When Allegheny County Airport opened in 1931, it was the third-largest in the United States and the only one whose runways were entirely hard-surface
A Pirep featured story · KAGC Allegheny County, West Mifflin, PA
By the late 1920s Pittsburgh had outgrown Bettis Field, the West Mifflin strip that carried the region's barnstorming and early airmail. The county's answer was audacious for its day: it took 432 acres of steel-industry slag dump and poured runways across it. Allegheny County Airport was dedicated on September 11, 1931 before a crowd of nearly 100,000, with stunt flying and parachute jumps over the new field. It opened as the third-largest airport in the United States and the only one in the country with hard-surfaced runways; everywhere else, the airlines were still landing on grass and cinders.
The terminal matched the ambition. Stanley Roush's 1931 Art Deco building went up in white brick trimmed in black, silver, and green, with terra-cotta planters carrying eagles, propellers, and squadrons of aircraft; Henry Hornbostel added the wings in 1936. Helen Richey, from McKeesport in the next valley over, flew for Central Airlines with the field as her home base; in 1934 she became the first woman to pilot a scheduled commercial airliner in the United States.
The airlines left for Greater Pittsburgh in June 1952 and Allegheny County settled into life as the region's reliever, which is the good news for anyone flying in now: the terminal never got modernized to death. The original wooden benches are still there, the compass is still set into the floor, and the Art Deco lettering still marks the Waiting Room. Land at AGC and you park at the airport Pittsburgh built when it decided pavement was the future.