The 1940 Air Terminal Museum opened to the public in 2004, bringing folks inside the airport terminal that served citizens adjacent to Houston’s Hobby Airport from 1940 to ’78. The museum was later designated a Historic Aerospace Site thanks to its classic Art Deco design, and it spent more than two decades bringing those in the Bayou City inside the world of Houston air travel from a century ago.
The museum announced its impending closure in March, citing “a perfect storm of financial pressure,” and now it’s selling artifacts until it leaves for good.
Less than a dozen items are listed for sale on the 1940 Air Terminal Museum website as of Sunday afternoon. True aviation enthusiasts can drop a pretty penny to purchase flight simulators and the nose of a DC-6 plane for $20,000 each. There are also, as of Sunday, some signs and hitches available.
The museum, which is now closed to the public, will leave its space June 30. The liquidation sale, which will conclude then, began in March. At the time, museum officials cited a number of reasons for the shuttering, but it boiled down to economic issues.
“The closure of the 1940 Air Terminal Museum, an all-volunteer organization, is the result of mounting financial pressures that accumulated over time, ultimately reaching a breaking point,” the museum wrote in a statement on its website in March. “The problem is straightforward: the museum’s revenues simply do not match its expenses.”
The museum added its “once-reliable fundraising channel” had dried up, and thanks to “inflation and other economic factors,” the vintage aircraft it once raffled off has doubled in cost.
“This loss represented a critical pillar of the museum’s operating budget, and no adequate replacement has been found,” continued the March message. “While the museum continued to generate income through admissions, events, and private rentals, those sources simply haven’t been sufficient to cover costs.”
Museum operators lobbied Houston Mayor John Whitmire to and the Texas Historical Commission to take over operations, though those efforts were unsuccessful.
