2015 - Bob Van Toor - ReflectingAbsenceorHowGroundZeroWasPurgedofItsMate[Retrieved 2015-07-28]

7/25/2019 2015 - Bob Van Toor - ReflectingAbsenceorHowGroundZeroWasPurgedofItsMate[Retrieved 2015-07-28]

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International Journal of Cultural Property (2015) 22:85110. Printed in the USA.Copyright 2015 International Cultural Property Societydoi:10.1017/S0940739115000028

Reflecting Absence, or How GroundZero Was Purged of Its Material History(20012010)

Bob van Toor*

Hanneke Ronnes*

Abstract: The development of the urban space of Ground Zero has been a longand difficult process, resulting in the removal of almost all of its material history.The material objects formerly present on the site had an important part and significant

agency in the struggle between different stakeholders of Ground Zero. The PortAuthority of New York and New Jersey and Larry Silverstein, owner and leaseholderof the sixteen acres that held the Twin Towers, intended to rebuild the ten million

square feet of office space that was destroyed on 9/11. This force of productionasserted itself over possible modes of consumption of the space, each championed

and represented by overlapping groups of people. Some wished to see the spaceredeveloped as a site of mourning, others as a site fit for touristic consumption, as aspace for residence, or as a site representing a material past older than 9/11. It shall be

argued that for these consumer groups the symbolic complexity of the site, and itspotential power in political performances, was intricately connected to space and thematerial agency of objects remaining on Ground Zero post 2001.

INTRODUCTION

Since 2011, late each March, a pear tree has blossomed amid the still-bare swamp

white oaks that line the waterfalls of Reflecting Absence, the memorial at Ground

Zero. This pear tree is called the Survivors Tree, and it is the only object, organic or

inorganic, that stood on the site before 2001 and stands there still.1

*Cultural Studies Department, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.Email: [email protected], [email protected]


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86 BOB VAN TOOR AND HANNEKE RONNES

The development of Ground Zero has been the subject of much scholarly

attention. Among the countless articles published in the wake of the events of 9/11,

most dealt primarily with its emotional, cultural, and individual impact.2 When

material aspects were discussed, the focus lay on what was due to be built. Rel-

atively little attention, however, has been given to the tangible, material aspects

of the site that remained after the attacks, and which became the center of an

ongoing power struggle. This article argues that various consumer groups could,

with varying success, substantiate their protest against the proposed site develop-

ment by invoking the importance of objects on the site.

In what has been termed a spatial turn in the social sciences, scholars have increas-

ingly turned to the study of space and place, and their role and usage, since the early

1990s.3 This development was largely a reaction to the realization that space and place

seemed so ordinary as to cause a kind of myopia. Overlooking space is a common but

notable error: not only is each life, each act spatial; space is an a prioriexigency of it.4Spaces are lived in, gazed upon; they form the arena for physical human interaction

and reference points in dialectic exchange. In short, spaces are consumed.

John Urry noted that the act of spatial consumption remains relatively under-

analyzed.5 Many authors only go as far as to note spaces of consumption: spaces,

especially urban sites, that are built or developed to enable commercial consump-

tion of other products.6 But spaces, through design, intent, and materiality, invite

and prohibit entrance; they invite and prohibit the consumption of its features,

visually and haptically, by groups of users.7 When it has been established that

spaces are consumed, then it follows that they are also produced.When HenriLefebvres La production de lespace, written in 1974, was finally translated into

English in 1991, it immediately became instrumental in the spatial turn. Lefebvre

argued that space is produced by a hegemonic power, often resulting in tension

and the exclusion of consumers of that space.8

A useful instrument in spatial analysis is the concept of material agency. Though

agencyis traditionally ascribed to human actors, material or non-human agency has

recently been used with increasing frequency by several scholars.9 They argue that

the relationship between human and non-human actors is not a one-way process.

Objects might not be able to act, but they can certainly actively shape, impact

and transform the perception, in the words of Michael Kirchhoff.10 The ability of

objects to symbolize, to shape public opinion, and even political processes, through

human mediation, is a crucial aspect in the development of Ground Zero that has

hitherto gone almost completely unexamined.

At first sight, the picture as regards Ground Zero seems deceptively simple.

Very soon after 9/11, political constellations and some serendipitous circum-

stances put control of the redevelopment process firmly in the hands of a small

group of players. First among them was the Port Authority of New York and

New Jersey, an organization that owned the 16 acres of land and answered only

to the state governors. As will become evident, its hegemony was constantly challengedby various types of potential consumers of the space, who increasingly invoked


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HOW GROUND ZERO WAS PURGED OF ITS MATERIAL HISTORY 87

the material agency of material and objects on the site to gain political leverage.

The symbolic complexity of the site for these consumers, it shall be argued, was

intricately connected to space, material and objects on the site.

(RE)CLAIMING THE SIXTEEN ACRES, 20012002

The first days after the collapse of the Twin Towers, the city government took

charge at Ground Zero, setting up rescue and recovery efforts and clearing the

roads around the ravaged 16 acres bound by Liberty, Vesey, West, and Church

streets.11 The higher political echelons were less assertive. The razed land belonged

to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which was recovering from

a great loss of personnel in the Twin Towers, including its executive director.12 The

Port Authority, a semi-governmental state agency, was officially subordinate to

the state governor, George Pataki. The governor chose the time-tested politicianstactic of watching the proceedings before speaking out with regard to the future

of Ground Zero. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was vocal, but mostly regarding the

victims and survivors. Giuliani knew, however, that his term was almost up, and

he held the strategic opinion, which would be voiced often and loudly by others

over the next years, that no civic or commercial buildings should ever again be

built on Ground Zero.

A stark contrast was provided by the last force on the space-production side at

Ground Zero: Larry Silverstein, real estate mogul and leaseholder of the land beneath

the destroyed towers. Silverstein had invested in several buildings of the World TradeCenter just a few months before 9/11.13 The fact that his acquisition was so recent

that the insurance documents were not yet entirely finalized complicated matters

significantly. To bolster his claim to double insurance payments (for two separate

attacks on two separate towers), Silverstein stated his intention to rebuild the Twin

Towers just weeks after the originals had been destroyed. To the press, Silverstein

declared that not rebuilding would give the terrorists the victory they seek, and that

we must not let terrorists destroy our way of life or our citys vital financial heart.14

The real estate company received much criticism for this brash action.

Two months after the attacks, in November 2001, Governor George Pataki and

Mayor Giuliani created the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC).

