July 25, 2006
NO ONE WAS SUPPOSED TO GET HURT...:
The Last Full Measure (Steven Malanga, Summer 2006, City Journal)
From Lookout Point at Eagle Rock Reservation in West Orange, New Jersey, you see some of the most spectacular views in the New York metropolitan area. No wonder that early settlers used it as a surveying station and that in the Revolutionary War, Washington’s army set up a post there to chart British movements. Today, the point reveals an unobstructed view of New York’s skyline 15 miles away—which is why Essex County officials chose it as the site for a September 11 memorial. Opened barely a year after 9/11, the $1.2 million, privately financed memorial features a bronze sculpture of an American eagle in flight, inscriptions of the names of all those who died on 9/11, and individual tributes to rescue workers. In its first year, the site attracted some 75,000 visitors, and it continues to draw thousands seeking to remember the dead, to contemplate the heroic acts and sacrifices of that day, and to recall the Manhattan skyline back when the Twin Towers graced it.The impressive Eagle Rock memorial is one of dozens that have gone up in and around the New York metropolitan area since 9/11, even as controversy and fecklessness have paralyzed efforts to create a memorial on the grounds of the former World Trade Center itself. At Ground Zero, the projected cost of the proposed memorial ballooned to a staggering $1 billion, even though no construction ever began. The commission formed to build the memorial, in utter disarray, has fallen far short of fund-raising goals, prompting the recent resignation of its head and the sharp downsizing of its plans. The monument’s proposed design—dubbed by its creators Reflecting Absence—has faced intense criticism for its vacuity, fastidiously rejecting any tribute to the heroism of the day or the rock-solid American values that the terrorists attacked.
No such paralysis seems to have encumbered the dozens of commissions that local governments and ordinary citizens set up around the tristate area to honor the dead and remember the day. Though the terrorist attacks were a tragedy for the entire nation, they hit home most acutely in the scores of commuter towns within 100 miles of New York City, where many World Trade Center workers lived. Those communities have responded with a wide array of memorials.
Most are modest in scope and cost, but they are often inspired and poignant. Some serve as gravestones for local victims who have no known resting place. Others commemorate the valor that Americans exhibited on 9/11, especially New York’s rescue workers. By contrast, the World Trade Center site will have no unique memorial to the sacrifices of the city’s firefighters and police. In an age when many memorials, like Reflecting Absence, are abstract gestures that avoid invoking anything except loss—and not even directly but in a glass darkly—some of these local monuments are throwbacks, robust statements of American ideals, rendered in an unapologetically realistic style that might dismay postmodern critics but that successfully translates our common feelings about September 11 into concrete form. Deeply moving, a tour of these memorials also reminds us of the gigantic failure that has left Ground Zero little more than an opening in the earth.
One thing that comes through in visiting these memorials is just how much people miss the Twin Towers.
We moved to NJ in the mid/late '60s and lived in East and West Orange, so Eagle Rock was a frequent haunt. The view of the NY skyline is amazing and the Towers were always a blight upon it. I always wondered how we'd manage to tear them down, so felt weirdly guilty watching them fall. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 25, 2006 10:18 AM
Agreed, the Towers were not very good looking compared with the Empire State Building. However, when viewed from the Jersey City waterfront at sunset, they were breathtaking.
Posted by: Ed Bush at July 25, 2006 10:34 AMThey were anti-human 24/7
Posted by: oj at July 25, 2006 10:48 AMOne of the treats of visiting family in New Jersey from Long Island was getting to drive along the BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway) as it passed under Brooklyn Heights at night, displaying an unbelievable view of Downtown Manhattan at night, with the WTC as backdrop (being on the western side of Lower Manhattan, the BQE facing the eastern side across the East River). They were gorgeous and awe-inspiring from that perspective, especially to a young boy.
Posted by: Matt Cohen at July 25, 2006 10:50 AMFoil wrapped shoe boxes with no character.
Posted by: oj at July 25, 2006 11:17 AMI grew up with OJ in West Orange and also spent a lot of time gazing at NYC from the lookout. My strongest memory is going up to look at the City during the 1978 blackout. It was amazing because instead of the normal view of an incredibly bright Manhattan (from the look out, we were able to read some of the signs in Times Square with binoculars), the world seemed to end at the west bank of the Hudson River, with nothing but blackness beyond...every once in awhile, though, lightning would crack near mid-town (or even hit the aerial on one of the skysrapers) and, for an instant, a shadow of the skyline was visible. The next evening we went up to watch again as the lights came on, and the Twin Towers stirring back to life was an amazing sight....
Posted by: Foos at July 25, 2006 11:28 AMOn the other hand, the view from/i> the towers was wonderful.
Posted by: Jim Miller at July 25, 2006 11:36 AMI agree about the Twin Towers disturbing the skyline and never deigned to enter them for that reason. Now, of course, I wish I had gone up to the top to enjoy what was a spectacular view.
Posted by: erp at July 25, 2006 11:40 AMThey WERE the skyline.
Posted by: RC at July 25, 2006 11:45 AMOrrin-
How on Earth is the Empire State Building pro-human and the World Trade Center anti-human? Because one was boxy and the other was pointy?
Don't forget that Orrin didn't just hate the WTC - he hates all of NYC and any cities anywhere along with anybody who lives in them. But he's not anti-human.
Posted by: Bryan at July 25, 2006 11:49 AM> They WERE the skyline.
I agree with RC. The towers made it possible for anyone to identify the NYC skyline as quickly as reading a printed word.
Posted by: Guy T. at July 25, 2006 11:59 AMAll skyscrapers are anti-human--they needn't be so ugly.
Posted by: oj at July 25, 2006 12:06 PMWhat about the TransAmerica Tower in SF? Or PPG Plaza in Pittsburgh?
Buildings don't need to be ugly, or even plain, but paying for them is always 'common'. So only the uncommon ones are remembered.
Posted by: jim hamlen at July 25, 2006 12:13 PMguy, sorry no.
Posted by: erp at July 25, 2006 12:44 PMAside from their merits architecturally (I was never a big fan of their design -- the former Hudson Terminal towers were much less cold and foreboding up close), the ground level layout of the WTC site bascailly created a walled fortress on 2 1/2 of the four sides of the complex, isolating it from the rest of the neighborhood, since the plaza level was kept at the same height as its eastern edge even as the streets sloped towards the Hudson River. The creation of the World Financial Center, the marina and the pedestrian overpasses on the other side of West Street did serve to make the center a more people-frendly place in its final decade of life, but hopefully whatever goes up on the eight acres that won't be dedicated to the memorial will make a better effort to intergrate itself with the surrounding neighborhood instead of trying to create its own self-contained business area.
Posted by: John at July 25, 2006 12:47 PMGuy - I have to disagree with "They WERE the skyline." Look at the New York Mets patch (which was designed in 1962...well before the Towers went up). That skyline is clearly identifiable as NYC...
Posted by: Foos at July 25, 2006 6:50 PMSo, to sum up Judd's Grand Unified Theory of Trains and Skyscrapers: Long shiny vertical boxes bad, long shiny horizontal boxes (that deliver people to the long shiny vertical boxes) good.
Posted by: joe shropshire at July 25, 2006 7:04 PMYes, skyscrapers are evil for exactly the same reason as highways--they're fascist:
www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/2005/01/whats_more_fascist_than_a_skys.html
Posted by: oj at July 25, 2006 7:29 PMWell, obviously. Wasn't Mussolini famous for making the skyscrapers run on time?
Posted by: joe shropshire at July 25, 2006 8:26 PMIt's Italy--nothing runs on time.
Posted by: oj at July 25, 2006 9:16 PM