DEP Invoice or Financial Record, September 30, 2001

z z o o co

■D c o CT o o' o ■D cn O to 3. to g) co O Beauty From Evil: Preserving Felled Tower Facade as Sculpture o o c 3

w six firemen — three pallbearers on each * CD have even envisioned turning the whole site O HAT do we do with the facade in side, their hands touching the cart as they the ruins? That twisted aluminum rem- into a solemn memorial, but that’s problem­ atic, and not merely because the real estate ‘We have to remember escort it to the street. The workers stand at is so valuable. New York is too young and vi­ attention, saluting, construction helmets nant of the south tower of the World Trade Center has become the most revered shape brant for the ruins and grand monuments to what happened and above their hearts. the past that are the trademarks of Euro­ But once the procession is gone, the hats in the city. The sightseers snapping pictures from two blocks away can’t help calling it pean capitals. People come here for the buzz grieve, and we have to go back on and the workers resume clearing of Times Square, not for the silence of the rubble, far more energetically and beautiful. Even the workers at the site, the ones eager to take it down before it col­ Grant’s Tomb or our other monuments to look forward, too.’ cheerfully than you would expect after near­ lapses on them, will occasionally stop and the dead. ly two weeks of 12-hour shifts. Watching remark on the strange form looming above In designing a memorial to the World them, you can imagine that the facade Trade Center’s victims, we could learn from town and a new public space filled with peo­ above isn’t just the debris from a successful the rubble. Until Sept. 11, New Yorkers did not spend the Rev. Lyndon Harris, the pastor of St. ple. What we don’t need is another big emp­ attack — it’s the building hanging on, still much time contemplating sculpture in pub­ Paul’s Chapel, the Episcopal church next to ty space like the old plaza. refusing to fall, just like New Yorkers. It’s lic spaces. Sculptors kept trying to make . the trade center site. He is planning a me­ “The plaza never quite worked and no one the message sung by Tom Petty during Fri­ statements in plazas, but the public general­ morial using a sycamore in the church’s could ever figure out why,' said Angus day night’s telethon: "I’ll stand my ly responded with either anger (they forced cemetery that was uprooted on Sept. 11. Kress Gillespfe, the author of "Twin Tow­ ground.” the removal of Richard Serra’s wall) or “The tree pretty much saved the church ers,” a history of the trade center. “It was At night under the floodlights, the spires with indifference. Can you even remember by absorbing the power of the blast,” Father just so big and windswept. Something was of the facade can start to look like the masts what sculptures used to rise from the plaza Harris said. “We’re thinking of using part of in the famous flash-lit photo of Endurance, the trunk to make a baptismal font. We have missing.”' at the World Trade Center? the British ship that was crushed by the Ant­ Now people study the charred metal and to remember what happened and grieve, Z“^NE reason for the facade’s current arctic ice in 1915. The photo shows the ship see a Roman coliseum, a Gothic cathedral, a and we have to look forward, too. We would I I appeai is that it's surrounded by so sitting in the icy rubble, its masts and rig­ ship, a bird in flight, a hand reaching to use the trunk to make a memorial to the V-X many busy workers. Oddly enough, ging a ghostly white against the black Ant­ heaven. They have no interest in preserving dead Juxtaposed with the new life of bap­ arctic sky. the site can seem one of the more hopeful the old sculptures in the plaza (a bronze tism.” places in the city, because here people are The ship is trapped in the ice, about to be globe as well as works in black granite and The facade memorial could also be juxta­ crushed and sunk, but the picture is inspir­ posed with life if it was made part of the city doing something about the attack. They are stainless steel), but they’re already wonder­ already looking forward. ing because you know that Shackleton and ing how best to preserve the facade. — not just a solemn tourist destination but a all his men will miraculously make it home place where New Yorkers work and play. There are terribly quiet moments when a Other cities have turned wartime wreck­ body is taken out of the rubble and wheeled alive. Like the masts still standing above the age into memorials, and there’s talk of do­ The charred and.twisted aluminum would look best framed by new buildings down- out on a construction cart accompanied by rubble, they have not given up. ing that with the tower facade. Some people

NVT'fmeS