World Trade Center

One afternoon, we headed to Lower Manhattan and visited the World Trade Center site to pay our respects. A lot had changed there, obviously, in the 12 years since I last was here. In 2006, there was still a huge hole in the ground at the WTC site, and it looked like a huge construction zone. Although it had been a few years since the attacks, there was still visible scars on some of the nearby buildings and a strong feeling of melancholy and grief that seemed to permeate the area.



Since then, the One World Trade Center building and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum have been completed. There is still a cloak of sadness that seemed to hang over the memorial, but there was also something else there. A sense of resilience, and a pride at having endured the mourning. Lower Manhattan is again dominated by a towering skyscraper here, One World Trade Center. The 104 story building opened in 2014 and is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere (and the sixth-tallest in the world).



Below is the 9/11 Memorial, with two deep pools sitting in the footprints where the Twin Towers once stood. The waterfalls are the tallest man-made waterfalls in the country, and they are meant to symbolize the physical void left by the destruction caused by the attacks. Around both pools are bronze parapets that list the names of 2,983 people who were killed during the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Also included were the victims of the 1993 WTC bombing.



It was heartbreaking to be there. And also a little frustrating, since people were taking goofy selfies in front of the memorial pools. It felt a little disrespectful. I was a little overwhelmed there, especially with my camera. Should you visit a place like this and be thinking about the most artsy views for photos? I know that the point of the memorial is for people to view and interact with it. But you couldn’t help shake the intense weight of what the memorial represented.

We walked by a few roses that were placed by some of the names on the parapet, and I saw a sign saying that the roses are placed there on the victim’s birthday. It was sad yet poignant reminder of the individual lives that were lost, and it brought a touching connection to the memorial. I ended up taking quite a few pictures of the roses, since it seemed to place a more human connection to the memorial.





And a view looking at the memorial where the North Tower once stood, with One World Trade Center in the background.



And the view looking up at One World Trade Center from the Memorial.



A storm was about to move in, it would actually begin snowing soon, and it got a little windy. The wind was strong enough that it would pick up water from the waterfalls and whip it up over the parapet and onto the sidewalk like rain.



And one last shot of the Memorial pools, with the brand new PATH station in the background.



We went inside the new station, which just opened in 2016. The first train station here opened in 1906 and was called the Hudson Terminal. It was an engineering marvel at the time, with the station also having two twin 22-story buildings built atop it. That station was mostly demolished to make way for a new station in 1971 when the original World Trade Center was built. That station was destroyed during the 9/11 attacks, and a temporary station served rail traffic for a few years until the new station could be built.

The new station cost about $4 billion dollars to construct, but it is a statement of a building. It features stark white columns, which are meant to evoke a bird taking flight. Inside, the concourse was meant to compete with Grand Central Station. It is definitely much prettier than Penn Station.



And a view of the exterior of the station, with the One World Trade Center Building in the background.



And one final shot of the station exterior, showing the curved steel columns.