The Twin Towers underperformed as office buildings and stunk as architecture. But no one who knew them will ever forget them. Millions of New Yorkers \u2014 and millions upon millions of Americans \u2014 miss their iconic, double thumbs-up thrust into the sky.<\/p>\n
If the new World Trade Center represents a \u201clost opportunity\u201d to New York Times architectural sages who preferred apartments at the site, it\u2019s a different brand of disappointment to Americans who wanted something better than a contemporized and somewhat more humane replacement for the commercial complex terrorists destroyed.<\/p>\n
After the infamy of 9\/11, we deserved an architectural Midway \u2014 the great US naval triumph six months after Pearl Harbor that marked the beginning of the end for Japan\u2019s Pacific Ocean dominion.\u00a0We instead got a new, highly functional World Trade Center but without the visual passion and majesty it was our right to insist on after the atrocity of Sept. 11, 2001.<\/p>\n
The Freedom Tower is the tallest building in the country, at a height of 1,776 feet. Christopher Sadowski<\/p>\n
We\u00a0deserved a new set of twin towers taller than the originals but graced with superior, 21st Century glass curtain-wall design.\u00a0 Or we deserved\u00a0a single, triumphant spire taller than any in the world, including the 2,722-foot-tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai. <\/p>\n
That super-skyscraper was designed by an American architect, Adrian Smith. Why couldn\u2019t he have been tapped to do the same at Ground Zero, where the Twin Towers once reigned as the world\u2019s tallest buildings.<\/p>\n
The emotional hunger remains unsatisfied, not only for victims\u2019 loved ones but \u00a0for many of us who wanted a bolder, more definitive response to the slaughter of 2,997 human beings.<\/p>\n
To understand how and why we have a new World Trade Center that\u2019s much better than the original, yet lacking spirit and soul, let\u2019s revisit \u00a0the political and media climate that dominated after 9\/11.<\/p>\n
For five years after the attack, we were made to feel selfish and insensitive even for wanting a replacement of any sort on teh hallowed ground. <\/p>\n
Critics in government, in learned architectural circles and even in real estate circles howled over the \u201cfolly\u201d of rebuilding offices when the market was supposedly \u201cglutted.\u201d<\/p>\n
In such an anti-development \u00a0atmosphere, the notion of building on a grand, symbolic, trumpet-blowing scale that would thrill America\u2019s friends and serve as a warning to our enemies,\u00a0never stood a chance.<\/p>\n
British architect Norman Foster proposed this design for the World Trade Center. Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images<\/p>\n
To be sure: the new World Trade Center undeniably symbolizes New York City\u2019s resilience. We can and should celebrate the spirit of enterprise that made Lower Manhattan a great place to live, work and play again, despite pundits who claimed \u2013 even celebrated! \u2013 that downtown if not the entire city\u00a0\u2014 was gone for good.<\/p>\n
The new towers filled up with great, private-sector companies \u2014 as diverse as Conde Nast, Spotify and Uber \u2014 \u00a0as their government-subsidized\u00a0predecessors did not. (Former Gov. Mario Cuomo moved half of the state government there to help pay the rent to the Port Authority.)<\/p>\n
And the 16-acre site\u2019s \u201cmissing tooth,\u201d Two World Trade Center which will be the new home of American Express, has finally begun to rise.<\/p>\n
But we almost didn\u2019t get any of this.<\/p>\n
Another team proposed steel lattice 1,665-foot towers. REUTERS<\/p>\n
For years after 9\/11, the idea of creating a triumphant new World Trade Center was widely regarded not only as inappropriate, but obscene \u2014 not only in the ivory-tower academic world but in the corridors of institutional power.<\/p>\n
Both the New York Times and the Daily News railed against even considering the idea. Both hated World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein.<\/p>\n
The Times was partners with developer Bruce Ratner in the media company\u2019s new Eighth Avenue headquarters; the project left Ratner with 800,000 square feet to fill, and the last thing he wanted was\u00a0competition with new\u00a0towers \u00a0at the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n
