New Hampshire Aviation Museum

This cute little building is now the Aviation Museum of New Hampshire, built in 1937 as the terminal for the airport in Manchester, New Hampshire. The Museum is run by the New Hampshire Aviation Historical Society. Soon this art deco style historic building is going to undergo an expansion to more than double its size, thanks to a million dollar donation by Eugene and Anne Slusser of Hopkinton, New Hampshire. Ground was broken on May 13, 2010 for the new addition which will resemble an old airplane hangar.

The building was one of the Great Depression’s Works Progress Administration projects. It was actually the second terminal at Grenier Field, replaced by a larger brick building in 1961, and then again in 1999 by the current 75,000 square foot Manchester Airport terminal. Slated for destruction, in 1995 the city of Manchester chose the terminal building for its annual preservation award. NHAHS applied for placement on the New Hampshire Registry of Historic Places, and this was granted in 2004.

In 2004 the New Hampshire Aviation Historical Society, the Manchester Airport and the Town of Londonderry raised the funds to move the 1937 building across two runways and save it from destruction. This move required approval of the Federal Aviation Administration and took all night, and the east west runway was closed for one hour, and then the north south runway was closed for an hour for the second crossing. The NHAHS raised 1.1 million dollars to restore the terminal building and convert it into a museum.

The New Hampshire Aviation Museum is open Fridays and Saturdays 10 AM to 4 PM, and Sundays 1 PM to 4PM. It is located at 13 East Perimeter Road, Londonderry, New Hampshire in the 1937 terminal building. For more information call the museum staff at 603-669-4820. The museum is located next to the runway, and has a wonderful close up view of planes landing and taking off from Manchester.

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For more information:

www.nhah.org The website for the New Hampshire Aviation Historical Society

http://www.flymanchester.com/about/history.php The history of the Manchester-Boston Airport shown in a timeline

Manchester’s Airport: Flying Through Time, by Edward Brouder and Maurice B. Quirin, UBT Press, 2006

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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo