The Mustin Field Seaplane Hangar
The entrance to the Mustin Field Sea Plane Hangar reflected in a pool of water on the floor
Updated January 6, 2023 | By Matthew Christopher
By the time I got to the Mustin Field Seaplane Hangar, there was very little sense of its former glory remaining. The exterior which, as Michael Bixler accurately notes in his Hidden City article on the property, resembles nothing as much as “the sun-bleached vertebrate of a tremendous sea creature from the Mesozoic Era” was crowded on three sides by hundreds of imported cars in a Philadelphia Port Authority lot, and the other side facing the water was blocked off by large mounds of dirt and demolition debris from the torn-up airfield. The cavernous interior was mostly empty save for large pools of water on the floor, side rooms with odd light, and a few surprises like a closet full of toilet bowls. The hangar didn’t feel like a place on the National Register of Historic Places, more like something that had been mislaid by mistake. These were its last days, uncelebrated and unremarked, yet it was in fact an architectural marvel and a pivotal facility in the history of seaplane aviation.
The Mustin Field Seaplane Hangar, also known as Building 653, sits on a property that was formerly the Henry C. Mustin Naval Air Facility (or NAF Mustin Field), which was in service from 1926 to 1963. It was named after Captain Henry Mustin, who is considered the “Father of Naval Aviation” for making history when he flew a Curtiss Model AB-2 off the USS North Carolina in 1915 in Pensacola Bay. It was the first recorded catapult launch from a moving vessel; Mustin’s first solo flight had been at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard just two years earlier in 1913.
The Naval Aircraft Factory, the only government owned and operated aircraft production, design, and evaluation facility in the United States, was built in 1917 to address supply shortages during World War I and manufactured flying boats, seaplanes, and other aircraft. NAF Mustin Field was constructed as a landing field for the factory. According to John Fass Morton’s Mustin: A Naval Family of the 20th Century, the opening of the field was a spectacular event: “With the airship USS Los Angeles circling above, Mustin's most senior classmate, Captain William L. Littlefield, commander of the yard, unveiled a monument with a plate reading, "This Tablet Erected By His Naval Academy Classmates”… The ceremonies continued with a skywriting of 'Mustin Field,' a flyover that cascaded flowers onto the tablet, a bombing demonstration by three Martin bombers, and a series of stunts culminating in 'bubble busting' where aircraft chased balloons until breaking them all."
An exterior view of the Mustin Field Seaplane Hangar's entrance
The Bureau of Aeronautics approved the funding in 1942 for the Mustin Field Seaplane Hangar along with a cafeteria, forge shop, seaplane ramp, aircraft parking, and heating plant. German-born structural engineer Anton Tedesko, who is perhaps best known for his design of NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building in Cape Canaveral, FL, the Denver Coliseum, and the St Louis International Airport Terminal, planned the Mustin Field Seaplane Hangar using a standardized design that would be replicated in other aircraft hangars across the nation. This design allowed for thin, vaulted concrete roofs covering huge open interiors requiring minimal building materials. A wooden framework was created to build the roof one segment at a time, and when after construction the framework was sent to Cherry Point, Maryland to complete another. When the Mustin Field Seaplane Hangar was completed in 1943, it totaled 89,700 square feet, spanned 262 feet, and was 70 feet tall. It was primarily used to assemble PBN-1 Nomad flying boats, most of which would be used by the Soviet Union in a lend-lease program, until the Naval Aircraft Factory ceased production in response to pressure from private manufacturers in 1945. Afterward the Mustin Field Seaplane Hangar was used for the testing of prototypes such as the Fairchild YC-123E Pantobase.
Aircraft testing was discontinued in 1962 and the property was handed off to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard the following year, who used it for airshows and later built naval housing on the airfield. The hangar was used for a gym and later a commissary. The Department of Defense decided to close the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in 1991 but the closure was postponed until 1996, at which point the 1,000 acre property was transferred to the City of Philadelphia. In the years that followed the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard became a business park known as The Navy Yard that consists of roughly 120 companies which include GlaxoSmithKline, Tasty Baking Company, and Urban Outfitters. During this period the Mustin Field Seaplane Hangar was used as a film stage for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender and the Colin Farrell movie Dead Man Down, which also notably filmed on the S.S. United States. It is also reported that when Pope Francis visited Philadelphia in 2015 he arrived via helicopter outside the hangar where he was transferred to the Popemobile.
At the time of its demolition in 2021, all that was left of NAF Mustin Field was the abandoned Mustin Field Seaplane Hangar and an electrical substation, isolated and forgotten on a remote patch of the property cut off from public access. Currently it is a parking lot for imported Hyundais and Kias.
An interior view of the hangar shows off the impressive scale as well as the segmented roof
I’m not sure, given the restricted setting, how the hangar could have been reused. I always tend to wish for a museum in places like this, and a showroom of the history of seaplane aviation sounds like it would have been a great fit, presuming that the public would be granted access to the parcel of land the hangar sat on. Given that was unlikely, an alternate would have been using it to store cars without demolishing it, which would have at least preserved the structure for the possibility in the future. While I’m certainly no structural engineer, it appeared to be in excellent condition, and shielding the cars from the elements seems like it would have been beneficial. But, what do I know? Philadelphia is a city that loves tearing things down regardless of their place in history. The Mustin Field Seaplane Hangar is just another in a long string of redevelopment casualties and at this point it’s hard to even expect anything different. When people look at photos of the airfield and the hangar itself, maybe they’ll wonder what it was like – full of experimental aircraft being tested, bustling with engineers and servicemen. They won’t really get a sense of its scale or that special connection to the past that comes from actually physically standing in a place that was a part of history. I love photography but no image can do that. It’s all we have now, though. NAF Mustin Field is gone, the factory is gone, and the hangar is gone. Perhaps one day someone will be standing in the overgrown parking lot wondering what it looked like when it was full of imported cars, but honestly, I doubt they’ll care.
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