World Trade Center site
The World Trade Center site, also known as Ground Zero is the 16-acre (6.47 hectare) plot of land on which the World Trade Center complex of New York City stood until the September 11, 2001 attacks. The lease for the site and control of its rebuilding is held by Silverstein Properties Inc. whose CEO is Larry Silverstein. Silverstein obtained the lease for the then-standing towers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in July 2001 for $3.2 billion.
The Pile
The Pile was the term coined by the rescue workers to describe the tons of wreckage left from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. They avoided the use of "ground zero," which describes the epicenter of a bomb explosion.
Workers worked day and night to clear the wreckage and recover colleagues killed during the attacks. The site was officially cleared around Memorial Day, 2002, about 4 months earlier than expected.
The last standing piece of building steel, which was part of the South Tower, was draped with an American flag and carried out during a ceremony marking the last day of the recovery work. It was a symbol for all those lost whose bodies were never recovered or identified. It will be used to construct the bow of a new San Antonio-class amphibious assault ship, USS New York (which is specifically named for the state, not the city).
Since 2002, with the physical removal of the debris, the term pile is not used with respect to the World Trade Center site.
The debris itself was checked for human remains down to about the size of penny, however some families of the victims have asked for the debris which is located in a special area of the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island (N.Y.) to be reburied at or near the site of the World Trade Center. Mayor Bloomberg has rejected this request on the grounds of cost and impracticality. A small memorial is planned at the landfill itself.
Reconstruction plans
2002
Six land-use plans, created under Port Authority guidelines, were released in July 2002 to great public scorn. The guidelines demanded that all commercial space destroyed had to be replaced even while streets were opened through the site, greatly limiting the possible designs. However one of the most popular options, rebuilding the Twin Towers, was ignored by authorities, partly at the insistence of WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein. He is not comfortable with new office buildings taller than 70 floors and dreads the short-to-medium term vacancy risk of rebuilding the giant Twin Towers. His chief architect, David Childs of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, publicly denounced the original Twin Towers and the superblock as out of place and lacking in street activity or aesthetics. The July 2002 designs met with near-universal disapproval, forcing the government to restart the design process nearly from scratch but with the same guidelines.
A popular element from the designs was an open parkway connecting the site to Battery Park, with line of sight to The Statue of Liberty.
Seven new designs were presented and winnowed to two candidates, one from Studio Daniel Libeskind, and one from the THINK architectural group, led by Rafael Viñoly, Shigeru Ban, Frederic Schwartz, and Ken Smith. While Libeskind's proposal (which largely repeated the July 2002 "Memorial Plaza" plan with more unusually-shaped buildings) was not accepted by the public, Michael Bloomberg and George Pataki preferred both the design and Libeskind's approach to dealing with the necessities of the project to the THINK group. The THINK proposal was championed by The New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp. A public poll sponsored by the official planners saw the choice of "Neither" win comfortably over the THINK plan, with the Libeskind plan last.
2003
On February 26, 2003, Studio Daniel Libeskind's design was announced as the winning design. The design includes office buildings and a Wedge of Light which he claimed would honor the victims of the terrorist attacks by allowing sunlight into the footprint of the towers between 8:46AM and 10:28AM EST every September 11; shadow analysis has cast great doubt on this. Also the footprint of the towers will be largely preserved amid a huge sunken pit. Planning review continues, with many citizen groups of many angles strongly opposed to proceeding with this plan for various reasons.
Freedom Tower
The Libeskind proposal includes a 541 m - 1776-foot high tower. The chosen height in feet is a reference to 1776, the year that the United States Declaration of Independence was signed. Larry Silverstein, whose real estate company acquired the lease to the World Trade Center in July 2001, rejected the original design. In July 2003, he convinced Libeskind to hire David Childs of Skidmore Owings & Merrill as a co-architect of the proposed 1,776-foot tower, which Governor Pataki named the Freedom Tower. A draft design for the tower released December 19, 2003 was heavily criticized and as of January 2005 it was still unclear that building the spire according to the Libeskind design was even possible.[1] In May 2005 a thorough redesign of the tower was ordered after safety concerns raised by the police department.
On April 27,2006, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the Freedom Tower.[2]
Reflecting Absence
The permanent memorial, known as Reflecting Absence, is being built on the site. Reflecting Absence, designed by Michael Arad, was the winning memorial of a design competition.
Memorial Museum
On October 12, 2004 the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced the selection of Gehry Partners LLP and Snøhetta as architects for the Performing Arts complex and the Museum complex.
