NOTES

INTRODUCTION

More than 26,000 workers: Steven Plate, Director, World Trade Center Construction, The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. Interview, Feb. 6, 2014.

“single largest contributor to construction spending”: Patrick Foye, Executive Director of the Port Authority, interview, June 5, 2015.

“different layers of objectives”: David Childs, Chairman Emeritus and Consulting Design Partner, SOM, interview, Apr. 1, 2014.

“to-ing and fro-ing”: Daniel Libeskind, AIA, Designer, World Trade Center Master Plan, interview, July 25, 2014.

Since its opening, people: Steve Cuozzo, “Public Has Embraced Gorgeous New World Trade Center,” New York Post, Dec. 21, 2014.

In exchange for relieving: Joe Mysak with Judith Schiffer, Perpetual Motion: The Illustrated History of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (Santa Monica, CA: General Publishing Group, 1997), 163–64.

“In addition to the national”: Foye, interview, June 24, 2014.

In the years that followed: Christopher O. Ward, Executive Director (2008–2011) of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. Interview, Nov. 18, 2014.

usually it would regroup: Scott H. Rechler, Vice Chairman, Board of Commissioners, The Port Authority, interview, July 1, 2014.

The idea, floated in 2002: Thomas J. Lueck. “McGreevey Calls Trade Center Land Swap Unlikely.” New York Times, Aug. 22, 2002.

The constant turnover: Since the mid-1970s, New York’s governor has selected the Port Authority’s executive director, and New Jersey’s governor has recommended the chair of the Board of Commissioners. It was further agreed in 1995 that New Jersey’s governor would select a deputy executive director, who would share managerial responsibility with the New York–appointed executive director.

according to a special evaluatory panel: The Special Panel on the Future of the Port Authority, Keeping the Region Moving. A Report Prepared for the Governors of New York and New Jersey. Dec. 26, 2014.

Their 2014 report: Ibid., 10.

“The agency for the last couple”: Rechler, interview, May 21, 2015.

“It’s a positive, self-reinforcing cycle”: Rechler, interview, May 21, 2015.

“executive director”: Foye stepped down as executive director on Nov. 19, 2015.

“account for more than 128,200 jobs”: The Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at NYU and Appleseed. “SURPRISE! The World Trade Center Rebuilding Pays Off for the Port Authority—and the Region.” Report. Oct. 29, 2015.

“he had a lease”: Kenneth J. Ringler, Jr., Executive Director (2004–2007), The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. Interview, June 24, 2015.

“because of the site’s importance”: Foye, interview, June 5, 2015.

“deliberate, strategic, and quite successful”: The Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at NYU and Appleseed. “SURPRISE! The World Trade Center Rebuilding Pays Off for the Port Authority—and the Region.” Report. Oct. 29, 2015. This study asserts that the outlook for the World Trade Center is bright and that the Port Authority and Silverstein Properties made a sound investment in its redevelopment. The Port is likely to recoup 98.6 percent of its rebuilding costs by 2019; by 2020, the agency’s WTC net operating income will be an estimated $177 million. Between 2002 and 2020, the Port/Silverstein investment will have directly and indirectly supported more than 198,700 person-years of work in the region, an average of more than 10,400 full-time-equivalent jobs per year; provided nearly $19.4 billion in wages; and generated $43.9 billion in regional economic output (all figures in 2015 dollars). For decades to come, the WTC will generate major tax revenues for New York City and State and, to a lesser extent, New Jersey. The benefits extend beyond economic impact: the WTC has transformed lower Manhattan, attracting new businesses and residents and allowing a vibrant cultural community to thrive downtown.

“While real estate development”: Foye, interview, June 24, 2014.

joint venture with the Westfield Group: “World-Class Retail Coming to World Trade Center under Joint Venture between Port Authority & Westfield Group.” Port Authority of New York & New Jersey press release, Feb. 9, 2012.

The authority’s 2013 agreement with Legends: “Nationally Renowned Legends Hospitality Chosen to Develop and Operate Three-Story Observation Deck atop One World Trade Center.” Port Authority of New York & New Jersey press release, Mar. 20, 2013.

“challenge of divestiture”: Rechler, interview, May 21, 2015.

GROUND ZERO: COMPETING VISIONS

The stark, unadorned date: Christopher Bonanos, “9/11, Name of.” New York Magazine, Aug. 27, 2011.

Architect Rick Bell plants: Michael Gericke, Pentagram, interview, May 22, 2014.

“a marathon race”: Plate, interview, Feb. 6, 2014.

New York New Visions: New York New Visions’ partners included the Infrastructure Task Force of the New York City Partnership; the Real Estate Board of New York; the Civic Alliance; observers from the Department of City Planning; and participants from Community Board 1, the Manhattan and Bronx Borough Presidents’ Offices, and the Alliance for Downtown.

“We’ve got to think”: “Text of Mayor Giuliani’s Farewell Address,” New York Times, Dec. 27, 2001.

it is soon covered: For those whose loved ones’ remains had yet to be recovered, erecting the platform was seen as premature, and their resentment was exacerbated by the announcement within days of its opening that, for crowd-control purposes, access would be by ticket only. Although free, tickets had to be picked up at the South Street Seaport—a twenty-minute hike away; the more cynical understood the ticket location as an attempt to entice people to visit other parts of the city where tourism had all but evaporated.

Max Protetch mounts: Philip Nobel, Sixteen Acres: Architecture and the Outrageous Struggle for the Future of Ground Zero (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005), 95. A New World Trade Center: Design Proposals exhibit was on view from January 17 to February 17, 2002, at the Max Protetch Gallery, New York City. In association with Architectural Record and others, the gallery exhibited sixty drawings, models, and photographs submitted from architects around the globe. The show traveled to the National Building Museum in Washington, breaking all attendance records, and then took on a political dimension, representing the United States at the Venice Biennale in September 2002, before the Library of Congress acquired it.

“help build consensus”: New York New Visions, Principles for the Rebuilding of Lower Manhattan (New York: New York New Visions, 2002).

Installed in a parking lot: Tribute in Light was conceived by John Bennett, Gustavo Bonevardi, Richard Nash Gould, Julian Laverdiere, and Paul Myoda and realized by Fisher Marantz Stone (FMS), who also designed the National September 11 Memorial & Museum lighting. Originally produced by the Municipal Art Society and Creative Time, in collaboration with the Battery Park City Authority, Tribute in Light is now directed by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. FMS’s first task was to source lights that were powerful enough to be visible. They found 7,000-watt xenon searchlights in Las Vegas and did a test run of the installation there. Since even a slight misalignment would distort the beams, FMS stationed people in the five boroughs and New Jersey to report back on the alignment; eventually, they realized they could align the lights to the surrounding towers.

much of what BBB proposes: Paul Goldberger. Up from Zero (New York: Random House, 2005), 93. In writing about the public agencies’ struggles to meet their obligations, Goldberger deemed the hiring of BBB a miscalculation. Thanks to Gehry’s Bilbao Museum and other expressive structures that had sprung up in the previous decade, the public had come to expect architecture to make iconic statements, not merely be a placeholder for real estate.

“Listening to the City”: Two Listening to the City meetings were held at the Javits Center, on July 20 and 22, 2002. An additional eight hundred people participated online between July 29 and August 12. The forums, sponsored by the LMDC and the Port Authority, were organized by the Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York, a planning coalition of eighty-five organizations. Additional support was received from the Center for Excellence in New York City Governance at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, the Regional Plan Association, the Pratt Institute’s Center for Community and Environmental Development, the New School’s Milano Graduate School, and AmericaSpeaks.

“It was a town meeting”: Robert Campbell, “Rigid Ideas Hinder Plans of WTC Site.” Boston Globe, July 28, 2002, L1.

Critics, however, attacked: Michael Sorkin, “Critique,” Architectural Record 190, no. 9 (Sept. 2002): 67.

The public and the press deemed: The Civic Alliance, Listening to the City: Final Report, September 24, 2002.

“People were exposed”: Barbara Littenberg, Peterson/Littenberg, interview, June 10, 2014.

