The Naval Air Station was built to support America's rigid airship program. Hangar One was constructed specifically for the USS Macon, a helium-filled flying aircraft carrier that could launch and recover small biplanes while airborne. The Macon crashed into the Pacific off Point Sur in February 1935, less than two years after Hangar One was completed, effectively ending the Navy's rigid airship program. But the hangar endured. Hangars Two and Three, built later, and Shenandoah Plaza -- named for the USS Shenandoah, an earlier Navy airship -- form the historic core of a military installation that would serve through World War II, the Cold War, and into the Space Age.

The Naval Air Station closed in 1994, and Moffett Field was transferred to NASA, which operates it as Moffett Federal Airfield. The historic district's buildings have been adapted to new uses, though Hangar One's deteriorating structure has been a persistent preservation challenge. Its original exterior cladding was removed due to contamination, leaving the steel frame exposed for years before restoration efforts began. The historic district listing on the National Register of Historic Places recognizes the ensemble of buildings as a significant example of military aviation architecture and planning.

Shenandoah Plaza and its hangars represent a chapter of American aviation history that is easy to forget in a region now defined by software. The dirigible era lasted barely a decade, but the infrastructure it left behind -- particularly Hangar One -- has shaped the landscape of the South Bay for nearly a century. The hangar has appeared in films, served as a navigation landmark for pilots, and provided the most dramatic visual punctuation on an otherwise flat bayside landscape. That it was built for airships that no longer exist gives it a quality of magnificent futility -- a cathedral built for a religion that died young.