DEP organizational chart for 9/11 emergency response, Sept 2001

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■0 c JOHN TIERNEY/ The Big City '2 o o If- CT o' ■D tn t.r instore the Skyline, but Do It the New York Way O 3. 03 o tn o 'U HE skyline will be made whole again,’ ’ It’s a style, admittedly, that never caught on, but o c Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said, and it it was a style of its times. Just as the landmark d: was one of the finer moments this week. Instead of a replica, build Art Deco skyscrapers were a product of their 3 Q 3 jThe skyline is our pyschlc equivalent of the cathe­ era.” drals and temples and mosques that other cities something that fits the jrushed to rebuild after other attacks. Civic sym­ ■f^^VEN if you failed to see the towers’ beauty, bols are crucial at times like this. But just how do spirit of our times. tH you could argue that such historic land- We go about making the skyline whole? * marks deserve to be preserved. But you 03 The mayor said he wasn’t sure yet exactly could also argue that there’s something more Im- what would be built on the site of the World Trade downtown skyline. The twin towers never in­ portant to be preserved: the city’s traditional , Ginter. The most obvious choice would be to re­ spired the same kind of affection as the Chrysler spirit, as manifest on the southwest comer of build the original towers, as some are already de- Building, which would probably win the vote for Fifth Avenue and 34th Street nlanding. An Italian cabinet minister has sug- the city’s most charming skyscraper. Nor, for That comer was once the home of Mrs. Astor ; gested that European countries help pay for it as many New Yorkers, did the towers ever replace and the landmark ballroom where the city’s 400 "a'^esture of solidarity, and that the twin towers the Empire State Building as the quintessential danced. The Astor mansion was razed in the ' rauld be renamed for Europe and the United symbol of the city. 189O’s to make room for what became another ’Stktes. While foreigners may now see the towers as landmark, the opulent Waldorf-Astoria hotel, That’s a generous offer, but there are a cou- a symbol of triumphant capitalism, the trade cen­ which became the city’s new social mecca. Then, ' pie of questions to consider. One is the practical ter started out here as a symbol of government in­ in 1929, that landmark was tom down to make ’ ikatter of finding tenants. How many people eptitude, political patronage and corporate wel­ room for the Empire State Building. ' wpuldwanttogotowork every morning tn the fare. It was built by the Port Authority of New Newer, bigger, better: that was spirit when 'world’s most famous target of terrorism? York and New Jersey to revive New York’s ship­ the city’s symbol was built on 34th Street, and Nd matter how much progress is made ping Industry, but the port continued to decline that was the spirit when the twin towers rose even ^'’against terrorism, the image of that plane and and the buildings originally had a hard time at­ higher. That was how the skyline was built, and ,“ &ose collapsing towers will remain. tracting tenants. Eventually the buildings filled maybe that’s the way to rebuild IL ’' Even if tenants are willing to put aside those^ up, and the trade center’s popular Image Im­ The new trade center might, in keeping with ^J^ars, are the twin towers the right symbol for '■ proved, thanks to King Kong and the daredevils the tastes of our age, be less stark than the old York? Before Tuesday they were tourists’ who scaled one tower and walked a tightrope be­ twin towers, more like buildings nearby and the . fiyorite postcard image of the city and terrorists’ tween the two. Some contrarians even began to rest of the skyline. Instead of huge towers around ,1 favorite image of capitalism; now that image has suggest that the World Trade Center was not a huge, barren plaza, it might have a more humaii .reacquired a terrible grandeur and is more famous ugly. scale at ground level, more of a classic New York ,^an ever around the world. It does not, though, "It does have beauty, but it’s subtle,’’ said streetscape with some smaller buildings spaced ; i^^cessarily represent the way New Yorkers see Angus Kress Gillespie, a professor of American more closely together. ■their city. studies at Rutgers University and the author of But whatever is designed, it would be lovely , cy When the towers opened in the 197O’s, the "Twin Towers” (Rutgers University Press, to see at least one graceful new tower, preferably bidings were denounced by citizens and archi­ 1999), a history of the center. "You can say two two, rising even higher than 110 stories—an unfa­ tectural critics as bland, ugly and out of place plain towers side by side are static and banal, but miliar sight with a familiar feeb To make the sky- among the elegantly ornate ziggurats on the you can say there’s a minimalist sculpturallsm. line whole again, make a whole new skyline.

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