{"id":343831,"date":"2026-09-11T10:52:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T10:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/343831\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T10:52:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T10:52:21","slug":"the-legacy-of-9-11-is-complicated-but-the-heart-and-generosity-of-new-yorkers-endures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/343831\/","title":{"rendered":"The legacy of 9\/11 is complicated, but the heart and generosity of New Yorkers endures"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the days after 9\/11<\/a>, the fear of what might come next beset famously unflappable Gotham. Was another attack in the works? Would large city centers with now-vulnerable skyscrapers become obsolete?<\/p>\n

The magnitude of the human carnage and physical destruction was overwhelming.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looked, immediately after 9\/11, as if Lower Manhattan\u2019s future, and indeed the entire city\u2019s future, would be very much in doubt,\u201d said Carl Weisbrod, a long-time fixture in city government and economic development circles, was heading up the Alliance for Downtown New York when Al Qaeda brought down the twin towers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a sense throughout the country that, well, maybe city centers were vulnerable,\u201d he said. \u201cThat this might be the wave of the future, that businesses should think about not being in urban centers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"VolunteersVolunteers line up to assist in the search and rescue efforts outside the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan on Sept. 13, 2001. (Michael Appleton \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

But New York\u2019s civic spirit bounced back just days after the attacks. Posters started showing up around town, distributed by graphic artist Milton Glaser<\/a>\u2018s students at the School of Visual Arts.<\/p>\n

Beneath his iconic \u201cI (heart) NY\u201d logo, Glaser had added the words \u201cmore than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

A black spot on the heart represented heartbreak over thousands of New Yorkers who\u2019d died.<\/p>\n

At the bottom, a note: \u201cBe generous. Your city needs you.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a simple message, but one the city wanted to hear.<\/p>\n

\"AA man on the street reads the back page of the New York Daily News, which carries Milton Glaser’s new version of his famous slogan “I (heart) NY” and now reads, “I (heart) NY more than ever,” on Sept. 19, 2001 in New York City. (Photo by Viviane Moos\/Corbis via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

From the distance of a quarter-century, the much-vaunted legacy of \u201c9\/12,\u201d shorthand for the days after the attack, is complicated by factors such as the surveillance of Muslim New Yorkers that followed<\/a> and the ongoing death toll from 9\/11-related illness<\/a>. Uncertainty over whether businesses would come back to Gotham persisted for years<\/a> after the attacks.<\/p>\n

But the notion that the city was generous, and that New Yorkers of all stripes did what they could during the city\u2019s hour of need \u2014 holds up under the weight of years.<\/p>\n

On 14th St., the furthest south anyone but lower Manhattan residents could travel, teenagers volunteered to load trucks outside the Salvation Army, filling them with donated supplies bound for first responders and the isolated communities around Ground Zero.<\/p>\n

\"AA volunteer asks for donations outside St. Vincent’s Hospital after the 9\/11 attacks on Sept. 13, 2001. (Kristen Artz for New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

As missing posters dominated the landscape, NYC taxi drivers volunteered to take distraught families seeking news on their loved ones home from the Family Assistance Center on Pier 94<\/a> and from area hospitals free of charge. The TLC estimates more than 1,000 drivers participated in the program<\/a> in the weeks after the attacks.<\/p>\n

Blood banks, both in New York and around the nation, went from a dangerous shortage on September 10 to more plasma and platelets than they could handle.<\/p>\n

New Yorkers put their generosity and sense of community on display, helping fuel a long and difficult climb not just to rebuild, but to reckon with what had happened.<\/p>\n

\"SignageSignage posted for volunteers outside the Jacob Javits Convention Center on Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001, a day after the terrorsit attack on the World Trade Center. (Chet Gordon for New York Daily News)
\nPlay ball<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s baseball teams played a key role in helping lift the city\u2019s spirits, proving there was still room for joy. \u00a0Both the Mets and the Yankees made visits to Ground Zero in the days after the attacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first we thought we were being intrusive,\u201d Jay Horwitz, longtime spokesman and team historian for the Mets told the Daily News.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut these guys wanted to talk,\u201d he said of the construction workers and first responders on the pile. \u201cThey wanted to talk baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Bobby<\/p>\n

