Salt Lake City International Airport saved the world.
That is, a world map.
The artwork was installed in Terminal 1 of the old Salt Lake City airport in 1961 and delighted travelers for decades before being removed when the new airport opened in 2020.
A terrazzo map showing the flight path United Airlines took from the airport in 1959 has been dug up after years of storage and moved to Concourse B plaza of the new airport, which is scheduled to open on October 22nd along with the new central tunnel.
“This is something we wanted everyone who came here to see, and a lot of people who leave here,” said project manager Chandler McClellan. “Whether it was missionaries, businessmen, people going off to war, that's what they saw when they left town. We wanted this building to be there when they came back. We wanted it to be there for them.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) World Map on Monday, August 26, 2024. When Concourse B Plaza opens on October 22, travelers will once again see the famous map.
Engineers initially feared that moving the installation, which is about 36 feet in diameter, would damage the piece. Project workers managed to do this by dividing the map into 75 pieces, each about four feet long and four feet wide, and weighing 400 pounds. The entire operation cost $250,000.
The map was left in pieces in an airfield warehouse after being removed from the old airport, and “putting it all together was like putting together a giant puzzle,” said John Kunz, project manager for IMS Masonry.
But the terrazzo slabs are arguably more valuable than your average cardboard puzzle pieces, and workers had to solve some significant math problems during the transport: Engineers had to calculate how many pieces to put on each pallet, while also factoring in the maximum weight the freight elevator could support.
“We had to really think through our process, take things slowly, and take a leisurely approach,” Kunz said. “We found that by treating it like marble or granite, we could handle the product.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake City Tribune) A world map of Salt Lake City International Airport on Monday, August 26, 2024.
With the world map's 2,000ft journey completed from its original location within the old airport, engineers are now looking forward to reuniting the map with travellers heading to destinations around the world.
“When I thought about all the planning and logistics that would require, I said, 'We can create this map and recreate it exactly,'” project manager Jake Bingham said.
But replicas won't do, Bingham says.
“They were very adamant that they wanted this piece because it was something the public was really interested in, and I'm glad they pushed forward and that we chose this path,” he said.
