The last major stop on our tour was the World Trade Center site of the 9/11 terrorist attack. This is a picture of the new Tower 1 being rebuilt. I think they said it would be finished in 2013 or so. The foundation and first few floors of the new Tower 2 will be built but that is all for now. They have the same financial problems that the Empire State Building and others had when they were built. You can build a building but then you need tennents. So until more financing and tennants appear there will be just one Tower fully built.
We were taking these pictures across the street from the Twin Towers site. The building we were in is absolutely beautiful and only had its windows blown out that day. It is interesting how buildings so close to this disaster were only slightly damaged. Memorials to the dead are being built at the actual site of each tower. In the middle of this picture of the site you can see some trees. That is the rear of St. Paul's Chapel. The church was undamaged that day but one tree in the cemetery was blown over.
This sculpture is actually a rendition of the root system of the tree that was blown over and is placed at Trinity Church due to a lack of space at St. Paul's. The metaphore is that as trees need roots to be anchored, we need to have roots to hold us firmly in our family and nation.
I don't know the name of this building but it is one half as wide as one of the original Twin Towers and one half as tall making it just a quarter the size of one of the original Towers. They were huge. That is the beginnings of the second tower in the foreground. Our guide was a witness to this disaster from two miles away in Brooklyn where he was working. He said they actually saw the second plane crash into the tower and after they came down didn't know what to do so they left work. He went to his wife's school in Queens to pick her up and he said he was covered with ashes from the buildings even though he had been so far away. He could hardly talk about it and was quite emotional. You feel a hallowed feeling here like I have felt at Valley Forge, Gettysburg, etc.
All good days must end and ours did too as we walked through Times Square to our hotel. This is where the ball is dropped each New Years Day.
1 comment:
I love that city so much! Wish I could live there for a while and just soak it all up! It's so amazing! Hope you have a blast at Phantom!!! I think we have the music on CD is you want to load it to your ipod when you come back. Sooooo jealous! :)
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