If one were transported from Sept. 10, 2001, a day before the 9/11 terror attacks that collapsed the World Trade Center and took nearly 3,000 lives, to the present day, they would hardly recognize Lower Manhattan — and, in particular, its mass transit system.

They would likely be awestruck by the Oculus — a modern white-ribbed behemoth housing PATH’s World Trade Center Station; the gleaming rebuilt 1 train Cortlandt Street station; and the sprawling Fulton Center subway hub that connects nine lines.

However, neither those visible structures nor the network of new connections across Lower Manhattan’s transit system would likely exist as they do today if not for the tragic events of 9/11.

Not only did the collapse of the Twin Towers, spurred by terrorists hijacking and crashing two commercial airplanes into them, cause massive devastation above ground, but it also destroyed and disrupted crucial pieces of both commuter train and subway infrastructure below.

The interior of the Cortlandt Street station 1 and 9 station severely damaged by the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001.New York Transit Museum Collection

Both the World Trade Center PATH station and the Cortlandt Street subway station, which at the time served the 1 and the since-retired 9 trains, sat directly beneath the World Trade Center complex. They were damaged beyond basic repair when the buildings collapsed.

Clarelle DeGraffe, who is currently the director of PATH at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and served as the system’s program director for its World Trade Center Division on 9/11, said the attacks impacted PATH operations far beyond the World Trade Center station itself.

“The damage went probably into the tunnels because of the fact, of course, we couldn’t run our trains,” DeGraffe said, referring to the mile-long tunnels connecting the World Trade Center and Jersey City Exchange Place PATH stations beneath the Hudson River.

“There was a lot of debris that ended up going into the tunnels,” she continued. “That, of course, affected everything. Not only our power, [but] our signals, lighting, everything basically went dark. And the blockage, the debris, the dust, that just made its way through probably a good portion of the tunnel.”

The Cortlandt Street subway station was similarly crushed when the buildings crumbled, along with the surrounding tunnels between Cedar Street and Park Place. 

Structural beams in the 1/9 tunnel near Cortlandt street are bent and twisted from the collapsing buildings above, 2001.New York Transit Museum Collection

Photos of the station after the attacks, provided by the New York Transit Museum, show that steel beams from the collapsed World Trade Center towers pierced through its ceiling into the station floor. The weight of the collapsed buildings also caved in many parts of the station’s ceiling and left it buried in debris and soot. 

”We basically had dozens of floors of a huge building falling from 600 feet right on top of our roof. It was like a pile driver,’ said John Ferrelli, who was chief of infrastructure for the subways at the time, according to a 2001 New York Times report.

The MTA demolished the damaged station by the next year, having 1 and 9 trains bypass the Cortlandt Street station until it was rebuilt and reopened nearly 17 years later.

It took over two years after 9/11 for the Port Authority to restore PATH service to Lower Manhattan, when it opened a temporary PATH station housed inside what was left of the prior station in November 2003. 

“It gave us time to rebuild systems within the tunnel, and at least just prepare ourselves for the rebuilding, which took much longer, as we know, until you know we’re able to rebuild what is now the Oculus,” DeGraffe said.

The temporary station ended up being in use for 13 years, as the Oculus did not open until 2016.

Oculus serves as awe-inspiring centerpiece of post-9/11 transit in Lower Manhattan

The Oculus, which ultimately cost nearly $4 billion, was one of the centerpieces of the federal, state, and local effort to rebuild transit infrastructure in post-9/11 Lower Manhattan. The wide-ranging project also included a new subway hub at Fulton Street and a new South Ferry terminal.

“The money went into building two train station hubs. One for PATH and one for the subways, but not any new capacity for moving the trains,” New York University Professor of Urban Policy Mitchell Moss said, referring to federal funding earmarked for rebuilding Lower Manhattan after 9/11.

Police patrol the Oculus in lower Manhattan.Photo by Dean Moses

The Oculus is a massive sculpture-like building made of metal and white marble, designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. The nearly 800,000 square-foot elipsis-shaped building not only houses PATH’s World Trade Center station, but connects to the 1 train’s WTC Cortlandt Street station as well as the R and W trains’ Cortlandt Street station, and also includes the World Trade Center Westfield shopping mall.

“It’s awesome and I mean that in the actual sense of the word ‘awesome.’ It induces awe,” said Jessica Lappin, director of the Downtown Alliance, told amNewYork about the Oculus at the time.

The Oculus’ design was both meant to inspire hope and honor those lost, with its shape meant to evoke a hand releasing a dove and the skylight designed to align with the sun during the time of the attacks on Sept. 11 each year to fill the space with a beam of light.

DeGraffe, who worked on the rebuilding as a project manager, said there was a lot of “legacy and intention” attached to the project.

“I was part of the project management team, and we would work into the night sometimes having 7 p.m. meetings because of the fact that we knew we had to get this done,” she said. “We just always thought of the people that we lost and how important it was to create a space that would always be remembered and that it would have to be done well.”

However, the project faced criticism over being delayed, exceeding its original budget by $2 billion, and the extravagance of its design.

Moss is one of those critics. He said the mall inside of the Oculus is “intrinsically flawed” because it does not contain black pipe necessary for ventilation in restaurant and thus has sparse dining options.

“The Oculus is a visual success from the outside, and from the interior, it’s a dramatic success,” he said. “It doesn’t work for shopping or for dining. And that’s what most people in New York do.”

The northbound platform as a 1 train enters the station.Photo courtesy of MTA

Adjacent to the Oculus, the MTA completely rebuilt the Cortlandt Street subway station, which now only serves the 1 line, and renamed it WTC Cortlandt. Similar to the Oculus, the $181.8 million subway station is brightly lit and sports white walls adorned with messages of freedom.

Moss said that part of the reason the new station took so long to build was that the MTA had to construct it while continuing to train service.

“The problem is you were running the trains while you were rebuilding the stations, very hard job,” Moss said. “The MTA did a magnificent job, as well as the PATH, that they were operating trains while there was construction going on above ground.”

When it came to the Fulton Center, the $1.4 billion effort was intended to connect the tangle of nine subway lines across five stations in Lower Manhattan.

The hub, which the MTA opened in 2014, is built around a main station building on Broadway between Fulton and John Streets. It connected the 2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, J, Z, and R trains via a continuous passage under Dey Street, rehabilitated several platforms, added new entrances along several lines, and restored the Corbin Building adjacent to the station.

Work on the Fulton Center in Lower Manhattan as of January 22, 2013.Photo: Patrick Cashin

Vipul Patel, who was a construction manager for systems integration at MTA Capital Construction at the time said the project was a “massive undertaking.”

Patel said that is because it included “coordinating multiple contracts, such as the Corbin Building restoration and the Dey Street underpass.”

“The Fulton Center project was a complex underground construction,” he added. “Together, the connectivity between the R, 2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, J, and Z lines from one central hub, including integrated utilities.”