One For The Road: Chicago's First Municipal Airport Opens

By Samantha Abernethy in Arts & Entertainment on May 8, 2012 10:30PM

$[ca. 1928 May 11-13]\r\n\r\nPortrait of William Hale Thompson, Mayor of Chicago from 1915-1923 and 1927-1931, looking toward the camera, sitting with an unidentified man in the cockpit of an airplane in an airplane hanger in 1928. An American flag is hanging from the ceiling in the background. Text on airplane reads: Chicago. Relates to the Chicago celebration of the Bremen Flyers. The airplane shown is probably the Junkers aircraft, similar to the Bremen, in which the Flyers arrived in Chicago at Municipal Airport. The Bremen Flyers made the first successful nonstop airplane flight from east to west across the north Atlantic Ocean, on April 12-13, 1928. The Flyers were: Baron Ehrenfried Gunther von Huenefeld and Captain Herman Koehl, both of Germany, and Captain James C. Fitzmaurice of Ireland. Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum.$

Informal full-length portrait an unidentified woman stepping out of a Universal Airlines airplane in 1929 in front of a hangar on a field at Municipal Airport, later Midway Airport, bounded by South Central and Cicero Avenues and West 59th and West 63rd Streets in the Garfield Ridge community area of Chicago. A man wearing a uniform is standing on the ground in front of the woman, holding her hand and assisting her. Another woman is standing on the ground, on the right side of the image. Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum.

View of three men standing beneath the propeller of an airplane on a flooded airfield in 1929 at Municipal Airport, now Midway Airport, located in the Garfield Ridge community area of Chicago, Illinois. Two men are standing next to the airplane, and buildings are visible in the distance. Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum.

View of an airplane descending on to an airfield at Municipal Airport (now Midway Airport) in 1928 at 63rd and Cicero in Chicago, Illinois. A crowd is standing behind a chain link, and an airplane is partially visible on the left side of the image. A young boy in the foreground is standing on the other side of the chain, looking at the airplane. This image is damaged, and the top right-hand corner is missing. Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum.

A 1929 image of a mail airplane driving after landing on an airfield at Municipal Airport, later Midway Airport, bounded by South Central and Cicero Avenues and West 59th and West 63rd Streets in the Garfield Ridge community area of Chicago, Illinois. A man is jogging alongside the airplane, touching one of the wings of the airplane. A man is walking in the foreground, and two airplanes are visible in the background. Text on image reads: N. A. T. Municipal Airport. Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum.

View of a propeller airplane sitting on a dirt field at the Municipal Airport in 1928 in Chicago, Illinois, with its propeller turning. Text on airplane reads: I Will. Buildings and airplane hangers are visible in the background. Text on hanger reads, in part: Transport School of Aviation. Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum.

A 1929 image of an airplane flying close to the ground at Municipal Airport, later Midway Airport, bounded by South Central and Cicero Avenues and West 59th and West 63rd Streets in the Garfield Ridge community area of Chicago, Illinois. A National Air Transport (N. A. T.) hangar is visible in the background, and a Curtiss airplane is sitting on an airfield in the foreground. Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum.

You now know it as Midway Airport, but when it opened in 1926 it was known simply as Municipal Airport. It would be years before it became the busiest airport in the Chicago area, let alone the world.

In 1922 the city opened Chicago Aero Park on part of what would become Municipal Airport, but it was on this date in 1926 that the city opened its "first-class facility" with hopes to attract business from the United States Postal Service. The airport was quiet until the USPS transferred airmail flights there in 1928.

The Tribune writes:

Chicago almost banned aviation after the city was the site of the world's first commercial aviation disaster in 1919. The Goodyear blimp Wingfoot Air Express caught fire and crashed through the skylight of Illinois Trust and Savings Bank in the Loop, killing 13 people, including 10 bank employees.
By the 1920s, when the United States Post Office Department had made Chicago a center for its Air Mail Service, the city changed its mind about aviation. The service first used Grant Park as an airport, but eventually settled at Maywood Field.

Before Municipal opened, aviators used pretty much any open space as a runway, including Grant Park and the White City Amusement Park on the South Side. The first flight was brief. A National Air Transport (later United Airlines) flight traveled from suburban Maywood to Municipal. After a celebration, it returned.

The airport was renamed after WWII to honor the Battle of Midway. Coincidentally, just today questions have surfaced about Mayor Rahm Emanuel's plans for the airport and whether it would be privatized.

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