we know how they fell. but how did they rise?

Hard to believe what with Tribeca real estate prices, but the World Trade Center began as an urban renewal project. It was spearheaded in 1960 by David Rockefeller who hoped to stimulate the languid economy in lower Manhattan just as his father had revived midtown’s economy in the 1930s with Rockefeller Center.

Architect's model for proposed World Trade Center on East River, 1960

The original plan was for the Trade Center to be built on the East River, near where the South Street Seaport sits today. But the Governor of New Jersey objected, resenting that New York would get the $335 million project. (Kids.)

How to get New Jersey’s necessary vote? Ridership on New Jersey’s H&M (Hudson & Manhattan) Railroad had declined over 80% after commuters started driving over new tunnels and bridges. Port Authority promised to take over the bankrupt H&M and re-site the Center on Manhattan’s West Side, more convenient for New Jersey commuters. New Jersey threw in, and PATH was born.

Radio Row, looking east along Cortlandt towards Greenwich Street, photo by Berenice Abbott, 1936

New Jersey wasn’t the only force of resistance. The neighborhood where the Trade Center was re- sited, called Radio Row, was up in arms. It was home to hundreds of small businesses and residents who filed an injunction in 1962 against Port Authority’s power to evict them. A year later, the NY Court of Appeals overturned the injunction, on grounds that the project had a “public purpose.”

Also opposed was the Museum of Natural History, citing hazards the buildings would impose on migrating birds.

After years of controversy, work on World Trade Center foundations began in 1966. Construction started in 1968. More than 1.2 million cubic yards of earth and rock were excavated to make way for the  Center. The excavated was dumped in the Hudson to create 23.5 acres of land(fill) deeded to the City of New York--now Battery Park City.

The Twin Towers were completed in 1970. There were 43,600 windows. You may recall how narrow they were. They measured only 18 inches wide. Lead architect Minoru Yamasaki had a fear of heights. He thought narrow windows would make building occupants always feel secure.

hijacked on 9/11: childhood

Peggy Noonan has an interesting piece in the WSJ today on how 9/11 has affected the lives of children.

A young man who was 14 the day of the attacks told me recently that there's an unspoken taboo among the young people of New York: They don't talk about it, ever. They don't want to say, "Oh boo hoo, it was awful." They don't want to dwell. They shrug it off when it comes up. They change the subject.

I've found this to be true among my daughter and her friends who that day were freshmen at Stuyvesant, in the shadow of the Towers. They never talk about it. Though no doubt it has affected them profoundly.

It was their third day of high school. That morning, my daughter emerged from the subway (only the second time I'd let her ride it alone) to see people jumping from flames in the tower. She had headphones on, though I'd warned her about wearing them in transit. She later told me she was glad she did because they drowned out the screams of people standing with her on the sidewalk. She watched for a few minutes. Then walked on to school. She didn't want to be late. Halfway through the first class, an announcement was made instructing teachers on the East facing windows to pull the blinds. An hour later, the school was closed. The city needed a triage center to treat the wounded. (Wounded were still expected at that point.) The kids were released to the streets, told to "Walk north. Don't look back." The subways weren't going. Buses lumbering uptown were so crowded they weren't stopping. I'd been worried about her riding the subway alone. It hadn't occurred to me to teach her to navigate the 130 blocks without transportation. When she finally got home (by then I was frantic) she told me what she had seen and asked, "There were trampolines underneath to catch them, weren't there?" I was tempted to say yes. But I knew the news would make me a liar. When I said no, she looked away. I could almost hear the breaking glass of her childhood.

She and her friends never talk about that day, though it was long a topic of constant obsessive conversation among us parents. We worried about how seeing national landmarks felled affected our kids, both psychologically (is it good they never talk about it? or bad?) and physically (what about air quality? is the school still filled with flying asbestos?) The school was closed for three weeks for cleaning while our kids were switched to a school in Brooklyn. When the school was reopened, many of us sent our kids with potassium iodide pills that are said to help survive a nuclear attack. There was much talk in those days about "the other shoe dropping".

One of the few times my daughter has referred to 9/11 was when we were driving around to see colleges. She was in the passenger seat and reached out to change a song playing on the CD. "I can't listen to that," she said. "It's what was playing that day on my headphones." She skipped the track ahead. Then turned up music so loud it made talking impossible.