The date (1969) seems just about right. I remember the WTC best as a hole and a mess. My concentrated time in NYC spans 1970 -1973. So. Yeah. Now, this is coming from memory but I carry this impression that until Philipe Petit, and I know I've butchered his name beyond belief, made the walk between the two towers most new Yorkers were all "Meh. Another tall building." about the Towers project. After the walk, suddenly they became sexy and people didn't mind the mess quite as much. And, of course, everybody was there. If as many people had been there as say they were, the place would have looked like "Friggin Woodstock", as a friend of mine used to say.
Blue, I've got a whole segment planned for Phillip Petit here. What an incredible feat, I remember seeing it on TV in utter amazement and awe as a 13 year-old. It was the subject of a fascinating and extremely well done documentary two or three years ago. Much more about that later!
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Re: The Twin Towers « Reply #21 on Jun 24, 2010, 11:00pm »
"Let me help you to pick up your dead..." Ian Anderson
Nine years after September 11, 2001, human remains are still being discovered from the debris under West Street. From the June 24, 2010 edition of Metro New York News:
More Remains Found at WTC
NEW YORK. A renewed sifting of debris around the World Trade Center site has led to the discovery of 72 potential human remains. The city Medical Examiner’s office is working toward a goal of identifying all 1,123 9/11 victims whose remains are still missing. The latest discoveries were made during intensive hand-sifting of Ground Zero debris in Brooklyn. The greatest number of samples, 37, were found beneath West Street.
Re: The Twin Towers « Reply #22 on Jun 26, 2010, 4:43am »
Jeff, I know what you mean about seeing the towers in old movies. Mrs mix has the sex and the city box set and I think the series starts from 97. We were watching it earlier in the week and there they were. They were such a dominant part of the sky line. Every time I see them in movies it leaves an eerie feeling in my gut.
Jeff, I know what you mean about seeing the towers in old movies. Mrs mix has the sex and the city box set and I think the series starts from 97. We were watching it earlier in the week and there they were. They were such a dominant part of the sky line. Every time I see them in movies it leaves an eerie feeling in my gut.
I know, and you see them in a lot of movies. They were such fixtures on the skyline, and seemed to anchor lower Manhattan. In this case it was even more weird because I had just been thinking about the Towers a few minutes earlier, and then I came across the movie Daylight with the Twin Towers standing in the background in the final frames.
When I was a kid and we went to visit my nana and other relatives in Brooklyn, I always couldn't wait for the part of the trip when my father drove on that little stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, near the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridge, that passed directly across from the southern tip of Manhattan, and I would peer out for those three or four seconds and crane my neck up to see the towers. When I was old enough to drive I would do the same thing, quickly glance over once or twice whenever I passed by. That is something I will always remember, and miss.
Many years later, I would go to events at the New York County Law Association on Vesey Street, and one of the rooms had a big window where you could look out and up at the two behemoths shining in the sun. That was a surreal site because it was so close, right across the street, and you couldn't even see the tops of them from that angle. I think I used to go to those events more to see the towers than to sit through some of the boring legal seminars they had there.
The Twin Towers can also be seen in a bunch of movies dating from 1969 to 1972, while they were under construction and the top of whatever level they were working on would be covered with black netting. One which comes to mind is a 1970 or '71 movie with George Segal, involving a jewel heist, where they were flying past the not-yet-completed towers in a helicopter en route to the museum where the gems were located. I forgot the name of it, but maybe Blue remembers that one. She was living or working (?) in New York City at the time.
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Re: The Twin Towers « Reply #24 on Jun 26, 2010, 8:54am »
I just found this terrific site which is a compilation of 620 movies where the Twin Towers have appeared during their 30 year lifespan. The webmaster says it is the most comprehensive list of such movies on the net. He is sure he may have missed a few, but he's gotten all the major ones.
