Rocketeer
Transworld Airlines (TWA) Headquarters
Kansas City, MO. USA
Everyonce in a great while I get a fabulous blue sky and some puffy white clouds in my hometown. On this day I was driving by the TWA headquarters and looked up and had to catch this image. The orange architecture, the shades pulled up and down, and the infmaous Moonliner atop the building just seemed like a magical fit. Everytime I visit Disneyland and see their version it makes me recall this one here in KC.
In 1956 Hughes added a 22-foot-tall (6.7 m) version of the Disneyland Moonliner, known as the TWA Moonliner II, atop the southwest corner of the TWA Corporate Headquarters' Building, located at 18th Street and Baltimore, near downtown Kansas City, MO. When Hughes and Disney ended their business partnership in 1961 after Hughes sold TWA, the airline's management removed the Moonliner II from its roof and sold it in 1962 to a local RV company called SpaceCraft.
SpaceCraft moved the now all-white Moonliner in 1970 to Concordia, MO, where it landed near the south side of Interstate 70, between Kansas City and St. Louis, MO, where SpaceCraft operated its assembly plant; it slowly rusted on that spot for more than 25 years. In 1997 a Columbia, MO lawyer, who collected Disney memorabilia, bought the deteriorating Moonliner II and then began a long, careful restoration process, eventually bringing it back to its 1956 condition and sporting its original red and white TWA paint scheme. The rocket is currently on loan to the National Airline History Museum at the Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport, in Kansas City, MO, where it stands very near an original, fully restored to flight status, TWA Super "G" Constellation airliner; the Moonliner II is located about five miles from its original TWA rooftop location.
Moonliner III. In 1998 a new but scaled-down version of the Disneyland park's original Moonliner was added as part of the New Tomorrowland, complete with the familiar red stripes of the now defunct TWA. Today, this one-third smaller Moonliner is used to promote Coca-Cola "Delivering Refreshment to a Thirsty Galaxy"; it sits next to the building that once housed the "Flight to the Moon" attraction, which is now Redd Rockett's Pizza Port.
--wiki
Mike D.
Rocketeer
Transworld Airlines (TWA) Headquarters
Kansas City, MO. USA
Everyonce in a great while I get a fabulous blue sky and some puffy white clouds in my hometown. On this day I was driving by the TWA headquarters and looked up and had to catch this image. The orange architecture, the shades pulled up and down, and the infmaous Moonliner atop the building just seemed like a magical fit. Everytime I visit Disneyland and see their version it makes me recall this one here in KC.
In 1956 Hughes added a 22-foot-tall (6.7 m) version of the Disneyland Moonliner, known as the TWA Moonliner II, atop the southwest corner of the TWA Corporate Headquarters' Building, located at 18th Street and Baltimore, near downtown Kansas City, MO. When Hughes and Disney ended their business partnership in 1961 after Hughes sold TWA, the airline's management removed the Moonliner II from its roof and sold it in 1962 to a local RV company called SpaceCraft.
SpaceCraft moved the now all-white Moonliner in 1970 to Concordia, MO, where it landed near the south side of Interstate 70, between Kansas City and St. Louis, MO, where SpaceCraft operated its assembly plant; it slowly rusted on that spot for more than 25 years. In 1997 a Columbia, MO lawyer, who collected Disney memorabilia, bought the deteriorating Moonliner II and then began a long, careful restoration process, eventually bringing it back to its 1956 condition and sporting its original red and white TWA paint scheme. The rocket is currently on loan to the National Airline History Museum at the Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport, in Kansas City, MO, where it stands very near an original, fully restored to flight status, TWA Super "G" Constellation airliner; the Moonliner II is located about five miles from its original TWA rooftop location.
Moonliner III. In 1998 a new but scaled-down version of the Disneyland park's original Moonliner was added as part of the New Tomorrowland, complete with the familiar red stripes of the now defunct TWA. Today, this one-third smaller Moonliner is used to promote Coca-Cola "Delivering Refreshment to a Thirsty Galaxy"; it sits next to the building that once housed the "Flight to the Moon" attraction, which is now Redd Rockett's Pizza Port.
--wiki
Mike D.