New York City (Part 2) NY USA

New York City Hall

Friday 12 October was a down-day on the repair work on BV, so we took a second trip into the Big Apple.  The weather was much better than the previous Sunday but we had planned to visit the 9/11 Museum so we took the subway to the financial district and then walked the 5-10minutes from there to the World Trade Centre site, ogling the buildings as we went.  Again, we saw an interesting mix of beautiful old skyscrapers, impressive ultra-modern towers and some pretty ugly mid-century buildings.

The Woolworth Building is a beautiful building but the structure next to it is so lacking in aesthetics that it should be torn down

The World Trade Centre Oculus Centre

Despite the World Trade Centre site now housing the tallest building in the USA (1 World Trade Centre, 1776ft) and 2 more of the top ten tallest buildings in New York (3 and 4 World Trade Centre) the building that first grabs and holds your eye as you approach the site is the incredible Oculus Centre.  It’s an enormous white building, somewhat reminiscent of a rack of ribs, an enormous dinosaur exhibit or a Pokemon.  Inside the huge vaulted space, we felt a little as if we were Jonah, swallowed inside a huge blue whale with the baleens stretching up on either side. The building is actually the main transport hub for the World Trade Centre site as well as being a huge retail location so, as we weren’t interested in either function, after gawping a bit like many of the other visitors we followed the signs out to the 9/11 Memorial.

The 9/11 Memorial.  (Top left) North Pool – when we visited the wall fountains in this pool were off
because of the strong winds.  (Top right and bottom) South Pool

The National September 11 Memorial, which centres on twin pools, provides an area for remembrance of all those who died in the terrorist attacks of 9 September 2001, whether they died at the World Trade Centre site, at the Pentagon or in the crash of Flight 93, as well as for the 6 victims of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre.  The names of those who died are inscribed on bronze blocks which edge the pools, each of which covers the original footprint of its respective tower.  It was incredibly busy when we visited but even with so many people in the memorial area, and with the city so close, the pools with their waterfalls, the trees and the openness of the space (in comparison to most of the city) provide an effective space for reflection and remembrance.

(Right) The Twin Towers and (left) remnants of 2 of the steel uprights that formed part of the exterior structure of the towers – in this instance a section of the shaped ‘windows’ near ground level

The museum and the memorial are run by the same company with proceeds from the museum being used to pay for the upkeep of the memorial.  It seemed very busy when we visited so Nicky asked about visitor numbers.  She was told that on a normal day there are about 10,000 visitors, 14,000 on a busy day….. and the day we visited didn’t classify as busy!

The main hall of the museum, showing the Last Column standing (signed by many of the recovery teams that worked on the site) and the original slurry wall of the ‘bathtub’, the retaining wall between the buildings’ foundations and the Hudson River not far beyond

Like the memorial, the museum is essentially underground.  While the memorial’s deep ponds represent the void left behind, and the same could be said of the museum, from a more prosaic perspective putting the main body of the museum underground opens up some interesting features of the Twin Towers that would otherwise not be seen.  A case in point is the slurry wall, which stands 30 feet or so high in the main exhibition space.  When the Twin Towers were built, the Hudson River was extremely close to their foundations (the spoil excavated from their foundations and basements was used to reclaim land to the west of Manhattan, into the Hudson River).  The architects were worried that the river’s proximity would undermine the towers’ foundations and so used a novel system to build a protective wall (the slurry wall) to provide the stability and protection the buildings needed.  Interestingly, despite the reclamation around the World Trade Centre site, when the terrorist attacks occurred, there were concerns that the slurry walls would be compromised and that they may collapse, which would likely cause a structural failure above.  In the event, the slurry walls survived the attacks unscathed though, of course, the towers failed for other reasons.

(Left) Part of the exterior structure of one of the towers.  (Right) The remains of the communication mast from the top of the North Tower

We saw a number of dramatic displays in the main hall of the museum.  The slurry wall and the ‘Last Column Standing’ feature as primary focal points but the crumpled sections of the towers’ exterior structure and the remains of the North Tower’s comms mast were probably more potent symbols of the devastation wrought by the aeroplanes’ collisions and the subsequent collapses.

In the focal point of the museum (an enclosed, maze-like space separate from the main hall), where the events of 9 Sep 2001 are narrated in detail, photography is not permitted.  So we have nothing to show of the nearly 3 hours we spent in there, listening, reading and watching many harrowing tales.  There are countless recordings, from aircraft, from the Towers, from the emergency services…...  We heard people calling the emergency services, telling them not to forget the employees at the top of the North Tower (above where the plane hit and so with no lift and no stairs to get them down); we heard the voices of people who were in doomed aircraft calling their loved ones’ voicemail; and we heard air traffic controllers trying to work out what was going on and whether or not Flight 93 was still airborne.  And then there were the eye-witness accounts.  Seared on my memory is that of one person who escaped the collapse describing firemen climbing the stairs as they, the eye-witness, was escaping downwards: ‘they looked so scared but they were still going up……’.  Unfortunately, so many of the rescue workers didn’t come down alive, though a vast number of the 50,000 people who worked in the Twin Towers did manage to get out – a quite incredible statistic when you think about it.

The World Trade Centre area lives on

Given the numbers in the museum (we spent much of our visit jostling for position to view exhibits and read the commentaries) it was an incredibly quiet and sombre experience.  And whilst we had felt when we entered that the main hall (with the slurry wall etc) was quiet, the lightening of the atmosphere as we left the focal area of the museum and re-entered the main hall was quite extraordinary.

The Woolworth Building

Coming up to ground level, back to the memorial and to New York City as a whole, was a bit of a shock.  So to reacclimatise before heading into the subway, we walked to Battery Park via the Woolworth Building.  It was a beautiful late afternoon and from the tip of Manhattan we could see the distant figure of the Statue of Liberty as the blazing sun dropped in the sky behind her.  A fitting end to an emotional day.

New York, New York, USA