Travel

Step inside the brand new TWA hotel at JFK airport in New York City

Opening in spring 2019, the TWA Flight Center returns to its Jet Age glory.

David Mitchell

ByGenevieve Shaw Brown

April 17, 2018, 3:36 PM

Travelers looking for a more gilded age of travel need look no further than the TWA hotel in New York City.

MCR and MORSE Development built a full-scale model guest room and hotel hallway in a vacant hangar located at JFK Airport’s Building 87 and revealed it to the media on April 17, 2018.
David Mitchell

Guest room 528 honors, May 28, 1962. Opening day of the TWA Flight Center.
David Mitchell

Scheduled to open in spring 2019 near John F. Kennedy International Airport, the first photos of a model guestroom have been released. Visitors to the hotel, which has the fabled TWA flight terminal as it's core, will be immediately transported to the 1960s.

Lined in brass, a custom quilted leather-look headboard features a custom brass sconce and a crystallized glass ledge that easily holds overnight accessories.
David Mitchell

Guests will enjoy a full lineup of TWA Hotel grooming essentials. (The items shown are part of an authentic toiletries kit that will be on display in the TWA Hotel museum.
David Mitchell

Housed in two low-rise buildings, the new hotel has 512 guest rooms with martini bars, vintage rotary phones and bathrooms with Hollywood-style vanities. Floor-to-ceiling, full-width windows will provide expansive scenes of the TWA Flight Center lobby or nearby runways.

The star of the terrazzo-tiled bathroom is a custom Hollywood vanity with bubble lights inspired by Philip Johnson's iconic ladies lounge in New York City's former Four Seasons restaurant.
David Mitchell

An authentic Eero Saarinen-designed Womb Chair sits beside a round white Saarinen Pedestal tulip side table where guests can make unlimited free international and local calls on a 1950's Western Electric 500 phone retrofitted converter by Old Phone Works. — An authentic Eero Saarinen-designed Womb Chair, upholstered in red Knoll fabric, sits beside a 16-inch round white Saarinen Pedestal tulip side table where guests can make unlimited free international and local calls on a 1950's Western Electric 500 phone retrofitted with a pulse to tone converter by Old Phone Works.
David Mitchell

But the hotel remains ultra-quiet: The windows will be seven panes thick.

PHOTO: TWA's hotel model room is seen here. — TWA's hotel model room is seen here.
David Mitchell

The planned lobby will be 200,000 square feet and include reception and restaurants. There's also a planned rooftop pool and 10,000 square foot observation deck, as well as a museum devoted to the Jet Age, TWA, and the midcentury modern design movement.