Washington Airport - Improvements at Washington Airport

Improvements At Washington Airport

The field was dramatically enlarged (and the coastline of the Potomac River altered) in April 1928 when Washington Airport contracted to received tens of thousands of cubic yards of earth, dug during the construction of the Federal Triangle complex of buildings in the District of Columbia, and used them to fill in the sides and ends of the field. An airport office was also constructed at Military Road. The expansion and land reclamation increased the size of the airport six times, to 97.31 acres (39.38 ha). The airport's new size was so impressive that in March 1930 President Herbert Hoover proposed that the federal government loan the government of the District of Columbia $2.5 million to take over both Hoover Field and Washington Airport, fill in the Boundary Channel between the Virginia shoreline and Columbia Island, and create a new city-owned municipal airport that would be a model for the nation. In August 1930, with construction largely completed on the new facilities, Washington Airport announced that it would begin 10 hourly flights between Washington, Philadelphia, and New York City.

The expansion effort ran into serious problems in September 1929 when the Smoot Sand and Gravel Corp. began constructing a rock wall along the high-water mark of the Potomac River. The rock wall was being built by the federal government, and was intended to support the fill dirt that was being placed there for the construction of Mount Vernon Boulevard (that portion of what is now the George Washington Memorial Parkway from Arlington Memorial Bridge to Mount Vernon). Washington Airport claimed it had title down to the low-water mark. The legal case went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, which held two years later in Smoot Sand & Gravel Corp. v. Washington Airport, Inc., 283 U.S. 348 (1931) that the proper boundary of the state of Virginia was the high-water mark.

Although this changed the company's plans, work still went ahead on the razing of the Arlington Beach amusement park, construction of three paved new runways on the theme park grounds, a new paved runway on the site of the existing airport, razing of the old hangar and office building, construction of a new hangar 160 feet (49 m) by 100 feet (30 m) in size and a new and larger office building. By year's end, however, the airport had changed its plans. It now intended to build two hangars, one 120 feet (37 m) by 100 feet (30 m) in size and the other 50 feet (15 m) by 110 feet (34 m) in size. (Paving of the runways was also canceled in favor of oiled earth.) Construction on the new buildings began in January 1930. The hangars were designed by the firm of Lockwood, Green & Co., while the terminal was designed by the architectural firm of Holden, Stott, & Hutchinson. Total cost of the two structures, whose designs were approved by the United States Commission of Fine Arts, was $85,000. Forty-five days later, however, some shareholders in the company sued the Funkhouser, Fahy, and others, arguing that they had reneged on a deal to buy them out and further alleging that they were driving the airport into bankruptcy with their profligate spending. As the suit lingered in the courts, Arlington County commissioners stopped the burning of trash at the landfill next to Hoover Field in mid-1932 (but not the one next to Washington Airport).

The improvements at Washington Airport were so significant that in April 1932 the night airmail flight was transferred from Bolling Field to Washington Airport. A month later, in a continuing effort to improve safety, the airport paid local electric power and telephone companies to bury their lines obstructing the landing and take-off lanes. The airport had improved so much that legislation was introduced in Congress to authorize the lease of the airfield as a municipal airport. Washington Airport authorities conditioned their acceptance on the payment of $25,000 a year and the closure of Military Road. They also suggested that Hoover Field be added to the lease. The lease proposal, however, was complicated by the federal government's claim to the Potomac River up to the high-water mark on the Virginia shore. Local small businesses had sold the airport land they claimed to own. But this land had formerly been part of Roaches Run, a creek that emptied into a bay of the same name on the Potomac River. The creek and a large portion of the bay had silted up and turned to dry land after the construction of the Long Bridge in 1903 changed the flow of water, and it was this property which the businesses were built on, and which had been sold to Washington Airport. The Supreme Court's decision in Smoot Sand & Gravel two years earlier did not apply, parties in the dispute said, because the Roaches Run land had been created naturally rather than artificially. But no legislative action was taken, and the government never leased the airport.