This agency, set up to oversee the development of the site after rescue and recovery

operations had finished, would get a remarkable position in the political hierar-

chy of city planning. Political scientist Maarten Hajer observes that [w]ith the

installation of the LMDC [Pataki and Bloomberg] essentially created ambivalence

about which rules should apply and hence they opened an arena for contestation in

which all sorts of actors could claim the right to have a say.15

Like Silversteins press conference, it can be seen as a political performancein

a chaotic discursive space where ordinary democratic and political restraints had

less meaning. The political and organizational situation, as rife with meaningas it was lacking in historical precedents, formed a battleground in which new,


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sometimes creative ways could be found to influence the development of Ground

Zero. The invocation of the meaning of objects on the site would become a major

strategy in that arena.16

More or less simultaneously with the establishment of the LMDC, architects

collectives and other groups and committees started popping up. The media duly

reported that Silverstein was already drawing up plans for offices, and even though

Ground Zero had been meticulously fenced off, theNew York Timesinformed its

readers of the sheer rapidity with which the site is being cleared, with debris

being hauled away to the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island, and to locations in

New Jersey where it is already being ground into scrap.17 Debates in the media,

civic gatherings, and idealistic art exhibitions about the future of Ground Zero

were taking place simultaneously with the quiet planning in boardrooms, but there

was little connection between these spheres. Very few were aware, for instance, that

Silverstein had contacted his architect, David Childs, to start drafting plans for newbuildings at the site weeks after 9/11.18

A permanent memorial of some sort was crucial to many, but because of the

political ambivalence it was far from clear where any development proposal should

be sent. One important realisation seemed to take root nonetheless. What was

crucial at the moment, said Michael Manfredi, a member of an advisory committee

called the Memorial Process Team, was that the design, the art, would not be

a footnote to a large development project.19 His words illustrate the widely felt

dread that the Port Authority-Silverstein program would primarily feature

commercial development. And it did. Silverstein still owed the Port Authority$100 million per year in rent; and the Port Authority, in turn, could not do with-

out this revenue from office space to finance other infrastructural and real estate

projects throughout the state.

In 2002, the Port Authority commissioned six proposals for redevelopment of

the site, in what they termed a design study, on the basis of the strict demand that

any design would have to accommodate the same 10 million square feet of office

space the Twin Towers had provided.20 The six firms were asked to reserve some

space for a memorial as well, but many alternative forms of possible land usage

were ignored.

As the forces of production asserted their power and intentions, four modes of

potential alternative site consumption could be distinguished. Each mode had its

own advocates in sometimes-overlapping groups that challenged the interests of

the governor, Silverstein, and the Port Authority. First was the proposal to develop

the site as a space of mourning. Many, especially New Yorkers, saw the entirety of

Ground Zero as a graveyard that should never be built upon again. Second, a much

larger group was attracted to the site in order to gaze and reflect on the tragedy,

consuming the space as tourists. Third came the proposed use of the 16 acres as

residential space. This is the mode of consumption proposed by both those who

wished to use it as residents of nearby neighborhoods, through shopping or asrecreation, and those who wanted to use it as a spaceforresidence, with housing


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built on Ground Zero. Finally, several developments after 9/11 opened doors for

potential historical consumption of the site. Throughout the development process,

possibilities presented themselves to conserve, visualize, and connect with a pre-

9/11 history of the site.

CURATING MEMORIALIZATION: 20022004

Around the time that the design study was announced, Governor Pataki declared

the end of recovery operations in a highly ritualized and performative ceremony in

which soldiers marched an empty coffin out of the pit to bagpipe music. Although

human remains would be recovered from the site for years to come, Pataki sig-

naled that the time had come to stop framing the site as a burial space only and

to begin moving on to a phase of redevelopment.21 The Port Authority announced

more changes at the site, including a new 30-foot-high barrier around GroundZero. Neither party seemed to realize that the new phase would also entail intense

battles over the objects and materials on and around the site.

Immediately after 9/11, the barriers erected to demarcate the site became the

most important objects in the communication with and the consumption of the

tragedy that had played out behind them.22 A patchwork of paper notes, missing

posters, and photographs changed walls of bare plywood into sites of public

mourning. By placing candles, teddy bears, flowers, t-shirts, and other tokens near

Ground Zero by the thousands, visitors physically transformed the barriers into

temporary memorials, places accorded special, even sacred, status by the ritual-ized acts and offerings of everyday urban pilgrims.23

Harriet Senie has observed that by offering these everyday, often banal things,

mourners create a public space for individuals and communities united in grief

and often anger.24 From its origins in nineteenth-century roadside memorials and

other, mostly Catholic, spontaneous shrines, the creation of modern temporary

memorials has evolved into a secular and, surprisingly, strictly coded ritual in the

last decades.25 Their recognizability perpetuates itself through mainstream media,

as news broadcasts have increasingly used video and photo footage of massed things

to convey the extent of feeling that the event caused in the affected community.26

The massiveness of temporary memorials, their suggestions of grassroots com-

munity involvement and direct emotional display, all correspond to the perceived

greatness of the tragedy. Significantly, they demand physical interaction, even if

this means just walking around it.27

At Ground Zero, they were not just innocuous expressions of grief, Elizabeth

Greenspan reminds us: With each bear, banner, and handwritten signature, people

were expressing sympathy but they were also making claims upon the land.28

The Port Authority attempted to channel this wave of public grief by commis-

sioning a temporary memorial of its own: two vertical rays of light beamed into

the night sky, suggesting the Twin Towers in the New York skyline. It was a well-loved memorial, but too expensive to be maintained for more than a few weeks.


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A temporary memorial in nearby Battery Park City proposed by the LMDC met

with much disapproval; victims families found a memorial away from Ground

Zero objectionable (as one family member explained, [I]f [my brother] is anywhere,

hes buried somewhere at Ground Zero. And I wouldnt want to go to anywhere else

but there), while Battery Park City residents were equally opposed, fearing that the

memorial might turn into a permanent one.29 One resident told the press: To have

a temporary memorial in a residential area where you have traumatized children

and traumatized adults, I think is asking a little too much for one neighborhood.30

A report from New York New Visions, an architects and planners coalition, foundthat rescue workers expressed concern that a temporary memorial might distract

attention away from a permanent memorial, while Lower Manhattan residents

stressed the need for temporary memorial sites. The report continues: [T]hey

were concerned about the amount of tourism that a memorial site would generate,

and therefore favored reclaiming the current site for public uses such as a park,

performing arts center, cultural center, or learning center for children.31

Memorialization was laden with meaning for everyone, and this early discussion

of the use of space shows the ways in which potential modes of consumption vied

for the available space. But as challenging as long-term planning would be for the

Port Authority, the piles of stuffgrowing on the sidewalks near the site were an

even more urgent problem. The temporary memorials, though no ones property,

could not be treated as litter.

Although made up of cheap objects that were often of a perishable nature, many

such temporary memorials have been the subjects of preservation efforts. The

problems with either storing or exhibiting the temporary memorials, however, are

manifold. First, the chaotic power of a thousand teddy bears placed by a thousand

individual people is obliterated as soon as a curator marks the things and attempts

to reassemble a pile of them in an exhibition space. The same goes for the direct

experience of gazing upon a memorial that is spontaneously erected in a place aspublic as a sidewalk. Jack Santino calls them performative commemoratives that

FIGURE1. A spontaneous temporary memorial on Union Square on September 25, 200.Photo by Rob Sheridan, used with permission.