“It looks like Albany”: Civic Alliance, “Listening to the City.”

the LMDC regroups and issues: Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, “Request for Qualifications: Innovative Designs for the World Trade Center Site,” Aug. 19, 2002.

the “Don’t Rebuild. Reimagine” issue: More than a lineup of architectural beauty contestants, the plans, Muschamp insisted, were on par with the urban ambition evident in Vienna, Tokyo, Rotterdam, and other foreign cities. He admitted that the publication deadline didn’t allow the team to focus on a number of critical issues that had to be addressed, including sustainable design, transit links, and underground retail. In fact, these were necessary accommodations that would ultimately play a key role in shaping the final site. The invited architects included Stephen Cassell and Adam Yarinsky of Architecture Research Office; Henry N. Cobb; Peter DePasquale; Todd Fouser, Reuben Jorsling and Sean Tracy of FACE Design; Alexander Gorlin; Zaha Hadid; Rem Koolhaas, Dan Wood, Joshua Ramus, and Office for Metropolitan Architecture; Koning Eizenberg Architecture; Maya Lin; Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa; structural engineer Guy Nordenson; Enrique Norton and Bernardo Gómez-Pimienta of TEN Arquitectos; David Rockwell; Lindy Roy; and Hernan Diaz Alonso of Xefirotarch. Also included were Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey, Steven Holl, Richard Meier, Frederic Schwartz, and Rafael Viñoly, all of whom were invited to submit proposals to the LMDC’s “Innovative Design Study,” issued on September 26, 2002.

Designed by Diana Balmori and Pentagram: Balmori and Pentagram worked in collaboration with the Skyscraper Museum, the New York Historical Society, New York New Visions, the Port Authority, and others. A year later, a second Viewing Wall that pictured the history of lower Manhattan since colonial times opened on the southern border.

New York Magazine publishes seven: Joseph Giovannini, “Rising to Greatness.” New York Magazine, Sept. 16, 2002. The magazine published plans by architects Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Thom Mayne, William Pedersen, Wolf Prix, Lebbeus Woods, and Carlos Zapata that accommodated the LMDC’s guidelines but did not make functionality a “primary premise.” Instead, they prescribed “curative doses of the beautiful, the poetic, the sublime.”

The LMDC selects: The seven teams included Foster and Partners; Peterson/Littenberg Architecture and Urban Design; Studio Daniel Libeskind; Think Design (Shigeru Ban, Frederic Schwartz, Ken Smith, Rafael Viñoly), which presented three schemes; a consortium formed of Richard Meier & Partners, Eisenman Architects, Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, and Steven Holl Architects with engineers Craig Schwitter/Büro Happold; and United Architects (Greg Lynn Studio, UN Studio, Foreign Office Architects, Reiser + Umemoto, Kevin Kennon, Imaginary Forces). The team composed of SOM, SANAA, Field Operations, Tom Leader Studio, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Rita McBride, Jessica Stockholder, and Elyn Zimmerman withdrew from consideration; SOM team members Michael Maltzan Architecture and Neutelings Riedijk withdrew from their team in mid-December shortly before the proposals were made public.

the puzzle eludes the public’s: Edward Wyatt, “Visions for Ground Zero: Overview; 7 Design Teams Offer New Ideas for Attack Site,” New York Times, Dec. 19, 2002.

In a nine-page letter: Larry Silverstein, letter to John C. Whitehead, Chairman, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Jan. 31, 2003.

“astonishingly tasteless”: Herbert Muschamp, “Balancing Reason and Emotion in Twin Towers Void,” New York Times, Feb. 6, 2003.

“between the promise of birth”: Steve Cuozzo, “Leader of the Pack: Think Team Proposes Right Kind of Rebuilding,” New York Post, Feb. 3, 2003.

Silverstein calls a press conference: “Designs for Three World Trade Center Towers Unveiled,” Silverstein Properties press release, July 7, 2003.

“Precisely because architecture”: Libeskind, interview, June 17, 2003.

The joint city-state agency: “Governor and Mayor Name Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporation,” LMDC press release, Nov. 29, 2001. Additional inaugural board members were Roland W. Betts, Paul A. Crotty, Lewis M. Eisenberg, Dick Grasso, Robert M. Harding, Sally Hernandez-Pinero, Thomas S. Johnson, Edward J. Malloy, E. Stanley O’Neal, Billie Tsien, Carl Weisbrod, Madelyn Wils, Deborah C. Wright, and Frank G. Zarb.

From the outset, the LMDC’s ability: Lynne B. Sagalyn, “The Politics of Planning the World’s Most Visible Urban Redevelopment Project,” in Contentious City: The Politics of Recovery in New York City, edited by John H. Mollenkopf (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005), 24.

In April 2002, the agency: The firms included Beyer Blinder Belle (BBB); Peterson/Littenberg; architects SOM; planners Cooper, Robertson & Partners; and engineers Parsons Brinkerhoff. 36 They ultimately selected: Goldberger, Up from Zero, 93.

LMDC issued an open Request: Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, “Request for Qualifications: Innovative Designs for the World Trade Center Site,” Aug. 19, 2002.

Proposals had to accommodate: Littenberg, interview, June 10, 2014. Garvin derived the redevelopment guidelines for the Trade Center largely from New York New Visions’ prescient document “Principles for the Rebuilding of Lower Manhattan” and was assisted by Peterson/Littenberg, an architecture firm that had prepared an award-winning master plan for lower Manhattan in 1994. The LMDC program also required provision of a central transportation hub to link subway, PATH, and future airport lines; cultural and civic amenities such as parks, museums, performing arts and educational facilities; and the rebuilding of St. Nicholas Orthodox Church.

“make lower Manhattan a destination”: Sixteen Acres, directed by Richard Hankin, DVD (New York: Tanexis Productions, 2012).

More than one hundred thousand people: The Winter Garden exhibition was open to the general public from December 20 until February 2, 2003.

“The designs are polar opposites”: Quoted in Paul Goldberger, “Designing Downtown,” New Yorker, Jan. 6, 2003.

the LMDC announced two finalists: Suzanne Stephens, Imagining Ground Zero: Official and Unofficial Proposals for the World Trade Center Site (New York: Rizzoli, 2004), 66.

the LMDC selected Libeskind’s proposal: Alex Garvin and Stuart Lipton, “Effect: Delivering Change,” RSA Journal 151, no. 5510 (Jan. 2004): 44. Accused of holding closed-door meetings, the LMDC in fact had established nine advisory councils composed of 211 members that met more than fifty times to consider all the issues before selecting Libeskind’s master plan on February 27, 2003. Twenty-two public hearings were also held, in every borough and the tristate area.

“I may just be a hick”: Quoted in Nobel, Sixteen Acres, 175.

the “Thanksgiving Accord”: World Trade Center Design and Site Plan Agreement and Exhibits, Nov. 24, 2004.

EVOLUTION OF THE TOWER’S DESIGN

The leases they had signed: Martin C. Pedersen, “In Praise of Guarded Optimism,” Metropolis Magazine, Mar. 2004.

Silverstein commissioned SOM: Larry Silverstein, interview, Apr. 10, 2014. When Silverstein offered Childs the entire site, Childs demurred, saying the project would be “much more dynamic, much more attractive” if different architects designed each tower. Silverstein recalls David saying, “Honestly, you should not, you should not, as much as I’d love to have it, you should not offer it to me, because that would be a mistake and not in everybody’s best interest.” “[David] was very placid, very calm, and, obviously, very deliberate. It was a wonderful moment in time. I looked at him and said, ‘I couldn’t have a better friend.’” Childs said that Silverstein “loves to tell that story because he was so shocked. Here’s an architect giving away work, [but] I don’t care how good an architect you have, the imposition of one hand would not be as enlightening as having multiple hands.”

“Dan, if I’m gonna have”: Quoted in Nobel, Sixteen Acres.

“We spent quite a few months”: T. J. Gottesdiener, Managing Partner, SOM, interview, Mar. 13, 2014.

“You’re experiencing a certain meaning”: Libeskind, interview, July 25, 2014.

“the issues of the families”: Ibid.

