In 1960, Robert Sowers designed what at the time was the largest window in the world for American Airlines JFK terminal, recently demolished.
This holiday season, thousands of travelers will be arriving and departing from New York City’s John F. Kennedy Airport on their way to join their families for the holidays. Passing through or driving by Terminal 8 at JFK isn’t the same these days since the epic 317-by-23-foot stained glass window known as “the Cathedral” that once adorned the old American Airlines terminal has been demolished along with the building. This abstract glass mosaic, designed by architect Robert Sowers for American Airlines in 1960, has been torn down and replaced by a brand-new $1.3 billion American Airlines terminal that has none of the grandeur of the original.
Airports are the first things people see when they enter a city, and the last when they depart, and their design becomes a quintessential part of the city’s identity. The Sowers window, along with Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal at JFK, “was part of a pavilion that spoke to New York’s commercial might and aesthetic sensibilities,” according to an extensive New York Times article on the demolition. When it was built, Sowers window was the largest window in the world and the first stained glass window to be incorporated so prominently into a secular building. Its glowing colors at night spoke of a bygone elegant sophistication once associated with plane travel in the jet age. Now, only 49 years later, this epic wall’s lifespan was shorter than that of most New Yorkers, and the allure of air travel has gone the way of free checked-luggage policies.
Although there was a heroic effort to save the window, including a now-defunct group called Save America’s Window, all efforts to stop the demolition or move the window to a site where it could be preserved were unsuccessful. The estimated cost of $1 million to remove the window intact, as well as the lack of a place to put it, made saving it impossible despite the best efforts of many. American Airlines concluded that the only solution was to have it demolished, but, something about the glass begged to be saved loudly enough that even a cash-strapped airline has found a way to salvage parts of it.
The airline initially proposed making key chains with the discarded glass but this idea was looked upon with disgust by almost everyone interviewed in a The New York Times article, which quoted people calling the suggestion “”very disappointing,“ “disrespectful and distasteful,” and “tacky.” However, the biggest opponent of the key chains, Sower’s wife, wrote a Letter to the Editor to say, “Turning shads of glass into key chains for airline employees is a pathetic gesture to justify the destruction of a work of art and a sad reflection of a world that increasingly trivializes beauty.” She preferred it be demolished completely.
A table made from a section of Robert Sowers's window is a suggested use by the demolition company selling sections of it online.
However, the demolition company that took down the window has salvaged portions of it, and has put them up for sale on their website, www.oldegoodglass.com. Selling different sizes ranging in price from $180 to$680, they recommend using the window sections as an office partition, coffee table or incorporated into a concrete wall. Sold in pieces significantly larger than a key chain, in the hands of a gifted designer they have the potential to become an enchanting piece of architecture. Though there’s something morbid about a work of art living on in shards of its former glory, the fact that this material is being recycled, and can be owned by those who know its impressive provenance, is not entirely tragic. For any glass-lover looking to own a piece of history, perhaps this unusual purchase pictured at left could be the perfect Christmas gift this season.
—Kim Harty