Dulles International Airport opened 52 years ago today, “a distinguished ornament of a great country and a great governmental system,” as President John Kennedy said at its dedication.

The main terminal was designed by architect Eero Saarinen and photographed extensively by Balthazar Korab, who donated the images to the Library of Congress. “This building, I think, symbolizes the aspirations of the United States in the 1950s and the 1960s, and I don’t think it’s at all incongruous that we should be at the same time devoting ourselves to the preserving of Lafayette Park and all of the old buildings of that park, and all of the old views which other Presidents a hundred years ago saw, and at the same time taking the greatest pride and satisfaction in this new building,” Kennedy said in 1962. “We believe in the past and in the future, and I think this building symbolizes that great future, as Lafayette Park symbolizes that brilliant past.”

Korab’s photos show the Chantilly airport under construction, which began in September 1958, and after it first opened. See them above.