Added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 30, 1992

Ask 100 people “What’s the most important building in the history of Los Angeles International Airport?” and chances are, 99 of them will say “the LAX Theme Building, duh” or maybe “that weird flying saucer thing with the two curves over it” (that’s also the LAX Theme Building). Until I started this project, I would have said the same thing. But I know better now. The correct answer is Hangar One, the first airplane hangar constructed in this airport’s earliest days, and the only one that’s still standing from the era before it was known as “LAX.”

Hangar One is currently owned by the global logistics company DHL. It’s on a busy corridor of cargo facilities clustered in the southeast corner of the LAX campus, right in the armpit of Aviation Boulevard and the 105. It’s busy out there, trucks coming and going, FedEx planes taxiing to the runway. Security’s tight too – if you’re not wearing a DHL badge and neon yellow safety vest, you’re not making it past the Hangar One parking lot. 

Back in 1929, when Hangar One was built, this area looked more like midwestern farmland than one of the world’s busiest airports. The portion that would become LAX once sat on a vast Mexican land grant known as Rancho Sausal Redondo. By 1894, a guy named Andrew Bennett leased 2000 acres of the land and built an agricultural operation, planting beans and barley. Later he added ranching to his repertoire, and would help develop the City of Inglewood. 

The aviation era of this story begins in the 1920s, at a time when LA was quickly becoming enamored with flight. After the first major airshow in the US took place at Dominguez Field, near present-day Carson, small landing strips popped up throughout Los Angeles. Filmmaker Thomas Ince built one in 1914, not far from his “Inceville” property in Pacific Palisades. Charlie Chaplin’s half-brother, Sydney, built Chaplin Airfield in 1919, near the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax (then called Crescent Avenue). Cecil B. DeMille opened three airfields, and Glendale developer Leslie Coombs Brand famously hosted high society “fly-in” parties on his property in the 1920s. By 1928, some 25 manufacturing plants serving the aviation industry had opened in LA, plus dozens of flight schools. 

The early airfields required large tracts of undeveloped land, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising when pilots started to use a small section of Andrew Bennett’s ranch as a landing strip for biplanes. People would come by on weekends to watch these airborne contraptions take off and land. 

Before 1927 all of the LA airfields were privately-owned affairs. That year there was a push for an official municipal airport, no doubt spurred by superstar aviator Charles Lindbergh’s exhortations in a speech at the LA Coliseum that September: “Airports are the most important factor in the development of aviation…I wish to say that if you expect to keep your city on the air map, it will be necessary to construct a municipal airport.” 

The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce surveyed 13 different sites for the airport. At one point they even considered opening three municipal airports, but by the summer of 1928, they had whittled it down to the strip on Bennett’s ranch – which came to be known as Mines Field, after the real estate developer William Mines who brokered the deal. It probably helped that Mines Field had been chosen as the site of the 1928 National Air Races by that time. The City leased 640 acres of Bennett’s ranch for 10 years beginning October 1, 1928, and extended the lease to 50 years in 1930, the same year the Los Angeles Municipal Airport was officially dedicated.

Hangar One was the first major structure built after LA leased Mines Field and the surrounding acreage. Completed in June of 1929, it was built for the Curtiss-Wright Company, an early airplane manufacturer that had sub-leased the land from the City of LA, with the intention of opening a flight school. 

The firm of Gable & Wyant designed Hangar One out of unreinforced brick and concrete, in the Spanish colonial revival style – atypical for an airport hangar of its day, which tended to have corrugated iron roofs, but very on-trend architecturally. Gable & Wyant’s classy parapets, arched windows and towers belie the essentially industrial function of this building. On the inside it’s basically a large open space, a warehouse for planes. A wrought-iron circular staircase leads to a second floor of offices.

The Curtiss-Wright Company’s plan was to spend $2 million (in 1929 money) on more student buildings, dorms and more hangars, all in the same Spanish colonial style. Pictures from the 1930s show some of the fruits of that building spree, though the “Morton Air Service” sign on the hangar below would suggest that Curtiss-Wright may have either sold or leased the building to another company. 

In its early years of operation, Hangar One was the site of a lot of memorable aviation events. The massive German airship Graf Zeppelin anchored here from August 26-27, 1929, as part of the world’s first ‘round the world trip by a dirigible. The National Air Races returned in 1933 and 1936. Famous aviators like Charles Lindbergh and military general Jimmy Doolittle stowed their planes here…even the actor Jimmy Stewart kept his Stinson 105 biplane in Hangar One from 1929 through 1935.

