote the day the airport opened.

The crowd size might be exaggerated, but Brian Butko, of the Heinz History Center, said the opening was nonetheless a big deal.

“The airport was so important during World War II. It’s still important, and the county realizes that,” Butko said.

First called Pittsburgh-Allegheny County Municipal Airport, it was built for $3.5 million – the equivalent of about $59 million today. Located in West Mifflin, Pa., the airport is a timepiece. It has no mall, food court or long security lines. Twenty years ago, at the airport’s 75th anniversary, the late Steelers owner Dan Rooney said the airport had changed little since he was a child. He remembered being there in 1937 at age 5 to bid farewell to his uncle.

 

Evolution of Usage

The general aviation airport handles only noncommercial flights today, which Bagnoff emphasizes does not mean just flights for the wealthy. There are many hobbyists who use the facility, he said. And one fifth of the airport’s flights involve medical transport to or from Pittsburgh’s renowned hospitals.

Besides private flights, the airport houses the Pittsburgh Flight Training Center, Stat MedEvac, Allegheny Flying Club and Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics, a nationally-renowned aviation maintenance school.

The airport, also known as AGC, was the region’s primary airport until Greater Pittsburgh Airport opened in 1952. The airport is operated by the Allegheny County Airport Authority, which also operates Pittsburgh International Airport, about 26 miles away.

The airport remains one of the busiest in the state with more than 60,000 operations annually with two fixed-base operators (FBOs) and several hangars housing the jets of some of Pittsburgh’s largest companies.

Parade of notables over a century

Like any building that’s almost a century old, Allegheny County Airport has had renowned people travel through it, including most presidents going back to Harry Truman.

In the past couple of years, Presidents Donald Trump and Barak Obama and former First Lady Jill Biden have flown into the airport, along with various cabinet members, Bagnoff said.

In September 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt flew into the airport before meeting with African-American leaders, visiting a new housing development and lobbying for stepped-up defense manufacturing – less than three months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Over the years entertainers such as Sophia Loren, Bob Hope, Danny Kaye, John Denver and Elvis Presley traveled through the airport.

Many visitors, including Roosevelt, were photographed by Charles “Teenie” Harris, whose vast trove of photos often ran in the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation’s premier African-American newspapers.

Harris photographed iconic entertainer Lena Horne at the airport in 1938, when she was 21. The vintage airport has also appeared as a setting in several films, including “The Mothman Prophecies,” “Gung Ho” and “Last Flag Flying.”

Next week’s story will feature AGC’s evolution to today’s growing, self-sustaining business model.