I've lived in New York City for 20 years, and I've worked at the World Trade Center for the past three. I've reported on the redevelopment of Ground Zero, and consider myself fairly knowledgeable about the history of these 16 acres in Lower Manhattan ever since I watched them get destroyed on September 11, 2001. This summer, I was driving my family home from the beach when we got stuck in traffic on the West Side Highway, the artery that snakes up the western side of Manhattan and hugs the 9/11 Memorial toward the Battery.
As we crawled along, I looked up at the pedestrian bridge that connects Liberty Street, at the south end of the WTC, with the World Financial Center, another office complex across the highway. I remembered reading years ago that this rather nondescript overpass was one of the few pieces of infrastructure still standing more or less intact, almost miraculously, after the Twin Towers collapsed on top of it. When I stared up, I noticed dozens of little nicks in the aluminum cladding of the structure.
Small dings and scuffs imprinted all over the siding, like the ones you see on a car that's spent its life parked on Manhattan streets. Could these scrapes be damage from when the towers fell? Indeed, a quick dig through the New York Times archive of 9/11 coverage indicated they were.
This discovery set me on a reporting trip. How many remnants of that day—the physical scars of the worst terrorist attack to befall our country—were still visible after all these years? Not the relics and tributes painstakingly cataloged and displayed at the nearby museum, powerful as they are.
But those elements of the disaster that were either never covered up, or else woven with purpose into the rebuilt neighborhood.In the exclusive video podcast below, I am joined by Glenn Guzi, assistant director at the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, the supragovernmental agency that's always owned the Trade Center. Glenn, who oversaw major elements of the WTC rebuilding process and is as familiar with the complicated history of the site as anyone I know, gives Newsweek's The 1600 a walking tour of Ground Zero as it stands today: as both a bustling commercial district and a living reminder of what was lost here 25 years ago—if you know where to look. Below, Newsweek readers also talk about their memories of that day.
Their responses have been lightly edited. Mindy Dallas: I was living in NYC on 9/11/2001. The attack was so shocking that it took me a while to process it.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
