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

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

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.