Childs “is a gem”: Silverstein, interview, Apr. 10, 2014.

a “mission he was entrusted”: David M. Childs, correspondence with the author, Jan. 29, 2015.

Childs could give Silverstein: Nicolai Ouroussoff, “The Power Broker Yearns to Be Cool,” New York Times, Feb. 20, 2005.

Their approaches were fundamentally at odds: Goldberger, Up from Zero, 188.

devised an internal cable system: David Childs, interview, Mar. 13, 2014. Structural engineer Guy Nordenson assisted in the development of this design. 44 This scheme was developed: Jeffrey Holmes, interview with the author, Feb. 13, 2015.

Pataki, frustrated that things: Deborah Sontag, “The Hole in the City’s Heart,” New York Times, Sept. 11, 2006. By all accounts, the governor deemed the World Trade Center a strategic backdrop for the upcoming Republican National Convention in Manhattan in August 2004 (his presidential bid would fail). But, as Sontag reports, his leadership was criticized widely as “erratic, risk-averse and lacking vision.”

The governor told the LMDC: Edward Wyatt, “Officials Reach Agreement on Rebuilding Downtown,” New York Times, July 16, 2003.

Pataki surprised everyone: Nobel, Sixteen Acres, 223.

That design survived until 2005: Ward, interview, Nov. 18, 2014.

“A lot of people talked about”: Libeskind, interview, July 25, 2014.

the right to develop One and Five: In 2003, Silverstein selected French architect Jean Nouvel to design Five World Trade Center, and he relinquished his rights to develop the tower in 2006. Construction is on hold.

“Did we think it was fair?”: Quoted in Nobel, Sixteen Acres.

“Silverstein is the one who said”: Ward, interview, Nov. 18, 2014.

“It was the best teaching”: Silverstein, interview, Apr. 10, 2014.

“America didn’t lose its freedom”: Ward, interview, Nov. 18, 2014.

he cares deeply about what: David M. Childs, conversation with the author, Dec. 31, 2014.

“This is my World Trade Center”: Erica Dumas, Spokesperson, The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. Interview, June 5, 2015.

“The slurry wall speaks”: Libeskind, interview, June 17, 2003.

Constructing a concrete diaphragm: Henry Petroski, “Big Dig, Big Bridge,” American Scientist 92 (2004): 317.

these walls were stabilized further: Scott Raab, “The Foundation,” Esquire, Sept. 5, 2003.

below-grade structural slabs were installed: George J. Tamaro, “Holding Up,” Civil Engineering 73 (2003): 62–67.

Tamaro worked with other foundational engineers: Mueser Rutledge consulted with other stakeholders besides the Port Authority, including Battery Park City Authority, Brookfield Properties, the state of New York, and Metropolitan Transit Authority, who were responsible for other structures that depended on the efficacy of the slurry walls.

“mud map”: Marc Colella, Senior Associate, WSP USA. Correspondence, Nov. 6, 2015.

The slurry walls were fortified: Ahmad Rahimian, Chief Executive, WSP USA, interview, Apr. 17, 2014.

THE INFLUENCE OF SEVEN: SEVEN WORLD TRADE CENTER

“One of the great attributes”: James Carpenter, James Carpenter Design Associates, interview, May 13, 2014.

“The subtext of everything”: Kenneth A. Lewis, Managing Director, SOM, interview, Apr. 11, 2014.

“We had to do something”: Silverstein, interview, Apr. 10, 2014.

“Larry, we’ve got thirteen”: Childs, interview, Mar. 13, 2014.

For 7 World Trade: Holzer’s lobby installation scrolls quotations about Manhattan in a loop that is about thirty-six hours long. It includes lines from American poets, such as Elizabeth Bishop, Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman, and William Carlos Williams, and from songwriter Woody Guthrie and essayist E. B. White. When the installation is viewed at an angle, the wall’s acid-etched surface causes the text to transform into a luminous volume of white light.

SOM made life safety: Gottesdiener, interview, Mar. 13, 2014.

Silverstein was actively involved: Carl Galioto, interview, Dec. 31, 2014.

“We were collaborative”: Peter Walker, Principal, PWP Landscape Architects, interview, Oct. 30, 2014.

Even the tenant leases are green: “Mayor Bloomberg Announces First Ever Lease For Commercial Office Space That Contains Groundbreaking Language That Incentivizes Energy Efficiency.” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg Office press release (109–11), Apr. 5, 2011. Silverstein Properties and the law firm of WilmerHale, a 7 World Trade Center tenant, were the first to adopt the green lease language crafted by the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability.

the harmony of a “jazz quartet”: David W. Dunlap, “A First Look at Freedom Tower’s Neighbors” New York Times, Sept. 8, 2006.

INTO THE BLUE: DESIGNING ONE WORLD TRADE CENTER

“serenity amongst all the cacophony”: Childs, interview, Apr. 1, 2014.

Its nuances become more apparent: Jeffrey Holmes, Associate Design Partner, SOM, interview, Oct. 10, 2014. Holmes spent a lot of time studying American artists such as Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Richard Serra, whose minimalist work—composed of boxes, neon tubes, or twists of steel, respectively—creates a rich experience. A simple box becomes interesting, Holmes said, once you begin to consider its relationship to the room or to the proportions of the human body. “It’s no longer about the box; it’s about the interaction with it.”

“It’s difficult to say”: Childs, interview, Apr. 1, 2014.

“Suddenly, it clicked”: Childs, interview, Mar. 13, 2014.

“a stick of butter”: Ibid.

the depth of a typical city block: Each side of the Twin Towers was 207 feet 2 inches (63.1 m) long.

buildings that express permanence and social purpose: John M. Bryan. Robert Mills: America’s First Architect (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001), 246.

“a front door”: Childs, interview, Mar. 13, 2013.

He told Ward: Ward, interview, Nov. 18, 2014.

“a centralized decision-making group”: Ibid.

Ward established a steering committee: The World Trade Center (WTC) Steering Committee included representatives from key WTC stakeholders: the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey and its Board of Commissioners; the Federal Transit Administration; the City of New York; the National September 11 Memorial & Museum; Silverstein Properties, Inc.; the Metropolitan Transportation Authority; the New York State Department of Transportation; and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

“Not to be cynical”: Ward, interview, Nov. 18, 2014. Ward said, “The only way we could bring them all to the table was by saying that the memorial would be done. Then you could say to them, ‘Tough shit, while that’s important and we’re struggling with that, this is the priority.’… It cut through so many competing self-interests that it allowed, finally, some management control. Otherwise, it was like the scene in Lawrence of Arabia when the Bedouin tribes are in fucking Damascus and they’re all screaming at each other. Once they knew the memorial was going to be delivered, they had to take a backseat because that was driving the schedule.” Additionally, with some difficulty, the authority got out of the contract with the consortium of Skanska, Fluor, Granite, and Bovis, which was building everything except Silverstein’s buildings. “We [then] went to competitively bid packages, which allowed us to deliver schedule and budget far more effectively and direct work in a more focused way.”

It set forth schedules and budgets: The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, World Trade Center Report: A Roadmap Forward, Oct. 2, 2008, 3.

“SOM nixed this design”: Tony Tarazi, Senior Project Manager, Durst Organization, quoted in David W. Dunlap, “1 World Trade Center Is a Growing Presence, and a Changed One,” New York Times, June 12, 2012.

“approachable, friendly, light”: Gottesdiener, SOM, interview, Apr. 1, 2014.

“We set the mood”: Claude R. Engle III, founder, Claude R. Engle, Lighting Consultant, interview, Mar. 10, 2014.

As the Port Authority saw it: The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, Board of Commissioners meeting minutes, Aug. 5, 2010, 31.

they awarded the Durst Organization: “Port Authority Finalizes Agreement with Durst Organization for Equity Membership in One WTC,” Port Authority of New York & New Jersey press release, Aug. 5, 2010.

