The Twin Towers: Why We Should Rebuild

It’s been a decade since the attacks of Sept. 11th, and I’m still furious.
Furious that a day where we should honor the fallen has turned into some kind of self-important feelings day; furious that it pretty much took us a decade to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and finally kill him; furious that we’re still embroiled in two conflicts that were a direct result of the attacks.

But I’m especially furious about what’s happening at Ground Zero.

What’s happening in lower Manhattan is one of the worst mockeries in our nation’s history, perpetrated by the authorities who promised us the legacy of the Twin Towers would live on: the construction of the new WTC site.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (the LMDC) spearheaded the initiative for the rebuilding of the site, working with the Port Authority and Silverstein Properties.

Drawing public ire by dragging their feet for the better part of a decade, they subjected New Yorkers to the grisly reminder of what was once there by leaving two gaping holes in the ground while in-fighting occurred amongst the organizations.

Then in 2004 came the punch line in this ongoing joke told by a bourgeois confederacy of real estate developer dunces: the LMDC would hold a contest on who could come up with the “best” design for the new WTC site. The sticker in this situation? The LMDC had no authority to hold the competition in the first place and had no power to implement the winning design.

What makes this joke even better is that you’re paying for it. For a site that is still technically on public land but being fought over by privatized interests, the American people get to sit back and open their wallets a little bit wider so the LMDC can continue the rampant fleecing.

In an Aug. 4th, 2006 article in the Downtown Express, it was reported that $45 million “has been shifted away from its promised uses” and still remains unaccounted for, while up to $15 million “was shifted to other places.”

As of Aug. 12 of this year, The New York Post has reported that over $2 billion in additional funding is needed to finish construction on the new WTC site and a project that was supposed to be completed sometime in between 2013 and 2016 is now pushed back yet again with no tentative date for said completion.

Some progress is being made at the site, however, but in one of the worst ways with the construction of “the Freedom Tower,” or 1 WTC.

This building, which has become the hopes and dreams of Ground Zero developers, is one of the biggest eyesores that 21st Century architecture has to offer. As Donald Trump so eloquently put it in an interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, “(the new WTC site) looks like a junkyard. And it shouldn’t be built.”

Not only did developers push forth with the new 1 WTC, but they even it kept it from the American people that it is not an original design.

The New York Observer’s Matt Chaban reported on Sept. 12 that a strikingly similar building, right down to the “heavenly spire” and “chamfered corners,” already exists in Tianjin, China.

With all this controversy and problem-rife construction, why aren’t we asking the most important question anyone could ask of this situation: why not rebuild the Twin Towers?

Rebuilding the Twin Towers is the most logical solution to the conundrum in which we find ourselves when it comes to what should happen at Ground Zero.

The Twin Towers were true American icons. What the Statue of Liberty stood for to the waves of immigrants in the 19th and 20th Centuries, the Twin Towers stood for to newcomers to America from all over the globe since 1973.

They stood for resilience, man’s desire to touch the sky and strive toward the future; a 1982 New York guidebook boasting the awe-inspiring towers and the observation deck even came with a disclaimer: “… in the evening, please don’t touch the stars.”

Even 10 years later, you cannot escape the symbol of the towers as you walk the streets of Manhattan—you see it on garbage trucks, murals, business advertisements, cheap wares hocked by vendors in Battery Park.

The towers weren’t just symbols of New York. They were New York. Built during one of the most strenuous economic times in the city’s history, the towers represented the unwavering hope New Yorkers had for their city. On a larger scale, the towers came to represent a similar hope Americans had for their country.

Standing 110 floors, the towers were the country’s guiding light, a symbol that we would latch onto, steering us into a brighter future. They were man-made mountains, easily seen from every borough of the city and from New Jersey, dwarfing the rest of Manhattan in their shadow of hope and prosperity.

Hollywood loved them and built up their image as American icons—to prove it, watch any NYC movie from between 1973 and 2001, the Towers are prominently featured, as though they were characters in the film themselves.

Unfortunately, as opinions are so often changed, in the days after 9/11, movie companies scrambled to cut out shots of the Twin Towers from films in their vaults, citing taste in doing so.

Not only is rebuilding the Towers the logical thing to do, it’s what the American people want. A poll conducted by MSNBC asking whether or not New York should rebuild the Towers or go ahead with the planned Freedom Tower revealed that over 90 percent of Americans wanted to see the Twin Towers in their rightful spots.

America has spent billions of dollars rebuilding other countries so why not spend the billions on ourselves? We even rebuilt the wall of the Pentagon. Other countries spend similar amounts preserving and rebuilding their cities and sites (Egypt with the Sphinx and Pyramids, Italy with Coliseum, Poland with Warsaw), why can’t we do the same thing?
Also, by rebuilding the Twin Towers, we are sending a message to terrorists worldwide, saying “when we get knocked down, we get back up.” The greatest victory in the War on Terror that we, as Americans, could ever achieve would be rebuilding the Towers.

The world is full of nay-sayers right now, with people like Chris Ward, the Executive Director of the New York and New Jersey Port Authority telling the New Zealand Herald News, “Soaring, beautiful office buildings is what New York needs… It didn’t need at this point a symbol, a message.”

A message is precisely what New York and America need right now to once again instill hope in us to move headlong into the future in these dark days where the War on Terror seems unwinnable and the recession grows and grows. We need those masts again to guide us through treacherous waters.

There is hope in seeing these giants restored. Due to increased pressure on developers, construction has slowed significantly with Tower 1 coming to a standstill, Tower 2 placed on hold indefinitely and Tower 3 sent back to the drawing board. The real hope comes in the plans of Ken Gardner and Herbert Belton (who is now deceased), the two architects responsible for the Twin Towers II.

This plan would not only see the Towers’ return, this time a floor taller as the ultimate gesture to terrorists.

These towers would be incredibly safer, with state-of-the-art fireproofing instead of spray-on proofing previously used, more stairwells and elevators in case of emergency, and both buildings would withstand plane crashes better than the Freedom Tower.

Even with the Freedom Tower about halfway completed, this plan is still a reality.

We the concerned public have the voice with which to get this achieved. Make this possibility a reality and restore the New York skyline to its former prominence before we are forced to live with that cemetery they are constructing down at Ground Zero.

Each of us lost something on 9/11, whether it was physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, we are not the same people we were before that day. We lost our legs when we lost the Twin Towers.

If we keep on with the building of the proposed WTC site, we will have to live the rest of our days looking at those stumps and trying to make do; we will refuse to heal and relegate ourselves to the rampant victimization we have endured in the past decade.

If we rebuild the Twin Towers, however, it’s not our way of growing new legs as there is no way we could ever replace the originals. By building the new Twin Towers, we’re giving ourselves the ability to walk again, the ability to get up, and most importantly, the ability to move forward.

Conner McDonough can be reached at cmcdonough@spartans.ut.edu.