A mere 17 months after September 11th, and New York’s city fathers have decided that we’ve now got enough distance from the WTC attacks to choose a suitable memorial/ replacement/ redevelopment/ park/ shopping center/ office complex.
Personally, I wasn’t aware that we’ve attained that much perspective already. Doesn’t the present condition of the site adequately reflect the way we feel about it - an open wound? Wouldn’t common decency demand that we hold off on contracting architects before we’ve apprehended the architect of the slaughter? If this were a slasher flick, we’d be 40 minutes into the film: The captain of the football team’s been found garroted and hung from the ceiling fan, the police have traced the call - and it’s coming from inside the house! …this is not the moment to build a monument to all the slain cheerleaders, folks, this is the time to grab a conveniently-displayed antique farm implement and head for the door.
But no. Apparently it’s already time for victims’ families and venture capitalists to squabble Jerry Springer-style over the blueprints. And sensible voices have been drowned out. For example, my plan to construct a 120-story “Kick Me” sign has been repeatedly returned by City Hall.
[Photo: Governor Pataki views the new Trade Center:
“Could we put a no-fly zone over the Cinnabon?”]
Maybe it’s the right thing. Maybe our collective memory IS that short. So although it would have seemed unthinkable to turn Pearl Harbor into a museum in 1943, perhaps if we don’t construct the memorial now, people walking by the site of the WTC in 2004 will look at the empty space and muse, “Hmmm, didn’t there used to be some kind of… thing there?”
We can’t have that. So let’s get a-building, so that in a couple of years we can step out of our fancy new offices, buy a pair of relaxed-fit jeans and a frappuccino, and sit down to talk office politics with Joe from Accounting. All on hallowed ground.
Fanny Roborat
21 comments
jr
February 27, 2003 at 3:16 pm
1I’m guessing the real motivation came from the sponsor, Hot Wheels (who I understand will be releasing the model just in time for the Holiday shopping season).
Personally, I think the design is rather fitting, considering it was modeled after Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.
Chicory
February 27, 2003 at 3:24 pm
2I think it’s a really nice model. I’ll bet most New Yorkers will enjoy sitting outside, sipping a latte and looking over at it.
What? You mean, they actually plan on building two really big towers? I think I’m going stay here in the Midwest.
Max
February 27, 2003 at 4:07 pm
3Sandburg said it best:
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
Elayne Riggs
February 27, 2003 at 4:25 pm
4But– but– 1776 feet! So if you object you’re obviously unpatriotic and unAmerican!
Nobody seems to recall how many people objected to the WTC when it was first being built, on the grounds that it stuck out like two sore thumbs in an otherwise lovely downtown skyline. It’s probably blasphemy to say it, but I never thought the WTC fit properly, even though it’s entered everyone’s consciousness to the point where the skyline doesn’t look “proper” without it. But geez, god forbid they actually ask the people living in the area what they want; most of them just want a memorial, there are so many empty office buildings in Manhattan that there’s no friggin’ NEED for any more to be built. Why don’t we try instead to better maintain all the ones we already have?
Anonymous
February 27, 2003 at 4:45 pm
5Love this site - come here everyday now to get my real news
. I just wanted to offer a different perspective on this topic, because I initially felt very much like you do- I also live near ground zero and I have been very apathetic about all the designs that have been offered up and debated over the past few months. So I was surprised that when I looked more closely at the ‘winning’ design this morning I actually found that I liked it very much. I also had the chance to hear the architect himself speak about the design on WNYC this morning, and he really seemed to put a tremendous amount of time and heart into this. The symbology and light that he designed into the buildings, and the way he is leaving ground zero untouched as hallowed ground all just seemed very nicely done to me. (I think it would have been a *big* mistake not to leave some part of the ground as a memorial, as many of the other designs proposed). It made me glad that in the midst of all the commercialism and ridiculousness that’s behind this, there was someone who really seemed to put some care into this design, and seemed to understand some of the graver aspects of what was involved, more so than maybe Mr. Mayor and the venture capitalists.
Or maybe he just sold me, I don’t know.
I do think that if it’s going to be done anyway that (by some miracle) they picked the right design and the right designer.
t.a.
February 27, 2003 at 6:44 pm
6i’m not a new yorker, far from it here in orygun, but i agree with elayne: the skyline is a lot nicer without the humongous towers. but i do understand the important matter here: how can new york be considered the world’s greatest city if it doesn’t have the world’s largest phallic symbol? how can we hope for a stock market recovery and vast wall street wealth if the nyc business community can’t look out their windows and see a gleaming rod thrusting, straining, throbbing…
um, sorry, i got distracted. anyway, small is beautiful. build a nice brewpub, a park, and leave it at that.
BOB
February 27, 2003 at 7:04 pm
7Don’t feel bad. No one gave my suggestion a second thought either…
Matt Sandwich
February 27, 2003 at 10:32 pm
8Say there, Mr. Felber-guy, sir (who probably doesn’t bother reading
these posts since he’s got a lot on his mind and all). With all this talk
about attempts to float an, uhmmmm, NPR-takes-Rush-by-the-horns
sort of radio show, what would you say to doing your part and
contributing gems like this? You’d think this sort of issue would have
conservatives flipping their whigs, except maybe in this age of
robber barons returned from the dead to feast upon the living….