The Durst Organization’s portfolio: In some ways, Durst was a surprising choice. Earlier, in February 2007, Durst and Anthony E. Malkin, another powerful New York real-estate agent, took out full-page ads in New York newspapers. The open letter, written by the Continuing Committee for a Reasonable World Trade Center and addressed to the Port Authority and Governor Eliot Spitzer, called for a halt to One World Trade Center’s construction. Despite the “understandable rush to demonstrate New York’s resilience after 9/11,” the letter criticized the “frenetic redesign of the tower after the NYPD’s security review.” As designed, the tower would be “extraordinarily expensive to build,” and, in any case, as the most valuable building on the site, it should have been built last to capitalize on the successes of the other buildings. The tower was “far too important an undertaking to be mired by inefficient planning, hasty design, or occupancy by government agencies paying sub-market rents.” This was not the first family effort to stop construction at the Trade Center. As reported by R. W. Apple Jr. in the April 1, 1964, edition of the New York Times, Durst’s father, Seymour B. Durst, and Malkin’s grandfather Lawrence Wien had formed the Committee for a Reasonable World Trade Center in 1964 to protest the original Twin Towers, which they believed would flood Manhattan with unneeded office space and undermine the real estate market.

The firm’s long game: Erin Carlyle, “Sky Scrappers: World Trade Center Is a Risk for Everyone Involved—Except the Durst Family,” Forbes, July 21, 2014, 68.

“The view is what’s going”: Durst, interview, June 30, 2014.

As one incentive, the Port Authority: Charles V. Bagli, “Condé Nast Will Be Anchor of 1 World Trade Center,” New York Times, May 17, 2011.

they “did not negotiate anything”: Ward, interview, Nov. 18, 2014.

Ward addressed their concerns: Ibid.

Less predictably, Condé Nast’s: Ibid.

automated systems cannot properly clean: Adam Higginbotham, “Life at the Top,” New Yorker, Feb. 4, 2013.

They are equipped with: In 2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded two of One World Trade Center’s basement levels and destroyed three costly, state-of-the-art fuel cells. The cells, which generate electricity with very little pollution, have yet to be replaced.

they constructed an “exemplar space”: Ken Lewis, interview, Apr. 11, 2014.

“Some of them, quite frankly”: Dan Tishman, Chairman and CEO, Tishman/AECOM, interview, June 16, 2014.

“a value engineering effort”: The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, Board of Commissioners meeting minutes, Aug. 5, 2010, 27.

“result in net economic benefit”: Ibid., 44.

That equation later changed: Douglas Durst, Jonathan (Jody) Durst, Thomas Duffe, Tony Tarazi, and Jordan Barowitz, Durst Organization; Gary M. Rosenberg, Rosenberg & Estis, interview, June 30, 2014.

the “Port decides”: Ibid.

“We don’t cut costs”: Ibid.

“We would have designed”: Michael Stein, interview, Oct. 10, 2014.

the radome would increase: Jon Galsworthy, Principal and Wind Engineering Director, RWDI, interview, Sept. 26, 2014. At several different stages of design, RWDI analyzed the spire structure, testing it with and without the radome. According to Galsworthy, those tests revealed that “the radome actually resulted in the spire vibrating quite a bit. Without the radome, the wind just passes through the spire structure.”

cited the radome’s cost: James Panero, “A Beacon Diminished,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 20, 2013.

DCM/Solera, in turn subcontracted: Tara Taffera, “U.S. Suppliers Do the Design Work but Overseas Company Gets the Job for Portion of One World Trade Center,” USGlass News Network, Mar. 31, 2009.

invested “high seven figures”: Ibid.

The Chinese glass was brittle: Charles V. Bagli, “Feature at Trade Center Is Halted after $10 Million,” New York Times, May 11, 2011.

Durst emailed SOM: Durst, interview, June 30, 2014.

“SOM rose to the occasion”: Ibid.

“shimmering skirt”: Holmes, interview, Oct. 10, 2014.

“It was going to be something”: Peter Walker, Principal, PWP Landscape Architects, interview, Oct. 30, 2014.

“an exemplar for large-scale”: The Port Authority, LMDC, and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority developed Sustainable Design Guidelines Reference Manual for World Trade Center Redevelopment Projects. Acknowledging the project’s scale and extended time frame, as well as the reality that much on the site could not be defined simply as a “building,” it urged “whole systems thinking.” Densely detailed and nearly five hundred pages long, the manual was published in March 2005 as a supplement to an earlier set of guidelines.

“Sustainability wasn’t limited”: Lewis, interview, Apr. 22, 2014.

the event forced a move: Simon Lay, “How World Trade Center Affected Tall Building Life Safety Design: Fire Engineering,” CTBUH Journal 3 (2011): 39.

“The most critical question”: Galioto, interview, Dec. 31, 2014.

“Should one or more columns fail”: Gottesdiener, interview, Mar. 13, 2014.

“a process of listening”: Ibid.

“never been a major fire”: Galioto, Dec. 31, 2014.

“Pre-9/11, it was a very”: Childs, interview, Mar. 13, 2014.

“there’s a requirement for buildings”: Ibid.

In the past, it was assumed: Gottesdiener, interview, Mar. 13, 2014.

“What we can deal with”: Quoted in Science Illustrated 4, no. 2 (Mar.–Apr. 2011): 36.

Childs made an emotional appeal: “CTBUH Affirms One World Trade Center Height,” Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat press release, Nov. 12, 2013.

STRONG AND TRUE: ENGINEERING ONE WORLD TRADE CENTER

Greater Security Demands: Yoram Eilon, P. E., Senior Vice President, WSP USA, interview, June 18, 2015.

“Dan Tishman and the Tishman team”: Gottesdiener, interview, Mar. 13, 2014.

a series of recommendations: Based on its WTC investigation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued recommendations that impact thirty-seven specific standards, codes, and practice guidelines. The final 2008 NIST report covered eight categories: increased structural integrity, enhanced fire performance, new methods of passive fire protection, improved active fire protection, improved building evacuation, improved emergency response, improved procedures and practices, and education and training. See the complete list of recommendations at http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/wtc_recommendations.cfm.

the steel perimeter and concrete core: Ahmad Rahimian and Yoram Eilon, “Rising to the Top,” Modern Steel Construction, Feb. 2014.

decision was made early: Nicole Dosso, Technical Director, SOM, interview, Apr. 1, 2014.

One World Trade Center’s foundation: Ahmad Rahimian and Yoram Eilon, “The Rise of One World Trade Center,” Thomas C. Kavanagh Memorial Structural Engineering Lecture, Pennsylvania State University, Apr. 3, 2014.

“We immediately began laying”: Michael DePallo, Director and General Manager, PATH, quoted in The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, World Trade Center Progress Newsletter, Feb. 2010, 2.

The flooding was caused: Jerrold Dinkels, Srinath Jinadasa, and Raymond Sandiford, “Restoring PATH,” Civil Engineering 73, no. 7 (July 2003): 56–61.

the solution “in a remarkable way”: Tishman, interview, June 16, 2014.

Architect Nicole Dosso: Dosso, interview, Apr. 1, 2014. Dosso’s father worked in New York City water and subway tunnels, and he would sometimes take her five hundred feet below ground when she was a young girl. Consequently, she said, wearing a hard hat and walking construction sites had become second nature.

first large-scale use: Nicole Dosso, correspondence with the author, June 5, 2015. SOM and Autodesk partnered to beta-test Revit on OWTC.

“There were multiple parties”: Ibid.

“We were not dealing”: Ibid. Dosso recalls coordinating the “J line wall” between the One World Trade Center and the Memorial sites in 2007. “We sat in a room with forty people trying to coordinate five openings, which should have taken a half hour to an hour. It took days, weeks, to get everybody to agree how those openings would be located and placed and how the infrastructure then would wrap with somebody else’s building, and negotiating something that should’ve been ‘Okay, here are the openings, here’s what I need to get through the wall, and so on.’ It really became an exercise in and of itself.”

For the structural steel: Rahimian and Eilon, Modern Steel Construction, 23.

“Every structure interacts”: Galsworthy, interview, Sept. 26, 2014.

“Inefficiency in the design”: Lewis, interview, Apr. 22, 2014.

