The Word Is Soar

For years after it had become obvious that the airplane was here to stay, it seemed as though nobody on the ground believed it. U.S. airports in general were miserable places--drab and drafty sheds that looked as if they had been thrown together for processing prisoners of war. But no longer.

Stimulated by the replanning required for the big new jets and by federal allocations averaging $75 million a year, city after city has broken out a brand-new terminal during the past two or three years. A town without new airport construction on the ground or at least on the drawing boards seems heading for an urban inferiority complex. And a "soaring" airport is getting to be the most In of all.

Pacesetter of the "soaring" design was the late great Eero Saarinen's TWA building at New York's Idlewild. Washington also went soaring with Saarinen in its new Dulles International Airport. Latest to soar is the most air-served city for its size in the U.S. No fewer than seven air lines have been pumping people in and out of Las Vegas through one of the shabbiest airports in the land. But last week's crop of gamblers, conventioneers, vacationers and divorcers found themselves arriving and departing through a $4,500,000 air, terminal that looked as though it were about to take off.

Designed by Architect Welton Becket (who has worked on the new airports expansion projects at Los Angeles and San Francisco), McCarran Field's 38,850 sq. ft. hexagonal waiting building consists of three identical sweeps of vaulted concrete like wings, arching from the ground to a 45-ft. peak, and illuminated by vast areas of tinted glass "to portray the beauty and grace of soaring flight and the simplicity and endlessness of space. From the moment the passenger enters the winglike ticketing building to the time he leaves the spacious, vaulted terminal with its feeling of motion, he will be exposed to design as functional and dramatic as the airplane itself." Inside are a 220-seat restaurant-coffee shop, a nursery where one can check the children, and a cocktail lounge decorated with a 44-ft. mural depicting the history of gambling.

And of course, there is a double bank of slot machines.

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