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Katherine Mangu-Ward takes the scenic tour of the old site of the World Trade Center, and asks "Hey, why isn't there a building here?"
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|9.8.06 @ 2:47PM|#
Donald Trump had the best idea. Just rebuild it like it was.
|9.8.06 @ 2:52PM|#
This is a pretty awesome example of just how ineffective the government is at getting something accomplished. Good lesson for us all. And yeah, why not just rebuild them again. I liked the twin towers.
|9.8.06 @ 2:55PM|#
...two large pools in the footprints of the Twin Towers...stopped in May when it became clear that the project was going to cost more than $1 billion. ...visitors should be charged an entrance fee to cover the pools� estimated annual operating cost of $49 million.
Over a billion dollars? That's 1,000 millions. For 2 pools? With annual operating costs of $49 million? That's more than the operating budget of most decent-sized cities. That's preposterous, if not downright obscene.
|9.8.06 @ 3:01PM|#
...why not just rebuild them again.
Why not just not? Especially since it looks like the market's going to take care of tanking this one...
The doubt stems mostly from the inability of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey...to convince business tenants to buy into a building on a site that has twice been attacked by terrorists
|9.8.06 @ 3:05PM|#
God damn it already! Auction off the land and let whoever buys it build whatever the hell they want.
MAX HATS|9.8.06 @ 3:12PM|#
I sure as hell wouldn't want to work there. Might as well paint a bullseye on the thing.
|9.8.06 @ 3:25PM|#
I wholeheartedly agree with Lord Duppy, which to me is the only course of action to take. Unless you are a grandstanding politician, of course.
|9.8.06 @ 3:30PM|#
And yeah, why not just rebuild them again.
Because they epitomized everything that was bad about architecture in the 70s (not that the proposals for the replacement buildings are any better).
|9.8.06 @ 3:33PM|#
Besides KM-W's article, The Onion has a fascinating take on the problem.
Kevin
|9.8.06 @ 3:46PM|#
What Seamus said.
All of the factors that should be foremost in planning for the site - economic viability, access, the experience of people who will work in it, or live near it, or work nearby, the niche it will fill in the neighborhood-city-regional economy - have been marginalized in favor of b.s. tee-vee driver concerns like the desire to build big, its appearance as a sculpture, the skyline view for the NYC-based tee-vee series that will be shot in the future, and the conceit that building a certain way will somehow stick it to Al Qaeda.
|9.8.06 @ 4:35PM|#
I agree that the market should deal with it. I hope whoever buys rebuilds, naturally using the technology developed from the analysis of the failures of the structure and the safety issues.
Only makes them 10 stories taller.
|9.8.06 @ 4:54PM|#
meh. It will all be underwater soon anyway.
|9.8.06 @ 5:28PM|#
Because they epitomized everything that was bad about architecture in the 70s (not that the proposals for the replacement buildings are any better).
Actually, they're supposedly making the site fit into the neighborhood, with streets and shopping rather than empty plazas and platforms - that sounds better to me.
The "auction off the site" idea is silly - for one thing, Larry Silverstein would probably not go along with that, nor would the victims' survivors. You just can't get away with pretending that this is some run-of-the-mill plot of land.
|9.8.06 @ 5:41PM|#
As much as I dislike Ray Nagin, he had a point about this hole in the ground . . .
|9.8.06 @ 5:43PM|#
"You just can't get away with pretending that this is some run-of-the-mill plot of land."
...Then make the thing a National park/monument. The govt. can buy off the guy with the 99 year lease, plunk down a big ol' hunk of granite with something meaningful etched into it and leave the rest green and clean. Cheaper in the long run and the only cost is to cut the grass and run the squatters off now & then.
|9.8.06 @ 8:04PM|#
rhwyun,
They have incorporated some good urbanist ideas into the design, like the reconnection of the street through the superblock, but the bare 20 story (yes, really) shealth of blast-proof concrete around the base of the Freedom Tower is going to swamp any Jacobsian energy in its Urban Renewal brutalist immensity.
That thing is going to kill any street life that even attempts to poke its head up. And it is only necessary because they insist on putting up a sculpture with a heavy-handed peak elevation figure and an "inspiring" design when viewed from the suburbs, or through a teevee screen.
Office buildings can be pretty, they can be immense, they can be imposing, but they can never, by themselves, be a monument to anything but subsidized office space. The site should HAVE a monument among the buildings; it should not try to make the site itself into the monument.
|9.8.06 @ 8:08PM|#
Above ten or fifteen stories at most, the visual design of a building is imperceptible to the people walking by it. The experience the ground floor or two, then a handful of stories above that, and then it's just a tall building. That concrete is all they're going to see.
For the people on the sidewalk, the Freedom Tower is going to be nearly indistinguishable from the walls of a prison. Now that's irony.
|9.8.06 @ 8:26PM|#
If Silverstein Properties owns the property then I'm surprised that anyone from this playing field would dare question or recommend what they do with it. If it was your property...
|9.8.06 @ 8:30PM|#
99 year lease, not own.
|9.8.06 @ 9:08PM|#
Classic conservatarian comment.
Blissfully unaware of the corporate welfare that underwrites the project, he argues property rights for the plutocrat.
|9.8.06 @ 9:58PM|#
Yeah, the giant blank wall sucks, but FWIW the "Freedom Tower" is in the remotest corner of the site - there's nothing on the other side of it except the West Side Highway and beyond that the unattractive World Financial Center and Battery Park City.
...Then make the thing a National park/monument.
That works for me, too. A large urban park can be a great asset to the surrounding blocks if done right. Of course, pigs could also fly.
|9.8.06 @ 10:02PM|#
God damn, I miss those towers. I still have the "New York: View Of The World" coffee mug I bought at the observation floor geegaw shop in 1989.
Every time I look at a pic of the post-9/11 Manhattan skyline, I keep expecting to see those damned towers there - kinda like a ghost-limb thing, I suppose...
Windypundit|9.8.06 @ 10:36PM|#
The site should HAVE a monument among the buildings; it should not try to make the site itself into the monument.
Wow. I totally agree with joe.
|9.8.06 @ 11:51PM|#
Maybe NYC realtors could rent space in some "Freedom Towers" planted in lower Manhattan if Gotham's City Faddas and Muddas would try some actual freedom.
Kevin
|9.11.06 @ 11:04AM|#
God damn, I miss those towers. I still have the "New York: View Of The World" coffee mug I bought at the observation floor geegaw shop in 1989.
I only went to the observation floor once (ca. 1980). I remember loving the fact that I was in one place in Manhattan where I didn't have to see the ugliness of the World Trade Center. Added bonus, I got a great view of a truly beautiful building: the Empire State Building.
Actually, they're supposedly making the site fit into the neighborhood, with streets and shopping rather than empty plazas and platforms - that sounds better to me.
I agree; that is better. I'd forgotten that there was a plan to restore some of the street grid that was obliterated by that Rockefeller-era boondogle.