“It’s the only reliable method”: Galsworthy, interview, Sept. 26, 2014.

“anything Mother Nature”: Ryan Kernan, Project Manager, Benson Industries. Interview, May 14, 2014.

What shapes motion perception: Melissa D. Burton, Kenny C. S. Kwok, Peter A. Hitchcock, and Roy O. Denoon, “Frequency Dependence of Human Response to Wind-Induced Building Motion,” Journal of Structural Engineering 132, no. 2 (Feb. 2006): 296. Response to building movement arises from multiple psychological and physiological factors and varies widely from person to person.

“become an obstruction”: Rahimian, interview, Apr. 17, 2014.

HIGH STEEL: BUILDING ONE WORLD TRADE CENTER

“Everyone had to dance”: Craig Dykers, AIA, Founding Partner, Snøhetta, interview, Apr. 1, 2014.

“we slowly and methodically broke”: Plate, interview, June 5, 2014.

“We use this as a tool”: Michael Kraft, Senior Program Manager, World Trade Center Construction, interview, June 30, 2014.

A state-of-the-art enterprise: Plate, interview, Feb. 6, 2014.

Plate was joined: Dan Tishman said his father realized there was a significant flaw in the construction industry: Owners “didn’t engage a constructor until the project had been completely designed and everything was done and then looked to the constructor for a price. Then the battle started between the owner and the contractor.” Tishman, interview, June 16, 2014.

game of chess: Tishman, interview, Mar. 26, 2014.

Before construction of the superstructure: Nadine Post, “Tower Crews Get Royal Treatment,” Engineering News-Record 267, no. 5 (Aug. 15, 2011).

“I knew I would never”: Tishman, interview, June 16, 2014.

Four of the lead ironworkers: Field Supervisor Kevin Murphy, Foreman Kevin Scally, Connector Tom Hickey, and Connector Mike O’Reilly, Local 40 Ironworkers employed by DCM Erectors, interview, Mar. 25, 2014.

Four cranes were used: Two Favco 760 internal climbing cranes, a Manitowoc 16000 Crawler Crane, and a Manitowoc 18000 Crawler Crane were used to erect the podium. The ironworkers also erected, “jumped,” and dismantled a creeper crane that Collavino Construction, the concrete contractor, used to lift the material to build the concrete core.

Kahnawake and Aquasasne: Ralph Gardner Jr. “What’s Old Is New Again.” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 4, 2015.

once the glaciers retreated: Rhoda Amon,” Shifting Sands and Fortunes,” Newsday, Mar. 30, 1998.

“There were actually four”: Steve Jackson, Area Manager, Eastern Concrete, interview, June 11, 2014.

“You’re dealing with”: Kernan, interview, May 14, 2014.

His father, John L. Tishman: John L. Tishman, “Construction Management, a Professional Approach to Building,” Robert B. Harris Inaugural Lecture, Center for Construction Engineering and Management, University of Michigan, Apr. 13, 1988. This landmark talk concerned the benefits of coordinating the efforts of the owner, construction manager, and architect from a project’s outset. A radical departure from traditional ways of building, this approach let design and construction proceed simultaneously, resulting in major time and cost savings.

CONSTRUCTION TIMELINE: ONE WORLD TRADE CENTER

After protracted legal battles: Sagalyn, “Politics of Planning the World’s Most Visible Urban Redevelopment Project,” 59. When Silverstein bought the original WTC lease, he had obtained insurance from two dozen insurers in the amount of $3.55 billion “per occurrence.” After September 11, there were legal questions about the meaning of “occurrence.” Did the attacks constitute one or two events? The answer determined whether there would be a single payout or one twice as large.

The largest single insurance: Charles V. Bagli, “Insurers Agree to Pay Billions at Ground Zero,” New York Times, May 24, 2007.

“Uncertainty is expensive”: The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, World Trade Center Report: A Roadmap Forward, Oct. 2, 2008, 21.

at the 9/11 Memorial Museum: After praying at the 9/11 Memorial and greeting family members and rescue workers, Pope Francis descended into Foundation Hall at the museum. Standing before the slurry wall, its symbolic power never more evident, he presided over a multifaith ceremony of great breadth and power. Religious leaders said prayers in sacred tongue and in English. The three Abrahamic faiths were bridged in a striking visual tableau when Rabbi Elliot J. Cosgrove shook hands with Imam Khalid Latif, with Francis standing just behind them. The Pope called for peace: “We can and must build unity on the basis of our diversity of languages, cultures, and religions, and lift our voices against everything which would stand in the way of such unity. Together we are called to say ‘no’ to every attempt to impose uniformity and ‘yes’ to a diversity accepted and reconciled.” With haunting emotion, Cantor Ari Schwartz sang the Kaddish, a Jewish prayer in honor of the deceased. As he ended, with repeated supplications for peace—Ya’aseh shalom, Ya’aseh shalom, Shalom aleinu (May He make peace, May He make peace, Peace for us)—Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and others chimed in softly. In that unforgettable moment, full of grief and hope, a secular museum became a holy temple.

“The workers knew”: Plate, interview, Feb. 6, 2014.

May 19: The American Institute of Architects also awarded “Architect of Healing” medals to Julie Beckman, Robert I. Davidson, Ridgely Dixon, Craig Dykers, Ronald E. Fidler, Christopher Fromboluti, Keith Kaseman, Daniel Libeskind, Craig A. Morgan, Paul Murdock, and Mary Oehrlein. In addition, more than 130 architects received AIA Presidential Citations for their roles in rebuilding Ground Zero.

SEE FOREVER: ONE WORLD OBSERVATORY

One World immerses guests: Phil Hettema, The Hettema Group, interview, Apr. 2, 2014.

“A view is power”: Justin Davidson, “What You’re Really Seeing from the 100th Floor of One World Trade Center,” New York Magazine, May 31, 2015.

Meeting the public’s expectations: David W. Checketts, Chairman and Chief Executive, Legends, interview, June 5, 2014.

Those effects were developed: The Hettema Group worked with these firms on elements of the One World experience: Blur Studio (Sky Pod), Mousetrappe (Voices of the Building), Réalisations, Inc. (See Forever Theater), Stimulant (Welcome Lobby), and Local Projects (City Pulse).

That interactive spirit guided the design: Doug Barnes, “Phil Hettema—from Disneyland to Universal to the World!,” MiceChat Podcast, Oct. 12, 2013.

REMEMBRANCE: THE NATIONAL SEPTEMBER 11 MEMORIAL & MUSEUM

He had few commissions: Arad worked for Kohn Pedersen Fox, notably on the ICC Tower in Hong Kong, before joining the Design Department of the New York City Housing Authority in 2003, where he had the opportunity to work on community projects, such as police stations. In 2004, he joined Handel Architects as a partner.

“five or six things”: Walker, interview, Oct. 30, 2014.

“It’s almost entirely spatial”: Ibid.

“think longer before”: Ibid.

Walker describes as a “harness”: Ibid.

begun more than thirty years ago: Alexander Cooper and Stanton Eckstut, with the landscape architects Hanna/Olin and overseen by Amanda Burden of the Battery Park City Authority, included the riverfront esplanade, now 1.2 miles long, in their 1979 master plan for Battery Park City.

“from the first minute”: Paul Marantz, FIALD, Founding Partner and Consulting Design Principal, Fisher Marantz Stone, interview, Oct. 29, 2014.

“We want the names above”: Quoted in Sontag, “The Hole in the City’s Heart.”

The powerful Coalition: Joe Hagen, “The Breaking of Michael Arad,” New York Magazine, May 22, 2006.

