TWA Hotel at New York City’s JFK Airport, a genuine lifestyle destination in itself

After years of anticipation, the 512 room TWA Hotel at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport has opened, giving new life to a long-abandoned airport terminal that was once an icon of the 1960s Jet Set.

The only hotel on the airport’s grounds is an adaptive reuse of the historic Trans World Airlines Flight Center, which opened in 1962 via noted architect Eero Saarinen and entrepreneur Howard Hughes and was designated a New York City Landmark in 1994 before closing seven years later. Today, it sits across the street from Terminal 5

The project is a public-private partnership between MCR and Morse Development, JetBlue and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, but the redevelopment was privately funded with no government subsidies.

The re-creation, overseen by Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, not only turned the historic terminal into a hotel lobby but added two wings (designed by Brooklyn-based Lubrano Ciavarra Architects) for the property’s guestrooms (interior design from Manhattan’s Stonehill Taylor) and added a 50,000-square-foot events center (by Manhattan-based INC Architecture & Design).

The Flight Center also includes the Paris Café by Jean-Georges, the Sunken Lounge cocktail bar (a reuse of the historic red-carpeted lounge), grab-and-go dining, a coffee bar, a 10,000-square-foot fitness center (reportedly one of the world’s biggest hotel gyms), historic split-flap boards, a Shinola custom watch bar and leather goods store, a reading room (outfitted with Mid-Century Modern furniture supplied by Herman Miller), the TWA Shop and a museum celebrating the airline and its legacy. There is also an indoor infinity swimming pool.

Erik Palmer, the hotel’s managing director, called the opening one of the “most unique” he had ever been involved in and expects the hotel to occupy a unique space for the city. Unlike most airport hotels, where guests only stay for a few hours before early-morning flights or rest after late-night arrivals, current reservations at the TWA Hotel are for two nights on average, said Palmer.

Lubrano Ciavarra Architects came on board to build the two new guestroom wings when Anne Marie Lubrano and her partner/co-founder Ciavarra met with Morse almost five years before the new hotel opened its doors. Morse already had a development plan in mind to make the project profitable, Lubrano said—a plan that would require at least 505 guestrooms and 50,000 square feet of event space, and would allocate at least $60 million for the flight center restoration alone.

The rooms got Saarinen-designed Mid-Century Modern Knoll furnishings and retro touches like rotary 1950s Western Electric 500 phones, retrofitted with a pulse-to-tone converter by Old Phone Works and high-tech VoIP technology. Classic bar carts in each guest-room offer cocktails or Tab sodas, further evoking the 1960s. “We did everything custom except for the very obvious nods to Saarinen—the womb chair, the executive chair and the tulip table,” Duffy said. “But everything else was designed by us with him in the back of our minds, trying to figure out what he would think about that.”

Stonehill Taylor also helped turn a retired  Lockheed Constellation “Connie” L-1649A plane into a cocktail lounge. The Connie bar, operated by Gerber Group, maintains many original details, including the cockpit, some chairs and a small skylight, which would help flight crews navigate by stars.

The most important element of the project’s design and redesign, said Ciavarra, was respecting the symmetrical design of the Saarinen building as 21st-century elements were added. “Visitors and guests to the hotel will be able to enjoy the experience of the Saarinen building as it was really originally designed and then move through the flight tubes into our new hotel buildings.”

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