Framed or unframed, desk size to sofa size, printed by us in Arizona and Alabama since 2007. Explore now.
Shorpy is funded by you. Patreon contributors get an ad-free experience.
Learn more.
New York, March 22, 1915. "Navy dirigible, Long Island." 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.
This looks a lot like the C-4, which operated out of NAS Rockaway.
However, NAS Rockaway wasn't built until (I believe) 1917
Here's some photos of it, including a shot of their blimp hangar. Note the same doors, and the cupola on the roof.
http://www.farrockaway.com/carol/morprockawayairhistory.html
Here's an image of the C-4 herself.
My suspicions are confirmed by some brief online research. Dirigibles (rigid airships) are easily recognized by their "facets" - the skin is stretched across internal framing whose outline shows through. Blimps are inflated, and hence much rounder.
["Dirigible" does not, strictly speaking, mean "rigid airship" -- the current usage is a mistaken notion resulting from confusion over the similarity of the words "rigid" and "dirigible," which means "steerable." Ninety years ago, people correctly used the word "dirigible" to mean "steerable airship," whether or not the airship was rigid. The use of the word "dirigible" in the caption for this photo -- a caption written in 1915 -- has nothing to say about whether the airship has a rigid frame or not. - Dave]
Straight from my son in fifth grade: Aircraft are kept in a hangar. Not a "hanger."
[Sonny gets a gold star. Thank you! - Dave]
At the Tillamook Air Museum in Tillamook, Oregon the building is called either a Blimp Hanger or an Airship Shed.
[Not quite. Next guess? - Dave]
Having grown up in these parts, my educated guess is that we're looking at the future Floyd Bennett Naval Air Station, which operated until the middle 1960s or so. The multi-story building in the distance looks a little familiar. It might've survived until the 1950s.
What do we call the large structure where blimps and other aircraft are kept? (Hint: Not a "hanger," which is where you'd put a sweater, not an airplane.)
I grew up in Akron, the home of the Goodyear blimps. I used to see the crews muscling the blimps in and out of the huge blimp hangars there. I toured one of the hangars on a grade school field trip. The thing that impressed my young mind the most was the tour guide telling us that it would sometimes rain inside the hangar on a sunny day, because rain clouds would get trapped inside the hangar.
I was in Akron recently and saw that one hangar is still there.
This picture really illustrates the size of the ground crews needed to manhandle these things around. Sort of like trying to deal with a huge drunken elephant on a unicycle.
I thought the Rockaway Naval Air Station was founded in 1917, unless I have the location wrong.
On Shorpy:
Today’s Top 5