Airship Landings on Buildings

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The Myth:

One of many composites of an airship moored to the Empire State Building. Never happened! Photo credits: Public domain

The INTERNET is rife with images of airships moored to the Empire State Building. The only problem is, it never happened! The pinnacle of the Empire State Building was built as an airship mooring, but no great airship ever moored there and no crew or passengers ever diembarked an airship to enter the Empire State Building. The narrow, precarious pathway, the 103rd floor, still exists though is off-limits to the public; see this 2016 article by the Daily Mail, UK. Even though the desire to moor airships on buildings existed in the early 1900's, the idea suffered from a major problem: It was a very bad idea!

It's a grand idea, yes! But when the practical issues of the idea surface, one sees that it is a terrifically bad idea! This is why it never happened:

It was grandiose to romanticize the idea of disembarking a great airship through the nose of the craft moored to the top of a skyscraper, taken to ground level by one or more elevators. But imagine a great airship, attempting to hover above the bustling city dwellers below, needing to occasionally dump great quantities of ballast water on the unsuspecting pedestrians! Imagine the danger to the surrounding area as the airship approaches the mooring tower as it dumps ballast even blocks from the intended destination! Imagine the high wind conditions at the nose as the passengers pass from the airship to the mooring tower entrance - hundreds of feet above the surroundings with nothing between the passenger and certain death except a narrow walkway! The airship also must be able to turn in the wind so the nose can always be pointed into the wind so the mooring tower must be designed to permit this continuous swiveling as wind conditions change.

And imagine the difficulty of dropping a rope from the nose of the airship and having it grabbed by mere humans dangling from an access platform at the top of narrow structures at the top of skyscrapers! Positioning a great Zeppelin is far too complex to imagine this scenario ever working!

And how would the airship have been replenished? Fuel, water, crew supplies, food, hydrogen or helium lifting gas? Provisions would have certainly been needed, even if only an intermediate stop!

No, the idea of mooring towers on skyscrapers never passed the "dream" stage. It is a myth, only a myth, that giant airships ever moored on any building. But it still captures the imagination in the photo-shopped images found all over the Internet.

Anatomy of a fake:

No rigid airship has ever moored with the top of a skyscraper. Period. It simply never happened. But the allure of the idea is so powerful that it entices people to fake it and create photos of a great rigid airship moored to the top of a skyscraper! But the simple fact that no such thing happened is not passed on with the bogus photo they created! This is a problem, because most people, clueless of history, will (and do) simply believe what they see! There is a reason that today the term "fake news" is so prevalent! Fake news is dangerous! Oh sure, a "faked" landing of an airship on a skyscraper will not bring about the end of the world. But why must a fake be continued to be "sold" as real? Why not be truthful? That's a statement transcending the topic at hand.

As with the photo above of the US Navy Los Angeles moored to the top of the Empire State Building (bogus as it is...never happened), no photo caption is submitted along with these faked photos explaining that it is only a concept, a fanciful idea! Those few who know are powerless to inform the masses who don't the photo is faked! Here is another example. It purports to be the USS Shenandoah moored at the L. C. Smith Building in Seattle. (Never mind that the airship shown is NOT the Shenandoah, rather, is the USS Los Angeles, and in the well documented history of the L. C. Smith Building, completed in 1914, the top floors and pinnacle of which were never designed or built to be an airship mooring!):

Left. Another of many composites of an airship moored to a Skyscraper - this one in Seattle.
Never mind it's not even the USS Shenandoah! The whole thing never happened!
Photo credits: Public domain.
Right. The original 1928 photo of the USS Los Angeles. Compare with the fake to see how the faker failed to
remove all of the actual mooring tower, parts of which are still seen in the fake.
Photo credits: Public domain.

Here is how it was done:

The faker simply found a photo of the scene and added a photo of the airship. He tried his best to blend everything so it looks real. Unfortunately, as here, the faker makes mistakes. Mistakes include: The original photo is identifiable, all the way down to the pedestrians on the street. The original photo of the USS Los Angeles is identifiable. The faker did not know the difference between the USS Shenandoah and the USS Los Angeles. The scale of the airship is wrong. The original photo of the USS Los Angeles betrays the ruse as portions of the actual mooring tower are still visible in the fake!

