According to Donald Trump, landing at New York City's LaGuardia Airport is like landing in "a third world country."
"It's one thing to have $20 trillion in debt and our airports and roads are good — our airports are like from a third world country," he said during Monday's presidential debate. "You land at LaGuardia, Newark, LAX, and you come in from Dubai and Qatar, you come in from China, you see these incredible airports — We've become a third-world country."
Trump isn't the first to criticize LaGuardia's design. Joe Biden made the same "third world" comparison in 2014, and the airport has been ranked in many surveys as the worst in America. New York City may agree too, considering the city approved a $4 billion redesign of LaGuardia in March. The new 1.3 million-square-foot airport is expected to open by 2021.
But before LaGuardia became a place to insult on national television, it wasn't an airport at all. Over the past 100 years, the land that LaGuardia sits on has gone through many iterations, including an amusement park.
Keep scrolling to check out images of its evolution.
SEE ALSO: Donald Trump called LaGuardia Airport ‘third world’ — here’s the design that will transform it
The Gala Amusement Park opened on the land that now holds LaGuardia in the late 1890s.
Source: Curbed
The park was owned by the Steinway family, who also launched a piano company in 1853 that's still in operation today.
In 1929, the park became a private airfield. It was called the Glenn H. Curtis Airport, named after the famed aviation pioneer from Long Island.
Source: 6sqft
See the rest of the story at Business Insider