The movie I was referring to is called 'The Hot Rock' from early 1972. Tower 1 was completed (except for the very top) and was already open and occupied, and Tower 1 was nearing completion at that time. George Segal's partner in crime was Robert Redford. Here are some photos of the site from the helicopter:
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Re: The Twin Towers « Reply #25 on Sept 5, 2010, 2:09pm »
Reflecting Absence:
This picture is an artist's rendering of the Reflecting Absence memorial -- the entire site is still under construction, but the square pools have now been built and are visible from above. When pouring the concrete for the pools not too long ago, they found more bone fragments, as they occasionally still do. The memorial is scheduled to open on next September 11th, I believe. The pools have been constructed right where the Towers stood, in their "footprints."
The rendering shows West Street between Vesey Street and Liberty Street. (Liberty is the intersecting street on the right). The Tower 1 "footprint" is the one on the left-hand side; the main entrance to the Tower was on West Street. The new One WTC tower, which was originally going to be called the Freedom Tower, is being build just to the left of this footprint on the northwest corner of West and Vesey. You can see a partial view of it on the left side of the artist's rendering.
The footprint of Tower 2, where I used to work form 1987 to 1989, is the one on the right. It's on the south side of the site, near the intersection of Liberty and Church, actually that might be the new Greenwich Street that I believe is being restored. (Greenwich Street existed before the Towers were constructed in the early 70's, but was eliminated as part of the WTC site; I am pretty sure that the new plan restores Greenwich through the middle of the site, and that the other new towers will be built on the eastern side of Greenwich, not shown on this rendereing. I just read that Larry Silverstein got the necessary funding to build all of the towers that were originally planned, several of which were on hold for awhile, only the bases were going to be built for them with the towers to be constructed much later, but now it's full-scale ahead.)
The main entrance to Tower 2 was on Liberty Street, on the right-hand side of the footprint. I used that entrance every day for over two years to exit and enter the Tower on my lunch break. Right across from Tower 2, on the other side of Liberty Street, is the contaminated Deutsche Bank building which still has not been completely taken down -- 30 or so floors still remain, nine years later. Two construction workers died there a few years ago because of a fire. It is so contaminated with toxic matter that it has to be taken down very slowly and carefully so that residents of the neighborhood will not ingest the toxic dust. On my first day at work, the attorney who was training me, John Bradbury, may he rest in peace, took me to lunch at a coffee shop on the ground floor of the Deutsche building. I still remember that day.
To the immediate west of the Deutsche Bank building there was a very old church, right near the corner of Liberty and West. I forgot the name of it, but I will look it up and post a photo. It seemed so out of place there, but I loved looking at it because it made for such an interesting and unique contrast with the Towers. The church was destroyed.
In between the two gleaming, magnificent towers, stood the World Trade Center Marriott Hotel, at the southwest corner of the site, formerly known as the Vista International Hotel before Marriott took it over. It too was destroyed in the attacks. The Marriott was the white structure which can be seen between the two Towers, to the right of the pedestrian bridge, in this photo taken in July 2001:
Rob was working at the hotel on the morning of September 11th; he escaped among falling debris and carnage just after the second plane hit. Many of his friends did not.
This post started off much shorter, but things began to come back to me as I wrote. I have much more I want to write about here, so many more memories, thoughts and experiences that are going through my mind now as the sad day approaches.
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Re: The Twin Towers « Reply #26 on Sept 5, 2010, 3:45pm »
The church I was talking about, which was destroyed when the second tower fell, was the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church:
Tower 2 is right across the street, with Tower 1 behind it. You can see the Marriott Hotel -- from which Rob was escaping probably right around the same time this photo was taken -- on the left side behind the church.
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Re: The Twin Towers « Reply #27 on Sept 5, 2010, 4:01pm »
The shrouded, infamous Deutsche Bank building, across from where Tower 2 was. I'm pretty sure this photo was from a few years after the tragedy, before they started demolishing it in 2005. For the first few years they were not sure what to do with it, because there was a fear that it would collapse.
I just read that there are only twenty more floors to be taken down, so they are finally making some progress after four years of dismantling it, but even taking down 20 floors will take a long time because it was only 40 stories to begin with.
Re: The Twin Towers « Reply #28 on Sept 5, 2010, 6:05pm »
On another note about the Deutsche Bank, in August 2007 , two firefighters were killed at the site battling a 7 alarm blaze caused by a workers discarded cigarette and disconnected standpipes (which feed water to high rise buildings) .