Here is an overlay of the fake superimposed on the original scene of the L. C. Smith Building in Seattle. Grab and slide the blue bar to see the two separate photos:

The Truth:

The truth is, airships have landed on buildings! Not the great, rigid airships such as the Graf Zeppelin, Hindenburg, Los Angeles, R-100, R-101, or the Shenandoah, but small airships, "dirigibles", also known today as "blimps".

I've identified SEVEN airships that are known to have landed on building rooftops. These events were so long ago that they are long forgotten and have become generally lost to history! These are all detailed below. As I become aware of other, actual airship landings on buildings I will be updating this page.

There have also been airship crash-landings on buildings. I have identified three. Since these events were not intended to be landings on buildings, I opted for a long time not to include them in this history, as they were each disasters resulting in the loss of the airship, and in one case, loss of life. However, in February, 2020, I decided these, too, should be mentioned.

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Identified Airship Landings on Buildings

Toledo, Ohio:

On the 30th of June, 1905, Roy Knabenshue landed his "Toledo No. 1" on the roof of the Spitzer building in Toledo, Ohio. (For more on the Toledo No. 1 see: Knabenshue Toledo No. 1)

Photo credits: Roy Knabenshue Collection

There are two, known stereoscopic-pair images of the Knabenshue airship landing which permit the viewer to see this 100+ year old event in 3-D! Good luck!

Photo credits: Public domain

Photo credits: Public domain

The Spitzer Building still survives today at the corner of Madison Avenue and Huron Street (514-526 Madison Ave), Toledo, OH; (Lat Lon) 41.652673 -083.536297. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. As of this writing (2020), the building has been unused since 2013.

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Los Angeles, California:

On Oct 21, 1905, the Los Angeles Herald reports that the police attempted to apprehend Herbert Burke for distributing handbills in the area of 5th St. and Broadway. Mr. Burke evaded the officers and ascended the store on 5th St to his awaiting "Man Angel" airship and he escaped apprehension! See the article on the "Man Angel" airship here: Reynolds "Man Angel"

Photo credits: Los Angeles Herald.

The newspaper article does not specify which "Man Angel" was involved in the landing on the building at 5th St and Broadway, but it likely was the Man Angel No.2 seen here over the grounds at Chutes Park, though this is NOT Herbert Burke in the photo:

Photo credits: Public Domain

Nevertheless, regardless which of the Man Angel airships was used the landing was on a building at this intersection in present-day Los Angeles. Perhaps someday I will identify which building it was, and be able to determine if the current building is the original. In the mean time, the intersection of 5th and Broadway is at (Lat Lon) 34.048116 -118.250700:

Photo credits: Google Earth

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Bloomington, Indiana:

On the 14th of September, 1910, Capt George E. Yager landed his airship on the roof of the Klemm department store on the North side of the Courthouse square in Bloomington, Indiana.

Yager Airship on the Klemm Department Store. Photo credits: Public domain

The location of the Klemm Department store is at (Lat Lon) 39.167702 -086.534364.

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Red Oak, Iowa:

Some years before February, 1917, Capt Horace Wild, or one of his crew landed on the Johnson Hotel in Red Oak, Iowa. I could not find a date with this landing happened. The only reference I could find was a story in the "Hotel World" magazine, 3 Feb, 1917, where Capt Wild mentioned the landing in a speech he was making at the Hotel Sherman in Chicago. Here's the story:

"Another hotel story Capt Wild told with gleeful humor was this: It was in the days when we gave flying exhibits at state and county fairs. We were at Red Oak, Iowa. The proprietor of the Hotel Johnson there is Sam Payne and I gave him a pain before I got thru with him. He was joking about our flying and said he would pay the hotel bill of our crew if we would land on the top of some building. Well, next morning our airship was landed on top of the Johnson. And at the end of the week Mr. Payne drew a check for $250 to cover our hotel bill. And Mr. Wild threw a picture of the Johnson on the screen showing the airship on the roof!" (From the "Hotel World", 3 Feb, 1917, pg 45).