Elliott
February 28, 2003 at 1:38 am
9Gosh, this is a sensitive subject, but let me say that I think that the only people who should have a say in the whole thing are those people this effected. Since this effected just about everyone out there, we should realize that memorials are what you make of them, just as god is what you decide god is. I watched the sun rise from between the towers that morning from Newark, I noticed the beauty of those ugly thumbs in the sky and was amazed by New York that morning. We cannot replace those towers, but what should we do? I wish that there was an easy answer, but to just leave a wound forever is not a way to heal. My sister was killed by a drunk driver and the first time I felt any sense of healing is when we planted a tree for her. A building can be a living memorial as long as there are people to remember the dead.
Ibid
February 28, 2003 at 10:47 am
10I’m a DC resident. I’ve never been to New York or seen the towers anywhere but on TV/in movies. I don’t have the sensation of an altered skyline or know anyone who died in the towers. I don’t own a construction company or plan to rent space in a new building on the site. In fact what they do to the site has absolutely no impact on me. So naturally my opinion is the most important and you should all take my advice.
Whatever happens to the site will be a memorial. It may not even have a special 9-11 plaque, but it will be a memorial until the last of us becomes worm food.
Considering the Bush Economic Sabotage Packages that he keeps bombarding us with I’d say that something needs to be built fairly soon just to put some people to work.
Giant McDonald’s arches? Sure. A 500 ft penis? Why not? A giant radio tower and wind turbine? Sounds nifty.
No matter what is built or when someone is going to be pissed off. “It’s too tall.” “It’s too short.” “It’s just the wrong shade of greenish purple.”
It’s valuable property. Sell it to the highest bidder and let them figure it out. Use the money to buy Valium for anyone who takes issue with it.
-Ibid
Bobby
February 28, 2003 at 10:48 am
11The designer is the same one who design a museum in Germany that memorializes the holocaust.
Elayne Riggs
February 28, 2003 at 11:32 am
12Elliott, many of us feel the Towers don’t need to be replaced at all, that the spot should exist solely as a memorial without any new and unnecessary office towers. But of course we only look at things from a human perspective, not a business one, so our opinions don’t count.
Sarah
February 28, 2003 at 11:33 am
13I agree with Elliot and Ibid, they are much more eloquent than I could hope to be. I visited a site yesterday that you could post comments on the design and several of the comments were from ignorant people. It is so nice to come to this site and not feel that way about these postings. Thank you, Mr. Felber.
-Sarah in Oregon
Sarah
February 28, 2003 at 11:33 am
14I agree with Elliot and Ibid, they are much more eloquent than I could hope to be. I visited a site yesterday that you could post comments on the design and several of the comments were from ignorant people. It is so nice to come to this site and not feel that way about these postings. Thank you, Mr. Felber.
-Sarah in Oregon
Sarah
February 28, 2003 at 12:22 pm
15Sorry I posted twice, me bad.
MeanTim
February 28, 2003 at 11:27 pm
16So you decided to post a third time????? Completely unacceptable! Go to your room and think about what you’ve done…. Oh I’m sorry I can’t stay mad at you. I’m sorry I used so many question marks and the exclamation point was way over the line.
julia
March 1, 2003 at 10:21 am
17the kid cried when I showed her the Liebeskind plan, because she thought (I didn’t realize) that we were going to get the twin towers back. She’s been holding onto that as if all the awful things that have happened since then would go away.
My dad used to take my brother and I walking downtown on weekends to watch them build the towers and I passed through them every day on the way to work. There’s an empty place inside where they used to be, and there probably will be always, although I don’t expect I’ll think about it too much after a while.
I think they ought to rebuild. The people who died got up every morning and went to work and did whatever they did to make lives for themselves and their families. They’re always going to be dead. They used to be alive. I’d rather see life returning to the site as a tribute to them. The open wound seems to me like a ghastly inverse tribute to the hijackers.
I’m also a little tired of national politicians who would probably have been happier if they’d taken out the whole city using us as a symbol of whatever obscenity they’re trying to push through. I think new towers would be a real symbol of New York - saying fuck you to them as don’t love us and getting on with our lives.
Even if that lowlife Pataki is involved.
Elayne Riggs
March 1, 2003 at 11:08 am
18“I’d rather see life returning to the site as a tribute to them.” Me too. Life as in a public garden or other green and beautiful space, not as in icky tall buildings that make a mockery of the landscape (again) and stick out like a target (again). I just don’t get why people feel we need the office buildings.
julia
March 1, 2003 at 11:20 pm
19I think probably the guy who signed the 99 year lease on the buildngs about 45 minutes before the planes hit probably feels the most strongly about it.
Honestly, my mind is doing an amoeba-and-glass-pipette thing about this whole subject. I was at Century 21 today shopping for the kid’s summer clothes and it was tourist hell across the street at the site.
I think I’d support rebuilding if it didn’t accomplish anything but making the ghouls go away.
Hunter
March 3, 2003 at 8:48 pm
20One small observation. I like the idea of a skyscraper planted with gardens, but I hope they’re careful about what they plant up there.
Just a tip: don’t plant, say — an apple tree — 1500 feet above a crowded Manhattan sidewalk.
Jason
March 3, 2003 at 9:59 pm
21I think that this new building (I’ve seen the architect on TV) should also include a memorial to not only those who died on 9/11, but in the first WTC attack (which was 10 years ago last Wednesday (2.26)). My opinion is that we remember 9/11 and the people who perished so much, that we tend to forget those who died in the first attack a decade ago.