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The TWA Flight Center, also known as the Trans World Flight Center, is an airport terminal and hotel complex at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK). The original terminal building, or head house, operated as a terminal from 1962 to 2001 and was adaptively repurposed in 2017 as part of the TWA Hotel. The head house is partially encircled by a replacement terminal building completed in 2008, as well as by the hotel buildings. The head house and replacement terminal collectively make up JetBlue's JFK operations and are known as Terminal 5 or T5. The TWA Flight Center was designed for Trans World Airlines by Eero Saarinen and Associates, and was erected between 1959 and 1962. It featured a prominent wing-shaped thin shell roof supported by four "Y"-shaped piers. Inside was an open three-level space with tall windows enabling views of departing and arriving jets. Two tube-shaped red-carpeted departure-arrival corridors extended outward from the terminal, connecting to the gates. Roche-Dinkeloo, a successor firm to Saarinen's company, designed an expansion in 1970. The TWA Flight Center continued to operate as an air terminal until 2001. Its design received much critical acclaim; both the interior and the exterior of the head house were declared New York City Landmarks in 1994, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. The encircling Terminal 5 addition was designed by Gensler and constructed between 2005 and 2008. It contains the 26 active gates at Terminal 5, as well as numerous restaurants and stores. Although portions of the original complex have been demolished, the head house remains standing. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ), which operates JFK Airport, had once intended the original structure as an entrance to the replacement terminal. In 2016, the Port Authority began converting the original head house into the TWA Hotel, which opened in 2019 with two additional buildings adjacent to the T5 addition.