I take the phrase "It was in the days when we gave flying exhibits at state and county fairs" to mean that the landing was likely a good 5 years earlier, perhaps 1907-1912.

Although I'd like to find a real photograph of the Wild airship on the hotel, the best I've been able to find is a post card from the time thanks to reader Neil Strickland who sent me this photo, which is far better than the one I was using. I think this postcard is pretty close to the original photo of the event as it shows the telephone pole, power lines, and original propeller of the airship. The other postcard version, found widely on the Internet, was clearly heavily edited and colorized and the items seen in the photo here are not seen in the colorized postcard. (Even the colorization was not particularly well done as it's color registrations did not overlap properly causing haloing.)

The date on the back of the postcard is Jan 6th, 2014, so this postcard cements the date of the airship landing on the hotel to 1913 or earlier!

Wild Airship on Hotel Johnson Red Oak, Iowa. Photo credits: Public domain

The location of the Hotel was a bit hard to identify, but eventually I found that it is the present location of the Houghton State Bank, the Hotel having been long demolished. The location is at (Lat Lon) 41.008756 -095.230955.

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Cleveland, Ohio:

In May, 1919, U.S. Army A-4 landed on the roof of the Statler Hotel in Cleveland, OH. It was a stunt at the Staler orchestrated by the Cleveland section of the Society of Automotive Engineers where the meeting of the association took place.

Army A-4 landing on the Statler Hotel. Photo credits: "Flight" Magazine, 10 July, 1919.

A short entry in the July 10, 1919 "Flight" magazine records that the airship was piloted by James F. Shade and that the purpose of the demonstration was to drop off two passengers at the hotel to "show the progress that has been made in the development of dirigibles and the skill with which difficult landings can be made by experienced pilots."

I should point out that the A-4 was a very successful training airship for the U.S. Army and even once carried Brigadier General Billy Mitchell in February 1923! You can read more here: Army A-4.

The Statler hotel building still exists and is located at (Lat Lon) 41.500750 -081.684853.

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Akron, Ohio:

On 20 Jun, 1928, the Goodyear blimp, "Pilgrim" landed on the O'Neil's Department Store in Akron, Ohio.

Goodyear Pilgrim. Photo credits: Public domain

Here is another great shot of the landing!

Goodyear Pilgrim. Photo credits: Public domain, taken from Popular Mechanics, Jul, 1929, pg 31

Read more about the Pilgrim at airships.net. According to the article on airships.net, the Pilgrim was deflated in June, 1928 and fitted with a new, larger envelope so that modification must have taken place shortly after this publicity stunt.

The location of the landing was at (Lat Lon) 41.079314 -081.520568, and the building still exists:

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Washington DC:

In 1928, the Goodyear blimp, "Puritan" landed on a building in Washington DC. The Puritan first flew on July 2, 1928 and this landing took place 5 Oct, 1928.

Goodyear Puritan. Photo credits: Public domain

Read more about the Puritan in the October 25th, 1928 edition of "Flight Magazine", page 942.

Here is a photo of the early Puritan at an unknown location in February, 1929, described as "taken after the Puritan collected mail from a nearby post office roof."

Goodyear Puritan. Photo credits: Public domain

The location of the landing was in Washington DC, and the name of the building on which the Puritan landed (the building no longer exists), was the "Emerson & Orme Building", 1620 M Street. [Thanks to fellow airship enthusiast, Bunky Wertman]. The building next to it still exists which provided the identity of the site! The building which still exists was the original "Sumner School", 1201 17th St NW, Washington, DC., at the NE corner of 17th and M Streets., NW. Therefore the building on which the Puritan landed, now long gone, was on the SE corner of the same intersection - now the site, fittingly, of the National Geographic Museum!

Goodyear Puritan. Photo credits: Public domain

Having identified the old Sumner School, the location of the landing of the Puritan was thus known and the "Emerson & Orme Building", long gone, was found. It was at 38.905378° -077.038108°, seen here on Google Maps:

Photo credit: Google Maps

And here is something unique! There exists a short video segment of the landing! The 90 year old, 48 sec video fragment is, sadly, shamefully watermarked by the image hawking site "Getty Images", but it is a wonderful video clip all the same.