The Daily News\u2019 conflict of interest was even more flagrant. Its owner, Mort Zuckerman, was also chairman of office development\u00a0giant Boston Properties. To torpedo the\u00a0rebuilding agenda, the newspaper threw every monkey wrench it could into it, \u00a0including an infamous LARRY MUST GO front page.<\/p>\n
This artist\u2019s rendering of the Freedom Tower was released in December 2003. REUTERS<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerica\u2019s Mayor\u201d Rudy Giuliani, who performed heroically at first, later declared the site should not be rebuilt at all, but be preserved as a 16-acre memorial. Sure, let\u2019s show the world we know how to build a mass grave.<\/p>\n
His successor, Michael Bloomberg, downplayed the idea of new office buildings in favor of \u201caffordable\u201d housing until he came to his senses four years later.<\/p>\n
Gov. George Pataki failed for six years to rein in competing agencies and architects.<\/p>\n
The ivory-tower world rejected the idea of rebuilding as a capitalist-imperialist atrocity. A \u00a0\u201ctown hall\u201d event at the Javits Center, \u201cListening to the City,\u201d displayed goofy, un-buildable \u00a0designs in the shape of doughnuts and ziggurats, yet was taken seriously by media and educators.<\/p>\n
Along the way, only two proposals had symbolic and emotive potential.<\/p>\n
Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, Freedom Tower architects David Childs and Daniel Libeskind and developer Larry Silverstein unveiled the design for the Freedom Tower in 2003. Getty Images<\/p>\n
Donald Trump wanted to put up new twins exactly one foot higher than the originals \u2014 and set them catercorner to them to preserve their foot prints.<\/p>\n
It seemed clever, but Trump\u00a0refused to participate in the bidding process or put up any money. Instead, he assailed every other\u00a0proposal and called the\u00a0Freedom Tower \u201cterrorist target No. 1 with a bull\u2019s eye around its neck\u201d \u2013 a sore-loser\u2019s tirade that prompted others to reject ambitions for any kind of brave new World Trade Center.<\/p>\n
A far more serious proposal by Silverstein and architect David Childs, unveiled in December 2003 might have been the heart-lifting retort to terrorism we craved. It got as far as a \u201ccornerstone-laying\u201d in the summer of 2004. <\/p>\n
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Unlike today\u2019s One World Trade Center \u2014 which equals the twins\u2019 roof height of 1,368\u00a0feet with a cheap-looking antenna mast tacked on to reach the symbolic 1776-foot height \u2014 the Silverstein\/Childs plan was a vision to behold.<\/p>\n
The tower\u2019s main shaft, covered in a unique harlequinade glass pattern, was gently twisted into a spiral to channel wind upward to power turbines and windmills housed in a 400-foot-high, open-air cage wrapped by Brooklyn Bridge-inspired cables. An off-center roof spire designed by Childs\u2019 grudging partner, Daniel Libeskind, would point toward the Statue of Liberty from 1776 feet.<\/p>\n
I called it a \u201cgrand gesture to reclaim the skyline.\u201d <\/p>\n
Alas, the NYPD declared in May 2005 that the tower set next to West Street was too difficult to protect from truck bombs.\u00a0Sources also told the New York Post that authorities feared the building\u2019s \u201csymbolic nature\u201d could make it \u201ca target of terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, we gave up without a shot being fired.<\/p>\n
Pataki, the Port Authority and Silverstein nudged Childs to redesign the tower with \u201csecurity\u201d in mind. Today\u2019s octagonal mediocrity is the result.\u00a0 The die was cast in favor of four conventional towers that would roughly total as much office space as the original World Trade Center had.<\/p>\n
They were a lot better than nothing \u2014 but a lot less than what might have been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Twin Towers underperformed as office buildings and stunk as architecture. But no one who knew them will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5301,113412,359,9,11,10,299,28979,7037],"class_list":["post-345082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-9-11","tag-9-11-25th-anniversary","tag-lower-manhattan","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-opinion","tag-twin-towers","tag-world-trade-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345082","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=345082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}