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United Air Lines Flight 521

1940s in Queens1947 in New York CityAccidents and incidents involving the Douglas DC-4Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot errorAirliner accidents and incidents in New York City
Aviation accidents and incidents in the United States in 1947LaGuardia AirportMay 1947 events in the United StatesUnited Airlines accidents and incidentsUse mdy dates from February 2020
United Douglas DC 4 (4590434250)
United Douglas DC 4 (4590434250)

United Air Lines Flight 521 was a scheduled passenger flight operated by a Douglas DC-4 from LaGuardia Airport in New York City to Cleveland, Ohio. On May 29, 1947, while attempting to take off on runway 18, the aircraft failed to get airborne, overran the end of the runway, ripped through an airport fence onto traffic on the Grand Central Parkway, and slammed into an embankment, ultimately plunging into a pond and exploding. Ten people escaped the flaming wreckage; only five of them survived.It was the worst commercial aviation disaster in United States history at the time. Its record stood for less than 24 hours before an Eastern Airlines DC-4 crashed near Baltimore, Maryland, killing all 53 aboard.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article United Air Lines Flight 521 (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

United Air Lines Flight 521
Runway Drive, New York Queens County

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Wikipedia: United Air Lines Flight 521Continue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 40.7683 ° E -73.8847 °
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Runway Drive

Runway Drive
11371 New York, Queens County
New York, United States
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United Douglas DC 4 (4590434250)
United Douglas DC 4 (4590434250)
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Marine Air Terminal
Marine Air Terminal

The Marine Air Terminal (also known as Terminal A) is an airport terminal located at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York City. Its main building, designed in the Art Deco style by William Delano of the firm Delano & Aldrich, opened in 1940. The terminal was built to handle Pan Am's fleet of flying boats, the Boeing 314 Clippers, which landed on the nearby Bowery Bay. Technological advances after World War II made the Clippers obsolete, and the Marine Air Terminal was renovated in 1946 to serve conventional planes. As of 2022, the terminal is used by Spirit Airlines flights to various destinations around the US. The Marine Air Terminal was LaGuardia Airport's original terminal for overseas flights. It was highly popular in the 1940s, when LaGuardia was the only major airport in the U.S. which offered regular flights to Europe. Traffic dropped drastically after the larger Idlewild Airport opened in 1948, and Clippers stopped serving the terminal in 1952. The terminal then served as the airport's general aviation terminal for more than three decades, except for a short period in the 1950s, when it was used by Northeast Airlines. The Pan Am Shuttle service started operating from Marine Air Terminal in 1986. Delta Air Lines took over the service in 1991, operating Delta Shuttle flights from the terminal until 2017, after which it was used by various carriers. The terminal has been renovated multiple times throughout its history. The main terminal building consists of a two-story circular core with a projecting entrance pavilion and a pair of two-story wings. The brick facade is painted buff, with black details, and contains a frieze that depicts flying fish. The three-story rectangular entrance pavilion contains a canopy and a set of doors leading to the terminal's main rotunda. The rotunda contains marble floors and walls, as well as the Flight mural by James Brooks. Both the interior and the exterior of the main building were declared New York City Landmarks in 1980, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. In addition, there was a hangar for seaplanes next to the main building, which has been converted into a garage for snow-removal vehicles.

One Room Schoolhouse Park

One Room Schoolhouse Park is a small park located on the southeast corner of Astoria Boulevard and 90th Street in the East Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens, New York City. Its name recalls the site of Queens's last one-room schoolhouse, demolished in 1934. The schoolhouse was built only five years after New York State required compulsory education for children in 1874. Last called P.S. 10, the school was also known as the Bowery Bay School, after an earlier school established in 1734, and as the Frogtown School. Frogtown was a poor community located in a swampy area north of Astoria Boulevard, near the present-day LaGuardia Airport. Emma Fagan headed the school from 1879 to 1910. The 15 by 28 foot classroom had capacity for fifty-two students divided into six classes. The six rows of desks were arranged according to the age and ability of the students. The beginners were seated at the smaller desks in the front, while the more advanced students occupied the back rows. In the center of the classroom, a stove with a pipe extending to the roof that kept the space warm during winter. By 1910, the expanding needs of immigrant populations and the reform movement that created the public education system had rendered one-room schoolhouses obsolete. The schoolhouse closed in 1925, but a temporary school building was still in use at the site when Parks acquired the .14-acre property from the Board of Education in 1934. Increased population in the neighborhood necessitated the construction of a new playground that opened to the public in December 1935. Subsequent decades saw the playground transformed into a sitting area. In 2015, the City Council allocated funding for the restoration of this park. The redesign of the park will commence following informational sessions to incorporate public input on the park’s features. Work on the renovation started in 2019.

Holmes Airport

Holmes Airport (occasionally known as Grand Central Air Terminal and Grand Central Airport) was an airport in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens in New York City that operated from 1929 to 1940. Real estate developer E. H. Holmes built the airport on approximately 220 acres (89 ha) of undeveloped land. He organized and sold stock in Holmes Airport, Inc., but claimed that some wanted to see him fail. In February, 1929, Clarence D. Chamberlin, the aviator Viola Gentry, and Dorothy Stone, actress and daughter of Fred Stone, broke ground for the new airport. According to a contemporary street map, it extended as far as 79th Street to the east, 68th Street and St. Michael's Cemetery to the west, Astoria Boulevard to the north, and 31st Avenue to the south. The airport had two hangars, an office, and two gravel runways, of 2,800 feet (853 m) and 3,000 feet (914 m) in length, respectively.The new airport opened on Saturday, March 16, 1929, attracting 100,000 visitors on its second day of operation. Later that year, the first scheduled flights from New York City began when Eastern Air Express started a two-day service to Miami from Holmes.In April 1930, thousands of people paid $1 each (equivalent to $16 in 2021) for a ride in an airplane. It was promoted as an experiment to ascertain whether it was fear or the expense that kept the public from flying.On Sunday, November 11, 1934, sixty-four airplanes took part in a 30-mile (48 km) novelty race involving a treasure hunt and pie-eating contest, the winner returning in 28 minutes.Blimps also used the airport. Goodyear erected a 220-foot-long (67 m) hangar in 1931 and conducted sightseeing flights. In 1936, a Goodyear blimp based at Holmes Airport provided the first aerial traffic reports.In 1937, the airport's owners sought a court injunction to stop New York City from spending $8,444,300 (equivalent to $159,000,000 in 2021) to develop the smaller North Beach Airport, only a mile or so to the northeast, into the much larger LaGuardia Airport. Supreme Court Justice Ernest E. L. Hammer denied the request. LaGuardia Airport opened in 1939 and Holmes Airport closed the following year.The northern portion of Holmes Airport's land was later developed into veteran housing and the Bulova watch factory site.