Washington Dulles: Saarinen's Mobile Lounges, Lost Willard and the Hub Era

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In 1958 President Eisenhower chose a site 26 miles west of Washington for a second airport, and aviation adviser Pete Quesada named it for Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. The 13,000-acre site, larger than Manhattan, required condemning land from 87 owners and demolishing Willard, a largely African American community. Architect Eero Saarinen hung a catenary concrete roof from leaning exterior pillars to create a column-free terminal, and replaced concourses with mobile lounges, raised vehicles on stilts that drove passengers across the apron and docked with the aircraft door. John F. Kennedy and Eisenhower dedicated the airport in November 1962, but by 1965 it averaged only 89 daily flights against 600 at National.

Slot and perimeter limits at National, plus the growth of the Dulles Technology Corridor, eventually filled the airport. Its 11,500-foot runways hosted the first commercial Boeing 747 christening in 1970, a nose-to-nose Concorde arrival in 1976, and a 1990 SR-71 Blackbird flight from Palmdale that took 64 minutes. Deregulation and United's 1986 hub made Dulles a transfer point the lounges could not handle, so midfield concourses, the 2010 AeroTrain and the 2022 Silver Line followed, while lounges still serve international arrivals. American Airlines Flight 77 departed from gate D26 on September 11, 2001, and a flag flies there today.

• Pat Nixon christened the first commercial 747 by spraying it with red, white and blue water.
• The original code DIA was changed to IAD because handwritten tags were confused with DCA.
• Saarinen's terminal later inspired the original terminal at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
• Senator Bob Dole proposed renaming it Washington Eisenhower International in 1990, and bills in 2024 and 2025 proposed naming it for Donald J. Trump.
• A 100-megawatt solar facility with battery storage is being built on airport land.