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place death at the heart of social life.32 The shock of feeling, the urge to add a

thing to the pile or to take part in the performance of grief by crying, praying,

or even picking up and caressing an object, is almost impossible to reproduce

meaningfully in a museum setting. Objects removed from their location are

alienated, decontextualized.33 An object placed in a museum becomes heritage,

ethnography, the result of the culture of another. Its significance is often

inextricably linked to its spatial context, and its biography is irreparably termi-

nated when taken out of that context.34

Second, museum space is problematic because it excludes certain modes of con-

sumption. Museums are not public spaces, and they often demand entrance fees

and specific forms of behavior that resemble the touristic mode of consumption

certainly in the eyes of the many families who vehemently protested the storage of

unidentifiable human remains in a space bordering the 9/11 Memorial Museum.35

In the case of the 9/11 Memorial Museum, the level of decontextualization isto some extent remedied by the fact that it is an on-site museum, safeguarding

the genius locior place authenticity.36 On-site museums have been compared

to medieval pilgrimage destinations harboring relics that do not show isolated,

unrelated bits of history, but entire scenes.37 More specifically, the 9/11 Memorial

Museum can be referred to as a trauma site museum, a type of museum that is

believed to maintain a real spatial contiguity with the trauma itself.38 This does

not mean that all the problems mentioned in relation to the museological presen-

tation of temporary monuments have been solved. The 9/11 Memorial Museum

displays the objects indoors, in a closed-up and carefully choreographed space.39

This means it is impossible to exhibit anything other than a representationof what

once was a powerful, spontaneous expression of grief.

The Department of Parks and Recreation began removing and storing the many

shrines and piles a few weeks after 9/11. The Giuliani administration had clamped

down on street vendors, public performances, and unsolicited public art. True to

form, they officially banned the creation of memorials in parks and other public

sites in the face of widespread protest. Decomposing flowers were composted to

feed official memorial flowerbeds, objects were stored in warehouses around the

city, yet the coded rituals of temporary memorials continued to be performed:

visitors still felt a need, as well as a sense of entitlement, to place flowers and other

objects on or near Ground Zero.40

The new 30-foot wall that the Port Authority envisaged met with unprecedented

outrage. Families demanded that anything that was to stand on the perimeter for

the next decade include a memorial, architects and designers opposed the prospect

of Ground Zero being walled off to the public, and New York New Visions appealed

to the LMDCs Alex Garvin, who agreed that the wall was unacceptable. The Port

Authoritys response was one of complete surprise, but their subsequent actions

betray their awareness of the potency of the object they were about to put up. It

refused to adopt the LMDCs recommendations and instead commissioned a see-through fence, designed so that it could not be turned into a permanent memorial.


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Mark Wagner, the Port Authority consultant in charge of the fence, admitted that

the Port Authority was acutely aware of the agency a new object might attain in any

struggle concerning the development. The organization feared that a fence full of

memorials and handwritten notes could engender a sense of attachment. And this,

in turn, could complicate its plans to redevelop the land.41

While mourning was enacted through creation outside the barriers, removal and

demolition still took place within them. Anticipating possible objections to the dis-

placement of dust and other material, the Port Authority had named a committee

shortly after 9/11, headed by Wagner, to select objects to be salvaged from the

site, as well as from the New Jersey and Fresh Kills recycling plants.42 On May 30,

2002, the last column of the South Tower, 36 feet in length and bedecked with res-

cue workers graffiti and missing posters, was removed from the site. Like many

other construction materials, wrecked cars, and pieces of public art tagged by the

committee, it was taken to Hangar 17 at Kennedy Airport. Officially, the mandatecame from the judiciary: Ground Zero was a crime scene, and all potentially rele-

vant material from it had to be preserved as evidence.

The collection of material in a drafty and obscure hangar met with some disap-

proval. After visiting the hangar in 2003, a journalist published an alarming article

that accused the Port Authority of allowing the objects to rapidly and perma-

nently degrade because of deficiencies in temperature and humidity control.43

In the following years, curators glued peeling paint back on to rusted girders and

carefully stored fading photographs that were once duct-taped to the girders. In

2006, the problematic status of Hangar 17 was further highlighted when a cross-shaped steel beam that had stood at the site, where it had become a focal point for

commemorative open-air masses, was to be moved to the hangar. Catholic priest

Brian Jordan led a passionate protest, stating that it was an unacceptable location

for the cross, even temporarily, and forcing the Port Authority to consider more

accessible public locations.44 This points to the main, and most relevant, concern

about Hangar 17: a complete lack of public access. The material, however carefully

preserved, was all but invisible to the public and often absent from public debate.

Perhaps because of this, and due to the legal status of the material as evidence, the

material was barely considered in the design proposals for the 9/11 Memorial.45

After tests on the structural integrity of the beams in Hangar 17 were fin-

ished in 2005, it gradually became clear that these were exhibits in a court case that

would never take place. By 2011, there were weekly dispatches of objects to be used

in monuments within fire departments or suburban squares, some still tagged

evidence with pieces of paper. The Port Authority actively encouraged applica-

tions for pieces of material by towns and museums around the world.46

In spite of these efforts, the sacralization of all material from Ground Zero made

the process of clearing the site for construction problematic. As early as October

2001, Richard Scherr, a finalist in the competition for the Oklahoma City Memo-

rial, noted that the material rapidly removed from the WTC site representsa fabric that can speak to us from the site.47 He suggested that material being


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ground to scrap or buried could very well have been used in a future memorial.

Many New Yorkers felt the same way, as evidenced by such groups as Save the

Facades, which claimed to fight to preserve history. The remaining facades,

the group states on its web site, provided comfort and resolve in the weeks and

months following the terrorist attacks. The public was assured that these poi-

gnant remnants would be included in the future memorial. But now the Lower

Manhattan Development Corporation wants to hide them in an underground

museum.48 Architecture critic Herbert Muschamp wrote that a memorial to

those lost in the terrorist attack already exists. We will probably see no more

eloquent reminder of that day than the twisted steel walls that at present rise

from the wreckage of the World Trade Center.49

In the summer of 2002, Pataki and Bloomberg were shown the six proposals

in the Port Authoritys design study. Each proposal incorporated a tremendous

amount of office space, a memorial, cultural facilities, and new infrastructure intothe site.50

Pataki praised the plans and gave the project his fiat. Bloomberg was dismayed at

the narrow scope of the possibilities for the site and asked why there was no option

for an empty site or one with residences.51 As mayor, however, he could not pre-

vent the Port Authority from putting the proposals on show the next day.

