Greetings from Airworld!

I was holding my digital camera, elbows high and splayed outward to frame the shot, when a security guard suddenly appeared on the tiny screen in front of me, wagging a finger. “No photos,” he announced. I lowered the camera.

“But it’s an empty building,” I said. His look suggested it would be unwise to pursue this line of reasoning. He wagged his finger again. “No photos,” he repeated.

It was nearly 6 a.m. I was at John F. Kennedy International Airport, standing in front of the vacant 1962 TWA terminal, which was designed by Eero Saarinen and inspired in part by the Sydney Opera House. It’s a splendid if peculiar bit of aviation architecture—one critic compared it to a “Danish Modern salad bowl”—and one of the great landmarks in the domain of the frequent flyer, or what the novelist Walter Kirn ...