Salt Lake City International Airport saved the world.
The world map, to be precise.
The artwork was installed in Terminal 1 of the old Salt Lake City airport in 1961 and delighted travelers for decades until it was removed in 2020 when the new airport opened its doors.
Now, after years of storage, the terrazzo map showing United Airlines’ flight routes from the airport in 1959 has been retrieved and brought to Hall B of the new airport, which is scheduled to open along with the new Central Tunnel on October 22.
“This is something we wanted to show to everyone who came here and a lot of people who left,” said Chandler McClellan, a project manager. “Whether it was missionaries, business people, people going to war, anyone else, this is what they saw when they left town. We wanted it to be there again when they came home. We wanted it to be there for them.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The world map on Monday, August 26, 2024. Travelers will see the famous map again when Plaza B opens on October 22.
Engineers initially thought that the installation – which measures about 11 meters in diameter – could not be moved without damaging the artwork. However, project managers managed to dismantle the map into 75 pieces, each measuring about 1.2 meters long and 1.2 meters wide and weighing 180 kilograms. The total cost was $250,000.
After being recovered from the old airport, the map lay in pieces in a storage building on the airfield. Putting the pieces back together was like constructing a giant puzzle, said IMS Masonry project manager John Kunz.
The terrazzo tiles were certainly more valuable than an ordinary cardboard puzzle piece, however, which meant that workers had to do some important math during transport. Engineers had to calculate the number of pieces they would put on each pallet, while also taking into account the maximum weight the freight elevator could carry.
“We had to think through our process, take things slowly and approach things slowly,” Kunz said. “By treating it like marble or granite, we knew we could handle the product.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) World map of Salt Lake City International Airport on Monday, August 26, 2024.
After the world map completed its 600-meter journey from its original location in the old airport building, engineers are now looking forward to reuniting the installation with travelers on their way to destinations around the globe.
“When I thought about all the planning and logistics that would be required, I said, ‘We can create this map and replicate it exactly,'” said project manager Jake Bingham.
But a replica, Bingham said, would not be enough.
“They insisted on having this piece,” he said, “because it was something the public had a real connection to… I’m glad they went ahead and we went down this path.”