Shortly after the six design plans were made public, the Civic Alliance to

Rebuild Downtown New York (a consortium consisting of several eminent orga-

nizations such as the Regional Plan Association, the New School, and the Pratt

Institute) organized a Listening to the City conference, attracting more than fourthousand people. Each of the plans was subsequently voted poor or unacceptable

by a majority. Despite the fact that the meeting was cosponsored by the Port

Authority and the LMDC, and despite the formers executive directors mean-

ingful opening words that the site was not a blank slate, the public had made

a clear statement.52 There was a desire for boldness and visionary planning,

FIGURES2.1 AND2.2. Two of the six proposals in the design study clearly show the

uniformity of the imagery. Lower Manhattan Development Committee, Urban Design

Approaches and Concept Plans. Image courtesy of the Lower Manhattan DevelopmentCommittee.


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andalthough it was not made explicitan unease with the outcomes of the

Port Authoritys rigid program.53

It was clear that proposals regarding production of space at Ground Zero had

hitherto ignored major alternative uses of the space. As with its 30-foot opaque

wall, the Port Authority may have hoped to retain control over a volatile redevel-

opment process through a lack of transparency. As demands for a more open and

inclusive planning process grew louder, consumer groups appealed to powerful

material symbols on Ground Zero. The most powerful protesters had, until this

point, favored a space of mourning, but with millions of visitors to the site since

9/11, tourism had to be taken into account as well.

Although access to Lower Manhattan was, for some time, restricted, the space of

Ground Zero was consumed by tourists from its inception through photographs

and other media representations. However, by visiting the site, which was pop-

ulated by memorial activity and temporary shrines, almost all visitors inevitablypartook in rituals of mourning, as Debbie Lisle, Marita Sturken, and others have

observed.54 Yet development of the site was, in many ways, aimed more at a tour-

istic mode of consumption, in the traditional sense, than at mourning or a hybrid

of tourism and mourning, which increasingly drove away disenchanted residents

of southern Manhattan itself.

Visitors from outside New York did come, and they kept appearing in extremely

high numbers to see, photograph, and otherwise engage with both the pile itself

and the surrounding area with its plaques and exhibition spaces. Though they

were well-meaning and well-informed consumers of the space, their consump-tive patterns diverged from those of family members of the deceased and other

involved New Yorkers, who avoided a site that had become just a hole and a lot

of gawking, as Greenspan writes.55 As the demands of victims families and sur-

vivors became more specific, tourists were increasingly encouraged to perform

traditional touristic consumption practices. From 2002 onward, for instance,

respectable newspapers published travel features advising visitors where to eat

after visiting Ground Zero.56

Just months after 9/11, a group of architects decided to upgrade a small viewing

platform, built for President George W. Bush, in order to fulfil a vital public need:

to see and understand what happened.57 Soon after the platform was opened in

December 2001, the enormous enthusiasm to visit and gaze from the platform

caused discomfort. Victims families hated the idea of masses gazing upon the

remains of their loved ones, while tourists berated each other for taking photo-

graphs or signing their names on the platforms plywood. Although the platform

was taken down just a year later, it had served as a potent symbol of the publics

sense of ownership over the land, Greenspan noted.58 Many had felt a need to

make the pilgrimage to Ground Zero as a way to come to terms with the realness

of their experience on 9/11, and they saw gazing upon Ground Zero as a significant

healing experience.59 The construction of the platform can be seen as initiatingthe sites destinization. After its removal, the site of trauma was increasingly


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transformed into a representation of itself through modern techniques, such as

touch screens now present on the site, in order to construct a new kind of tourist

realism.60

Eventually, the removal of tangible reminders of the tragedythe smoking piles,

the twisted steel, and the temporary monumentsmade the site less interesting for

visitors seeking to experience the immediacy of the tragedy.61 Sturken observed

that a set of photographic displays put up by the Port Authority around the perim-

eter of the site compensates for the fact that the site has little to show that can con-

jure up its intense meaning.62 And indeed, for many years to come, international

tourists, especially, would characterize the site, which had once embodied realness,

as just a big excavation, as one visitor put it, [m]ore like a been there kind of

thing.63

SURVIVING OBJECTS, SURVIVORS OBJECTS: 20042007

After the debacle of the design study, the Port Authority and the LMDC discarded

the six original plans as just studies, and in 2003, they held a new competition.

Despite the embarrassment of Listening to the City, the new criteria were as

restrictive as before, still demanding the ten million square feet of office space as

well as space for a memorial (with the sacred space of the Twin Towers footprints

free of commercial development), yet allowing no residential construction.64 Five

teams of architects provided detailed designs, some grandiose, like Sir Norman

Fosters kissing towers, and some featuring other modes of consumption. Peterson/Littenberg, a firm that had acted as Garvins consultants since 2002, proposed to

reinstate the pre-2001 sculpture the Sphere, discussed below, and the historical

coastline of the Hudson River in its design. Garvin selected designs by Rafael Violys

THINK group and Daniel Libeskind, who both had kept most pragmatically to the

competitions demands.

Governor Pataki had the final say and chose LibeskindsMemory Foundations. It

appears he may have been swayed by the emotional, highly personal rhetoric and

imaginative imagery of Libeskind. But Libeskind had never designed a skyscraper

before, and more significantly, he had not been asked to do anything but provide

a master plan for the usage of the space. After this victory, Libeskinds design for

a group of skyscrapers around one shard-like tower was fundamentally modified

by Childs (Silversteins architect of choice for his skyscrapers), to meet security

demands and translate sculptural imagery into a useable construction plan,

following a long and bitter design feud.65

In January 2004, Michael Arads Reflecting Absencewas announced as the winner

of a much less controversial (and much less transparent) memorial design com-

petition held by the LMDC, and in July of that year, a cornerstone was laid for

Libeskinds proposed Freedom Tower, then scheduled to open in 2008.66 Some

might have realized at the time that this date was far from feasible, nothing morethan a political statement. Much conflict still lay in the way of the Port Authority


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and the LMDC, much of it over objects on the site.67 As theNew York Timeswrote

late in 2004, the Port Authority faced the greatest test yet of its preservation mettle

as decisions are made about extraordinaryif subtlephysical remnants that

stand in the way of redevelopment plans.68

It showed remarkable foresight. Withthe Port Authority, Silverstein, and Libeskind keeping each other in a strangle-

hold over fees, deadlines, and design, the public grew increasingly frustrated and

Ground Zero ever more symbolically complex.

Unease had mounted over the sacralized dust, rapidly carted off to Fresh Kills

Landfill, and the steel girders of the Twin Towers walls shipped off to Chinese

steel ovens. The debates that followed from this unease between the producing

Port Authority and LMDC, and the modes of consumption that they excluded to

varying degrees, make interesting cases. As Bruno Latour stated, [T]hings, espe-

cially public things, map political cultures and shape political bodies. Dingpolitik

provides more credible possibilities than Realpolitik. The agency of the objects

at Ground Zero was becoming more visible with every week of site development.