Ezra Shaw\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

New York Mets manager Bobby Valentine and catcher Mike Piazza #31 of the New York Mets applaude in honor of New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani before the Mets game against the Atlanta Braves on Sept. 21, 2001, at Shea Stadium in Flushing, New York. The Mets won 3-2. (Photo by Ezra Shaw\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The Mets would be the first team to play a home game after the attacks, with a matchup against the Atlanta Braves on Sept. 21.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody knew what the right thing to do was,\u201d Horwitz said. \u201cAll these people died, all the kids without fathers, and we\u2019re playing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was petrified of going,\u201d Horwitz recalled. \u201cShea stadium was under armed guard. And I remember I told my friends not to come because Shea is right next to LaGuardia Airport \u2014 what better place you want to bomb than that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe crowd was very quiet in the first part of the game. To me it perked up in the seventh inning when Liza Minnelli sang \u2018New York, New York.’\u201d Horwitz said.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/p>\n

AP Photo\/Bill Kostroun<\/p>\n

In this Friday, Sept. 21, 2001 file photo, Carol Gies, center, a wife of a missing firefighter, leans on son Ronnie as she is consoled by sons Bobbie, right, and Tommy, behind, during the ceremonies for the victims of the World Trade Center prior to the New York Mets game against the Atlanta Braves at Shea Stadium in New York. (AP Photo\/Bill Kostroun, File)<\/p>\n

Then came Mike Piazza\u2019s famous homer<\/a>, driving in two runs to wild applause, winning the game over the Braves, 3-2.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the message was that, hey, life goes on,\u201d Horwitz said. \u201cLife goes on and you can get back to normal and you\u2019re not going to let these terrorists disrupt our life and we can play ball again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jack<\/p>\n

Robert Gauthier\/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Jack Hord, 7, puts on a brave face while fans cheer the national anthem during pregame ceremonies at the Mets Braves game, Friday, September 21, 2001. According to neighbor J. Christopher Daly, Hord’s father, Monty Hord, is missing, and was an employee at Cantor Fitzgerald which was located at the epicenter of the World Trade Center disaster. (Photo by Robert Gauthier\/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

When Saturday Night Live returned to the air on Sept. 29, Lorne Michaels famously asked Mayor Rudy Giuliani: \u201cCan we be funny?\u201d<\/p>\n

Giuliani deadpanned, \u201cWhy start now?\u201d <\/p>\n

Lower Manhattan bounces back<\/p>\n

The work was most difficult in the neighborhood surrounding the fallen towers. Many of the people who lived in Lower Manhattan\u2019s residential communities \u2014 Battery Park City, TriBeCa, Chinatown, and the converted office buildings around Wall St. that would soon earn the moniker \u201cFiDi\u201d \u2014 had evacuated after the towers fell<\/a>. In the days that followed many had to navigate how to return home, and then decide if they were going to stay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moving trucks were lined up for people to move out right after 9\/11,\u201d said Bob Townley, a longtime member of Manhattan\u2019s Community Board 1 and the head of the non-profit Manhattan Youth.<\/p>\n

\"DumpstersDumpsters full of debris are pictured on Nassau St. in Lower Manhattan on Sept. 17, 2001. (Heidi Schumann for New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

The neighborhood was far from hospitable. As the wreckage of the World Trade Center continued to burn, cell phone and land-line service was spotty for days and weeks. Radio and TV stations struggled to get back on the air. The fires persisted on the pile until December, and most everything was covered in a fine dust, only later revealed to be toxic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the stores were closed, and people were locked in their lofts and apartments south of Canal St.,\u201d recalled Townley. \u201cYou had what you had in your house, and you could travel out of the zone and back with proper ID \u2014 but most people had evacuated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But on the first weekend after the attack, Townley organized a community meeting at the basketball court on the north side of Canal St. at Thompson St., just outside the restricted zone.<\/p>\n

\"PeoplePeople volunteer at a site for rescue workers to get food and supplies outside the Javits Center in Manhattan on Sept. 21, 2001. (Heidi Schumann for New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew we had to bring the community together,\u201d Townley told the Daily News. \u201cIt became like a street fair where people could go and get what they needed to get information on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cElected officials came, some city agencies came, the policemen showed up,\u201d he said. \u201cThere were about 2,000 people there each day, on Saturday and Sunday,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople just wanted to know when they were going to get back into their homes. That was the number one concern.\u201d<\/p>\n

City Council Speaker Julie Menin\u2019s restaurant, Vine, located in the heart of the Financial District at Broad St. and Exchange Pl., was \u201cdecimated\u201d by the attack. In the following weeks, Menin started Wall St. Rising, a non-profit meant to help bolster and rebuild the small businesses of the Financial District. In the year that followed, Menin\u2019s group worked to put on public art shows and concerts in downtown neighborhoods, and offer discounts downtown businesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these programs were aimed at keeping small businesses and people downtown,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"SevenSeven days after the terror attack on the World Trade Center, workers and tourist walk passed the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 18, 2001. (Todd Maisel \/ New York Daily News)
\nMoney counts too<\/p>\n

