| Subject: Re: The Towers came down |
Author:
Raisinmom
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Date Posted: 04:45:18 07/03/02 Wed
In reply to:
M23
's message, "The Towers came down" on 23:51:42 07/02/02 Tue
This is a tough question. Some kind of memorial clearly is needed to console the families of the victims and the rest of us, to ensure that we "never forget," and it would be most odd to simply build over a place where so many died. I used to believe that for the sake of downtown NYC and its residents, the whole area could not be made a park -- that some development was needed to draw business, people and services to the area. (Downtown is primarily a business area, but there is a sizeable residential area just by where the WTC was, and more and more people are living downtown.) The people living there need the shops and services that used to be on the WTC concourse level (there isn't much else of that nature down there) and the small businesses surrounding the site depended on the influx of workers there every day.
However, over the last 6 months, I've been surprised by how well the area has fared overall. Many small businesses have had problems, but it's not as bad as I had thought it would be, and it's less ghostlike than I would have expected. (This could be due to the crowds visiting the site spending money at the local pizza places too; I hadn't really thought about the site becoming a tourist attraction. What do you all think of that? I understand people's need to mourn, but I personally find it very weird for tourists who are not family to someone who died there to come and snap photos of themselves at the site.)
This means that I now believe the entire area could be made a memorial, and certainly the footprints can be off limits to development (as Gov. Pataki pledged recently). It would be nice for the families to have somewhere peaceful to go and mourn, and I am sure the many hundreds of thousands of office workers nearby would enjoy green space, which is rare downtown. But the memorial, whatever it is, should be super-simple (I would favor a park with the damaged sphere sculpture that survived the collapse, but not much else).
I am not, however, opposed to the idea of some building on site, alongside green space for a memorial. However, if something is built on the site, I definitely think it should not be a replica of the Towers, because no one will take space in the higher floors. Also, the Towers were (dare I say it) ugly. Perhaps state and federal offices could move to the new buildings if others are slow to take space.
Finally, I wish they could find a way to keep the Towers of Light going a little while longer. These were the banks of lights that went on for a month or so that sent two soaring towers of light up to the sky from the site. It was really beautiful and very moving.
R.
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