Interestingly, resistance to the removal of soil or girders before 2004 did not

halt, or even significantly stall, the ongoing site recovery and construction. Perhaps

the process, which was handled by engineers and police officers with surprising

efficiency, went too quickly, but most likely, concepts like steel and sand, even if

they still contained human remains, were too abstract to inspire the public imag-

ination and rile enough protesters. The much greater agency of more concretely

tangible objects confirms this. From the earliest days after 9/11, the heavily dented

Great Spherical Caryatidfor instance, formed a familiar rallying point for feelingsof grief, hopefulness, and anger. This sculptural homage to peace by Fritz Koenig

FIGURE3. An early design sketch of Libeskind and Childs later design. Image courtesy of

the Lower Manhattan Development Committee.


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known to New Yorkers simply as the Sphere, did not enjoy much notoriety when it

stood between the Twin Towers. The first journalists writing about it after 9/11 felt

obliged to describe the object to their readers in detail.69

In contrast, articles with titles along the lines of Where is the Sphere? abound

in the media to this day.70 Koenigs sculpture was removed from Ground Zero early

in 2002, partly repaired, and placed on a small lawn in Battery Park.71 Although

initially presented as a temporary solution, the sculpture stands there to this day,

to the dismay of many. Residents did not appreciate having too many memorials

in the neighborhood they were trying to rebuild, and victims relatives as well as

tourists preferred to see the sculpture back at the site, where it could better fulfill its

role as an homage to peacethe meaning Koenig had intended for his workand

its new, added meaning as a symbol of endurance.

The Survivors Stairway is another case in point. The last flight of stairs from

Tobin Plaza to street level still stood in its place, and naturally, hundreds of survi-

vors attached meaning to iteveryone had used emergency staircases. The more

material was removed from the site, the more poignant and visible the recognizable

remnants became, and in the course of 2004 several artifacts could be identified.

Among plaza tiles, the floor of the central crossroads of the subterraneous shop-

ping mall, and the gnarled roots of an uprooted tree, the stairway stood out.

It was mentioned first in the New York Timesin 2007, when David Dunlap wrote

about a badly battered stairway that rises from the south side of Vesey Street . . . . In

some quarters, this is called the survivors stairway.72 A group called The World

Trade Center Survivors stated on their web site, savethestairway.org, that

[t]he image of stairs is a critical element of the story of September 11th.Everyone who escaped that day did so by going down stairs. And in goingdown, they were passed by the hundreds of fire-fighters and rescuers whowere going up heroes all, who ultimately met their deaths.73

In 2006, The National Trust for Historic Preservation, an influential non-profit

organization, put the staircase on its list of the most endangered historical places in

America. The protests had reached a climax when Silverstein Properties announced

an office tower designed by Foster for the lot on which the staircase stood. The

National Trust claimed that Silverstein Properties has not made a commitment topreserve the staircase, and it stated that it will be the most dramatic original piece

of the site that will have meaning to generations to come.74

It certainly looked dramatic, battered and covered in dust as it was, and the

image of the staircase featured prominently on posters and on web sites.

Silverstein, fearing a confrontation with the vocal and mediagenic survivors

and families lobby, announced that the stairway site would be excavated by the

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and stored. Foster demonstrated how

important the stairway had become, when he declared that his designs for the WTC

3 tower could be amended so as to save it, even suggesting that it be included inhis design.75


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The heroic image of the battered staircase fit the protesters narratives well.

It matched the images of dust-covered ruins seen during and shortly after 9/11.

None of them seemed to realize in 2007 that the staircase had survived the attacks

completely unscathedwhich is why so many people made a successful escape

by it. Its derelict state was a result not of 9/11, but of excavation and deconstruc-

tion efforts. For years, systematic demolition of the structures remaining on the

site had continued more or less shielded from public view, and the staircase was

partially dismantled as part of this routine process.

Though the concrete effects of protests like these on the development process

are difficult to measure, widespread media attention to the protests and fragmenta-

tion of public support may well have been one cause of the fundraising difficulties

the National September 11 Memorial and Museum has encountered.

The National Trust wrote, in a pamphlet entitled Moving the Stairs = Moving

Forward: [W]e need the Survivors Staircase as a reminder of the way Americalost her innocence, as well as a symbol of Americas strength, resilience and

FIGURE4. The Vesey Street Survivors Staircase, as it caught the publics eye after 2005.Photo by Brad Miller, used with permission.


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determination to survive.76 Peg Breen, the president of an organization for land-

mark conservation, said she was sorry it was not better looking, but it is what it is.

Its real. Its there. People did escape by it. It still exists. And I think that stands for

a lot.77

Meanwhile, residents saw the tug-of-war as yet another obstacle in the wayto a redeveloped, healthy neighborhood. Community Board 1 urged that even-

tual preservation should in no case cause or add to delay in reconstruction

or increase the already incredibly high costs of the Memorial Foundation, and the

West Street Coalition was opposed to any efforts to save the staircase. Its chairman

was quoted in theNew York Times: [I]f it can be moved to a museum, great. But to

the extent that this is going to delay rebuilding the World Trade Center site, I think

New Yorkers have had enough [of waiting].78 Significantly, he also questioned the

uniqueness of the staircase as a surviving structure (the Liberty Street pedestrian

bridge was another above-ground remnant still standing) and pointed to recently

published photos taken in 2001, which showed the undamaged stairs after 9/11.79

The stalemate over the staircase lasted through 2007, while the LMDC once

again tried to mediate by conducting a series of meetings between the parties. In

the end they proposed, late in 2007, to carefully remove the stairs and to include it

in the future museum.80

LOST HISTORY: 20082010

The proponents of Ground Zero as a residential neighborhood could not claim

a connection to the material of the site. In a way, this is surprising, for housinghad been a greater part of the biography of the site than mourning or tourism.

FIGURE5. Photographer Joel Meyerowitz found the stairs relatively unscathed in November

2001. Joel Meyerowitz,Aftermath(New York, 2006), 192.


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The neighborhood that was demolished to make space for the World Trade Center

as part of Robert Moses scheme of urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s had been

known as Radio Row. As a neighborhood, it was well-loved, and Jane Jacobs and

others unsuccessfully petitioned for its preservation.81

The absence of material remnants of this past on the site resulted in the absence

of any meaningful struggle for housing on Ground Zero. The low-rise buildings of

Radio Row had been torn down, and even the layouts, contours, and foundations

of the pre-1960 housing blocks had been irreversibly erased by the work on the

new World Trade Center buildings.82 Its skyscrapers and twin super-skyscrapers

needed much deeper digging to plant its basement levels and foundations.

