Across the country, Americans take for granted the con-
venience of air flight from one city to another. The
federal role in managing air traffic and the cooperative
corporate planning of major airlines mask to some degree
the fact that those airports are not jointly owned or managed,
but rather are local public responsibilities.
In this unique history of the places travelers in cities
across America call "the" airport, Janet R. Daly Bednarek
traces the evolving relationship between cities and their
airports during the crucial formative years of 1918–47. She
highlights the early history of experimentation and innovation
in the development of municipal airports and identifies the
factors—including pressure from the U.S. Post Office and the
military, neither of which had the independent resources to deve-
lop a network of terminals—that made American cities responsible
for their own air access. She shows how boosterism accelerated the
trend toward local construction and ownership of the fields.
In the later years of the period, Bednarek shows, cities found
they could not shoulder the whole burden of airport construction,
maintenance, and improvement. As part of a general trend during
the 1930s toward a strong, direct relationship between cities and
the federal government, cities began to lobby for federal aid for
their airports, a demand that was eventually met when World War
II increased the federal stakes in their functioning.
Along with this complex local-federal relationship, Bednarek
considers the role of the courts and of city planning in the
development of municipal airfields. Drawing on several brief
case studies, she looks at the social aspects of airports and
analyzes how urban development resulted in a variety of airport
arrangements.
Little published work has been available on this topic. Now,
with Bednarek's thorough treatment and broad view of the subject,
those interested in the patterns of American air travel will
have new understanding, and those concerned with urban develop-
ment will recognize an additional dimension of their subject.
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JANET R. DALY BEDNAREK is an associate professor of history at
the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio. She is the author of
The Changing Image of the City: Planning for Downtown Omaha,
1945–1973 and numerous articles and other contributions on aviation
and urban history.
Number One: Centennial of Flight Series
