Museum of Flight in Seattle

Brief information

The aviation museum grew not from a display case, but from the long restoration of a single airplane. The Boeing 80A-1 was found in Anchorage and restored over 16 years, after which it became the central exhibit. That is why the museum reads not only as a collection of machines, but also as a place where aircraft are brought back from the state of a find to the state of an object for careful viewing.

Another key to the place is William Boeing’s “Red Barn.” This all-wood building from 1909 was the Boeing company’s first office; later it was bought from the Port of Seattle for one dollar, transported along the Duwamish River, and opened after restoration. On the grounds by Boeing Field, an early wooden office of an aviation company, a large museum gallery, an aviation park, and aircraft that have themselves become documents of different eras of flight all stand side by side.

What to notice right away

It makes sense to compare not “airplanes in general,” but different ways of preserving aviation history. The “Red Barn” shows Boeing’s earliest business past through material and form: the two-story all-wood building differs sharply from the technology around it. The Boeing 80A is important as the museum’s starting point: it was its restoration that launched the future collection, not the other way around.

In the Great Gallery, the Lockheed M-21 provides a separate focus: it is not just a fast airplane, but a carrier for D-21 reconnaissance drones, so beside it aviation already looks like a system made up of a machine and a launched craft. In the Aviation Pavilion, SAM 970 changes the scale of the subject: the first jet Air Force One was an official presidential aircraft, and is now open to visitors. The wing north of the Red Barn brings together aircraft from the two world wars, linking early aviation with the military use of technology.