The great significance that surfaces through an analysis of the historical mode

of consumption is the realization that elements of the physical biography of the

site had been erased once before. The place had been effectively scoured between

1966 and 1973, when Radio Row was demolished to make room for a space dom-inated by its post-industrialist office function. And effective the scouring was. For

although there were many relevant arguments for reinstating the residential char-

acter of the site in 2001, and among the advocates for this mode of consump-

tion were powerful professionals, legal experts, and wealthy homeowners, they

could not point to tangible objects on the site that could, literally, substantiate

their claims. Over the years, the residents instead became proponents of simply

speeding up anydevelopment that would make the area livable again as soon as

possible. Of course, a long-term construction site is detrimental to both property

value and living comfort in the surrounding area. The residents tactic is clear fromthe advocacy of Community Board 1 and the West Street coalition for removal of

the Survivors Stairway.83

At a surprisingly late stage in the construction process, when few would have

anticipated further debate over objects on Ground Zero, a last hurdle appeared. On

a rainy July morning in 2010, workmen digging down to lay foundations for a tour

bus parking facility encountered sturdy timbers. It was the hull of an eighteenth-

century ship. Some readers of the news coverage of the find recalled the 1973 story

of another ship called the Tijger, which, upon its discovery at the WTC site, had

been partly salvaged by a historically minded Port Authority foreman. But this

time, no foreman was present to represent a historical interest from the side of the

Port Authority. Instead, a small team of archaeologists was sent in to document

any historical material for the Port Authority in accordance with the regulations

for archaeological research (the so-called process 106). Several other unofficial col-

leagues flocked to the site as well to see what could be salvaged of the ship, which

was thought to have been sunk, on purpose, as a landfill.

It was an urgent matter indeed, for as theNew York Timesreported, construc-

tion work could not be interrupted.84 Since 2008, Christopher Ward had been at

the helm of the Port Authority, and his one strategy for untangling the stalemate

between stubborn producing and consumers groups was de-symbolization andanti-monumentalism. His refusal to accept any invocation of symbolic or emotional


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value as an argument was successful, and construction was moving faster than it

had in years. The new executive director had grudgingly accepted the symbolic ten-

year anniversary as a deadline for finishing the monument.

Although there was plenty of media attention given to the story, no one doubted,

let alone challenged, the argument that construction work should continue within

a matter of hours. One of the archaeologists, Mary McDonald, somewhat apolo-

getically told the Associated Press that she wanted to at least salvage some timbers;

it was unclear if any large portions could be lifted intact.85 The first wood had

been spotted on Tuesday, and by Thursday, the AKRF archaeologists planned to

have the artifact removed. In the end, it was just over two weeks before everything

salvaged from the ship was moved to a water tank in the Bronx, to be packaged

and sent to a research institute in Maryland. The impatience with the proceedings

is captured well by several commentators on the news items, including one who

simply wrote: Great. Another reason for the WTC to be delayed.86 Process 106was carried out remarkably rapidly, and the paperwork was resolved within days.87

Once the artifact was in storage, the archaeologists had to wait for the LMDC to

give permission to start the process of preserving the ship, indicating that even this

piece of history in the ground was deemed to be the property of the developers of

the site alone. Eventually, in 2011, parts of the ship were brought to Texas A&M

Universitys Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation, where the pres-

ervation process began in earnest. One of the universitys archaeologists, Peter Fix,

said that if the timbers are to be reconstructed and exhibited, they could provide

future generations with a tangible connection to their maritime past.88

Althoughstill the responsibility of the Port Authority, it is unlikely that this tangible connec-

tion will be exhibited at the site where it was sunk and found.

The biography of the space of Ground Zero is crucial to the understanding

of New York. The location played a very relevant part in several episodes of the

development of the borough, the city, and the United States. But in the two waves

of development by the Port Authority, in the 1970s and from 2001 onward, the

tangible remains of this history were removed and, in many cases, destroyed.

Cornelius Holtorf surmised that places are reinterpreted by each new present

according to the history culture specific to their social context.89 By reinterpret-

ing Ground Zero as a prospective monument instead of a retrospective monu-

ment, built with an eye to twentieth-century events, the 9/11 Memorial (as well as the

constructions around it, with the name Freedom Tower being as much a monu-

ment as Reflecting Absence) effectively recasts September 11, 2001 as Stunde Null.

This is also evidenced poignantly by the case of the small memorial built for the six

victims of a car bomb placed in the World Trade Center parking garage in 1993. The

fountain was destroyed in 2001, and in 2009, the six names of the 1993 attack victims

were simply etched into the 9/11 monument without distinction.90

In 2010, almost 3,000 people signed a petition initiated by Michael Burke, whose

brother died on 9/11, to move the Sphereback to Ground Zero. The Port Authoritywas not swayed by their arguments, nor was the National September 11 Memorial


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and Museum after its founding in 2005. Some of Burkes followers, including sev-

eral collectives of victims families, organized a boycott of the anniversary of the

attacks.91 As the petitioner for the sculpture, Michael Burke was told by represen-

tatives of the 9/11 Memorial that they do not want any 9/11 artifacts cluttering the

8-acre memorial plaza.92

CONCLUSION

The process of developing the site known as Ground Zero is now often framed

as a triumph of democracy.93 Yet democracy seems the one thing that did not play

a relevant part in the redevelopment of the site. Few decisions about the construc-

tion were put to a vote, and if the public was allowed to choose, the options were

almost always limited due to the producing parties set plans for commercial use

of the land.In a remarkable series of events, consumers invoked the importance of objects

on the site to support their claims to site usage. The Port Authority was forced

to respond to their demands each time, as it could not continue its plans if these

would destroy objects such as the Survivors Stairway. With some diplomacy, and at

significant extra cost in time and money, the Port Authority deliberately removed

each object. The sacred dust was shipped to the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten

Island, currently being redeveloped into Freshkills Park. The steel girders, once

proposed as material for a memorial, were removed from public sight and made

inaccessible for years, or they were buried or melted down. The many impromptumemorials along the barrier have either been taken down or are exhibited,

together with the Survivors Stairway, in the 9/11 Memorial Museum, albeit in

an on-site museum, still out of their original (outdoor, disarranged) context

thus erasing a large part of their intended meaning: to be personal, direct, and

confrontational.

The destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001 was the starting point

for a long discussion of its future use. On September 12, 2001, the World Trade

Center seemed almost completely obliterated. The site might have appeared to

be a tabula rasa, but it turned out to be anything but. The very term Ground

Zero suggests a start from scratch, an annihilation of history.94 The study of

the material aspects of the site reveals that, in the decade after 2001, this is dis-

concertingly close to the truth.

Although control over the redevelopment process initially fell to the LMDC, the

Port Authority, Governor Pataki, and Silverstein, the parties could not proceed

with a set program. Several groups of people vied for alternative modes of con-

sumption that could give shape to Ground Zero. Survivors and victims relatives

soon became very outspoken against commercial development of the site, arguing

that it should remain a place solely of mourning. They viewed Ground Zero as

a graveyard and attached much meaning to the space and its material, yet accesswas restricted to them as to all other civilians. On the boundaries where the


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site connected to New Yorks public spaces, spontaneous memorials sprung up.

Apart from those directly affected by the attacks, millions of visitors arrived at the

site before the end of 2001. The residents of surrounding neighborhoods, as well as

many urban planners and scholars, argued for more mixed-use development at the

site. They preferred that shops, public institutions, and housing be included at the

site, as these were spaces that would be lively only during the day and on weekdays.