Arad suspected that moving: Ibid. 167 A thirteen-member jury: Jury members were Paula Grant Berry, 9/11 Memorial board member, whose husband died in the 2001 attacks; Susan K. Freedman, president of the Public Art Fund; Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York; Patricia Harris, first deputy mayor of New York City; Maya Lin, architect of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.; Michael McKeon, former communications director for New York governor George Pataki; Julie Menin, chairperson of Community Board 1; Enrique Norten, architect and principal of TEN Arquitectos; Martin Puryear, sculptor; Nancy Rosen, art adviser; Lowery Stokes Sims, curator of Museum of Arts and Design; Michael Van Valkenburgh, landscape architect; and James E. Young, professor at the University of Massachusetts. In addition to Arad, the seven memorial competition finalists were Dual Memory by Brian Strawn and Karla Sierralta; Garden of Lights by Pierre David with Sean Corriel and Jessica Kmetovic; Inversion of Light by Toshio Sasaki; Lower Waters by Bradley Campbell and Matthias Neumann; Passages of Light: The Memorial Cloud by Gisela Baurmann, Sawad Brooks, and Jonas Coersmeier; Suspending Memory by Joseph Karadin with Hsin-Yi Wu; and Votives in Suspension by Norman Lee and Michael Lewis.

“I really felt for him”: Walker, interview, Oct. 30, 2014.

What emerged was the idea: Michael Arad, 9/11 Memorial Designer, Handel Architects, interview, Nov. 3, 2014.

Arad began to explore: Arad, interview, May 8, 2015. Arad’s initial competition proposal did not address the placement of the names. After winning the competition, however, he suggested that the names be placed in meaningful ways, an idea that the LMDC quashed. Arad said it was “the only time I broke down and cried.” The plan to place the names randomly resulted in a lot of negative publicity for the memorial overall and very little fund-raising for a two-year period. Once it was decided to place the names in nine groups, organized by geographic location, Arad again took up the idea of “meaningful adjacencies” within those nine groupings, which is how the names are now arranged. Arad praised Bloomberg’s “tremendous leap of faith. No typical politician would have given us the opportunity to implement this idea.”

In June 2009, the 9/11 Memorial: Allison Blais and Lynn Rasic, A Place of Remembrance: Official Book of the National September 11 Memorial (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2011), 165.

“It was a very emotionally charged”: Arad, interview, Nov. 3, 2014.

“The fact that I’m taking”: Ibid.

“We recognized one thing”: Dykers, interview, Apr. 1, 2014.

“searing fragment of ruin”: Philippe de Montebello, “The Iconic Power of an Artifact,” New York Times, Sept. 25, 2001.

They looked “manageable”: Mark Wagner, AIA, Associate Partner, Davis Brody Bond, interview, Oct. 20, 2014.

“We couldn’t control”: Dykers, interview, Apr. 1, 2014.

There were fears that: David W. Dunlap, “Governor Bars Freedom Center at Ground Zero,” New York Times, Sept. 29, 2005.

“why I fought hard”: Dykers, interview, Apr. 1, 2014.

“They’re very, very realistic”: Ibid.

“It’s where you realize”: Steven Davis, FAIA, principal, Davis Brody Bond, and architect of the 9/11 Memorial Museum. Interview, Oct. 14, 2014.

were protected under Section 106: For a history of the Section 106 process, see Clifford Chanin and Alice M. Greenwald, eds., The Stories They Tell: Artifacts from the National September 11 Memorial Museum: A Journey of Remembrance (New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2013).

Paul Marantz guided the passage: Marantz, interview, Oct. 29, 2014.

The repository and a room for victims’: Joe Daniels, President and Chief Executive Officer, National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Correspondence with the author, Nov. 24, 2014.

staff worked with trauma psychologists: Greenwald, interview, Sept. 23, 2014.

The exhibits had to meet: The museum’s dedication took place on May 15, 2014, in Foundation Hall. About seven hundred guests attended the solemn ceremony, which was simulcast on the memorial plaza. Michael R. Bloomberg, chairman of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, introduced President Barack Obama. The president’s comments were followed by those of past and present political leaders whose careers were shaped by September 11, including New York governor Andrew Cuomo, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, former New York governor George Pataki, former New Jersey governor Donald DiFrancesco, and former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani. First Lady Michelle Obama, former president Bill Clinton, and former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton were in attendance. First responders, 9/11 family members, and survivors spoke, as did recovery workers from the FDNY, NYPD, and the Port Authority Police Department. Rhonda LaChanze Sapp, a Broadway singer who lost her husband, Calvin Gooding, on September 11, sang “Amazing Grace.”

“Visitors typically fall into”: Ann Frank Farrington, Exhibition Consultant, 9/11 Memorial Museum, interview, Sept. 18, 2014.

“I’d like to have a sanctum”: Tom Hennes, Thinc Design. Lead installation designer, 9/11 Memorial Museum. Interview, Nov. 4, 2014.

“We felt that the trope”: Greenwald, interview, Sept. 23, 2014.

Bearing witness to the unimaginable: “The National September 11 Memorial Museum Is Open to the Public,” 9/11 Memorial Museum press release, May 21, 2014.

“An emotionally safe encounter”: Quoted in “The Completion of the National September 11 Memorial Museum Upholds Commitment to Honor, Educate and Remember the History,” National September 11 Memorial & Museum press release, May 14, 2014.

“It’s a sacred place”: Alice Greenwald, National September 11 Memorial Museum Director, interview, Sept. 23, 2014.

landfill on Staten Island: Elizabeth Royte, “New York’s Fresh Kills Landfill Gets an Epic Facelift.” Audubon Magazine 117, no. 4 (July–Aug. 2015): 48–58. Fresh Kills, once verdant marshlands, was established as a landfill by 1948. Although closed prior to September 11, 2001, it was reopened after that date because of the urgent need to move debris off the World Trade Center site and set up a working station to sift through tons of wreckage in the search for human remains. In 2003, Field Operations, the architectural firm behind the High Line, won a competition to restore Fresh Kills into a biologically diverse urban oasis.

stored at Hangar 17: Before the 9/11 Memorial Museum opened, the Port Authority stored as many as 1,284 objects at Hangar 17. Since then, most of the artifacts have found homes, donated to 1,500 organizations nationwide and around the world.

Wagner went on his gut: Wagner, interview, Oct. 20, 2014.

As others learned: Ibid.

PRIMEVAL BEAUTY: THE TRANSPORTATION HUB

“the sky and the firmament”: Andrew Rice, “A Glorious Boondoggle: Will the New WTC Station Permanently Taint Santiago Calatrava’s Career?,” New York Magazine, Mar. 9, 2015.

“create a link between you”: Ibid.

“sense of accessibility”: Ibid.

“L’architecture, c’est”: Ibid.

“Imagine there could be places”: Santiago Calatrava, interview, July 7, 2014.

“if they were different people”: Carla Bonacci, Assistant Director of Infrastructure and Product Development, World Trade Center Construction, The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. Interview, June 30, 2014.

“the Wedge of Light”: Calatrava, interview, July 7, 2014.

“No one could ever get”: Mark Pagliettini, Assistant Director, WTC Transportation Hub, The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, interview, July 18, 2014.

“Thousands of commuters”: Ibid.

These different ways of understanding: Calatrava, interview, July 7, 2014.

The Port Authority conducted: Goldberger, Up from Zero, 181.

“The airports look the way they do”: Foye, interview, June 5, 2015.

Extra costs were linked: David W. Dunlap, “How Cost of Train Station at World Trade Center Swelled to $4 Billion,” New York Times, Dec. 2, 2014. The price tag also rose in response to a tsunami of political demands, not the least of which were the presidential ambitions of Governor Pataki, who supported the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s desire to keep the No. 1 subway line running during construction—at a cost of at least $355 million to the Port Authority—so as not to anger commuters from Staten Island, largely Republican, who ferried to Manhattan and then used that subway line.

The billions spent: Andrew Rice, “A Glorious Boondoggle.”

SPIRITUAL LEGACY: ST. NICHOLAS NATIONAL SHRINE

“human-scaled presence”: Santiago Calatrava, “A Monument to the Human and Divine,” in Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox National Shrine at Ground Zero: The World Trade Center (Privately published, unpaginated, 2013).

elements of two landmark churches: Calatrava, interview, July 7, 2014.

a cascading staircase: Archbishop Demetrios, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church of America, conversation with the author, Sept. 25, 2015.

“love of the stranger”: Fr. Alexander Karloutsos, Protopresbyter of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, interview, July 17, 2014.

a “city set on a hill”: Mark Arey, “The City Set on a Hill Cannot Be Hidden,” Orthodox Observer, Dec. 2013, 5.

