Boston Logan: The Hyatt Spite Hotel, a 2,557-Foot Runway and Filled Harbor

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Boston Airport opened in September 1923 at Jeffries Point in East Boston, started scheduled flights to New York in 1927, and was named in 1943 for General Edward Lawrence Logan. Hemmed in by water, it grew by filling in 1,800 acres of Boston Harbor, absorbing Noddle's Island, Apple Island and Governor's Island, and sits about two and a half miles from downtown. By the mid-1960s Massport used eminent domain to take homes and Wood Island Park, a 46-acre Frederick Law Olmsted park, and bulldozed Neptune Road for runway 15R/33L, while residents, including mothers with strollers, lay in the streets to block trucks.

The protests halted runway 15L/33R at 2,557 feet, the shortest runway at any top-30 U.S. airport, closed to takeoffs. Crosswind runway 14/32, proposed in 1973 to handle northwest winds, did not open until 2006, and state legislators placed the Hyatt Harborside Hotel, built in 1992, on its centerline to block any extension for heavy jets. On September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 left Logan, and the Massport CEO was forced to resign. In 2013 a lithium-ion battery fire on a parked Japan Airlines Boeing 787 at Logan led the FAA to ground the 787 fleet worldwide.

• American flags fly over gates B32 and C19 as memorials to the September 11 flights.
• Our Lady of the Airways, opened in 1951 in Terminal C, was the first U.S. airport chapel.
• Terminal A was the first U.S. airport terminal to earn LEED certification, with heat-reflecting roofs and waterless urinals.
• A 250-foot water security zone marked by 29 buoys rings the airport.
• A remote terminal in Framingham lets some Delta and JetBlue passengers check bags and clear security before a sealed bus ride to Logan.