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 — and millions upon millions of Americans — miss their iconic, double thumbs-up thrust into the sky. If the new World Trade Center represents a “lost opportunity” to New York Times architectural sages who preferred apartments at the site, it’s 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.
After the infamy of 9/11, we deserved an architectural Midway — the great US naval triumph six months after Pearl Harbor that marked the beginning of the end for Japan’s Pacific Ocean dominion. We 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.
We deserved a new set of twin towers taller than the originals but graced with superior, 21st Century glass curtain-wall design. Or we deserved a single, triumphant spire taller than any in the world, including the 2,722-foot-tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
That super-skyscraper was designed by an American architect, Adrian Smith. Why couldn’t he have been tapped to do the same at Ground Zero, where the Twin Towers once reigned as the world’s tallest buildings.
The emotional hunger remains unsatisfied, not only for victims’ loved ones but for many of us who wanted a bolder, more definitive response to the slaughter of 2,997 human beings.
To understand how and why we have a new World Trade Center that’s much better than the original, yet lacking spirit and soul, let’s revisit the political and media climate that dominated after 9/11.
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.
Critics in government, in learned architectural circles and even in real estate circles howled over the “folly” of rebuilding offices when the market was supposedly “glutted.”
In such an anti-development atmosphere, the notion of building on a grand, symbolic, trumpet-blowing scale that would thrill America’s friends and serve as a warning to our enemies, never stood a chance.
To be sure: the new World Trade Center undeniably symbolizes New York City’s 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 – even celebrated! – that downtown if not the entire city — was gone for good.
The new towers filled up with great, private-sector companies — as diverse as Conde Nast, Spotify and Uber — as their government-subsidized predecessors did not. (Former Gov. Mario Cuomo moved half of the state government there to help pay the rent to the Port Authority.)
And the 16-acre site’s “missing tooth,” Two World Trade Center which will be the new home of American Express, has finally begun to rise.
But we almost didn’t get any of this.
For years after 9/11, the idea of creating a triumphant new World Trade Center was widely regarded not only as inappropriate, but obscene — not only in the ivory-tower academic world but in the corridors of institutional power.
Both the New York Times and the Daily News railed against even considering the idea. Both hated World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein.
The Times was partners with developer Bruce Ratner in the media company’s new Eighth Avenue headquarters; the project left Ratner with 800,000 square feet to fill, and the last thing he wanted was competition with new towers at the World Trade Center.
The Daily News’ conflict of interest was even more flagrant. Its owner, Mort Zuckerman, was also chairman of office development giant Boston Properties. To torpedo the rebuilding agenda, the newspaper threw every monkey wrench it could into it, including an infamous LARRY MUST GO front page.
“America’s Mayor” 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’s show the world we know how to build a mass grave.
His successor, Michael Bloomberg, downplayed the idea of new office buildings in favor of “affordable” housing until he came to his senses four years later.
Gov. George Pataki failed for six years to rein in competing agencies and architects.
The ivory-tower world rejected the idea of rebuilding as a capitalist-imperialist atrocity. A “town hall” event at the Javits Center, “Listening to the City,” displayed goofy, un-buildable designs in the shape of doughnuts and ziggurats, yet was taken seriously by media and educators.
Along the way, only two proposals had symbolic and emotive potential.
Donald Trump wanted to put up new twins exactly one foot higher than the originals — and set them catercorner to them to preserve their foot prints.
It seemed clever, but Trump refused to participate in the bidding process or put up any money. Instead, he assailed every other proposal and called the Freedom Tower “terrorist target No. 1 with a bull’s eye around its neck” – a sore-loser’s tirade that prompted others to reject ambitions for any kind of brave new World Trade Center.
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 “cornerstone-laying” in the summer of 2004.
Unlike today’s One World Trade Center — which equals the twins’ roof height of 1,368 feet with a cheap-looking antenna mast tacked on to reach the symbolic 1776-foot height — the Silverstein/Childs plan was a vision to behold.
The tower’s 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’ grudging partner, Daniel Libeskind, would point toward the Statue of Liberty from 1776 feet.
I called it a “grand gesture to reclaim the skyline.”
Alas, the NYPD declared in May 2005 that the tower set next to West Street was too difficult to protect from truck bombs. Sources also told the New York Post that authorities feared the building’s “symbolic nature” could make it “a target of terrorists.” In other words, we gave up without a shot being fired. Pataki, the Port Authority and Silverstein nudged Childs to redesign the tower with “security” in mind. Today’s octagonal mediocrity is the result. 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. They were a lot better than nothing — but a lot less than what might have been.
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