The International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center were proposed for the World Trade Center site. On September 28, 2005, Governor Pataki withdrew support for them in response to criticism from victims' families and others.
In January 2006, Snøhetta redesigned the cultural center at Fulton and Greenwich Streets. The new plans remove the Drawing Center and International Freedom Center museum, reducing the size of the building.
The musuem associated with the memorial "will retell the events of the day, display powerful artifacts, and celebrate the lives of those who died." [1]
Transportation hub
A temporary PATH station reopened at the World Trade Center site on November 23, 2003, restoring service to New Jersey and providing connections to the New York City Subway. The temporary station will be replaced by a permanent transportation hub, designed by Santiago Calatrava, which will be connected to the Fulton Street Transit Center and have underground passageways to the World Financial Center, where there is a ferry access. [3]
Other buildings at the site
The site master plan as of September 2005 includes buildings designated as the Performing Arts Center and the Cultural Center in addition to the four office towers, memorial, and PATH station. Detailed plans for them have not been made public. [2]
Legal disputes
Cost estimates for rebuilding the WTC site range from $10 to $12 billion. This was a major motivation behind Larry Silverstein's ongoing insurance trial. During the court proceedings, he insisted that the collapse of the Twin Towers were two separate attacks, thus entitling him to $6.8 billion, double the payment he made when he bought insurance for the complex in July 2001. His insurers disagreed, saying that the attacks were a single event, entitling Silverstein to half that amount. Silverstein was defeated in a court trial where the jury found most of the insurers limited to a single payout. With this verdict, which was read in May 2004, Silverstein lost $2.4 billion in insurance money. The dispute over $1.1 billion held by the remaining insurance companies was resolved by a jury in December 2004, when it was decided that the September 11, 2001 attacks constituted two separate attacks.
Currently, the World Trade Center site is accessible by subway and PATH trains at the new—and temporary—World Trade Center station. Much to some survivors' and victims' families' chagrin, the new PATH station uses the same track alignment as the old, meaning that the tracks pass through the south tower's footprint. [3] It is unlikely that this will change when the permanent PATH World Trade Center station is completed.
Other proposals
Donald Trump briefly raised eyebrows in May 2005 when he endorsed rebuilding the site with the Twin Towers 2 alternative rebuilding plan, and in June 2005 was one of the first to sign its petition to encourage Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, Larry Silverstein, and the Port Authority to re-think the Freedom Tower design and consider rebuilding the towers.
WTC 9/11 Memorials
- Reflecting Absence WTC site (proposed)
- International Freedom Center adjacent to WTC site (proposed and rejected)
- Tribute in Light WTC site (temporary performance)
- World Trade Center cross A piece of debris from the WTC with a disputed suggested use in a 9/11 memorial
References
External links
Politics
- "Ground zilch: how Al-Qaeda defeated New York", New Statesman, 5 September 2005
- City Proposes Swapping Land to Control Trade Center Site, The New York Times, August 3, 2002.
- Trade Center Developer Is Portrayed in Court as Calculating, The New York Times, February 5, 2003
- From Political Calculation, a Sweeping Vision of Ground Zero, The New York Times, March 3, 2003.
- Op-Ed: Ground Zero Is So Over, by Frank Rich, The New York Times, February 27, 2003.
Designs
- AN APPRAISAL: Rediscovering and Celebrating the Vertical Life, The New York Times, December 19, 2002.
- DESIGN REVIEW: A Goal for Ground Zero: Finding an Urban Poetry, The New York Times, January 28, 2003
- Two Finalists Are Selected for the Void at Ground Zero, The New York Times, February 5, 2003.
- CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK: Designers' Dreams, Tempered by Reality, The New York Times, February 26, 2003.
- Panel Makes Unexpected Choice for World Trade Center Site, The New York Times, February 26, 2003.
- Libeskind Design Chosen for Rebuilding at Ground Zero, The New York Times, February 27, 2003.
Groups
- Website documenting the politics behind the WTC rebuilding process. (inactive)
- World Trade Center Restoration Movement (updated mid-2005)
- Team Twin Towers (as of February 2006, updated with links to news stories)
- TwinTowersAgain.org (updated mid-2005)
Other
- Aerial Large Picture (9000 pixel)
- WTC/September 11 site by Ralph Lichtensteiger
- WTC-Box by Ralph Lichtensteiger
- A plan for rebuilding new Twin Towers
- Project Rebirth, a work-in-progress time-lapse motion picture project of the World Trade Center site from March 2002, up to the complete recontruction of the area in the future.
Template:Geolinks-US-photo (on the terraserver image the towers are intact)