Chicago O'Hare: Terminal One

I passed through the United Airlines Terminal 1 complex at Chicago O'Hare Airport on Sunday, June 19 and again on Tuesday, June 21, so time for an update.

This is one of my favorite airline terminals anywhere. Originally designed by Helmut Jahn in the mid-1980s as United's chief hub and to evoke the great Victorian-era railroad trainsheds of yore, it celebrates travel. It's highlighted by the wonderful light sculpture, 'The Sky's the Limit,' that has been beguiling travelers in the tunnel between Concourse B and C for more than 20 years now. Amazing that a for-profit company could invest in building a structure as ambitious and inspiring as this -- something possible when the legacy airlines were still flush, which is no longer the case.




And yes, not even two decades of creeping-crud commercialism (afterthought retail kiosks that block the views, massive banners and video displays hanging from the ceiling, and multiple changing airline logo schemes) have diluted the excitement and energy of Terminal One. Like Grand Central Station in New York when it was buried under billboards and grime, it remains a great space.

A detailed inventory of its state was posted by me in October, 2010. A half-year later, the big news is that United has a new color scheme (blue, yellow, and white, thanks to its merger with Continental) and there has actually been some action taken to keep Terminal One from completely suffocating from commercial add-ons.

True, the kiosks are still everywhere, with businesses such as 'NUTS on CLARK' or phone/Internet clusters blocking the vistas of planes parked right up against the glass. But I noticed a fewer banners hanging from the ceilings, which opened up the interior viewscapes a little, and some of the most egregious logo-placement (such as on the escalator railings!) has been taken down.

Regarding the new colors and revised "globe" logo, they've been applied everywhere. Not a tulip (the company's long-standing 1970s-era logo) to be seen, except out on the tarmac, on planes one or two paint schemes behind. The only place yellow shows up big-time, though, is in the Terminal B check-in area; for the most part, it's not a noticeable difference. One thing, however, is that the terminal's original design called for red accents in places such as the tile borders or those hard-to-read gate signs, and they're still in place. So it creates a little visual discord, since red has been banished. Same with the pinstripe frosted glass. Let's hope they just leave it alone.

I'm not sure this is the case, but it seemed that gate areas had fewer TVs blaring the CNN airport channel at full volume, which is a major improvement. But one thing I can't understand is why the terminal's gray light-control shades get lowered on the non-sun sides of the building. In the B concourse on Tuesday afternoon, this unnecessarily blocked all the airside views, as if people couldn't possibly be interested in what's going on out beyond the glass. (See the picture for a sample of what you're missing.) Maybe some don't care, but no wonder few people get excited about flying anymore.

Also, viewed from the outside, the whole B concourse seems desperately in need of a good washing. Maybe more than that, because last I heard it sometimes rains in Chicago.

And how about the chairs these guys are sitting on? Want to use the phone? Tough luck. Plus, payphones are clearly just for losers anyway, right?

Chicago O'Hare, Concourse E & F, Terminal 2

Want to visit 1974? Then fly into the one part of Chicago's O'Hare Airport that hasn't doesn't seem to have changed since then. That's what I did on Saturday, May 7 when my US Airways flight from Philadelphia pulled up to a gate in the F Concourse.

Chicago is one of those rare places where two airlines maintain major hubs. United (the larger of the two) is based in Terminal 1, while American calls Terminal 3 home. Decades of competition have prompted both carriers to transform their original off-the-shelf facilities into places of distinction. United's Helmut Jahn-designed Terminal One, though tarnished by all sorts of creeping crud installed since it opened in the late 1980s, remains one of the most ambitious and successful in the nation, I think.

And international airlines use a still-new Terminal 5, a glittering showcase that I don't think is entirely successful by virtue of the way it squats on the field like an elongated quonset hut (how does that inspire flight?), but it's still a worthy attempt for Chicago to have a world-class gateway for flights from all over: Europe, Asia, South America, you name it.

So that leaves old Terminal 2, with its E and F concourses, as the place where all the “other airlines” go at O'Hare: Delta, USAirways, Air Canada, as well as Continental and Northwest before they were merged into United and Delta, respectively. With no major tenant demanding anything other than gate space, presumably, the terminal remains substantially as it was configured when it opened in the 1960s for the then-new jet age: modern, efficient, yes, but also boring and uninspired. It has virtually nothing to do with the idea that you're in an airport.

Really. Step off a plane, and your first taste of Chicago is of a shopping mall in the 1970s. Low ceilings and dull plain corridors leading you to the blockish terminal building, itself sheathed entirely in glass! (How daring! For 1966!) Details are substandard, and bespeak deferred maintenance: in some gate areas, rows of seats sported ripped upholstery, and they looked like they'd been like that for a long time.

I'll give them a few nice grace notes. The floor had a strange design based on intersection lines in which occasionally a triangle was colored blue, and most gate areas I saw were not imprisoned by the oh-so-cool horizontal windows that seem to be the rage in newer airport construction, and which I detest. And the original “Y” design of the concourses, in which E and F meet and form a kind of triangle junction, does reduce the distance between gates, though virtually no connection flights are run here by non-hub airlines.

The one truly spectacular thing was the entrance area to the gates. Concourse E has long been a kind of “spillover” area for United flights (all their dedicated gates in C and B aren't enough), and with the Continental merger it looks as if United is set to completely take over E. At some point United took the Helmut Jahn forms of Terminal One next door (all based on Victorian railroad station architecture, an inspired choice), and grafted them onto a small but surprisingly soaring vestibule connecting the terminal building with the concourses.

The result is that for just a moment, departing travelers might possibly feel that they're about to experience something out of the ordinary, and United connecting passengers will feel somewhat confident that they're in the right place by virtue of the design similarity. Alas, it does not extend to the gate areas or anywhere else, and in that sense it's a big tease. But while you're there, it's heartening, like the first few notes of a symphony, though the rest of it remains unplayed.

The check-in area of Terminal 2 has the feel of a big rectangular sarcophagus—not the most effective way to get anyone excited about the miracle of flight. The architecture reminds me of nothing so much as what I saw on a visit to Lenin's Tomb in Red Square many years ago. All that's missing is a waxy body on display somewhere. I didn't stick around long, so I may have missed it.