“It somehow seems appropriate”: Arey, interview, July 21, 2014.

“Freedom of conscience”: “Port Authority and Greek Orthodox Archdiocese Announce Agreement on Rebuilding of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church,” The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey press release, Oct. 14, 2011.

A handful of items were salvaged: The items recovered at St. Nicholas were a paper icon of St. Dionysios of Zakynthos; a hand-painted icon of the Zoodochos Peghe (Life-giving Fountain); a copper bell; melted candles; a silver candle holder; two books, a copy of the Holy Bible and a history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate; and several hand-embroidered velvet altar covers. These are displayed at the new church.

Church representatives sparred: Eliot Brown, “City News: Greek Church to Be Rebuilt at WTC Site,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 15, 2011, A19.

Efforts to proceed: The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, World Trade Center Report: A Roadmap Forward, Oct. 2, 2008. This report identified the primary issues to be resolved before the mired rebuilding efforts downtown could proceed. Chief among them was coming to an agreement with the Archdiocese.

The original St. Nicholas: Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox National Shrine at Ground Zero.

Both parties then agreed: The four-month study was led by Peter Lehrer, a renowned construction expert, who worked on the project on a pro bono basis with Director of World Trade Center Construction Steven Plate and independent engineers Gorton & Partners and McNamara/Salvia, Inc.

The Port Authority bore: David W. Dunlap, “Way Is Cleared to Rebuild Greek Orthodox Church Lost on 9/11,” New York Times, City Room blog, Oct. 14, 2011.

Calatrava’s design arose: Micol Forti, “The Metamorphoses of the Space between Sign and Function,” in Santiago Calatrava: The Metamorphoses of the Space, exhibition catalogue (Vatican City: Edizioni Musei Vaticani, 2014), 24.

Many supported the plan: Mark Arey, “A Tale of Three Churches: Part 2,” Orthodox Observer, Feb.–Mar. 2014, 5.

a national controversy ignited: See Elizabeth Greenspan, Battle for Ground Zero (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), for a thoughtful discussion of the Park51 battle. In addition to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, supporters included the United Jewish Federation of New York, September 11 Families for a Peaceful Tomorrow, and Community Board 1.

“Our first responders defended”: Text of New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s speech, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 3, 2010.

Shortly after the tenth anniversary: In 2014, developer Sharif El-Gamal said he planned to build an Islamic museum and residential tower at the location.

to display the Ground Zero Cross: American Atheists v. Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (13-1668).

Mass was said weekly: Sally Jenkins, “9/11 Memorials: The Story of the Cross at Ground Zero,” Washington Post, Sept. 8, 2011.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Time magazine partnered: To commemorate the rebuilding of the World Trade Center, Time partnered with GigaPan, a tech startup based in Portland, Oregon, and founded by former NASA and Carnegie Mellon University researchers. The firm creates panoramic photographs that combine digital images with billions of pixels into one, highly detailed image. To make the 360-degree interactive image of views seen from One World Trade Center’s topmost point, the team anchored a Canon 5D Mark II camera with a 100-mm lens to a jib anchored just below the beacon at the top of the tower’s spire. On September 28, 2013, working over a five-hour span, they captured 567 pictures that were then stitched together digitally into a single massive—and zoomable—image of views in all four directions. The photograph is accessible at http://time.com/world-trade-center/#a-view-reborn.

oku connotes the innermost: Brendon Levitt, “Veiled Sustainability: The Screen in the Work of Fumihiko Maki,” Places: Forum of Design for the Public Realm 17, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 76–81.

Their emotional response: Gary Kamemoto, Director, Maki & Associates. Interview, Oct. 22, 2014.

Kamemoto said they knew: Ibid.

The engineers had to: Osamu Sassa, Consulting Project Architect, Maki & Associates, interview, Sept. 30, 2014.

Convinced that public places: Media Kit Announcing the 1993 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate (Los Angeles: The Hyatt Foundation, 1993), 10.

He has long been a proponent: Yuriko Saito, “The Moral Dimension of Japanese Aesthetics,” Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism 65, no. 1 (January 2007): 93.

This life-affirming urbanism: Blair Kamin, “Ground Zero’s Gentle Giant,” Chicago Tribune, Nov. 5, 2013.

cities shaped by oku: Fumihiko Maki, “The Japanese City and Inner Space,” in Nurturing Dreams: Collected Essays on Architecture and the City, by Fumihiko Maki (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 165.

Maki compares this sensibility: Fumihiko Maki, “Japanese City Spaces and the Concept of Oku,” Japan Architect (1979): 52.

“There were no expectations”: Diana Horowitz, painter, interview, Sept. 29, 2014. Horowitz has been painting at the World Trade Center since 1985, first from the observation deck of the South Tower and then, as part of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s World Views program, from the upper floors of the North Tower. After September 11, Horowitz took her easel to Brooklyn and other parts of the city. She works at Four World Trade Center five or six days a week. Asked about the advantages of working from this particular perch, she said that “the paintings I’ve done there are the biggest I’ve ever done. Canvases of that size wouldn’t have been possible if I wasn’t able to leave my things there. It allowed me to do justice to the scale of the site.”

The sensibility implied by oku: Fumihiko Maki, “My City: The Acquisition of Mental Landscapes,” in Fumihiko Maki, Nurturing Dreams, 91.

Today, Maki observed: Fumihiko Maki, “Modernity and the Present,” in Fumihiko Maki, Nurturing Dreams, 256.

Fumihiko Maki, seen here: Fumihiko Maki, Nurturing Dreams, 29.

“We will leave this city”: Richard Rogers. Cities for a Small Planet (New York: Basic Books, 2008): 16.

Since then, Rogers has shaped: Edwin Heathcote, “Urban Warrior: Richard Rogers and ‘Inside Out,’” Financial Times, July 19, 2013.

“We can fit more people”: Larry Silverstein, interview, Apr. 10, 2014.

Once the building is completed: Charles V. Bagli, “First Business Tenant Is Set for a Trade Center Building,” New York Times, Dec. 23, 2013. GroupM is one of the many media, technical, and creative companies flocking to an area historically dominated by banks and financial services.

All parties agreed: The current migration of media firms to the downtown area recalls an earlier era, when lower Manhattan was the nation’s news hive in the nineteenth century and reporters cranked out stories for the city’s daily papers—the Herald, Sun, Tribune, World, Journal, and Times—from offices along Newspaper Row, a group of buildings across from City Hall Park, just blocks from the World Trade Center.

he wanted to restructure: Charles V. Bagli, “Developer Reaches Deal to Finish 80-Story Tower,” New York Times, June 25, 2014.

Failure to complete: Steve Cuozzo, “3 WTC Gets a Boost: Leasing Spurt Improves Silverstein’s Chances,” New York Post, June 23, 2014.

Critics argued: Charles V. Bagli, “Developer’s Skyscraper Is Focus of Latest Dispute at Rebuilt Trade Center,” New York Times, Mar. 16, 2014.

“We are triaging”: Quoted in Joe Nocera, “The Real Port Authority Scandal,” New York Times, Apr. 21, 2014.

The public also weighed in: Margaret Donovan spoke on behalf of the Twin Towers Alliance, a nonprofit citizens watchdog group; Paul Fernandes, chief of staff of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, spoke on behalf of the local affiliates of fifteen national and international unions. Port Authority of New York & New Jersey Board of Commissioners, committee meeting video, Apr. 23, 2015.

“a lot of what you hear”: Ibid.

the decision on Silverstein’s request: Daniel Geiger, “Deal Eyed to Restart Work on 3 WTC,” Crain’s New York Business, June 23, 2014.

Rechler disagreed: Rechler, interview, July 1, 2014.

“Glut ain’t the case”: Silverstein, interview, Apr. 10, 2014.

“Relentlessness is the first”: Foye, interview, June 24, 2014.

A video documenting this vote: The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, Board of Commissioners, committee meeting video, June 25, 2015.