A newspaper article implies that other landings on buildings had been made by the Puritan. Perhaps one day, those will be recovered!

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Identified Airship Crash-Landings on Buildings

Paris France: Crash of the Santos-Dumont No. 5, 1901

[Note: This crash site is also mentioned in my full-page covering the Airships of Alberto Santos-Dumont.]

On the 8th of August, 1901, Santos-Dumont had what he described as a "terrible day". On a trip to the Eiffel Tower in his No. 5, he began losing hydrogen. As he was attempting to win the Deutsch Prize, he made a bad decision to press-on. Enough gas was lost that suspension wires became caught in the propeller and he had to cut-off the motor. He had already rounded the Eiffel, but was descending uncontrolled. The winds blew him backward and he crashed into the Trocadero hotel complex. The No. 5 was destroyed but Santos-Dumont survived with only minor injuries and a bruised ego.

Photo credits (above): Public domain

This location is not well known, but by a rather lengthy study of Santos-Dumont's description of the events of the crash, and knowing the association with "Passy" suburb of Paris from the No. 5 crash photo above, led me to locate the crash site. I found an old post card which was oriented in nearly the exact direction which Santos-Dumont described as he rounded the Eiffel Tower, and flew against the wind back toward St. Cloud, passing by or over Passy. A group of buildings at the right side caught my eye:

Photo credits (above): Public domain

Examining those buildings closely, I found an exact match to the brick walls and windows seen in the No. 5 crash photo! Even the building in the foreground of the crash photo matches the building in the No. 5 crash photo. This is the crash site:

Photo credits (above): Public domain

There is no doubt that this is the crash site. There are many features in the photo above which match the No. 5 crash photo.

An here is the crash site as seen today. It's at (Lat Lon) 48.857503 002.286766:

Photo credits (above): Bing Maps

And the location on Google Maps, along Avenue du Président Kennedy:

Photo credits (above): Google Maps

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Chicago, Illinois crash of the Wingfoot Express, 1919

[Note: This crash and site is also addressed in my full web-page covering the Wingfoot Air Express.]

On July 21, 1919, the Wingfoot Air Express crashed into the 2-story Illinois Trust and Savings Bank which at the time looked like this:

Illinois Trust and Savings Bank Post Card. Photo credits: Public domain

The location bank was at (Lat Lon) 41.878398 -087.631863, today the site of the 20 story Wintrust Financial Corporation. The original building seen in the photo of the postcard above was demolished in 1924.

Photo credits: Google Maps

I leave you with this drawing of the dreadful incident from the July, 22, 1919 Chicago Tribune - not for any morbid reasons but to simply close this tragic, long forgotten episode of airship history in which thirteen people died: One crew member, two passengers, and ten bank employees.

Photo credits: 1919 Chicago Tribune

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New York City, the crash of the Pizza Hut "Bigfoot" blimp, 1993

On July 4, 1993, the Pizza Hut "Bigfoot" advertising blimp ran into trouble in New York City and crashed onto the roof of a Manhattan apartment building. The Bigfoot Blimp was a US LTA 138S non-rigid painted with the Bigfoot pizza logo and carried a large fiber-optic digital display on the side of the envelope:

The Bigfoot Blimp. Photo credits: US-LTA Corporation, us-lta.com (obsolete site)

Apparently, some rigging near the tail broke loose, perhaps a cable, and slashed the side of the envelope, releasing helium. As the envelope lost volume, control of the blimp was lost and the crew attempted to throw out anything they could to lighten the load and slow the uncontrolled descent.

The location of the crash was the Midwest Court Apartments, 410 W. 53rd, Manhattan. This is the only photo I could locate of the crashed blimp on the building, reproduced here without permission - but hopefully the AP won't mind its use here.

The Bigfoot Blimp - collapsed on a New York apartment building. Photo credits: Associated Press by Justin Sutcliffe

And the exact location, 40.765625, -073.988455:

Photo credits: Google Maps

To close, here's a 3 1/2 minute video of the crashed blimp at the site:

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