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Re: The Twin Towers « Reply #29 on Sept 5, 2010, 7:54pm »
because of a cigarette. Oh my god. That is just awful. I also witnessed a fire caused by a cig at a local coffee place, in like seconds the side of the place caught fire. It's not that hard to put out a cigarette.
On another note about the Deutsche Bank, in August 2007 , two firefighters were killed at the site battling a 7 alarm blaze caused by a workers discarded cigarette and disconnected standpipes (which feed water to high rise buildings) .
I did mention the incident in my post about the Reflecting Absence memorial, but I got it wrong because I referred to the two victims as construction workers, when in fact they were firefighters as you point out, and it was actually construction workers who were responsible for the fire.
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Re: The Twin Towers « Reply #31 on Sept 7, 2010, 3:59pm »
Very moving stuff there Jeff. Thank you for sharing. I know that area means a lot to you, and I could sense that as you and I walked around the village after watching Warchild.
Last night I watched the program called "Giuliani's 9/11" on the National Geographic Channel. It's amazing how we all forget. I haven't felt that kind of anger (or pain) like I did last night in a very long time.
Very moving stuff there Jeff. Thank you for sharing. I know that area means a lot to you, and I could sense that as you and I walked around the village after watching Warchild.
Last night I watched the program called "Giuliani's 9/11" on the National Geographic Channel. It's amazing how we all forget. I haven't felt that kind of anger (or pain) like I did last night in a very long time.
Paul, there is a hole in my heart that will never heal. I remember everything that happened that day, as if it were yesterday, and it frequently plays itself out in my head.
At 9:40 a.m., we stood there on that corner I showed you and saw the Towers burning only a mile or so away, and thankfully went upstairs just a few minutes before Tower 2 collapsed. We were spared from seeing the Towers actually disappear from the skyline before our eyes; it was bad enough to see it happen on television.
But at around noon, about an hour or so after Tower 1 also collapsed, I went out to buy some bottled water. I got it, then returned to the same corner where Karen and I had been standing two hours earlier, Bleecker and Mercer. Only this time there were no Towers, only smoke rising from the destruction.
I think it had such a profound effect on me for a number of reasons, starting from my childhood fascination with the Twin Towers when they were being built, and my parents taking me to the observation deck, and every time they would take me to Manhattan, that was the highlight for me, being able to marvel at those buildings on the skyline, which seemed to anchor all of Lower Manhattan in a way that I doubt the new buildings will be able to match.
Then, of course, it was working for Aetna in Tower 2 that was the whole reason for me moving into NYC in March of 1987, and it was the most amazing thing to me, incredibly exciting for a 25 year-old new attorney, fresh out of law school, to have an office in one of those towers, and I literally watched from my window on the 37th floor as they were building the World Financial Center and Battery Park City! The Twin Towers were central to my life in NYC from the day I arrived here, and continue to be so now, even in their absence.
When I left Aetna in the latter half of 1989, my co-workers took me out to a nice lunch at Windows on the World, and it was a rainy day, so I remember being up there in the clouds and hearing the Tower creak and feeling it sway; they gave me some gifts like an engraved pen set and business card holder.
I had many occasions to return to the Towers afterward, as I still had a lot of friends in that office, and there were other law offices in both Towers where I would go for depositions, including on several occasions, the Port Authority's house counsel in Tower 1. In 1993, after the first attack -- which many people do not realize nearly succeeded in taking down Tower 1 -- I spoke to friends who were still working at Aetna in Tower 2, which was evacuated, and they told me what that day was like. And I also visited Rob a few times, at the WTC Marriot Hotel where he worked.
Then, in 1997, I started dating Karen and her building was right there at 77 Bleecker, the building I showed you when we were down there, only a mile and a half away from the World Trade Center. So from then on, and particularly after we got married and I moved in with her in July of 2000, I was down there all the time. For the 14 months that I lived there prior to 9/11, I saw the Twin Towers virtually every day and night -- the view from that corner was magnificent, the Towers were due south, and I loved that neighborhood because of it. One time, while we were still dating, I took Karen to dinner at Windows on the World, that was probably in 1998 or 1999, and I remember standing with her looking out over the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges from the top of the Tower.