By the mid-20th century, the LA Municipal Airport was growing up. The City had purchased the original 640 acres of land outright in 1937, and a decade later, five major airlines (TWA, American, United, Western and Pan American) relocated from Burbank Airport (then called Lockheed Air Terminal) and Glendale’s Grand Central Airport to the renamed Los Angeles Airport, with the promise of expanded facilities. The City built temporary terminals, passenger facilities and admin buildings to support the shift in focus to commercial flight. In recognition of its new status, the LA City Council changed its name to the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in 1949. 

Hangar One was leased by the Army and Air Force during WWII, and later to a succession of aviation companies, all now defunct – an aeronautics firm called North American Aviation, Inc., a helicopter service called Los Angeles Airways, the commuter airline Golden West Airlines, and the manufacturing conglomerate Rockwell International. 

But as the planes got bigger, Hangar One became outmoded. Back in the day it could fit 18 small aircraft. Now you could barely fit one medium-sized modern airliner. By the 1980s the hangar was empty and dilapidated, its unreinforced masonry structure deemed unsafe for use. 

Airport officials considered demolishing it, like they had done with the first LAX control tower in 1974, just next door. Preservationists wanted it moved to Westchester, and converted into an aviation museum – that plan was nixed because the structure was too delicate to move in its termite-infested state.

In 1990 Hangar One was saved from the wrecking ball when the Department of Airports worked out a deal with Avia Development Group, Inc. Avia agreed to spend $2 million to restore and seismically retrofit the hangar, in exchange for permission to build two new cargo buildings that they would lease to DHL and Mexicana Airlines. Hangar One itself would be leased to Nippon Cargo Airlines. The original plan was to include a small museum in the lobby with Mines Field-era memorabilia, though I’m not positive that ever came to fruition…and if it ever did, it’s inaccessible to the public now anyway. 

It was Avia that spearheaded the effort to get Hangar One on the National Register of Historic Places. The designation made it eligible for a 20% tax credit under the Mills Act – an important incentive for the preservation of historic buildings in California. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times in March of 1990, Avia’s VP Brian Cochran said “It is tax credits that make the whole thing pencil in…It is a little creative financing that is enabling the airport to save the structure and us to renovate it back to its original grandeur.”

Maybe it sounds a little mercenary to campaign for a building’s historic status with the express purpose of saving some cash. But it’s an important reminder that preservation of an old building can be costly, resource-intensive work, and it often takes a deep-pocketed investor with an economic stake in the restoration. You can tell that the restoration job was top-notch, even if you can only get a glimpse of it through a high-tech security gate, or by stowing away on a cargo plane as it taxis by. 

Thanks to Frederick Badlissi with Los Angeles World Airports for his help tracking down photos and facts for this piece

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ ”Aviation in Early Los Angeles” (waterandpower.org)

+ Dick, Jean-Christophe: “LAX History” (Flight Path Museum LAX, December 12, 2021)

+ Dick, Jean-Christophe: “LAX Alternate Universe” (Flight Path Museum LAX, January 12, 2022)

+ Gardner, Hugh: “New Cargo Facility Built Around Historic Hangar at LAX” (Airport Services Management, February 1990 – reprinted in Hangar One’s NRHP nomination form)

+ Gnerre, Sam: “South Bay history: LAX’s Hangar One stands as the last link to the airport’s historic past” (Daily Breeze, December 25, 2021)

+ Gnerre, Sam: “South Bay history: The control tower at LAX has come a long way since 1930” (Daily Breeze, May 2, 2022)

+ Hernández, Caitlin: “LAX Explained: Your Guide To Navigating The West Coast’s Most Infuriating Airport” (LAist, July 19, 2022)

+ Los Angeles World Airports: “LAX Early History” (LAWA.org)

+ Masters, Nathan: “From Mines Field to LAX: The Early History of L.A. International Airport” (PBSSoCal.org, July 25, 2012)

+ McAvoy, Christy, Historic Resources Group: Hangar One’s NRHP nomination form

+ Morrison, Patt: “What if LAX were literally anywhere else? It could have been” (Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2023)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “From Point A to Point B: The National Air Races at Mines Field, Los Angeles, 8-16 September 1928” (The Homestead Blog, September 15, 2018)

+ “Training Service Hangar Completed” (Los Angeles Times, October 13, 1929 – via ProQuest)

+ Waters, Tim: “Renovation to Restore Hangar to ‘30s Grandeur” (Los Angeles Times, March 29,1990)