Over a half a century ago, a large airplane hangar in West Los Angeles housed the notorious Spruce Goose aircraft, Howard Hughes’ massive wooden flying boat that was airborne for only one short flight. Now, that historic hangar is being refurbished and protected using products by TEX•COTE^®, a leading nationwide manufacturer of Infrared heat reflective architectural coatings.

The former Spruce Goose hangar that was built by aircraft innovator Howard Hughes in 1945 in Playa Vista, California, is being renovated for use as office space. The project’s architects were looking for an infrared heat reflective coating and a dark color that will last on the building and not fade, and provide energy savings. They chose TEX•COTE, which will be coating over 160,000 square feet of this historic metal building with its REFLECT-TEC^® product in a dark, rich color called Black Bean. TEX•COTE makes this black bean color over 320 percent more reflective than all of its competition in the same identical visual color. For this 160,000-square-foot project, it is being coated with REFLECT-TEC. Reflect-Tec is a field-applied Kynar PVDF resin system using Infrared technology to coat all the exterior metal surfaces including many of the original galvanized steel and aluminum surfaces from the 1940s.

The Hughes Aircraft hangar that housed the Spruce Goose has been preserved as a historic structure in the up-and-coming neighborhood known today as Playa Vista. Located between Culver City and Marina Del Ray, the Playa Vista neighborhood was once the property of Hughes Aircraft and Howard Hughes, an eccentric billionaire aviation innovator, and is now home to many creative and technology companies.

The Hughes H-4 Hercules, nicknamed the Spruce Goose, was a prototype airlift flying boat that was supposed to be used during World War II but was not done in time. It made only one short flight, with Hughes as the pilot, in 1947 before the government-supported project was mothballed. The plane is now on public display at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

TEX•COTE, also called Textured Coatings of America, Inc. was founded in 1961, in Los Angeles California having factories in both California and Florida.

For more information, visit www.texcote.com.

By Textured Coatings of America, Inc.