Amazing Places
BY Logan Tsai
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The Cradle of Aviation Museum
Farmingdale, NY
Welcome to Amazing Places. Here, we’ll talk about awesome locations in New York that you can visit. I may or may not turn this into a series, so this may or may not be the first and last issue. Anyways, let’s begin with our first Amazing Place, the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, NY. You may not know this, but Long Island was actually a place critical to American aviation history. Many historical aviation achievements occurred here! The Cradle of Aviation Museum is dedicated to the aviation history of Long Island and New York. The museum is expansive, containing over 150,000 square feet worth of exhibits, galleries, and a variety of aircraft on display.
You start on the first floor when you enter the museum, which brings you to your first exhibit, the Hangar Two Jet Gallery. Tucked away in the corner of the first floor, this disused aircraft hangar converted into a part of the museum contains an expansive amount of real retired fighter jets. You can get way up close to the jets, so close that you could even almost touch them! The centerpiece of Hangar Two is the 707 display, the nose section of a former El Al Israel Airlines Boeing 707 aircraft from 1961. The cool part about the display is that there is a flight of stairs next to it, and when you climb up them, they lead to the fully intact forward lavatory and cockpit section inside the nose of the plane! You can step inside the cockpit and sit down on the pilot’s seat, then imagine yourself piloting the four-engined Boeing 707 jet on a flight across the world. Upon leaving the flight deck, you could take a quick peek inside the lavatory, or airplane bathroom. You can also see the flight attendant jump seat, then head back down.
Leaving Hangar Two and heading to the second floor, you walk into the Main Gallery, where most of the aircraft in the museum are located. Here, you can learn about the history of flight and aviation, see the planes that served in the World Wars, and experience the golden age of aviation during the Jet Age. Here, you can speak to the helpful museum staff about the exhibits, and they will explain to you the histories of the planes before they were moved to the museum, and even give you a few fun facts along the way. My personal favorite part of the main gallery was a scale replica of the cabin of an old Trans World Airlines plane, complete with first class seats and a galley drink cart. I had a lot of fun pretending I was a TWA flight attendant!
The third floor is where you’ll find the museum’s temporary exhibition: The Pan Am exhibit. For those who don’t know, Pan American World Airways, better known as just Pan Am, was a now defunct airline founded in 1927. It was for a time the largest international airline based in the United States before it ceased operations in 1991. The airline is famous for starting the Jet Age by being the first to operate the previously mentioned Boeing 707, which was the world’s first practical and safe jet airliner. Perhaps the most well-known achievement of Pan Am, however, was when they were the first to operate the original Boeing 747, making history as it became the very first wide-body jumbo jet to ever take to the skies in 1970. This exhibit is all about the airline and its glory years, from the time Pan Am started operating giant luxury seaplanes on intercontinental flights, all the way up to the Boeing 747’s debut.
This was my favorite of all of the exhibits in the museum. A collection of important objects from Pan Am’s history were displayed here, such as a collection of global Pan Am advertisements in different languages, models of Pan Am’s entire jet fleet, a first class amenity kit, and even an intricately detailed miniature model of Pan Am’s now demolished terminal at JFK International Airport, complete with mini planes and airport baggage vehicles on the tarmac! There was also a section of the exhibit dedicated to the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, also known as the “Clipper”, Pan Am’s flying boat type seaplane that set multiple transatlantic flight world records. Finally, a variety of documentaries and interviews about Pan Am’s history can be viewed as part of the exhibit.
Wow, what a journey that was! It looks like we’ve covered everything there is to see in the museum. If you’re a diehard aviation geek like I am, or just want to learn about Long Island’s involvement in the history of flight, I highly suggest that you head down to Garden City to give the Cradle of Aviation Museum a look! I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, and I hope that you will too. Thanks for coming with me to this Amazing Place, and I’ll see you next time!
-Logan Tsai
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