Any idea? What is the "tree" you reference? Isn't the subway running right to the site now?
I work in Rockefeller Plaza now, not the WTC, but yes the PATH train has resumed running. The PATH runs underground, but it is techincally not the "subway."
Posted on 12/26/2003 7:33:03 AM PST by presidio9
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:50:42 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Looking out my office window in lower Manhattan, across the 16 acres that have become an excavation site, I can see a steel mesh fence on the far side, and from one end to the other people are standing at the fence, looking into the September 11 space. This is Christmas week, and you could say these are just holiday tourists who've come to gawk at "Ground Zero." But these people are always at the fence, and have been at all hours for more than two years, looking in.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I have seen the new design and it was my understanding that even though it is much taller, only the first sixty floors will be used for occupancy, the rest is ornamental. Does the Port Authority still own the property? I thought an individual had bought it several years ago.
You may be on to something there.
I was born in 1965 right across the river from the towers. I can remember them just being completed but I have better memories of the World Financial Center going up. I have no recollection of what was there before the WTC.
Yah - and how many of them are remembered by everyone not a tourist specifically looking for the spot (and visited for that reason)? the times I've been to NYC (every season) most of what I see is people looking for a good place to spend their lunchtime - and I'm afraid that the small park/etc. planned for the trade center site will devolve to that status: "a nice place to get-outside to (e.g. lunchtime spot)".
The problem with this sort of proposal is that it is being made purely to satisfy the contemporary personal emotions of Henninger and those taking similar points of view. It gives, at best, short shrift to the actual needs of New York City (and particularly Lower Manhattan) as a going concern, and falsely presumes that both New Yorkers and Americans in general of the future will have the same need to feel continual, perpetual grief at the events of September 11, 2001.
They won't. The people of 2051, or of 2101, are not going to need or want a giant hole in the middle on the biggest city in the country. 9/11 will be nothing more than a chapter in the history books for most of those people, and thy will see a giant 16-acre bathtub, "prettified" or not, as an outrageous example of the self-centeredness of early 21st-century Americans. (They'll probably think of 9/11 as the point at which the true excesses of the 20th century, particularly the Clueless 90s, came to its true end, and of any such overwhelming "memorial hole" as the last hurrah of a people with their priorities seriously out of whack.) Such a memorial might satiate the immediate touchy-feely needs of a certain segment of our society, but from the perspective of fifty or one hundren years hence, it would say far more about the egos of those involved in creating the site and preventing it from being rebuilt than it ever would about 9/11 itself.
Everyone is free to hold whatever opinions they wish about what should become of Ground Zero, but it must be remembered that the WTC belongs to New Yorkers, not all Americans. Top priority must be given to the needs of New Yorkers, not the desires of the rest of America. Unless it is in the best interest of NYC to turn the WTC into a pure memorial, it should not happen.
(If you want to get technical, the real estate is legally owned by both New York State and New Jersey, but you know what I mean.)
This statement is not consistent with your tagline - apparently you can be pushed.
(just an observation...)
I've come to the conclusion that if the "Freedom Tower" ends up getting built as currently designed, it will not last much longer than the Twin Towers did themselves. And it won't be because terrorists take out the new building, but because the place will be almost certain to end up a financial boondoggle. They may have worked out a way to create roughly the same amount of office and retail space as the original WTC, but none of it will have any of the grandiosity and chutzpah of the Twin Towers. The area won't feel like New York City, and certainly not like a complex that will be fun and exhilerating to work in. So they'll have trouble filling the space, and Silverstein (or more likely his heirs) will eventually get sick of losing money and jump at the chance to re-rebuild when memories have faded in 20 or 30 years and some hotshot young architect comes along with a plan to truly make the site great again. When that happens, the wrecking balls will be taken to that oversized piece of decorated scaffolding so fast it'll make your head spin.
I hope I'm alive to see it.
They just might you know, it is possible. I think Hillary will propose it sooner or later.
Bloomberg is a pompous, self-important idiot. I think he will go down as New York's worst mayor, ever. At one of the most crucial junctures in our history he has made one idiotic choice after another (they are to willful and thought out to be called "blinders.) The city is like Omaha now - boring. The vibrant youth culture that made the place so fun is slowly disipating. And my has the nanny state arrived - all the parks now have fences all over them. It is really not the NYC I loved.
All but the very rich are moving. The cost of living for the average citizen has gone up of 25% in two years and there are no jobs. Young native New Yorkes in the outer bouroughs have to leave. They cannot find work to match the rent and they will never be able to buy. He made the biggest property tax raise in the city's history and was then astounded to find that people cannot pay it. And do not get me started on the smoking laws. Old neighborhood pubs that have been around for two generations are closing. One cannot think up a worse response to 911 than what has been coming out of City Hall. I wonder if we ever recover. It is not the same place. Even I am thinking of leaving, and I am one of those types that would never think about leaving.
I'm not saying what it should be, either way. My point is that for the crassness and short-mindedness of 99% of the 'cattle' in the city they will quickly become less-mindful of the atrocity and tragedy that the memorial represents and, for the locals, I'm afraid it'll become "just another place".
As for your other comments: do Hawaiians feel that Pearl Harbor is "theirs"? Or Gettysburg is only for Pennsylvanians? The site does 'belong' to all Americans, in a sense, as would any other location involved in a similar occurance but, though controlled by the municipality I believe it IS still owned by a particular individual or corporation and is _leased_ to, and managed by, the municipality (I think I remember hearing about that not long after the site was cleared and the owner wanted to rebuild - it was purchased something like a year before the crashes).
When Gettysburgh becomes an international trade hotspot, you let me know, and I may change my mind about it, too.
I work in Rockefeller Plaza now, not the WTC, but yes the PATH train has resumed running. The PATH runs underground, but it is techincally not the "subway."
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