But to rebuild a city center \u2014 and to look after the residents still trying to live there \u2014 would cost money.<\/p>\n

Sen. Chuck Schumer, who had been in Washington D.C. on September 11, flew up to New York the next day with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, on a government flight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we got there, we arrived at the heliport and we went downtown,\u201d he recalled. \u201cYou could smell the burnt flesh in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the most touching things to me was the hundreds and hundreds of people lines up with pictures, saying, \u2018Have you seen my wife Jean? Have you seen my brother Paul?’\u201d Schumer said. \u201cNo one knew who was alive and who was dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Sen.Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., talks on his cell phone Monday, Sept. 17, 2001, on his way to opening ceremonies at the New York Stock Exchange. Wall Street ended its longest shutdown since the Great Depression and resumed trading Monday for the first time since last Tuesday’s terrorist attack. (AP Photo\/Charles Rex Arbogast)<\/p>\n

After he was shown the site, Schumer said, he was invited to meet with then-mayor Rudy Giuliani and then-governor George Pataki at One Police Plaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked them, \u2018how much damage?’\u201d Schumer said. \u201cThey went through a list of things. I said, \u2018Could you say $20 billion?\u2019 They said, \u2018at least.’\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, September 13, the senator said he, Clinton, and the two senators from Virginia \u2014 where the Pentagon was attacked \u2014 were invited to the Oval Office.<\/p>\n

Schumer said he decided to ask then-President George W. Bush directly for $20 billion at that meeting, so as not to give the president\u2019s aides time to come up with a counter-offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told President Bush of the devastation, told him about the people with the signs, I told him you could smell death in the air,\u201d Schumer said. \u201cThen I said, \u2018Mr. President, that\u2019s why New York needs $20 billion right away to help us recover.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018You need $20 billion?\u2019 I said, \u2018At least that much,\u2019 because they had told me more,\u201d Schumer continued. \u201cHe said, \u2018You got it.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt says something good about Bush,\u201d Schumer reflected. \u201cI thought he\u2019d say, \u2018Well let me think about it, get me a memo.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PresidentPresident George W. Bush, surrounded by rain-soaked rescue workers, waves an American flag from atop a wrecked fire truck in the midst of rubble of what was once the World Trade Center on Sept. 14, 2001. (Harry Hamburg \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

Of that flood of federal money, more than $2.5 billion was earmarked for immediate debris removal, search and rescue operations, and repairs. Another $5.6 billion went toward restoring and improving utilities downtown. Roughly $5.5 billion was earmarked for economic revitalization. And $4.8 billion went toward rental assistance for local residents and businesses and making the city whole for its own recovery expenditures.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the most important allocations of funds that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation provided were grants to residents to return to their homes and help subsidize their rents for a very short period of time,\u201d Weisbrod told the Daily News. He, along with Menin, served for a time on the board of the LMDC \u2014 the joint city-state agency tasked with helping distribute the federal aid money.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone predicted that anything below Canal St. would be a disaster zone, a dead zone,\u201d Schumer recalled. \u201cEveryone thought New York was gone, no one would come.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ResidentsResidents and workers are pictured on a partially-blocked John. St. in Lower Manhattan amid cleanup efforts on Sept. 17, 2001. (Heidi Schumann for New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

Asked if there was ever a moment in those years when he worried the city might not come back, Schumer said, \u201cEvery day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI love New York,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve spent my whole life in New York. My family has. And every day I woke up and said, \u2018If we don\u2019t succeed, what is going to happen to this beautiful city?’\u201d<\/p>\n

Weisbrod, the Downtown Alliance head and LMDC board member, attributed much of the success of Lower Manhattan\u2019s rebirth, and with it the renewed future of New York City, to the local community itself \u2014 its civic engagement and participation in the process of deciding how the land around Ground Zero would be rebuilt and what should be prioritized.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing\u2019s perfect,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think if any of us on September 12th could have looked into a crystal ball 25 years in the future and said, \u2018this is what it was going to be like,\u2019 I think almost everyone, if not everyone, would\u2019ve been quite encouraged, relieved and proud actually.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the days after 9\/11, the fear of what might come next beset famously unflappable Gotham. Was another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[266,267,75,84,83,9,24,10,12,63,11803],"class_list":["post-343831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-news","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-september-11"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}