Twins Rise Again: New plans come closer to justice.

National Review Online ^ | March 04, 2004 | Deroy Murdock

[xsysmgr]

[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.

[eno_]

So if you are such a reliable witness, why are you not testifying against Milosevic? That case is falling apart.

There is, however, a pretty good case that the NATO bombing of Serbia was outside the bounds of legality.

[Ronly Bonly Jones]

Please explain again what this has to do with the Twin Towers.

[eno_]

Simple. Your comment:

ANY buildings that go up there will be nothing but big EMPTY targets for another pair of aircraft.

...and your profile:

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

...should be considered alongside each other, and in the context of the case against Milosovic falling apart. Painting the Serbs as more evil than their opponents in war was, at best, two shades of black. At worst it was a pretext to hijack NATO and conduct a horrific bombing campaign against Serbia's population.

[Ronly Bonly Jones]

I was in the former Yugoslavia on 9/11. Vojslav Seselj, certified Serb Nazi, lapdog of Slobo, and leader of the bloodthirsty bigots who started the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosova, and elsewhere, hailed the 9/11 terrorists for challenging America--the America that stopped Serb genocide in its tracks.

Now go away and sing "God Give Us Justice" but pray He never does.

[eno_]

What was stopped was Serb ambitions to carve up the former Yugoslavia differently than the Soviets and NATO.

It's the Moslems that want genocide.

[Ronly Bonly Jones]

What was stopped was Serb ambitions to carve up the former Yugoslavia differently than the Soviets and NATO.

It's the Moslems that want genocide.>>

Well, it wudn't Serbs that had their hands tied behind their backs and shot in the back of the heads at Srebrenica. It was Muslims. The Serbs committed the genocide. All the time yowling about how the Muslims wanted to commit genocide.

Go look up the word "projection" in your nearest psych dictionary.

[swarthyguy]

Unless they're taller than the originals, the jihadis win.

No matter what anyone sez.

[swarthyguy]

That's right.

Give up. Be intimidated by the jihadis. They just love your attitude.

Let's be nice and build smaller towers; maybe we can be friends with the jihadis.

Heck, put COngress, Homeland Security and the CIA and FBI in those damn buildings.

AS Mike Moran Said, Call 'em Mecca and Medina. If they're hit again, nuke those pusfilled pustules, the cancer on humanity.

[Cboldt]

All I want is our Towers back.

I watched the towers go up. I remember the skyline before them. I remember the days before the Verazanno Narrows bridge.

I watched the towers go down. I will never forget. When I am in the NYC area, I look at the skyline, and am reminded. I want the towers back, too. But I want more than that.

[Nick Danger]

[eno_]

With evidence like this:

Former NATO commander U.S. General Wesley Clark has told the UN war crimes tribunal that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic knew in advance that Bosnian Serbs were planning the slaughter of thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. Prosecutors say Clark's testimony is the most direct evidence so far linking Milosevic to Europe's worst civilian massacre since World War II.

...you are in good company, right? Whoa! Weasley Clark, butcher of Waco, says so, so it must be so!

[Stopislamnow]

Bigger, Taller, stronger is the only answer.

America has been sissified.

[LizardQueen]

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."

While I completely agree with him, love this design (I've hated all the others), and wish they do it, I also think that it will probably never happen.

Rebuilt towers won't be built if they can't be leased out, and since they'd instantly become targets again I think it would be very tough to lease them.

While emotionally everyone (myself included) says "put them back" I wonder how many businesses would put their money where their mouth is and actually lease space at or near the top.

It's too bad. I'm a native New Yorker and it rips my heart out every time I see the skyline without the towers there. But if it's not financially feasible those towers won't be rebuilt.

LQ

[eno_]

if it's not financially feasible those towers won't be rebuilt

That should be the only criterion.

[pax_et_bonum]

ping

[Ronly Bonly Jones]

...you are in good company, right? Whoa! Weasley Clark, butcher of Waco, says so, so it must be so!>>

Now repeat to yourself:
It was the fault of the Muslims.
It was the fault of the Croats.
It was fault of the Albanians.
It was the fault of the Slovenian.
It was the fault of the Germans.
It was the fault of the Turks.
It was the fault of the Russians.
It was the fault of the French.
It was the fault of the British.
It was the fault of the Greeks.
It was the fault of the Spaniards.
It was the fault of the Americans.
It was the fault of the Muslims...

Keep repeating until you feel better.

Buh bye, serbocrazy!

[robertpaulsen]

Keep in mind that there's more than one way to make the towers financially feasible.

Yes, it may be difficult to lease the upper floors. Fine. Leave them empty and finance the added construction cost with donations or a federal handout.

Personally, I would pay to see the towers back and two stories higher. Every time I see an old movie located in New York and the camera shows the towers, it strengthens my resolve to rebuild.

[MattAMiller]

I appreciate the sentiment in rebuilding the towers as they were but I'd rather not do it that way. It would strike me as a morbid theme park.

I want to see something forward looking. Something like we've never seen before.

[eno_]

It was the fault of a bunch of retreads from the Carter State Department, plus some nubags like Wesley Clark, a general who was removed from command due to his ordering British soldiers to fire on Russians and almost starting World War III.

These people brought U.S. foreign policy to the brink of disaster. The waged an incredible bombing campaign against Serbia to serve an abstract goal

To put the allegations of genocide in perspective, something like 200,000 people died in the wars in the former Yugoslavia. The allegations of genocide rest on satellite photos and subsidiary allegations that bodies were dug up and reburied. Originally, the number supposedly massacred was 20,000. Then 7,000. Then 4,000, but many of the bodies were dug up and reburied. Atrocities, yes. But "genocide?" That's an insult to people who really suffered genocide.