STL DPB IN NEW YORK - IN MEMORIAM

At least for me, one of the most gut-wrenching features of the current World Trade Center is the pair of memorial pools in the precise shape and location of the Twin Towers. They fall down from sidewalk level with waterfalls on all sides into a shallow basin, which then empties into a smaller and seemingly bottomless central pit. Around the edges, black marble is engraved with the names of those who died on 9/11, the recesses colored gold. Here and there, the living tucked paper flowers bound with twist ties into the spaces.            

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - INSIDE THE OCULUS

First off, I found that I have been misspelling the name of this building for the last couple of posts. One C, not two.

The view is from a balcony, symmetrical to the one in the background. It feels like you are inside of a space ship-cathedral, or possibly within Moby Dick's rib cage. It was a cloudy day and the upper reaches were a cool gray. There are two levels of shops beneath, whose interior lights send a warm glow. The far background leads to a transit hub with several subway lines and the PATH trains (Port Authority Trans Hudson) trains to New Jersey.          

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - 1 WTC AND THE OCCULUS

After returning from Ellis Island, the group went a short way north to the World Trade Center complex. After the tragedies of 9/11. the tower of 1 World Trade Center now dominates downtown. Below it is an amazing piece of architecture called the Occulus, containing a shopping center and major transit hub. I think we'll come back to more of that.            

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - NATIVE LAND

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said
This is my own, my native land!

                                        - From a mawkish poem by Sir Walter Scott 

But, my, how it's changed since I lived here. All the shiny new buildings, dominated by One World Trade Center toward the left. This is lower Manhattan taken from across the Hudson in New Jersey. There would normally be a spectacular fireworks display on the water tonight for the 4th of July but thunderstorms are likely.

 

 

9/11 Museum

Beneath the plaza of the World Trade Center is a museum about the devastating events of September 11, 2001, and the thousands of people who died that day. I've been there once before and I still find it a very difficult place. The horror and suffering it depicts are overwhelming, almost too much to bear for the living sixteen years later.

Olivier and I visited it on the last afternoon of our meet-up in New York. I took a lot of pictures on my first visit. but could not make more than a few this time. It was just too hard. As you descend the escalator into the cavernous space you are met with the sign in the first picture and wonder if it will literally be true. Just beyond is the mangled fire truck. The blue escalator in the last picture is the exit back upstairs. Stairway to heaven? The color could not have been accidental.     

Oculus

One dictionary defines oculus as a circular or oval window or a circular opening at the top of a dome.  I do not know how this new building at the World Trade Center got its name.  It has ribs that flare in like a cathedral ceiling and then back out like wings. The general shape, seen from above, is something like a football; maybe sort of oval. The eye reference may be that it contains a major transit hub, completely reformed after the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Then throw in an upscale shopping mall (there are Apple, Kate Spade and Hugo Boss stores). The name doesn't exactly work, other than it is memorable.

But it is such an eyeful! Every angle, every view has something uniquely interesting. Sometimes, like in the second picture, you get the tower of One World Trade Center in the frame.   

U Pick - Franco-American Relations - Delicatessen - On The Plaza - WTC - 14,557 Steps and 19 Floors - My French Is Horrible

I'm exhausted. Good thing I have to go to work this afternoon so I can get some rest. Two old guys do Manhattan and take a lot of photos. Jack, who helps manage City Daily Photo, asked for some pictures of the two of us. Pick your favorite. From top to bottom, at Rockefeller Center, The Oculus at the World Trade Center and Katz's Deli on Houston Street. Pick your favorite.

Home this afternoon. Sunday's stair climbing efforts were due to many subway rides - most of it isn't accessible. The language issue was still a bit of a struggle but we got by with the help of AI systems. Next year in Paris, I hope.

On High

Working through more New York pix pending new local material (but I have to work today). The top photo features One World Trade Center, now the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. On the left is the Oculus, the new shopping center and transit hub in the WTC.

The bottom picture is the Brooklyn Bridge, taken from the observation deck on the 102nd floor of One WTC.        

A Last Post From New York

Well, not forever, I hope. You know, home town and all that.

The renaissance of the World Trade Center is not nearly done. There's lots of construction still going on. The Freedom Tower (second picture) is almost ready but the finishing on the windows doesn't look complete. Tourists, of course, are now invited to the top through the underground elevator lobby in the third picture (and those elevators go up 102 stories fast with almost no sense of movement). 

The last picture is the new entrance to the transportation complex including the subway and the PATH train to New Jersey. It looks like a brilliant white crown.                     

In Memoriam

I had seen some photos of the memorial to those who died in the attack on the twin towers in 2001 but never in person before Friday. I was unprepared for how powerful it is.

There are two deep, square pools, each tracing the exact footprint of the towers. They are made of somber black and gray stone, deeply depressed beneath the level of the plaza. The towers once rose astonishingly high. These basins find emotional depth. Water pours over all sides, reminding me of the torrents of steel, stone and glass that plummeted onto those in the buildings and the people who came to their aid. In the center of each is another square pit, completely black and having no visible bottom. They speak of the anguish and despair of the day and those that followed.

The pools are rimmed with panels of polished gray metal containing the thousands of names of those who died. The top picture shows part of the section reserved for firefighters who died in the rescue, each with the number of his truck.                             

Home Town

I love it, I love it, I love it. Just glad I don't have to pay to live there.

Pix taken from the 100th floor observation deck of the new Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center. Certainly worth a visit but a bit disappointing for a photographer. There is no outdoor viewing area like at the building that was destroyed. The glass in the new place has all sorts of problems with reflections and hand smudges. These images are heavily Photoshopped but they work.

Below, a bit of spare space between downtown high rise apartment buildings has two baseball fields squeezed in.