Twenty (and fifty) years after

Attack of the World Trade Center, New York City, September 11, 2001. Photo by Evan Giniger.

Remains of 6, 7, and 1 WTC on September 17, 2001. 
U.S. Navy photo by Chief Photographer's Mate Eric J. Tilford.

On this 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 devastation of New York's World Trade Center by terrorist-hijacked airplanes, I'm sure the minds of all who were around back then and not too young to remember that cataclysm that claimed 2,606 lives (plus 125 in the Pentagon attack and 44 in the diverted plane crash in Shanksville, Pa.) still explode with stories that would fill all the gigabytes in all the digital archives in the world.

September 11, 2001. Photo by WalkingGeek (CC BY 2.0).

September 11, 2001, taken from a rooftop in Brooklyn and from the Brooklyn
waterfront. Photo by Andrew Lynch (CC BY 2.0).

Many (myself included)  remember just where they were and what they were doing when the news hit them by TV, car radio, phone, Internet, word of mouth, etc. Which is not surprising; due to the advanced communication and information technology we were fortunate to have by then (and without which the passengers of Flight 93 wouldn't have been able to prevent their hijackers from doing more damage), the impact of this "shot heard [or seen or felt] 'round the world" was far more far-reaching, time-halting and panic-inducing than the others throughout history, including John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination, the 1883 volcanic eruption on Krakatoa heard 3,000 miles away, and, of course, the initial musket-fire of the 1775 Battle of Lexington and Concord that gave rise to that locution in "Concord Hymn," Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 tribute to that historic start of the Revolutionary War.

My history with the World Trade Center goes back a good 50 years when I lived in New York and was first learning, to my chagrin, that a new skyscraper project was going to cop the "World's Tallest" title from a building that made me proud to be a New Yorker as I gazed in awe at my bronze souvenir model of it. My treasure was emblazoned in bold block lettering on each side of its base as follows: on one side, "1,472 FEET"; on another, "WORLD'S TALLEST"; and on another, "EMPIRE STATE BUILDING." In fact, that year (1971) my father decided to take my mother and me to visit this prized icon of Superman single-bounding and King Kong climbing and gawk at its cityscape views before it lost its Royal Highness crown to the new World Trade Center the city was all abuzz about.

Empire State Building, New York, looking up from its
5th Avenue entrance. Photo by Danny Thomas.

This low-angle view of the Empire State Building was my first close-up glimpse of it, from the way-down-there perspective of a small 9-year-old. And yet I could spot the tip of the top high in the sky from there. Which showed how well architects Shreve, Lamb & Harmon were blending their gentle giant into its neighborhood, with a base at a height that was level with its neighbors so it wouldn't seem so overwhelming, and that gave it a firm grounding against toppling in the wind (or from King Kong's ascent). 

It also showed how well the architects were following New York's 1916 Zoning Resolution mandating massing setbacks for upper levels of skyscrapers so they would not cast cavernous shadows on the streetscape – a law the World Trade Center boldly defied in the first straight-up, shadow-casting Twin Towers since the 1915 Equitable Building in Lower Manhattan (below) that provoked that law. 

Equitable Building, New York (1915, Ernest P. Graham). Photo by Yottabytedev.

Empire State Building, New York, 86th-floor observation deck. Photo: Daniel Penfield.

Below is a sense of the jaw-dropping, eye-popping panorama of the New York skyline I experienced in swoops and soars from the Empire State Building's 86th-floor observation deck. It was chilling, thrilling and fulfilling to spot familiar landmarks, neighborhoods, parks, streets, rivers, and distant views of New Jersey and Connecticut from sky-high.

World Trade Center topping-off, 1973. Courtesy of Facebook.

Our family outing (or upping) to the Empire's apogee was, of course, one of the last times anyone could experience the breathtaking, bird-swooping, skydiving city vistas of the Empire State Building as the World's Tallest, before the topping-off of Minoru Yamasaki's World Trade Center in 1973 enabled those newborn twins to stake their claim to that title (until Chicago's Sears Tower, now Willis Tower, surpassed them the following year, at 1,451 feet, as opposed to 1 WTC's 1,368 and 2 WTC's 1,362).

Perhaps I moved to Boston at the right time (1972) so I wouldn't have to witness the beheading of the sky-crown of my prized Empire landmark – which, technically, was still the tallest including its antenna and spire, at 1,454 feet, beaten out only by One World Trade Center, at 1,776 feet, in 2014 (see below).

Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on World Trade Center. US Park Police photo by Eugene Kuziw. 

But luckily, my move out of New York shielded me from firsthand experience of the 9/11/01 destruction of the Twin Towers (though the attackers' takeoff from Boston's Logan Airport put me not far away from where it all began – scary). I saw the calamity live on TV, from the planes to the plunges, while working at Community Newspaper Company in Needham, Massachusetts.

Collapse of South Tower, 9/11, before and after. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

All work stopped cold as all eyes fixated on our office TV screens and all news reporting priorities abruptly shifted to the unfathomable event that had just exploded before our eyes. The world suddenly turned to quiet fear, terror and shock as each of us wondered and worried if we'd be "next."

FDNY firefighter eyes a remnant of a WTC tower. U.S. Navy photo by Jim Watson.

Thus the iconic twosome soar of the Twin Towers that had monumentally anchored the tip of Lower Manhattan and the entry point of New York Harbor for 28 years was instantly replaced in the public eye by the iconic Gothic ruins of their sharded, smoky remains.

These in-your-face images of wanton destruction predominated the media for years as the body-search, site cleanup, War on Terror, memorial speculations and contests, and nasty politicking over how the hell to redevelop a prominent site of world trade that was gone in a flash went on and on.

One World Trade Center, New York (2014, David Childs). Photo: Praneeth Thalla.

Fast-forward 13 years to the dedication of the new victor ludorum of "New York's Tallest" prestige, One World Trade Center, nobly marking the gravesite of its parents, which are memorialized by two well-fountains framing their footprints with waterfalls cascading down into simulacra of Ground Zero and bearing the names of the fallen around their perimeters. 

Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 1 WTC boldly articulates the "United We Stand" aphorism the disaster gave rise to, by uniting ghosts of the Twin Towers in a geometric solid of elongated triangles tapering both ways between the square base and the square roofline rotated a 45-degree angle from the base. At this point the antenna takes over the soar to the patriotic height of 1,776 feet, an apt expression of fortitude in the face of adversity.

Never Forget.