World Trade Center Site

Though tragically no longer part of the city’s skyline, the twin, 110-story towers of Minoru Yamasaki’s World Trade Center—once bounded by Church, West, Vesey, and Liberty Streets—still seem to hover over downtown Manhattan [1], and all of New York. Erected between 1966 and 1970 by the New York and New Jersey Port Authority, the 1,350-foot-high towers were among the first modern skyscrapers built with weight-bearing walls instead of the steel frame construction popular since the late 1800s.

In the end, the World Trade Center stood for just 28 years, during which time New Yorkers grew accustomed to them. Their sleek self-containment, their shimmering prosperity, their constant reassuring presence.… New York didn’t know what it had until it was gone.

Today, the World Trade Center site, or Ground Zero as it came to be known, is an active construction site. All that can be seen beyond the screen of blue fencing is the rise and fall of the numerous cranes and the throng of construction workers around. Construction has begun on a memorial and museum [2] and some of the foundations needed for the new transit hub.

The final designs for the redeveloped site are still under debate as the developers and the city continue to hash (and rehash) the final plans. Hopefully, at this reading, some headway will be made on the work.