Sundrome (National Airlines Terminal, JFK Airport)

Before the Sundrome, National Airlines had used a corrugated-metal Quonset hut as its terminal since 1948, the year it began flying from the airport then called Idlewild; the hut stood between the future site of the new building and Terminal 7. The new terminal came out of a national design competition, closed in April 1962, won by the firm then called I. M. Pei & Partners, today Pei Cobb Freed & Partners; Henry Cobb had worked on this initial design. Construction began in October 1966 and the building was completed in October 1970. In 1972 it received the Albert S. Bard Award of the City Club of New York.

National stayed until Pan American World Airways took it over in 1980. TWA then expanded into the building, which became the TWA Terminal Annex, later the TWA Domestic Terminal and finally Terminal 6. Several other airlines followed, JetBlue among them from 1998 to 2008. The terminal fell empty on 22 October 2008, when JetBlue moved to Terminal 5.

The New York and New Jersey Port Authority declared on 29 April 2010 that the terminal would come down, so that JetBlue could consolidate its operations in an enlarged Terminal 5. Preservationists tried to save it, but the demolition of the whole terminal finished in October 2011, and the land went to expanding Terminal 5.

Henry Cobb, a partner at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, called the demolition a "tragedy": in his view the main departure pavilion had qualities seldom found in an airport, such as spaciousness, generosity, dignity, calm, order, precision and restraint.

The terminal had two rectangular pavilions, one for departures and one for arrivals, linked to two cylindrical satellites where passengers boarded and left the planes. Glass was its main material. The main pavilion, for departures, was wrapped in double-height glass walls hung from a space frame and held by concrete columns set outside the building; its glass walls inspired the nickname Sundrome. On the main front, the mullions themselves were glass.

The plan answered airport congestion: cars dropped passengers at the front of the terminal and collected them at the back, which doubled the length of kerb, and baggage moved underground. This open, highly flexible plan could be adapted during construction to the arrival of the Boeing 747.