How did the United States Navy manage to create an air station seemingly out of nothing? Out of land that they “made” where water once ruled, where San Francisco Bay tides once lapped the shores of two airports and the jetty that protected a major railroad mole with its wharf?
Congress appropriated funding to build the Alameda Naval Air Station in 1937, after two decades of urging for such a station by the Navy and local supporters led by banker John J. Mulvany. In 1938, the Navy began shaping the Alameda Naval Air Station from the Army Air Corps’ Benton Field, defining the future station’s northern edge and Curtiss-Wright’s Alameda Airport to its west.
The Army Air Corps opened Benton Field just south of the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Big Red trains operations in 1927. The field bore Lt. John W. Benton’s name. An Army Air Corps pilot and Shasta County resident, Benton died in an airplane crash in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the same year Benton Field opened.
Alameda Airport began operations to the west of Benton Field as a commercial enterprise on March 2, 1929, with one runway and three hangars. The builders beached 11 World War I destroyers and a merchant ship to create the breakwater for a yacht basin that did double duty as a “seadrome.”
The following July, Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company merged with Wright Aeronautical. That company operated Alameda Airport, which was also called “Curtiss-Wright Airfield,” and extended the airport’s property further into San Francisco Bay.
On June 1, 1936, Curtiss-Wright deeded the property to the federal government. The Navy took over Benton Field from the Army four months later.
“Alameda Naval Air Site Grows Up from Bay Mud,” a headline in the May 15, 1938, edition of the Oakland Tribune announced.
Join the Alameda Post for a two-part walk around Alameda Point, the former Naval Air Station. The Navy dredged San Francisco Bay and used what its machines drew from the Bay floor to create its air station. Dennis Evanosky will discuss how the Navy covered two existing airports and closed a third one nearby. Along the way, he will show you how Alameda Point evolved from where Jimmy Doolittle’s Raiders left for Japan, where aircraft carriers docked, and seaplanes took to the air. We’ll also check out several buildings once used by the Navy and see how they fit into today’s Alameda Point. Tickets for each are $20 and sell out quickly, so get yours now to ensure your place on the tour.
South of Tower Avenue Tour – Saturday, July 20, meeting at 10 a.m. at Seaplane Lagoon Ferry Terminal.
North of Tower Avenue Tour – Sunday, July 28, meeting at 10 a.m. at the Main Street entrance, on Navy Way by the plane on a stick.
Read Dennis’ previous articles about Alameda Point: Alameda Point Before the Navy Arrived, War and Peace at NAS Alameda, and There’s More than Meets the Eye at Alameda Point.
In his Historical Marker Database entry about Seaplane Lagoon, Joseph Alvarado describes an important task assigned to the early contactors. “A stone rip-rap seawall was built to exclude bay water from submerged and partially submerged areas.” Only then could dredging commence “with silt removed from the future sites of the ship channel, turning basin,” Alvarado writes. To read more interesting details that Alvarado adds to this story, visit the Historical Marker Database online.
The San Francisco Bridge Company, which had cut the tidal canal through from the Brooklyn Basin to San Leandro Bay in 1902, was on the job. The company’s $960,000 contract called for “dredging, filling, erecting bulkheads, dikes and temporary buildings.” Initial construction provided for two carrier air groups, five seaplane squadrons, two utility squadrons, and an Assembly and Repair Department.
Two dredges, with crews that totaled 80 workers, began dredging their way south from Benton Field. They deposited what the Tribune called “mounds of sand and mud, which will form new land.” The contract called for “a section of made land 4,000 x 2,000 feet and a lagoon measuring 3,000 x 1,500 feet.”
One of the dredges the Navy used was the 1,000-horsepower giant “Hines,” which, in the Tribune’s words, “swallows silt at the rate of 1,000 cubic yards per hour (and) spews it out through pipelines.”
By November 1938, contractors had topped with concrete much of what the dredges had “spewed out.” The Tribune also reported that work on creating the Seaplane Lagoon was “virtually complete.”
Contractors now turned their attention to the area west of Benton Field and began dismantling not only Alameda Airport, but the massive Southern Pacific Railroad wharf that lay just west of the air field. Contractors removed 10 of the 11 beached destroyers, burying the last holdout beneath the mud and silt.
Workers stepped in and paved over the site, preparing it for the runways. What about that last stubborn destroyer? Historian E. R. Kallus says that it stayed in place covered by sand, asphalt, and concrete in the infield between the Naval Air Station runways near the Main Gate.
“After dredging and filling were completed and utilities installed, construction of the air station’s core buildings commenced,” Alvarado tells us.
In 2012 Christopher McMorris and Chandra Miller of JRP Historical Consulting, LLC provided a detailed description of the station’s buildings on the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for the Naval Air Station, which is available to read online.
Of special interest is what McMorris calls the “Administrative Core.” The buildings represent the face that the Navy wanted to present to its important visitors. The commanding officer kept a more than a respectable distance in the headquarters building on the other side of an expansive field.
This Core offers the visitor the best expression of the “Moderne” style, the design theme for the entire station with most of the characteristic elements of the style:
- Reinforced Portland concrete.
- Smooth surfaces with curved elements.
- Highly stylized vertical elements at the entrances.
- Columns that have elongated cross-sections, transforming them into aerodynamic struts.
- The overriding element of the blue horizontal bands and running continuously across the façades, over the windows and over the wall panels between the windows. Some buildings feature some vertical elements in blue, as well.
Morris and Miller tell us that “the administrative buildings tend to be very long and low.” Some are enormous, and others “so long they cannot be seen in their entirety from any one perspective.” They point out that “even smaller buildings, such as Building 1 (the headquarters building, today’s City Hall West) are long and low.
Even today, visitors will notice how even, flat, and uniform these buildings are. Morris and Miller suggest this “is best illustrated in Buildings 2 and 4,” the two enlisted men’s barracks to your right as you walk from the Main Gate toward Building 1. Concrete panels and the bands of windows emphasize what Morris and Miller call “this long sweeping design.”
Although much smaller, the Headquarters Building boasts an even, flat, and uniform appearance. It’s all “Moderne,” after all. And when you admire these buildings, don’t miss Pegasus, the winged horse that stands for bravery, success in battle, protection, duty, and commitment.
As you walk through this Administrative Core, as Morris and Miller remind us, look for all that is “Moderne”—smooth reinforced concrete exteriors with flat, even, uniform surfaces complemented by those flat roofs and the blue vertical and curved tines that add some contrast to it all.
On November 1, 1940, Captain Frank McCrary took command of the air station. The Navy called McCrary, a decorated World War I veteran, out of retirement. He was handed the job of getting the brand new, barely serviceable Naval Air Station up and running. And just in time. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor 36 days later.
Dennis Evanosky is the award-winning Historian of the Alameda Post. Reach him at [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Dennis-Evanosky.