“immediately jump-start vertical”: Quoted in Bagli, “Developer Reaches Deal.”

Later, Rechler wrote a gutsy article: Scott Rechler, “WTC Deal Signals a New Port Authority,” Newsday, June 25, 2014.

Months of open debate: Scott Rechler, correspondence with the author, Aug. 19, 2014.

“new day at the Port Authority”: Rechler, interview, July 1, 2014.

“a vertical village”: Nikolai Fedak, “Interview: Bjarke Ingels on New Design for 200 Greenwich Street, AKA Two World Trade Center,” New York YIMBY, June 11, 2015.

Even the announcement: Goldberger, “How 2 World Trade Center Was Redesigned Exactly for Rupert Murdoch’s Media Empire.” Vanity Fair, June 10, 2015.

It was accompanied: Andrew Rice, “Revealed: The Inside Story of the Last WTC Tower’s Design,” Wired, June 9, 2015.

The foundations had been built: Andrew Rice, “Big Deal,” Wired, Sept. 28 2015. Piggybacking the new skyscraper onto Foster’s foundation created structural problems, especially in the lobby and the lower floors, which had to be engineered to shift the tower’s weight onto the preexisting supports.

Once Two’s anchor tenants: The two companies signed a nonbinding but detailed letter of intent with Silverstein Properties on June 2, 2015.

“My first reaction”: Quoted in Rice, “Revealed: The Inside Story of the Last WTC Tower’s Design.”

But there was little doubt: Rice, “Revealed: The Inside Story of the Last WTC Tower’s Design.”

Its profile recalls other: David Brussat, “BIG copies the future!” Architecture Here and There blog, June 12, 2015.

“It’ll be pretty epic”: Quoted in Rice, “Revealed: The Inside Story of the Last WTC Tower’s Design.”

“Your capacity to communicate”: Ian Parker, “High Rise,” New Yorker, Sept. 10, 2012.

The deal also signaled: Goldberger, “How 2 World Trade Center Was Redesigned Exactly for Rupert Murdoch’s Media Empire.”

On the east side: Ibid.

“Even though they are not twins”: Quoted in Sara Pepitone, “When Larry Met Bjarke…,” Commercial Observer, June 17, 2015.

“the vertical segregation”: Bjarke Ingels, “Interview with Charlie Rose.” Charlie Rose, PBS, New York. June 16, 2015.

Even his mother calls him: Parker, “High Rise.”

the Greenwich Street façade is conservative: Andrew Rice, “Big Deal.” Two’s critics include Douglas Durst, whose firm developed One World Trade Center and commissioned BIG to design VIA 57 West. “I’m very disappointed in Bjarke’s design,” Durst said of the orientation of Two’s stepped gardens. “He turned his back on [One]. Not even metaphorically. It’s very disrespectful.” Although Durst still thinks Ingels is a genius, Rice writes that a “cynic might say the developer has an interest in minimizing competition as he attempts to lease his own World Trade Center building.” Justin Shubow, president of the National Civic Art Society, wrote that to build a tower “seemingly on the verge of collapse at the site of the former World Trade Center goes beyond bad taste; it constitutes gross negligence. Two World Trade Center, like the three nearby towers at the site, ought to look as permanent and stable as possible.” Shubow, “Towering Infernal,” Weekly Standard, Sept. 21, 2015.

a “lifted landscape”: Joseph E. Brown, FASLA, AECOM, interview, Aug. 4, 2014.

“Let’s get people off”: Andrew Lavallee, FASLA, AECOM, interview, Aug. 8, 2014.

initially dismissed the idea: Ibid.

“We chuckled at first”: Ibid.

“We chose not to go”: Brown, interview, Aug. 4, 2014.

they “wrapped the landscape”: Ibid.

Placing, sizing, and disguising: The ventilation towers are located next to the pedestrian bridge, one at the corner of West and Cedar streets, two immediately south of the church adjacent to the future Tower 5, and one embedded in the church itself.

located with standoff distances: The ventilation shafts’ profiles were also determined by the way air moves around the different skyscrapers in the area; changing the size or height of any given vent required a costly airflow analysis of the entire district. Additionally, every time a park element was moved, the walkways had to be redesigned to make the vents as unobtrusive as possible.

“We pushed and pulled”: Lavallee, interview, Aug. 8, 2014.

SIXTEEN ACRES: HOSPITALITY, SAFETY, AND SECURITY

The Port Authority’s overarching goal: Bonacci interview.

To integrate the security features: Lavallee, interview.

The plaza needed light sufficient: Ibid. For human beings to feel secure, lighting does not have to be extremely strong, just strong enough. Originally FMS was asked to provide five-foot-candle lighting on the plaza, a foot-candle being a unit of light intensity. However, because this is New York, where “there’s plenty of light floating around loose in the air,” FMS was allowed to use half-foot-candle lighting. Marantz took Robert Ducibella, a Port Authority security consultant, to various parks in the city, including Bryant Park, “the best corollary place to downtown because it’s surrounded by tall buildings.… We put a light meter in the middle of the Bryant Park lawn, and it measured half a foot-candle.” Ducibella agreed it was sufficient and waived the five-foot-candle requirement.

“The minute you begin thinking”: Marantz, interview, Oct. 29, 2014.

“We had gone to Israel”: Walker, interview, Oct. 30, 2014.

There are none on the memorial: There have been numerous failed attempts to install self-cleaning automated toilets in Manhattan. In 1992, JCDecaux, a French advertising company, installed six restrooms that were removed after a four-month testing period; Cemusa, a Spanish advertising company, won a contract in 2008 to install twenty units, but only three, one of which is in Manhattan, have been installed thus far.

“we’ll probably spend”: Foye, interview, June 24, 2014.

“We have to live our lives”: Joseph Dunne, Chief Security Officer, Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. Interview, June 24, 2014.

Fears that bulky, obstructive security: David Dunlap, “With Security, Trade Center Faces New Isolation,” New York Times, May 16, 2013.

The Authority worked: Erica Dumas, Spokesperson, The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, correspondence with the author, Jan. 13, 2015.

Credentialing and screening: The City of New York Police Department, “World Trade Center Campus Security Plan. Statement of Findings,” Aug. 26, 2013.

“Someone once asked me”: Doug Farber, Chief of Security, World Trade Center, Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. Interview, July 8, 2014. A thoughtful man who takes long pauses before speaking, Farber began his career in the Secret Service in 1997, working as a specialist in the Technical Security division during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. His job required detecting environmental, chemical, and physical threats to the White House’s occupants at home and abroad.

“We’re the number-one target”: 60 Minutes interview with Ray Kelly, Sept. 25, 2011.

AFTERWORD

The Manhattan market: Carol Willis, Founder and Director, The Skyscraper Museum, interview, Dec. 30, 2014. While some question whether that much commercial space is needed, many developers are betting yes and leveraging pricing and location to their advantage. At one time banking and financial services were concentrated in the Wall Street district, but after the Second World War banks and other large corporations began to migrate to the newer buildings in midtown. Downtown office space expanded in the 1970s with the completion of the Twin Towers and then again with the development in the late 1980s of the World Financial Center, now Brookfield Place, in Battery Park City.

Critics damned it as compromised: Michael Kimmelman, “A Soaring Emblem of New York, and Its Upside-Down Priorities,” New York Times, Nov. 30, 2014, A1; Banksy, unpublished op-ed piece, posted online, Oct. 27, 2013, http://banksy.co.uk; Zachary M. Seward, “The Failure of One World Trade Center,” Quartz, Nov. 3, 2014; Michael Sorkin, “Ground Zero Sum,” The Nation, July 22–29, 2013; Blair Kamin, “One World Trade Center ‘a Bold but Flawed Giant,’” Chicago Tribune, Oct. 18, 2014; Aaron Betsky, “Spireless Wonder,” Architect, Aug. 13, 2012.

performing arts center: Robin Pogrebin. “Design Team Named for Performing Arts Center at World Trade Center Site,” New York Times, Nov. 20, 2015. REX, a Brooklyn-based architecture firm, will design the WTC PAC, with Davis Brody Bond as executive architect.