As one design after the next was proposed and subsequently altered, the different

consumer groups were frustrated by the rigidity of the unchanged commercial

plans for the site. As chaos and institutional insecurity slowly made way for a more

structured development process, challenges from consumer groups took on more

complex forms. In their struggle to sway the parties who controlled the site, they

often managed to stall the process and garner media attention, thereby increasing

their influence.

The removal of meaningful material and meaningful objects from GroundZero had two major consequences. One was to sever the connection of consumer

groups to the site. The producing parties managed time and again to take away

the base of consumers protests (their political performance) and effectively

silence groups.

Peckham has noted that war heritage often functions as a means to remember

to forget. A similar process may be unfolding at Ground Zero. Traumatic events in

the past can become so deeply imprinted on a groups collective memory that they

become an indelible part of its identity. The development of Ground Zero shows

that New York might not be able to remember anything but a stilted version of thetrauma of 9/11 on this site. The objects that remained provided several starting

points for constructing an inclusive urban space.

Cleansed of its material agency, the site could be produced as a commercial

space but not reconstructed as a healthy constituent of the fabric of urban space.

What was lost, along with the material, was the emotional, social and historic value

of the 16 acres as a place of mourning and remembrance, a residential area and a

site with a long past, related to the birth of America.

ENDNOTES

1. It has not been here continually. The pear tree, which had been planted in the 1970s, was

recovered from the rubble in 2001 covered in ash, with only one living branch, and shipped off

to a tree nursery in the Bronx. Michael Daly, The September 11 Survivor Tree in Bloom, Daily

Beast, 24 March 2012, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/24/the-sept-11-survivor-tree-

in-bloom.html.

2. Many have either focused on individual lives or provided a sprawling overview of the political

sphere. Some authors have written about the site to great effect, as Marita Sturken did as part of a dis-

cussion of grief, or as Paul Goldberger has in order to substantiate architectural critique. Goldberger

has written several books and countless articles on Ground Zero, most notably Up from Zero, while

Sturken has written Tourists of History. William Langewiesche provides an important and engrossing

account of the site excavation in the first months after the tragedy, but hisAmerican Groundends in


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2002. Some of the developments most deserving of study took place on Ground Zero between that

year and 2010, when the final stages of excavation were completed.

3. Yet urban theory, which arose out of these developments, was concerned mostly with either

ecological approaches (such as Louis Wirths concentric ring model of cities) or ethnographic types

of urban and rural individuals (Wirth, Urbanism as a Way of Life; Simmel, The Metropolis and

Mental Life). Marxist theory, on the other hand, described urban space mostly as places threatened

by capitalism, which destroyed local markets and concentrated the proletariat in slums and factories.

4. Casey 1997, x.

5. Urry 1995, x, 1.

6. Sack 1993, 326329.

7. Ibid., 21; Urry 1995, 25.

8. Rather than viewing space as a constant that can easily be taken out of the equation, Lefebvre

pointed out that spatial phenomena of every kind (boundaries, territories, and delineated sites)

should be taken and analysed as part of a dialectical structurenot just as space, but as a result of

spatialization (Lefebvre 1991, 17, 21).

9. Carl Knappett and Lambos Malafouris, for instance, have collected several engaging articles

that take the haptical engagement that can exist between humans and things into account. Knappettand Malafouris 2010, xi.

10. Kirchhoff 2007.

11. Langewiesche 2003, 32.

12. Founded in 1921, the Port Authority was the first regional planning body in the United States.

It provided a means to channel private funds into public works and would form a model for many

similar organizations set up under Franklin Roosevelts New Deal. Large public corporations thus

replaced the network of private enterprises, which collapsed in the crisis of the 1930s. Institutions like

the Port Authority allow for huge public investments and are exempt from many legal restrictions as

well as responsibility to voters.

13. On the day of the attacks, Silverstein lost not only the Twin Towers, which he had just acquired

in a multi-billion-dollar-deal, but also 7 WTC, another office tower on the site.14.New York Times, 26 October 2001.

15. Hajer 2005, 446.

16. Perhaps, however, the governor left less room for ambivalence than Hajer suggests. The LMDC

board would consist of nine members, six appointed by the governor and three by the mayor. Fur-

thermore, Pataki installed the LMDC as a subordinate agency of the Empire State Development

Corporation, a semi-private hybrid, which controls all major real estate developments in New York

State and answers to the governors office. Thus, the planning body that was to be the primary

representative of the production of the 16 acres of destroyed urban space would ultimately be con-

trolled by the governor.

17. Dinitia Smith, Hallowed Ground Zero,New York Times, 25 October 2001.

18. Greenspan 2013, 20.19. Smith, Hallowed Ground Zero.

20. Although officially held by the LMDC, the Port Authority had bypassed the agency earlier

in 2002, when its vice president, Alexander Garvin, started commissioning designs. The Port

Authority forced Garvin to cancel his commissions and abstain from any further unilateral plan-

ning of the site, on the grounds that he had no right to assume that great a measure of control.

Memorandum of Understanding, 10 March 2002, http://coscda.org/databases/COSCDA/MOU-

MIA/documents/03102002.

21. Greenspan 2003, 58.

22. The area between, approximately, Vesey, West, Liberty, and Greenwich Street was fenced off

and restricted to the public within weeks after 9/11. In 2008, mesh fences were put up to increase

transparency for the public. Only in early March 2014 was Ground Zero transformed back into

a truly public space, with the removal of fences and ticket requirements. David Dunlap, Passes are

No Longer Needed at 9/11 Memorial,New York Times, 16 May 2014.


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23. Doss 2012, 67.

24. Senie 2006, 4156, at 45.

25. Santino 2006, 13; Haney, Leimer, and Lowery 1997; Richardson 2001.

26. Doss 2012, 78.

27. Blair 1999, 4453, 46.

28. Greenspan 2013, 14; Richardson 2001, 2.

29.New York Daily News, 19 February 2002.

30. Ibid.

31. New York New Visions Memorials Briefing Book, March 2012, http://nynv.aiga.org/pdfs/

NYNV_MemorialsBriefingBook.pdf.

32. Santino 2006, 13.

33. Kirschenblatt-Gimblett 1998, 21.

34. Kopytoff 1986, 7071.

35. Greenspan 2013, 216.

36. Jivn 2003.

37. Though one could counter that by creating an underground museum, the 9/11 Memorial

Museum is in fact a new, different space. Shafernich 1993, 44.38. Violi 2012, 39.

39. Just how choreographed the space is became apparent shortly after its opening, when a visiting

off-duty reporter was tracked through the museum and escorted out when she asked an angry

visitor what was going on. Her report sparked some indignant reactions from readers, who felt

appalled a museum that supposedly celebrates the victory of American values over fascist tyr-

anny would forbid the practice of the first amendment on its grounds without prior permission

of the authorities. Jen Chung, How I Got Kicked Out of the 9/11 Museum, The Gothamist,

22 May 2014.

40. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2003, 1118.

