Google’s restoration of the mammoth Hangar One now complete

For anyone who has driven Highway 101 through Mountain View, California, Hangar One at Moffett Field is as familiar as the mountains in the distance. For most of the past decade, though, it was a haunt rather than a landmark – a hulking steel skeleton and reminder of engineering ambition looming over Silicon Valley. That changed last month. On March 20, officials and community members gathered inside the fully restored hangar to mark a moment many had stopped believing would ever come.

Of fog and airships

Hangar One is among the world’s largest freestanding structures, covering eight acres at Moffett Field near Mountain View. Eight football fields could fit inside its cavernous interior, where fog sometimes gathers near its 198-ft (60-m) high ceiling. It measures 1,133 ft (345 m) long and 308 ft (94 m) wide.

In 1933, the United States Navy built it as the West Coast base for the USS Macon, a massive dirigible measuring 785 ft (239 m) in length. The Macon was a marvel of its era –…