Then, in the month or so before the tragedy, all the strange occurrences that drew me to the Towers on a more frequent basis than normal. First of all, I know that in July and August, I just seemed to be down there more than usual on business. There is a law firm, on Broadway and Vesey, that used to give me a lot of per diem work, and that summer they gave me a lot of depositions and court appearance work, and I was at their office quite a bit, just a stone's throw from the Towers. (I called some of the people in that office the night of the tragedy, to see if they were okay, some of them were in the office when it happened and described what they saw and heard; I learned later that an airplane engine and human body parts had fallen onto the top of their building at 217 Broadway.)
Then, in the middle of August, about a month before 9/11, I went to a birthday party at a nightclub called Wild Blue, on the top floor of Tower 1, so I was 1350 feet in the sky only a month before the Tower was destroyed. The party was for a pretty young receptionist from my office, which was on an entire office floor with shared receptionists, giving each individual business the appearance of having its own receptionist, and I was friendly with several of the girls.
At the end of August 2001, Karen and I saw Tull at Snug Harbor, an outdoor venue, in Staten Island. We went with a Rubenesque woman, another receptionist from my office, Lisa, who I call my "pet whale" because she sat there on her lawn chair throughout a rocking, kick-ass Tull show, never once jumping up and pumping her fist in the air, as everyone else was doing, because Tull were so great that night and we were sitting right up front. But, anyway, Pet Whale drove us home after the show, and from the Verrazano Bridge and the Gowanus Expressway, we could see the Twin towers, and I gazed at them as always, never imagining in my wildest dreams that two weeks later they would be gone.
Then, strangely, on Sunday evening, September 9th, just 36 hours before the attacks, Karen and I went with another couple on a sailboat cocktail cruise in New York Harbor -- me going on a friggin' sailboat cocktail cruise for Chrissakes! Something I had never done before and probably will never do again. And from the sailboat, we were viewing and taking pictures of the Towers, just 36 hours before they were destroyed.
And finally, the morning of 9/11, Karen was running late for work, I was about to leave at 8:30 a.m. and was pumped up for a productive day, but something stopped me, because I changed my mind, thinking that it would be nice to for us to leave together for a change -- she usually left before me, but that day she was just going into the bathroom to shower and get ready at about 8:30, giving me a chance to blast Dot Com very loud while waiting for her to shower and dress, and I continued to blast it right up until the time we left the apartment at around 9:05, moments after the second plane had hit, but we were oblivious to it because Dot Com had spared us from hearing the first plane roar by at 8:45 and the sound of the two explosions, which we otherwise would have heard. So we didn't find out about it until people were talking about it in the elevator.
Then when we got downstairs, Karen wanted to go to work --her office is only four blocks from the WTC site -- it was a 10 minute bus ride or 5 minute subway ride from our block, and she would have done so had I not been with her, but I wouldn't let her, so again it was Dot Com, blasted at a very high volume, which indirectly saved Karen from being caught up in the huge dust clouds that engulfed all of Lower Manhattan up to Canal Street when the Towers collapsed.
And then there was everything else that followed that day and night, and those first three or four surreal months afterward, living in the city, we were absolute wrecks, the sirens constantly blaring down Broadway day and night, preventing us from getting much sleep, the strong, horrible smell penetrating the windows of our small apartment, resembling burning rubber but probably was burning flesh, the makeshift memorials all over town, the anthrax attacks, the plane going down over the Rockaways just a few weeks later, the constant fear whenever we took a bus or subway that another attack would occur.
In late December of that year, or perhaps early January of 2002, we conceived our first child, and the following September 11th, two months before he was born, I remember seeing the two vertical columns of light projecting upwards into the heavens, as a memorial to the Twin Towers, which will always remain close to my heart, and especially now in these approaching days.
I'm sorry for the long post. It's somehow therapeutic for me to write about all this, even though I know I have talked about a lot of this in prior posts. But little details, little bits and pieces of things that happened, or things I remember, keep coming back to me.
