Former Terminal 6 - Sundrome (New York City, New York)

 airport terminal, historical layer / disappeared object

Designed by I. M. Pei & Partners in the late 1960's and formally beginning service for National Airlines in 1969, JFK's Terminal 6 or "Sundrome", was the first airport terminal to be designed with glass as a primary building material and as a result had a simple and high-visibility appearance among JFK's other terminals.

Consisting of two rectangular pavilions for arriving and departing passengers, the Sundrome was also the first terminal designed to accommodate increased vehicular traffic by splitting up the two groups of passengers, a feature now common in most all major airports. Inside, passengers passed through an obstruction-free glass-lined space to the interconnected cylindrical boarding/deplaning areas, made possible by large exterior concrete columns which supported the double-height windows forming the terminal walls.

Used by National Airlines until their 1980 absorption into Pan Am, the Sundrome was purchased by TWA to augment their operations at the adjacent Terminal 5 until their own financial troubles in the 1990's forced TWA to lease part of the terminal to United Airlines. After TWA's own absorption into American Airlines in 2001 the Sundrome was selected by JetBlue to serve as their new dedicated terminal at JFK and was partially renovated with $7.5 million of capital investment to bring it up to modern standards.

Operated by JetBlue until the completion of their new terminal facilities at Terminal 5, the Sundrome was again idled on October 22, 2008 and remained largely unused for the next two years. Finding no airline interest in the aging terminal, the Port Authority announced their intentions to demolish the terminal in April 2010, leading to a sharp outcry by preservation groups.

After nearly a year of evaluations and public discussion periods, the demolition of the Sundrome began in the summer of 2011 and completed in 2012, allowing JetBlue to expand their Terminal 5 facilities onto the Sundrome's former footprint for their dedicated international flight operations.

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