Logan's tower, completed in 1973 and for a while the world's tallest, is surely one of the most distinctive, if not exactly distinguished, buildings north of the Harlem River. Iconic and obvious, it does what few airport structures do anymore: It draws your eye and tells you exactly where you are. People see those twin-trunk, 22-story pylons, and there is only one place they can be: Boston.

Some of you might recall my eulogy to the tower's 16th-floor observation deck, which for many years was the most breathtaking perch in all of New England, with sweeping views of the harbor and skyline. It's barely two miles from the threshold of runway 04L to the heart of the city's financial district, and since the closure of Hong Kong's in-town Kai Tak, I know of no other major international airport (55 visiting airlines and 23 million passengers in 2003) in such close proximity to downtown.

North of the tower I can see the vastly expanded Terminal E. In the old days (doors opened in '74), when multi-terminal airports were allowed the whimsy of using actual names instead of sequential numbers or letters, this was known as the John A. Volpe International Terminal, in tribute to a former Massachusetts governor. Twenty years on, E has tripled in size, rebuilt for $200 million to the specs of what I like to call Great Rectangular Modern. It's an enormous box of a building -- airy, efficient and cheerless. Downstairs, passengers emerge from customs into a bleak, mausoleum-like arrivals lounge. Above, the departure level is a softer space of natural light and wood panel highlights. It's the work of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the renowned architects of Chicago's Sears Tower and John Hancock Center and, since we're doing airports, the tent-topped Haj Terminal in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Logan's original Terminal A, a once-stately edifice of brown masonry and five-story cathedral ceilings, is demolished now. Originally built for Eastern Air Lines, I can still remember that carrier's blue and white "Whisperjets" docked along the piers. Now under construction on this somewhat hallowed ground is a glass-and-steel replacement to be occupied by Delta, scheduled for opening in spring 2005. State-of-the-art and eco-friendly, it'll be one of the largest single-tenant terminals in America.

Between A and E, changes to the remaining four buildings haven't been so drastic. The central atrium of Terminal C looks more or less the same as it did when TWA was a mainstay tenant, flying nightly Boeings to Rome, London and Paris. It's been glitzed, chromed and mirrored, but I can pick out the vestiges at once, and stepping into C is like a visit to my old grade school: left turn here; right turn there; yes, I remember (37-11-29 was my locker combination in seventh grade, and 2-3-5-1 was the keypad combo to the door at United ops that same year).

The stairwells over in B, meanwhile, are virtually untouched. The effect is particularly striking in that not only do they look the same, but they smell the same -- that weird rush of time-warp sensory flashback as I step through the door. Gone, however, are the banks of foam chairs down at the luggage claim and the pornographic magazines the workers used to hide beneath the removable cushions.

Throughout Logan you'll find the usual chain stores and restaurants, but the overall blueprint -- a piecemeal assemblage of separate buildings -- helps it avoid the look and atmosphere of a shopping mall, the chief scourge of most modern single-hall airports. In my travels of the past year or so, I was disappointed by the overhyped facilities of Dubai, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur, which all share a genericism due primarily to the relentless focus on shopping. In contrast, and while certainly older and smaller, Logan still feels like an airport and not like a mall that happens to provide air transportation should you wish to stop buying things.

In this way, Logan is somewhat reminiscent of New York's JFK. Call it a poor man's JFK, for the immensity of Kennedy, both in physical size and aerohistorical significance, dwarfs Boston's parochial harborfront aerodrome. And surely Logan can't match Kennedy's aesthetic treasures -- the world's largest stained-glass window or, need it even be mentioned, a landmark like Eero Saarinen's TWA facility (Terminal 5 in today's gray parlance). Yet as somebody who has punched the clock at both, I'll vouch for at least one important similarity: the layout of terminals as independent structures, each with its own architectural personality. Anachronistic perhaps, and even inconvenient, but the result is an airport that retains at least a modicum of character in an era when "Take me to the American Airlines terminal," specifies nothing more than at which set of otherwise identical doors one wishes to be deposited.

At Kennedy, transit between any two terminals among its mile-wide necklace of nine requires either a shuttle ride or a hefty constitutional. For those switching carriers at Logan, Massport provides an inter-terminal bus. Alternatively, those fish-floor walkways provide covered passage, though transiting from D to E one is still subject to the elements for 200 yards or so.

Comparing Logan with JFK is, maybe, something only a Bostonian would attempt. Then again, overstating our city's institutions is part and parcel of a 200-year-old inferiority complex. We imagine ourselves on a par -- culturally and geographically -- with perhaps the world's most famous and important city, a metropolis 13 times the size of our own. Residents of Boston espouse a delusional assumption of rivalry -- as if our museums, public spaces, sports teams and skyscrapers could hold their own, one for one, with their Gotham counterparts. BOS and JFK, like the Red Sox and Yankees. And we all know how that goes. (New Yorkers have their choice of three major airports, of course, but I must, as a proper Bostonian, ignore this fact.)

We're not fooling anybody, aside from ourselves, but cut us a break. We need this game for the sake of our civic confidence. Besides, we like our little airport. Logan is very much Boston: the cosmopolitanism of New York on a much more human scale. And today it looks better than ever.<<

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