February 16, 2007

The World Trade Center site at dawn.

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This is the view from my hotel room. I'm off to a conference at New York Law School. Perhaps I can blog from there later, but my panel is up at 9:15, so it won't be for a while.

12 comments:

Simon said...

Lovely picture - the lighting's very effective, with the tower tops making it out of shade at roughly eyeline with the buildings on the other side of the river.

People talk about how it's a shame that there's still not a monument there, but that the site remains little more than an open wound seems entirely apt to our national psyche since 9/11.

Wade Garrett said...

I used to live and work not far from there. The thing that people who haven't been to New York often miss about Ground Zero is its size -- without knowing the exact number off-hand, it is something like 15 acres. The tall buildings surrounding it make the hole feel even deeper. It is a very arresting and effecting site.

Fritz said...

Beautiful picture of the World Financial Center. There is a great restaurant there with a patio that over-looks the Hudson River with a view of the Statue of Liberty. My guess you are staying at the Millennium Hotel.

David said...

A nice picture for a great world trade center.

al said...

The thing that people who haven't been to New York often miss about Ground Zero is its size

Count me as one of those people. I didn't realize just how much area it covered till we walked around it last summer.

It was strange how much people were talking till they got to the site. Then they just stopped or got real quiet.

Brian Doyle said...

Ugh. Welcome to Graceland, Ann.

Unknown said...

Great picture - makes me feel I am there.

vbspurs said...

Ugh. Welcome to Graceland, Ann.

That's bloody unforgiveable. Even if I didn't have people I knew that died there, it's like hearing that said about Auschwitz.

You are a worthless human being.

Paul Worthington said...

That short, dark building to the right of the right-most tower is an Embassy Suites hotel. It has a similar view onto the World Trade Center site. I shot this photo of the site on the night of February 5, 2007. And this photo the next morning, February 6, 2007. Ann's hotel is relatively central in both photos.

Unknown said...

I think tourists are way more infatuated with Ground Zero than New Yorkers are.

9/11 was a horrible, disgusting attack inflicted on this city - but most New Yorkers have moved on a long time ago.

Unknown said...

Dawn - Just because your cousin died in 9/11 does not make you any more of an authority on this matter than Doyle.

Personally, I'm sick and tired of 9/11 relatives who live in the suburbs and who will visit this city about four more times in their lifetime, trying to dictate how this city should be rebuilt.

Unless they are New York City taxpayers, they should have absolutely zero say about Ground Zero.

If anyone is desecrating the dead of 9/11, it is the influx of tourists who swarm the site daily and are buying tacky T-shirts from street vendors.

amba said...

Beautiful photograph of two of my favorite buildings. I never got tired of looking at the World Financial Center -- beautifully proportioned, beautifully textured buildings, their window shapes and tints just right -- some of the most satisfying architecture I know, and on top of each building a stripped-down postmodern reference to a traditional finish -- dome, pyramid, ziggurat, altar. The only trouble is, as a group they were designed around the World Trade Center towers (to which they were infinitely superior as architecture). Now that the towers are gone the pin has been pulled out of the center of the design and it's fallen apart into formlessness. But the individual buildings are still a joy to look at.