The Times provides a by-the-numbers nostalgia piece on 130 Liberty Street (the Deutsche Bank/1 Bankers Plaza building). For a long time, much of their coverage of the WTC attacks evidenced a strong, restrained tone that was good reportage with a minimum of pap. Their commitment to publishing the stories of those who died and its execution was exemplary.
Now, like most everyone else, they have lost their way, producing mangled narratives of a middling sense of loss and ham-fisted telescopic observational rhapsodizing — the people who got up and left their breakfast, a stray business card, silent machines — dominate, best evidenced by the truly awful photo of the exterior framed with the obligatory flag billowing in the foreground. It’s a shame they couldn’t find a firefighter to hold a baby. Perhaps they were pressed for time. In the end, it reads like the CEO of Deutsche Bank wrote a ‘Lives’ column.
To borrow from the tone they employ, the final chapter of 130 Liberty Street has yet to be written. Along with Fiterman Hall, the Manhattan Community College facility just north of the under-construction (and under-rented) 7 WTC, 130 Liberty Street is slated for deconstruction. Though many of the delays were bureaucratic (both involved insurance disputes), they were also a result of uncertainty about safety. Now, some four years later, the mixture of the two adds to the air of confusion and incompetence that pervades the site. The stark image of the WTC side of each structure bear painful witness to the power of the destruction, a gash the seems to run the full length of 130 Liberty, and a gnawing at Fiterman that makes it impossible to determine just how much of it is destroyed (when in fact, it was relatively little — contaminants are the considerable issue there). And the persistence of these two clearly hopeless and useless figures continues the sense that no one knows what to do next.
The Times reports that many people consider them a blight. The reasons for this are obvious, but a very few people (if it is worth noting, most of them live physically proximate to the site) I know think that 130 Liberty Street is possibly the most fitting memorial, in its current state. Though I don’t enjoy looking at it, it is the only thing I am ‘comfortable’ looking to when near the site.
Comfortable is a very loaded word, and my qualified use of it is akin to the experience I had first seeing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, an accomplishment that has the unfortunate additional burden of being a paradigm for memorial design ever since its highly contested genesis. Though it is without a doubt a striking, elegant object, it did not register as pure form when I first came it, because it is submerged in far more significant cultural meaning. The interventions of the visitors, their consistent presence, and the knowledge of its history diminshed the importance of its physical form. Though there are key decisions that enabled this (walking down into the center being the most crucial), the collective role of people and thing manifest a narrative that seems fitting and honest.
And so, when I see 130 Liberty Street, I do not look away, embarrassed, angry or disappointed, as I do in so many other areas near it (though much of it is only implied, empty as it remains). It has an ugly dignity to it, and presupposes no attitude regarding how we should speak of the day, or the people, or the vast cultural conflagration it was both a result of and catalyst for. But that almost unmanageably large issue should be tended to, fought and — hopefully — resolved elsewhere. This place, those people were unfortunate, unwitting combatants.
We pave over history, no doubt. Partly a result the exigencies of growing populations and sprawling cultures, and partly because we would grind down into an existential morass were we to sit and think hard of all the moments of suffering that led us to the here and now. How this is perhaps unique is the speed with which we decided precisely how this paving should happen. Though some might argue that months of hand-wringing and listening sessions and this and that led to this decision, it should be recalled that it was no more than days, days, before someone voiced the opinion of what exactly should happen, and, to this moment, that decision has hardly changed. A single person, with a highly compromised financial position, dictated our collective memory. It isn’t worth mentioning a name, since most in that position would have likely responded the same, for any number of reasons. The rest of us failed to oppose such a limited and, in the end, repugnant concept of honor, with words and actions eloquent and forceful enough to manifest another way. For now, dark and draped in the obvious but effective funerary shroud, 130 Liberty Street is alone it its testimony to the narrative of hopelessness that we have not fully addressed, instead busying ourselves with the shiny distractions we want to dot the site. And to avoid responding more directly, we now want to remove it, to erase the most compelling vestige of that void, and those questions.
