[CPEO-MEF] Hangar One a key link to valley role in air age

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California
Hangar One a key link to valley role in air age
By Renee Koury
Mercury News
May 4, 2003

The huge glistening dome known as Hangar One at Moffett Field was an
engineering wonder when it was built in 1933 to house the Navy's first
West Coast dirigible. Today, it remains one of the most striking
landmarks in the region.

Stretching the length of seven football fields and coated in a silvery
sheen, the hangar rises like some mystical beast from the Mountain View
landscape. It's a longtime curiosity to millions of freeway drivers, a
beacon for airline pilots. And visitors say they feel engulfed in an
other-worldly atmosphere when they step into the hangar's cavernous
belly.

But Hangar One's most important role, historians say, was to usher a
robust aerospace industry into the region that spread down the Peninsula
and evolved into the technology hub that became Silicon Valley.

Now this gentle giant of landmarks, which survived one world war and the
Cold War, the closing of military bases and the whims of the aerospace
industry, might not make it through the latest debacle. Federal
authorities said Friday they may demolish the historic hangar because it
is contaminated with a toxic chemical known as polychlorinated
biphenyls, or PCBs.

Local historians say that would be nothing less than tragic.

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/5782658.htm

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