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Nine Years Ago Today...
Sep. 11th, 2010 10:16 amHere's what I posted in 2004:
http://lazypadawan.livejournal.com/42282.html#cutid1
It seems a bit incongruous to mourn the loss of buildings when there were so many lives lost at the same time, but the loss of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center was sad nonetheless, leaving a scar on the lower Manhattan skyline. I know they weren't always there but, built in 1974, they were there for most of my lifetime and on every visit I made to NYC prior to 9/11/01. Driving up the New Jersey Turnpike or taking the Amtrak from the south, you knew you were almost there when you could see them peeking over the horizon. They were the first buildings you saw coming and the last ones you saw going.
The very first time I saw the Twin Towers was in 1982 while driving through New York City, but we didn't stop. We were on a long road trip from Miami and we were heading for New England. I couldn't believe how tall they were. I'd only seen the Twin Towers in movies; they starred in an awful lot of them from the 1976 remake of "King Kong" to Mariah Carey's "Glitter." But in person, they were massive. I didn't see anything that tall again until I saw the even taller Sears Tower in Chicago some years later.
We returned to the Big Apple in 1984 and this time we went to the World Trade Center Plaza. If they looked massive from the road, they were even more so right up there in person. We got in line to get into the elevators up to the observation deck but for some reason, my mom decided she didn't want to go up. So I never went to the observation deck, even though I'd been back in the complex on another trip in 1990 and despite a few shopping trips to nearby Century 21 (a New York discount chain, not the realtor) later on. But they were always there whenever I went to SoHo or Chinatown.
The last time I saw the towers was in December 2000. They were there looming over Chinatown and they were visible from the parking lot at the Jersey Gardens outlet mall I'd stopped at on the way home. I had no idea I'd never see them again, except to see them collapse on t.v. nine months later. I returned to NYC the summer of 2002 and that time I took Amtrak. When the Manhattan skyline was visible, the Twin Towers were conspicuously gone. There was a big blank there. The odd part is on the train, everybody went quiet, looking out the window. We were all thinking the same thing.
Honestly, I couldn't go to Ground Zero. At that time it was still a pile of smoldering ruins and while visitors could go up to a walled-off area right by the ruins, I don't think I could've handled it. But I did get as close as SoHo and it was hard enough as it was to see just empty blue sky where those towers were located.
At the time, I didn't like the idea of rebuilding. To me, it was like putting a condo development at the battlefields of Gettysburg or a cruise ship terminal at Pearl Harbor. But real estate is precious in lower Manhattan and I supposed the proposed Freedom Towers were better than any number of tacky things that could be put in their place. But now it's on the table, why is it taking so darn long to build? Now they're saying it won't be completed until 2013. Thirteen years, when the original only took about a year and a half.
http://lazypadawan.livejournal.com/42282.html#cutid1
It seems a bit incongruous to mourn the loss of buildings when there were so many lives lost at the same time, but the loss of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center was sad nonetheless, leaving a scar on the lower Manhattan skyline. I know they weren't always there but, built in 1974, they were there for most of my lifetime and on every visit I made to NYC prior to 9/11/01. Driving up the New Jersey Turnpike or taking the Amtrak from the south, you knew you were almost there when you could see them peeking over the horizon. They were the first buildings you saw coming and the last ones you saw going.
The very first time I saw the Twin Towers was in 1982 while driving through New York City, but we didn't stop. We were on a long road trip from Miami and we were heading for New England. I couldn't believe how tall they were. I'd only seen the Twin Towers in movies; they starred in an awful lot of them from the 1976 remake of "King Kong" to Mariah Carey's "Glitter." But in person, they were massive. I didn't see anything that tall again until I saw the even taller Sears Tower in Chicago some years later.
We returned to the Big Apple in 1984 and this time we went to the World Trade Center Plaza. If they looked massive from the road, they were even more so right up there in person. We got in line to get into the elevators up to the observation deck but for some reason, my mom decided she didn't want to go up. So I never went to the observation deck, even though I'd been back in the complex on another trip in 1990 and despite a few shopping trips to nearby Century 21 (a New York discount chain, not the realtor) later on. But they were always there whenever I went to SoHo or Chinatown.
The last time I saw the towers was in December 2000. They were there looming over Chinatown and they were visible from the parking lot at the Jersey Gardens outlet mall I'd stopped at on the way home. I had no idea I'd never see them again, except to see them collapse on t.v. nine months later. I returned to NYC the summer of 2002 and that time I took Amtrak. When the Manhattan skyline was visible, the Twin Towers were conspicuously gone. There was a big blank there. The odd part is on the train, everybody went quiet, looking out the window. We were all thinking the same thing.
Honestly, I couldn't go to Ground Zero. At that time it was still a pile of smoldering ruins and while visitors could go up to a walled-off area right by the ruins, I don't think I could've handled it. But I did get as close as SoHo and it was hard enough as it was to see just empty blue sky where those towers were located.
At the time, I didn't like the idea of rebuilding. To me, it was like putting a condo development at the battlefields of Gettysburg or a cruise ship terminal at Pearl Harbor. But real estate is precious in lower Manhattan and I supposed the proposed Freedom Towers were better than any number of tacky things that could be put in their place. But now it's on the table, why is it taking so darn long to build? Now they're saying it won't be completed until 2013. Thirteen years, when the original only took about a year and a half.