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A void.
The Times provides a by-the-numbers nostalgia piece on 130 Liberty Street (the Deutsche Bank/1 Bankers Plaza building). For a long time, much of their coverage of the WTC attacks evidenced a strong, restrained tone that was good reportage with a minimum of pap. Their commitment to publishing the stories of those who died and its execution was exemplary.
Now, like most everyone else, they have lost their way, producing mangled narratives of a middling sense of loss and ham-fisted telescopic observational rhapsodizing — the people who got up and left their breakfast, a stray business card, silent machines — dominate, best evidenced by the truly awful photo of the exterior framed with the obligatory flag billowing in the foreground. It’s a shame they couldn’t find a firefighter to hold a baby. Perhaps they were pressed for time. In the end, it reads like the CEO of Deutsche Bank wrote a ‘Lives’ column. To borrow from the tone they employ, the final chapter of 130 Liberty Street has yet to be written. Along with Fiterman Hall, the Manhattan Community College facility just north of the under-construction (and under-rented) 7 WTC, 130 Liberty Street is slated for deconstruction. Though many of the delays were bureaucratic (both involved insurance disputes), they were also a result of uncertainty about safety. Now, some four years later, the mixture of the two adds to the air of confusion and incompetence that pervades the site. The stark image of the WTC side of each structure bear painful witness to the power of the destruction, a gash the seems to run the full length of 130 Liberty, and a gnawing at Fiterman that makes it impossible to determine just how much of it is destroyed (when in fact, it was relatively little — contaminants are the considerable issue there). And the persistence of these two clearly hopeless and useless figures continues the sense that no one knows what to do next. The Times reports that many people consider them a blight. The reasons for this are obvious, but a very few people (if it is worth noting, most of them live physically proximate to the site) I know think that 130 Liberty Street is possibly the most fitting memorial, in its current state. Though I don’t enjoy looking at it, it is the only thing I am ‘comfortable’ looking to when near the site. Comfortable is a very loaded word, and my qualified use of it is akin to the experience I had first seeing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, an accomplishment that has the unfortunate additional burden of being a paradigm for memorial design ever since its highly contested genesis. Though it is without a doubt a striking, elegant object, it did not register as pure form when I first came it, because it is submerged in far more significant cultural meaning. The interventions of the visitors, their consistent presence, and the knowledge of its history diminshed the importance of its physical form. Though there are key decisions that enabled this (walking down into the center being the most crucial), the collective role of people and thing manifest a narrative that seems fitting and honest. And so, when I see 130 Liberty Street, I do not look away, embarrassed, angry or disappointed, as I do in so many other areas near it (though much of it is only implied, empty as it remains). It has an ugly dignity to it, and presupposes no attitude regarding how we should speak of the day, or the people, or the vast cultural conflagration it was both a result of and catalyst for. But that almost unmanageably large issue should be tended to, fought and — hopefully — resolved elsewhere. This place, those people were unfortunate, unwitting combatants. We pave over history, no doubt. Partly a result the exigencies of growing populations and sprawling cultures, and partly because we would grind down into an existential morass were we to sit and think hard of all the moments of suffering that led us to the here and now. How this is perhaps unique is the speed with which we decided precisely how this paving should happen. Though some might argue that months of hand-wringing and listening sessions and this and that led to this decision, it should be recalled that it was no more than days, days, before someone voiced the opinion of what exactly should happen, and, to this moment, that decision has hardly changed. A single person, with a highly compromised financial position, dictated our collective memory. It isn’t worth mentioning a name, since most in that position would have likely responded the same, for any number of reasons. The rest of us failed to oppose such a limited and, in the end, repugnant concept of honor, with words and actions eloquent and forceful enough to manifest another way. For now, dark and draped in the obvious but effective funerary shroud, 130 Liberty Street is alone it its testimony to the narrative of hopelessness that we have not fully addressed, instead busying ourselves with the shiny distractions we want to dot the site. And to avoid responding more directly, we now want to remove it, to erase the most compelling vestige of that void, and those questions.