Thousands of people stream through them every day — shopping, commuting, picnicking, or working — without realizing they are moving across ground once alive with daring flights and roaring engines. These places have not vanished so much as they have shape-shifted, absorbed into the fabric of modern life while still carrying the names that once drew the world’s gaze.
Look closely, though, and history resurfaces. In historic aerial imagery, the faint outlines and ghostly grids emerge: grass fields where Amelia Earhart once took off, dusty runways where Lindbergh pointed the nose of his plane toward Paris, and crowded fairgrounds where air meets dazzled tens of thousands. What seems ordinary today reveals itself as the very landscape where aviation’s earliest legends were written.
Roosevelt Field (Long Island, New York)
Roosevelt Field was a famous airfield located in East Garden City (Uniondale) on Long Island, New York. It began as Hempstead Plains Aerodrome — a World War I Army Air Service training field known as Hazelhurst Field — and was renamed Roosevelt Field in 1919 in honor of Quentin Roosevelt (President Theodore Roosevelt’s son, killed in WWI air combat).
During the 1920s and ’30s, Roosevelt Field became one of the nation’s most prominent civilian airports. In fact, it was the takeoff point for many historic early flights. Most famously, on May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh departed Roosevelt Field on his solo Spirit of St. Louis flight across the Atlantic — the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight in history. Other aviation pioneers like Amelia Earhart and Wiley Post also used Roosevelt Field for record-setting flights. At its peak in the 1930s, it was reportedly the busiest civilian airfield in America.
After serving as a naval and Army air station during World War II, Roosevelt Field returned to civilian use briefly before its closure. Post-war commercial operations proved short-lived — real estate developers purchased the land in 1950, and the airport officially closed on May 31, 1951.
The historic field soon transformed dramatically. Part of the eastern airfield became an industrial park and later retail centers (such as The Mall at The Source built roughly over a former runway), while the western section — including the original 1910s flying field — is now the site of the large Roosevelt Field Mall shopping center. Thus, a modern commercial hub occupies the very ground from which Lindbergh and others once roared into the sky.
Grand Central Air Terminal (Glendale, California)
In the Los Angeles area — the cradle of aviation on the West Coast — Grand Central Air Terminal (GCAT) in Glendale was a pioneering airport that no longer operates, but whose site and buildings still stand. Opened in 1929, Grand Central was the first commercial airport for the growing Los Angeles metropolis. Its beautiful Spanish Colonial Revival / Art Deco terminal building (1310 Air Way, Glendale) was state-of-the-art and still survives today, restored and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. During the 1930s, Grand Central Air Terminal was the aviation hub of Southern California, witnessing numerous milestones in civil aviation.
Grand Central played a central role in early airline history. In 1929, Charles Lindbergh himself piloted the nation’s first regular coast-to-coast airline flight from Glendale, as part of Transcontinental Air Transport (which later became TWA). The airport was also the home base or testing ground for many aviation pioneers. Amelia Earhart frequented the field and even purchased her first airplane there. In 1930, Laura Ingalls completed the first female solo transcontinental flight by landing at Grand Central Air Terminal. In 1933, pilots Albert Forsythe and Charles Anderson became the first African Americans to fly transcontinental (from Atlantic City to Glendale), an achievement that paved the way for the Tuskegee Airmen.
The airport was a hive of innovation: Howard Hughes built his record-setting H-1 Racer in a hangar by the field in 1935, and Jack Northrop and William Boeing both established aircraft manufacturing ventures on-site in the late 1920s. Early airlines including Western Air Express and Varney Air Lines operated from Glendale, and after mergers this became a hub for Trans World Airlines (TWA).
Grand Central’s prominence declined after the late 1930s as newer airports like Burbank and Los Angeles Municipal (LAX) expanded. During World War II, the airport was requisitioned by the military and camouflaged for use as a training base and aircraft modification center. After the war, it returned to civilian use, but faced pressure from suburban growth. The runway was shortened and airlines had already moved out. By the 1950s the facility was underutilized and struggling financially. The airport’s owners announced its closure in 1959, and Grand Central Airport shut down operations that year. Much of the Grand Central property was then redeveloped into the Grand Central Business Park.
In the 1960s, the Walt Disney Company purchased a large portion of the site — today the old terminal is preserved as part of Disney’s Grand Central Creative Campus, and it serves as offices and an event space after an award-winning restoration. A few original hangars also remain. Visitors can still see the elegant terminal facade and imagine the days when Glendale’s Grand Central Air Terminal was the bustling heart of West Coast aviation, sending off DC-2s and welcoming intrepid air travelers in the early 20th century.
Crissy Field (San Francisco, California)
Crissy Field is a former airfield on San Francisco’s northern shore, within the Presidio, that dates back to the earliest years of military aviation. Opened in 1921 as an Army airfield, Crissy Field was the West Coast’s first permanent Army air base and served as the aviation center of the Bay Area in the 1920s. The field was named in honor of Major Dana H. Crissy, an Army aviator who died in a 1919 aircraft crash during a transcontinental air race. Crissy Field’s location by the Golden Gate made it a dramatic and strategic flying ground. It had a single grass runway (about 3,000 feet) and a row of hangars and barracks along the waterfront.
In its heyday, Crissy Field was the staging point for several aviation “firsts” and record attempts. In June 1924, it marked the end point of the first successful dawn-to-dusk transcontinental flight across the United States — a Army Air Service plane flew from Long Island to San Francisco in one day. Later that year, the Army’s team for the first aerial circumnavigation of the globe stopped at Crissy Field during their journey, and one of Crissy’s own stationed pilots (Lt. Lowell Smith) helped lead the round-the-world fliers upon their return. Crissy Field was also the launch site for early attempts at long-distance flights over the Pacific. In 1925, two Navy PN-9 seaplanes took off from Crissy in the first try at a flight from California to Hawaii (one of them ran out of fuel and had to be rescued at sea). Two years later, in 1927, Lieutenants Lester Maitland and Albert Hegenberger staged from Crissy Field before making the first successful nonstop flight to Hawaii (departing from Oakland in the Bird of Paradise). Crissy’s role in these pioneering efforts cemented its place in aviation lore.
Several factors eventually rendered Crissy Field obsolete for frontline use. Frequent fog and wind from the Golden Gate often hampered flying, and the field’s short runways could not accommodate newer, heavier aircraft of the 1930s. Additionally, the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge nearby threatened to complicate the airspace. In 1936 the Army opened Hamilton Field in Marin County, a larger, more inland air base, and Crissy Field ceased to be a primary air corps station. Military flying at Crissy continued on a smaller scale (for liaison planes and training) into the 1940s, and even into the early 1970s Army helicopters still used it for hospital evacuations during the Vietnam War era. Ultimately, when the Presidio was decommissioned as an Army post in 1994, Crissy Field was turned over to the National Park Service.
By the late 1990s, Crissy Field had become a forlorn expanse of asphalt, rubble, and derelict structures—but between 1997 and 2000, a bold reclamation began. Over a 100-acre site, more than 230,000 cubic yards of fill were reshaped to recreate 40 acres of vibrant habitat—featuring an 18-acre tidal marsh and 22 acres of dunes and swales that reconnected the land to the bay and revived centuries-old ecosystems. Crissy Field is now a picturesque part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area — a public park with walking trails, a restored salt marsh, and a beachfront, offering views of the Golden Gate Bridge. A few of the historic hangars and the old airfield alignment have been preserved as reminders of its past. Visitors on the grassy Crissy Field promenade may not immediately realize that this was once a busy landing ground where biplanes and early monoplanes made history.
A century ago, these places throbbed with the sound of radial engines, the smell of oil and dust, and the thrill of human daring. Today, they are shopping centers, office campuses, and parkland — ordinary settings for ordinary lives. Yet they carry their names forward, quiet markers of a past most passersby never suspect. Roosevelt Field, Grand Central, Crissy Field: each transformed, yet each still tethered to the golden age of flight.