The World Trade Center buildings before September 11, 2001 were not particularly beloved buildings. They were tall but they lacked that soaring grace of the Empire State Building or the Chrysler building.
If you wanted to show an image that typified New York the twin towers would appear at the very edge of the image like a semicolon. They were rarely in the center of the image. I remember reading a description of the Twin Towers in the New York Times Magazine a few years after the completion of the towers that described them as looking like a pair of staple boxes standing on end. I remember laughing when I read that description. It seemed so spot-on
Clearly the horrors of that day have transformed those two not very beautiful building placed in a sterile windswept plaza that turned it's back on the vibrant grid of the city into a symbol of loss.
Some years on September 11 I feel compelled to listen to the memorial ceremony to listen to the names being read. Other years it is just too hard, too painful to immerse myself in the public displays of marking and memorializing. This year I just couldn't manage the public mourning. It was just too hard.
Several of my friends posted deeply personal memories of the day. Reading their moving posts was my own way to mark the day.
During the summers before the attack my husband and I used to take the ferry from the World Financial Center to one of the beaches in New Jersey a few times each swimming season.
We would take the subway to the WTC stop.
Then we would walk through the shopping concourse. That is a fancy name for what it was, it was a mall in a basement that was also a corridor to move large numbers of people from one place to another.
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It was a busy, slightly depressing space. If you needed a snack you could buy it there. If your pants split or your flip flops broke you could find a replacement there. You wouldn't choose to shop there but you used the space to get from one place to another. I remember we once bought some terrible pizza there when we were hungry after our day
We then walked from the concourse in to the lobby of Tower 2.
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Just outside of the frame of this photo is the bank of elevators we took to to get to the pedestrian bridge across West Street.
At the other end of the bridge we entered the atrium of the Winter Garden. We would walk down the steps out the doors of the atrium and then wait on line for our ferry.
If you wanted to show an image that typified New York the twin towers would appear at the very edge of the image like a semicolon. They were rarely in the center of the image. I remember reading a description of the Twin Towers in the New York Times Magazine a few years after the completion of the towers that described them as looking like a pair of staple boxes standing on end. I remember laughing when I read that description. It seemed so spot-on
Clearly the horrors of that day have transformed those two not very beautiful building placed in a sterile windswept plaza that turned it's back on the vibrant grid of the city into a symbol of loss.
Some years on September 11 I feel compelled to listen to the memorial ceremony to listen to the names being read. Other years it is just too hard, too painful to immerse myself in the public displays of marking and memorializing. This year I just couldn't manage the public mourning. It was just too hard.
Several of my friends posted deeply personal memories of the day. Reading their moving posts was my own way to mark the day.
During the summers before the attack my husband and I used to take the ferry from the World Financial Center to one of the beaches in New Jersey a few times each swimming season.
Then we would walk through the shopping concourse. That is a fancy name for what it was, it was a mall in a basement that was also a corridor to move large numbers of people from one place to another.
We then walked from the concourse in to the lobby of Tower 2.
During the weeks and months after the attack I would be jolted out of sleep by the same dream. Each time I would find myself sitting up in bed with my heart thumping and breath racing.
In my dream I would find myself on my way to the ferry. Sometimes I would be in the subway station. More often I would be in the shopping atrium or in the lobby of Tower 2 waiting for the elevator or walking on the pedestrian bridge. In my dream nothing was amiss. My husband and I were making our way to the ferry. Yet, each and every time I had the dream I woke up in a panic.
As I searched Google Images for these photos I was surprised at how even looking at the photo of the pedestrian bridge or the tower lobby got my heart racing. I wasn't just looking at the photo, I was inside the photo.
My youngest has no memories of that day. One of my friends posted a photo of blue cloudless sky exactly the color it was that day. That terrible day changed the mundane for so many of us.
Your words! My heart just started racing also and I feel my heart in my throat. I worked downtown near Bowling Green, walked across that pedestrian bridge, relaxed in the Winter Garden and shopped in those subterranean stores a number of times. I can point at the items in my closet that were purchased there; I have a hard time letting go of them, even though they may no longer fit or have mothholes.
ReplyDeleteI so get those moth-eaten sweaters and broken down shoes. If you put us in a room...and showed us a slideshow of innocuous images of the WTC...the lobby, the plaza all of us would have really elevated blood pressure and heart rates...Of all of the images...it is the walkway that just freaks me out.
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