but Pan Am did not have any more space in its existing hangar. The New York City Planning Commission approved the proposed hangar in April 1941, allocating $389,000 to the project. LaGuardia attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the second hangar on August 4, 1941, and work on the hangar began that December. James Brooks completed his Flight mural inside the main terminal building in September 1942. The following year, in April 1943, an expansion to the original Pan Am hangar was completed. By then, the Marine Air Terminal had more than one transatlantic trip per day. American Export's new hangar opened in July 1943, and the terminal's observation deck reopened in June 1945. A New York Herald Tribune article in 1942 noted that Clipper flights came from as far as "Capetown, Lisbon, New Zealand, the Orient, Alaska and other remote places". During the Second World War, many soldiers would fly to Europe and Africa from the terminal, and political figures such as U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill also flew from the terminal. Even so, the Marine Air Terminal lasted as a seaplane terminal for less than a decade. When the terminal opened, seaplanes were generally more technologically advanced than traditional land planes; the earliest four-engine aircraft, capable of flying long distances, had been seaplanes. However, they were also more prone to disruption, particularly during the winter months and in poor tidal conditions, when they could not operate. Land planes were not affected by these issues, and land-plane technology was also improving quickly. With the outbreak of World War II, new four-engine land planes were being developed, making these seaplanes obsolete. Pan Am stopped operating the 314s into the terminal in June 1945 but continued to operate other service into the terminal. Use as international terminal By the mid-1940s, the small capacity of LaGuardia Airport could not handle the increasing demand for international flights. Despite the obsolescence of seaplanes, LaGuardia Airport was the only major airport in the U.S. which offered regular flights to Europe. To address increasing congestion at the Marine Air Terminal, the city government and representatives of several airlines agreed in June 1946 to spend $50,000 on upgrading the customs facilities at the terminal. Although the terminal had begun to serve land planes, it could only fit one plane at a time, and passengers frequently had to wait three to four hours