Review: TWA Lounge at One World Trade Center

Welcome back on board as we conclude this five-part flight back to the year 1962. If you missed any of the previous reviews, here they are:

The TWA Lounge at One World Trade Center

Today, as our flight back to 1962 concludes, we head across town to One World Trade Center. Here on the 86th floor is a recreation of the TWA Lounge and a collection of TWA artifacts and memorabilia.

a woman standing behind a desk — Entering the TWA Lounge. Photo credit: TWA Hotel.

The lounge is a magnificent recreation of how flying on TWA was in the 1960’s. This particular lounge was created as the inspiration for the building of the TWA Hotel and functions as its’ sales office. This lounge used to offer a monthly open house for the public, now it is no longer open to the public. I want to thank Edith Morris and Katie Groenke at Berlin Rosen for making my visit possible. My tour was led by Chris Betz of the TWA Hotel who created the TWA Lounge and TWA Hotel exhibits and is the curator. Chris also created a soundtrack of over 100 hours of vintage music from the 1960’s that plays at the TWA Hotel. You will hear the music of the early Beatles to Frank Sinata singing Come Fly With Me and Fly Me To The Moon among others.

The TWA Logo

The first thing you notice when you walk in is the TWA logo. TWA had one of the most iconic airline logos with the double-globe design. One of the challenges during the development of the TWA Hotel was recreating the original TWA font. Morse Development commissioned the design firm Pentagram to recreate the original TWA Flight Center Gothic font.

a drawing of a plane — The TWA Flight Center Gothic font. Photo credit: TWA Hotel

Stepping Into the Lounge

After passing the reception desk, you will enter the “sunken lounge”. This lounge was reproduced to scale on the main floor of the TWA Hotel. The centerpiece of the sunken lounge is the flight status “flapper board”. Before there were digital signboards, there were flapper boards. The TWA Hotel went to the Solari de Udine in Italy to recreate the original TWA flapper boards. Solari is the only company that still makes and supports flapper boards. There are 34,000 flaps in the sign and each sign costs $10,000 to make. When the entire board changes, you will hear that distinctive flapping noise for several seconds.

a room with red carpet and a black sign — The Sunken Lounge and the “flapper” status board.

a black sign with white text — The “flapper” board.

Here is a video of the board changing status. Listen to the harmony of the nostalgic soundtrack with the “flip-flap” sound of the board.

The Vintage Uniform Collection

TWA flight attendant uniforms were always designed by the major designers from Howard Greer in the 1940’s to Ralph Lauren in 2001. Some of the uniforms were made out of paper.

a room with mannequins and dresses — The uniforms on the left were made out of paper.

Artifacts and Memorabilia from 1962

Let’s take a look back. Did you ever use a rotary dial telephone or a Polaroid instant camera?

a white airplane model and a hard hat on a table — A model of the Constellation and a Polaroid camera.

a woman standing in front of a wall with shelves of books — TWA memorabilia. The flight bags were popular in the 1960’s.

a wall with pictures of various people — What you would have watched, read and listened to in 1962.

two posters on a wall — Howard Hughes commissioned David Klein to create TWA travel posters to exciting destinations.

a typewriter and camera on a table — Working examples of a Polaroid Model 20 “Swinger” camera and Olivetti typewriter. Photo credit: TWA Hotel.

a telephone and cigarette on a counter — The rotary dial telephone, martini glass, ashtray and packs of airline playing cards. Photo credit: Berlin Rosen.

Heading Back to the Present

As we prepare to fly back to today, I want to thank the staff of the TWA Hotel and Berlin Rosen for their help to make this TWA series possible. I hope that you enjoyed your flight back to 1962.