Meigs, publisher of the Chicago Herald and Examiner and an aviation advocate. On June 30, 1950, the airport was officially renamed Merrill C. The airport opened on December 10, 1948, in a grand ceremony. Aviation technology had advanced rapidly during World War II. That same year the Illinois state legislature deeded 24 acres (9.7 ha) of adjacent lake bottom to Chicago for additional landfill, to make the property large enough for a suitable runway. Operations Īlmost immediately after World War II, in 1946, airport construction began. In the 1930s the Chicago City Council and Illinois State Legislature passed resolutions to create the airport, but both the poor economy and World War II intervened. Construction continued on the peninsula itself, with the 1933 World's Fair occupying the just-completed peninsula. The Great Depression put numerous civic plans on hold, including the airport. In 1928, the Chicago Association of Commerce, representing the business community, also advocated for the lakefront airport. A few years later the Chicago South Park Commission voted in agreement. That same year Mayor William Hale Thompson recommended locating the downtown airport there. In 1920, Chicagoans approved a bond referendum to pay for landfill construction of the peninsula, and in 1922 construction began. Bennett, co-author of the Plan of Chicago, wrote that a lakefront location would be most suitable for an airport serving the central business district. However, Grant Park was unsuitable for the city's growing aviation needs.īurnham died in 1912. Then, in 1918, regular air mail service to Grant Park began. Chicago's first airplane flight took place in 1910 in Grant Park, adjacent to Northerly Island, with an international aeronautical exhibition at the same location in 1911. Northerly Island was also the site of the Century of Progress (1933–34) in Chicago. The island was to be populated by trees and grass for the public enjoyment by all. The Plan of Chicago had no provision for air service. Northerly Island, owned by the Chicago Park District, is the only lakefront structure to be built based on Daniel Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago. Daley forced the closing of Meigs in 2003 by ordering the overnight bulldozing of its runway without notice, in violation of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations.īurnham's Plan of Chicago (1909). The latest air traffic tower was built in 1952 and the terminal was dedicated in 1961.
The airport was a familiar sight on the downtown lakefront. Meigs Field airport was opened on 10 December 1948, and, by 1955, had become the busiest single-strip airport in the United States. The airport sat adjacent to downtown Chicago, the second-largest business district in North America. Meigs Field Airport ( ICAO: KCGX) /mɛgz/ was a single-runway airport in Chicago that was in operation from December 1948 until March 2003, on Northerly Island, an artificial peninsula on Lake Michigan.
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