41. Greenspan2013, 61.

42. The committee consisted of Marilyn Taylor, chairman of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (thecompany employing Silversteins architect, David Childs), architect Bart Voorsanger, and art consul-

tant Saul Wenegrat, who had been one of the consultants responsible for choosing art for the World

Trade Center. The group could hardly be called illustrious, as all three were clearly familiar to the Port

Authority rather than to authorities in their respective fields.

43. David Dunlap, Halting Rust from Devouring What 9/11 Couldnt; Curators Battle Elements

to Preserve Pieces of a Terrible History,New York Times, 3 April 2004.

44. David Dunlap, Plan to Move Ground Zero Cross Upsets Priest,New York Times, 12 April 2006.

45. Several architects and historians deplored their choice of marble and reflective pools instead:

The eight finalists are using materials that could be in hotel lobbies or corporate plazas, said histo-

rian Gavriel D. Rosenfeld. When you turn to art to commemorate something this dramatic, it ends

up diminishing the horror and distancing one from the actual authenticity of the event. Eric Lipton,Surplus History from Ground Zero; Left Mostly Out of Memorial Designs, Trade Center Steel Sits

Rusting in a Hangar,New York Times, 19 December 2003.

46. Yet each piece of material, no matter how small or unremarkable in appearance, could only

be moved after an official court order by a federal judge, highlighting the peculiar status of all this

material as appropriated and isolated by the state. Michael Wilson, Sept. 11 Steel Forms Heart of

Far-Flung Memorials,New York Times, 6 September 2009.

47. Dinitia Smith, Competing Plans Hope to Shape a Trade Center Memorial,New York Times,

25 October 2001.

48. Save the Facades, July 2005, http://www.savethefacades.com/index.htm.

49.New York Times, 11 November 2001.

50. Again, one could view this move as a political performance, in Hajers sense, in an essentially

unregulated political arena created by the producing parties themselves.

51. Edward Wyatt, Ground Zero: The Site,New York Times, 13 September 2003.


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52. Listening to the City: Report of Proceedings, http://www.civic-alliance.org/pdf/0920Final

LTCReport.pdf.

53. At several points in the decade following 9/11, there was talk of either the city or the state

government seizing the land from the Port Authority in the name of the public good. The legal

possibility was there under eminent domain, but Silverstein would probably sue, and Pataki and

Bloomberg feared it might tie the site up in years of litigation, the former said. Greenspan

2013, 86.

54. Lisle 2004, 1011; Sturken 2007, 178, 212.

55. Lisle 2004, 11; Greenspan 2013, 15.

56. The Los Angeles Timesconstructed such practices as an act of patriotic symbolism, stating that

dining near the site would be unthinkable if it werent an act of defiance in the face of terrorism and

a vote of support for the beleaguered neighborhood. Quoted in Sturken 2007, 211.

57. Greenspan 2013, 40.

58. Ibid., 54.

59. Lisle 2004, 9.

60. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998, 2223.

61. On the immediacy and dark tourism, see Stone 2006, 14560.62. Sturken 2007, 213.

63. Een grote bouwput. Meer iets van Je moet t gezien hebben (als je er toch toevallig langs

komt). Comment by Peter J on www.tripadvisor.nl.

64. It was Governor Pataki who, in the summer of 2002, had insisted that the towers footprints, in

which the highest concentrations of human remains were found, remain free as sacred space, and

the six designs all followed this instruction. Greenspan 2013, 120.

65. Greenspan 2013, 9596.

66. David Dunlap, A 20-ton Cornerstone for Freedom Tower, New York Times, 20 June

2004.

67. Fittingly, the cornerstone was the subject of a minor scandal in the press, when it was discov-

ered to have been removed sometime before 2008 and stored with the Long Island stone companythat donated it. Michael Daly, Freedom Tower Cornerstone is Rocked by Betrayal,New York Daily

News, 2 July 2008.

68. David Dunlap, Rebuilding, Yes, But Taking Pains to Preserve, Too, New York Times,

30 December 2004.

69.New York Times, 6 May 2002; 11 March 2002.

70. Miracles Emerge from Debris, USA Today,9 June 2002; Matt Chaban, Wheres Fritz Koenigs

Ground Zero Sphere Going?,New York Observer, 25 May 2012; Alfred Doblin, The Sphere Belongs

at Ground Zero, The Record, 7 May 2012.

71. The story that it withstood the falling debris in its current state, however, seems to have turned

into a received truth.

72.New York Times, 11 February 2007.73. The Survivors Stairway, 16 May 2007, www.savethestairway.org.



76. National Trust for Historic Preservation, 21 July 2011, www.savethestairway.org.

77.New York Times, 14 September 2006.

78. Ibid.

79. Ibid.

80. World Trade Center Memorial and Redevelopment PlanHistoric Resources Report January

2011, http://www.renewnyc.com/content/pdfs/WTCHistoricResourcesReport_January2011l.pdf.

81. In fact, New York historian Mike Wallace has stated that if left to flourish, the area might

well have provided the city with the foundations to develop into an equivalent of Silicon Valley.

Mike Wallace,A New Deal for New York, 82; Jane Jacobs, The Life and Death of Great American

Cities.


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82. De-mapped is the official, and somewhat eerie, term. Greenspan 2013, 121.

83.New York Times, 14 September 2006.

84.New York Times, 14 July 2012.

85. Ship Buried in 18th Century Unearthed at WTC Site, Associated Press, 14 July 2010,

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/07/14/ship-buried-th-century-unearthed-wtc-site/.

86. Comment from Big Tim, http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/18th-century-ship-

found-at-trade-center-site/.

87. World Trade Center Memorial and Redevelopment PlanHistoric Resources Report, January

2011, http://www.renewnyc.com/content/pdfs/WTCHistoricResourcesReport_January2011l.pdf.

88. Ship Remains Found at New World Trade Center Site Being Preserved at Texas A&M,

Texas A&M Today, 9 September 2009, http://tamutimes.tamu.edu/2011/09/09/ship-remains-

found-at-new-world-trade-center-site-being-preserved-at-texas-am/ .

89. Holtorf 1997, 4566.

90. Elyn Zimmerman, The World Trade Center Memorial, 1993, September 11th: Art Loss,

Damage, and Repercussions, Proceedings of an IFAR Symposium on February 28, 2002, http://www.ifar.

org/nineeleven/911_memorial1.htm.

91. 9/11 Family Members Start Petition to Save World Trade Center Sphere, http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20110228/downtown/911-family-members-start-petition-save-world-trade-center-

sphere.

92. The Gothamist, 28 February 2011.

93. Greenspans Battle for Ground Zero, for instance, was hailed by reviewers as a study of the

power of democracy; Governor Pataki referred to the demise of the Freedom Center as an open

process. Greenspan 2013, 141.

94. Hajer 2005, 446.

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