Local News in Brief : Airport Will Get $3-Million Museum

The colorful history of one of California’s oldest airports--a haven for barnstormers and Hollywood stunt pilots, and the place where the likes of Howard Hughes and Hal Roach tied down their private planes--is being be recounted in a $3-million museum under construction at Santa Monica Airport.

The new Donald Douglas Museum is part of a $20-million overhaul at the 69-year-old airport. In addition to the museum, a restaurant, 80 hangars and a modern administration building are being placed north of the airport’s single runway.

The museum, scheduled to open by November, replaces an older museum housed in a World War II-era building that many people said was too dark and cramped for visitors to appreciate the exhibits.

The new showcase is a cavernous, hangar-like building, shaped of galvanized-steel decking and modern glass blocks, nearly 60 feet high and with 32,000 square feet of floor space.

It will house the memorabilia of Donald Douglas Sr., aviation pioneer and founder of Douglas Aircraft, and up to 20 vintage airplanes, including a 1930s Spitfire, a P-51 Mustang and at least one DC-3, the so-called work-horse aircraft whose safety, speed and durability made the transportation of passengers comfortable and economically practical for the first time.