12 Years Later: Remembering 9/11

September 11, 2001. New Yorkers were heading to the polls to vote on the next mayor of the city. It was a morning full of promise and baseball fans were excited about the Yankees' chances of making the playoffs, the Mets thinking about the future, and the start of the new football season. In other words, it was a day not much different than those September days we've been experiencing in the New

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Lower Manhattan and World Trade Center Views

Corbin Building, the Fulton Center, and 195 Broadway from Dey Street





The WTC Transit Hub from Greenwich Street at Vesey





Looking down Greenwich St at the WTC Transit Hub and 3 and 4 WTC





Detail of the 1WTC base cladding





4WTC exterior finished; the building needs interior work, but is in its final form.





Looking up at 1WTC and 4WTC.





Ornate detail work on 140 West

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Remembering 9/11 Eleven Years Later

On a morning not all that different than the one forecast for today, it was a bolt from the blue. The skies over New York City were a crisp bright blue with nary a cloud in a sky. It was a morning full of promise.

September 11, 2001 and New Yorkers were heading to the polls to vote on the next mayor of the city. People were talking baseball and the upcoming football season, just as they are

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The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 167

Fiterman Hall is nearly complete. The exterior is essentially completed and interior spaces are being prepared for a fall opening. That's tremendous news for the CCNY, which has been craving the space since they were forced out after 9/11 left the original building seriously damaged and contaminated.

Meanwhile, Santiago Calatrava's signature PATH transit hub should start to rise above street

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The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 164

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will be visiting the World Trade Center site this afternoon to view progress at the site as part of a trip to New York City that includes two fundraisers for the 2012 campaign.

The trip will disrupt the commutes of tens of thousands of people who use the PATH station at the WTC (myself included), but the President needs to do more than just

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The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 163

The problems with completing the WTC Museum continue. The earliest that the museum will be open is mid 2013, and that's growing increasingly unlikely considering that the money issues between the Memorial Foundation and the Port Authority remain unresolved. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at issue, and each side blames the other for delays and costs that should inure to the other.

Meanwhile,

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The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 160

Westfield Properties envisions opening up its retail center in 2015 after signing new agreements with the Port Authority.After years of negotiation, Westfield (WDC.AX) last week signed a deal with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for a $1.25 billion joint venture to lease the retail space at the World Trade Center.

Westfield, one of the world's biggest mall owners, said the first

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The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 157

The Freedom Tower is nearing its ultimate height of 105 stories (more than 1,300 feet) before the spire is constructed to top the structure out at its symbolic 1,776 feet.

The building is creeping towards edging out the Empire State Building as the tallest in New York City within the next couple of weeks, but it is the spire that will push the building to the top of the heap as tallest in North

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The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 154

While the Freedom Tower (1WTC) is closing in on being topped out later this year, the financial picture for the World Trade Center redevelopment is grim. In fact, grim isn't quite the word. It's downright scary and awful. An audit demanded by both New York and New Jersey governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie shows just how bleak the situation is.

The Port Authority has so severely mismanaged

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The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 152

Once again, rebuilding at Ground Zero is threatening to come to a screeching halt. This time, Larry Silverstein is warning that rebuilding of 3WTC, which was designed by Richard Rogers, would be capped at a stump of 7 stories, because he can't find tenants and wont build it out on spec. The discussions with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the lower Manhattan site, are

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Costly To Build; Costly To Maintain; And No Way To Pay For All of It

I agree with much of what Benjamin Kabab writes on transit issues, and I don't disagree with his posting about how Amtrak lacks the operational funding to operate the Moynihan transit center for Penn Station in New York City. Money is in place to build out the Farley Post Office as a transit center to replace the decrepit Penn Station beneath Madison Square Garden, but it doesn't actually expand

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