Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Twins Rise Again: New plans come closer to justice.
National Review Online ^ | March 04, 2004 | Deroy Murdock

Posted on 03/04/2004 4:37:50 PM PST by xsysmgr

Front
[Note: Picture added - not in National Review Article.]

At last, an architectural team has given a glimmer of hope to those who want to see the Twin Towers rise again.

Herbert Belton and Ken Gardner just completed "The Plan of the People" to transform Ground Zero into a thriving commercial and transportation center. They also have crafted a tasteful and compelling memorial that recalls the 2,749 people killed there on September 11. It celebrates their lives and work without becoming an urban cemetery.

While this plan arrives two months after officials approved "Freedom Tower" by David Childs and Daniel Libeskind, nary a spoonful of soil has been scratched on that project. Legal, insurance, and financial questions cloud the Freedom Tower's future. Americans should urge public officials to substitute the majestic Belton-Gardner proposal for the lackluster scheme now selected for construction.

Team Twin Towers — a New York nonprofit that favors the World Trade Center's restoration — endorses the Belton/Gardner work. TTT unveiled their concept and stunning architectural models at a February 18 news conference at the Marriott Financial Center Hotel, two blocks south of where WTC Two stood for 28 years. It's all online at www.teamtwintowers.org.

"Herbert Belton and I created this to bring New York back to New York," says Gardner. He is a structural engineer while Belton, formerly with Emery Roth & Sons, worked as an architect on the first WTC's transit infrastructure. Their layout updates Minoru Yamasaki's 1962 design. Wider windows correct a recurring complaint about the Twin Towers. A "sky hotel" operates at mid-level in one tower. Belton and Gardner suggest that some floors house luxury apartments.

The new skyscrapers feature tougher, tube-within-a-tube construction. They contain more concrete and less drywall, a light material that was pulverized on September 11. Modern fireproofing, six (up from four) broader staircases, and sensors that pinpoint stairway obstructions all promote safety.

As before, the Towers dwarf shorter, adjacent structures, namely five attractive, 12-story buildings with rooftops as gently curved as the Towers are ramrod straight. These include offices, a transit hub, and an opera house.

This plan's memorial elements are sensitive yet imaginative. The new buildings stand 300 feet east of the Twin Towers' footprints. Each skyscraper's bottom five floors reappear in recovered or replicated steel. Within those lines, individuals who were killed will be named on stone tablets. Visitors can study this atrocity in an onsite museum and meditate on it inside a quiet, 12-story glass tower.

Belton and Gardner masterfully add an FDNY memorial at the top of one tower and its NYPD analog equally high in the other. They believe that since these brave souls climbed into each blazing building, those who honor their service should reach their intended destinations. Rebuilding advocates emotionally call for Belton-Gardner to become reality.

Hollywood entertainment executive Chuck Booms displays a small copper model of the Twin Towers that he acquired during a childhood trip to the WTC. Stifling tears, he recalls saying back then, "Dad, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen. How could man build such a thing?" He hopes to visit the new towers' souvenir shop and purchase a new model to
accompany the memento he bought at age 10.

TTT spokesman Jonathan Hakala says the Twin Towers were among Earth's few "instantly recognizable" landmarks. He compares missing the chance to restore them with "allowing the Pyramids to crumble or the Great Wall of China to come tumbling down."

Hakala says that financing anything at Ground Zero will be difficult. However, he believes it will be easier to fund something that is monumental, not mundane. He suggests congressionally-approved Liberty Bonds and private, domestic and international donations could help underwrite a new WTC.

"It was a magnificent structure to see going up," recalls Artie Vignapiano, who was a Port Authority landscape planner as the WTC was built. "When I worked on the 74th floor of Tower One, I used to tell people, 'You know what I get paid for? To look outside my window at the Statue of Liberty.'"

Vignapiano fled his office on September 11. Still, that horror has not slaked his desire to see the Twin Towers again. "All of the people who worked on the buildings — 10 out of 10 — want them back."

Erecting enhanced Twin Towers "can ignite the great American renaissance," Ken Gardner says. "I believe there will be a rallying cry for every floor that goes up...It's going to be amazing when it starts to pierce the skyline once again and rise above the Brooklyn Bridge."

If New York's civic and business leaders shelve the Freedom Tower and embrace "The Plan of the People," citizens from Gotham to the Golden Gate will exult. This winning detail of the Belton-Gardner blueprint embodies the American spirit: The new Twin Towers stretch 112 floors into the sky — two stories taller than did the beloved originals.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; US: New York
KEYWORDS: deroymurdock; freedomtower; nyc; planofthepeople; twintowers; worldtradecenter
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-57 next last

1 posted on 03/04/2004 4:37:51 PM PST by xsysmgr
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: xsysmgr
All I want is our Towers back.
2 posted on 03/04/2004 4:41:41 PM PST by Dog (Bin Laden your account to America is past due......time to pay up.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: xsysmgr
I *heart* it.
3 posted on 03/04/2004 4:42:58 PM PST by Bogey78O (The Democrats promised jobs but all they gave you was gay marriage- AppyPappy)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: xsysmgr
they ought to put this up to public vote. Let the people who were attacked decide how to best memorialize things.
4 posted on 03/04/2004 4:43:40 PM PST by GulliverSwift (Keep the <a href="http://www.johnkerry.com/">gigolo</a> out of the White House!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: xsysmgr

5 posted on 03/04/2004 4:52:08 PM PST by jaz.357 (Liberals fund the problems they seek to solve so that they can justify taxing you to fund them.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: xsysmgr
IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME SOMEONE MADE A DESIGN I CAN SUPPORT.
6 posted on 03/04/2004 5:00:18 PM PST by CzarNicky (The problem with bad ideas is that they seemed like good ideas at the time.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: xsysmgr
One remembers the Gary Larson cartoon of the deer with the target-shaped markings on its chest: "Bummer of a birth mark, Hal!"

Or to put it less obliquely: ANY buildings that go up there will be nothing but big EMPTY targets for another pair of aircraft. Alas.
7 posted on 03/04/2004 5:31:23 PM PST by Ronly Bonly Jones (The more things change...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Ronly Bonly Jones
"ANY buildings that go up there will be nothing but big EMPTY targets for another pair of aircraft."

This is why we must kill the Islamists. People who live in caves should not decide our urban planning.
8 posted on 03/04/2004 5:40:37 PM PST by CzarNicky (The problem with bad ideas is that they seemed like good ideas at the time.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Ronly Bonly Jones
OK... so we go ahead and paint a couple of big-a** red circular targets on them.

Dare them.

For some reason this really makes sense to me.
9 posted on 03/04/2004 5:46:06 PM PST by Ramius
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Ronly Bonly Jones
RBJ takes great delight in annoying those who support the anti-Muslim genocide committed by Serbians during the Balkan wars.

Hmmmm, and didn't it just come out that the Serb leader Maholovich saved hundreds of downed U.S. aviators while the Moslems were forming up Waffen SS brigades?

10 posted on 03/04/2004 6:52:42 PM PST by eno_ (Freedom Lite - it's almost worth defending)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: xsysmgr
I still prefer the design of 2 shorter buildings, one tall building and one more short building. The design that resembles the international hand signal "Eff U".
11 posted on 03/04/2004 8:01:54 PM PST by 3catsanadog (When anything goes, everything does.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: CzarNicky
IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME SOMEONE MADE A DESIGN I CAN SUPPORT.

Ditto. This is the only one that has touched me.

12 posted on 03/04/2004 9:14:05 PM PST by Marie (My coffee cup is waaaaay too small to deal with this day.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

Comment #13 Removed by Moderator

To: eno_
This is not the thread to discuss Serb genocide. Take it outside.
14 posted on 03/04/2004 10:11:44 PM PST by Ronly Bonly Jones (The more things change...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Ronly Bonly Jones
Just pointing out that Madeline Albright and Bill Clinton may not be the most reliable sources on who the bad guys are, and that we have been decieved about who they were in the past, too.
15 posted on 03/05/2004 3:48:40 AM PST by eno_ (Freedom Lite - it's almost worth defending)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: eno_
Just pointing out that Madeline Albright and Bill Clinton may not be the most reliable sources on who the bad guys are, and that we have been decieved about who they were in the past, too.>>

Just pointing out that I was in the Balkans 2 1/2 years, long enough to know who the bad guys were in the latest conflict: the Serbs. Been there, got coffee cup.

And no more. This thread is not about the Balkans. Let us be silent.
16 posted on 03/05/2004 4:06:55 AM PST by Ronly Bonly Jones (The more things change...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: xsysmgr
"The Plan of the People"

That should say it all. Why "Conservatives" would support this is a mystery.

BTW - The original was also a "Plan of the People" and a boondoggle.

17 posted on 03/05/2004 4:24:30 AM PST by decimon
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Ronly Bonly Jones
This thread is about slapping down the Moslems who think terror can intimidate us.
18 posted on 03/05/2004 6:34:34 AM PST by eno_ (Freedom Lite - it's almost worth defending)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: Ramius
This design says "We will not be intimidated".

This is a worthy message, IMHO, the only one worth sending.

We can either be a country that can absorb their best shot and build something even bigger and better, or we can wimper in the dark and hope they don't hurt us.

From my experience with dogs and other vicious animals, the former be respected and the latter will invite more attacks.

Just M(NS)HO.

19 posted on 03/05/2004 7:22:29 AM PST by bondjamesbond (John Kerry is nothing more than Ted Kennedy without a dead girl in the car.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: eno_
This thread is about slapping down the Moslems who think terror can intimidate us.>>

I've seen what happens when fanatics think in those terms: four thousand dead Muslim men, shot in the back of their heads with their hands tied behind their backs.

Genocide is genocide regardless of who is on the receiving end.

This thread is about rebuilding the Towers. Take your bigotry elsewhere.
20 posted on 03/05/2004 9:37:04 AM PST by Ronly Bonly Jones (The more things change...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-57 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson