In 1928, officials decided to build the first airport within New York City limits in order to reduce pressures on the increasingly busy airport in Newark. A site consisting of 387 acres of marsh with 33 small islands in Jamaica Bay was chosen because of it' s complete lack of obstructions and the ease with which it could be located from the air. In order to create the site for Floyd Bennett Field, six million cubic yards of sand were pumped from Jamaica Bay to infill the marsh around theislands and raise the site to an elevation of 16 feet above the high tide mark.

The rollover below illustrates how the land was reformed through engineering in the 1900's.