Operational for just 12 years, the city's Renfrew Municipal Airport represented the future of air travel in Scotland when it was first built and it was arguably the most striking airport in all the UK, if not Europe.
Designed by William Kininmonth in 1954, who had previously worked with the equally renowned Basil Spence, it boasted an eye-catching parabola at the entrance of the terminal building - but the interior was just as spellbinding.
The curved roof, wall and sculptural pillars were all white and flooded with daylight from large windows. Here was a structure that looked ready for the space age, never mind the age of civil aviation.
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“The terminal building at Glasgow’s Renfrew Municipal Airport is a lost beauty,” wrote transport blogger Daniel Wright, who ranks it alongside Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art in terms of its architectural importance.
"Available to enjoy now only through photos. It was a design years ahead of its time, and yet apparently almost forgotten today.”
The very concept of an airport being aesthetically-pleasing was a new one - and one that would take a while to catch on.
The airport's roots were sewn during the First World War when Renfrew Council informed tenants of Newmains Farm that the Ministry of Munitions required the land for the construction of an aerodrome. The RAF sites at Renfrew and nearby Abbottsinch (which later became Glasgow Airport) played vital defence roles in both world wars, in part due to their proximity to the industrial heartlands along the Clyde.
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In the years after the end of the Second World War, the civil aviation authorities designated Renfrew as a state airport, and, amid a growing demand for passenger air travel, it was decided to open a purpose-built terminal on the site.
In the early years, Renfrew attracted a number of airlines and chartered operators, including Iceland Air, Channel Airways, Britannia Airways, and Aer Lingus. By the end of the 1950s, the airport was handling more than 6,000 passengers a month - and this number was increasing fast.
But Renfrew Airport, as it would happen, would prove to be a victim of its own success. In the 1960s, it had become clear that the airport was too small, poorly situated, and would be unable to cope with the huge numbers of travellers that were expected to flood the industry in coming decades.
The sleek, state of the art building was designed just before a giant surge in popularity of air travel - and, striking as it was, Renfrew just wasn’t big enough to accommodate the number of people and planes that would be needed.
The end for Renfrew came in 1966, with the facility replaced by a new airport at nearby Abbottsinch that we know and love today (we guess) as Glasgow Airport.
Today, the site where Renfrew once stood is unrecognisable. Demolished in 1978, the terminal building and parabola arch made way for Arkleston Primary School and a Tesco supermarket, while the old runway was ripped up to be replaced by a stretch of the M8 Motorway. Much of the area once covered by the airport was also given over to new housing.
Will we ever see the likes of such an architectural marvel as Renfrew Airport ever again? Probably not.
In 1991, decades after Kininmonth’s building had been demolished, the author Douglas Adams stated: “It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression ‘as pretty as an airport’.
"Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort.”