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Re: The Twin Towers « Reply #33 on Sept 8, 2010, 12:21pm »
Another strange little detail I remember about 9/11, and this just came back to me, was that Karen and I had just gotten online for the first time, two or three days earlier, September 8th, I think. When the Towers collapsed, our phone service went dead, both the landline and our cellphones, because Tower 1 had that huge radio antenna on top. So we were just very lucky that we had gotten online a couple of days before, because that was the only way we could communicate with anyone for the first several hours afterward, until phone service was restored.
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Re: The Twin Towers « Reply #34 on Sept 9, 2010, 9:11pm »
I have only been in NYC while passing through on my way to or from Europe. I have always wanted to visit when I had a few days to walk around and visit some of the sites, the WTC being one them. It was more than just a pair of buildings...it was a monument, a monument to a lot of things to a lot of people, but for me it was a monument of coming home. I remember the first flight I made from Frankfurt Germany back to the USA after a couple of years of being stationed overseas. As our flight approached JFK, the WTC was the first recognizable site I beheld...followed by the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. It was hard to fight the feeling of great excitement when I first laid eyes on the WTC as we approached the city.
On September 11, 2001 I was at work, flying across the wiles of the Gulf of Mexico. When the first tower was hit there was a bit of chatter on the chit-chat frequency between helicopters...some are equipped with radios which allow you to listen to AM stations while you work, and one of my friends called me to let me know what had just happened. Shortly thereafter I landed on my home platform to take a break and found all of the oilfield hands in the TV room watching the coverage on CNN. I walked into the TV room just moments before the second airplane rammed into the other tower and saw it all unfold. Right then it became very apparent that the first one was no accident. We were all in shock. How could anyone do this?
A short time later the first tower crumbled to the ground while we all sat there with our mouths agape. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. After several moments it occurred to me that we had a national disaster on our hands which may effect what I was doing and decided to call my base. I was initially told that all flights had been suspended by the FAA and that I should plan on spending the night offshore. 10 minutes later my company called me back and instructed me to bring my helicopter back to base as the FAA had granted us all a one-time flight to recover our aircraft to their perspective bases. While making my flight back into the beach, the second tower crumbled to the ground. It was truly a very dark day for all of us. All the way back into the beach I reflected on that first view of the WTC from aboard that Delta Airlines flight from Frankfurt back in 1979...fighting a huge lump in my throat.
If anything good came out of this event, it would have to be the way our countrymen came together for the short period of time afterward. Politics has a nasty way of dividing us which I absolutely loathe, and in the first few months after the WTC fell, I was never so proud of our country simply because we really WERE the UNITED States of America. Leave it to partisan politics to spoil the moment. FDNY and NYPD certainly earned their stripes in this horrible event...mega kudos and much respect goes out from yours truly to those guys.
« Last Edit: Sept 9, 2010, 9:11pm by SilverHamer »
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Re: The Twin Towers « Reply #36 on Sept 11, 2010, 9:21am »
Shirts in the closet, shoes in the hall Mama's in the kitchen, baby and all Everything is everything Everything is everything But you're missing
Coffee cups on the counter, jackets on the chair Papers on the doorstep, but you're not there Everything is everything Everything is everything But you're missing
Pictures on the nightstand, TV's on in the den Your house is waiting, your house is waiting For you to walk in, for you to walk in But you're missing, when I shut out the lights You're missing, when I close my eyes You're missing, when I see the sun rise You're missing
Children are asking if it's alright Will you be in our arms tonight?
Morning is morning, the evening falls I got Too much room in my bed, too many phone calls How's everything, everything? Everything, everything You're missing, you're missing
God's drifting in heaven, devil's in the mailbox I got dust on my shoes, nothing but teardrops
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Re: The Twin Towers « Reply #39 on Sept 7, 2011, 6:40pm »
It's hard to believe that it's almost ten years since that morning, when I was standing with Karen on the corner of Bleecker and Mercer.
The events of that day are coursing through my mind again. The fact that Tull was involved in my 9/11 experience was so strange....and it may well have saved Karen's life. The surreal story is here:
I feel like I have so much more to say in this thread. I've written a lot here in the past, but not lately, and I haven't even come close to getting everything out.
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