The view from Ground Zero
(3 of 3)
A Japanese father poses his wife and kid in front of the rubble of WTC Building 7, the nearest devastated building to Century 21. It is now eight stories of molten, molded metal. Twisted beams project from the seventh floor like a scarecrow ghoul, its head soldered to the shell of the shard. Two decades ago, some government arts agency would have paid Richard Serra a bundle to devise and execute this idea. Even now, it has a weird... not beauty, but aleatory artfulness. In the current issue of a newsweekly (but not in THE newsweekly), the architect Bart Voorsanger says the steel beams are torqued in amazing ways. Does Al Qaeda deserve a commission? No, but theres something to be grateful for in the new American mood of seriousness, wariness, solemnity, mourning. It means that, as a country, weve been shocked into adulthood.
GROUND PLUS ONE
Now: my neighborhood. It has the highest congestion of superior restaurants in the city: Danube, Montrachet, Chanterelle, Nobu, and a lot of cozier places with smart food and delicious pretensions. A lot of movies have been shot here: our local fire house (now festooned with funeral flowers) was the setting for Ghostbusters, and if you look closely at any number of independent films, youll see the back alley of my apartment house on Hudson Street.
Our 10-story co-op building was originally an American Express Shipping Warehouse, erected by McKim, Mead and White in 1890. Atop it — the crown on this regal brick building — is a roof garden, planted and maintained by one Mary Corliss (to whom Ive been married for 32 years, but who still looks so young and lovely that someone meeting her recently said she thought Mary was my trophy wife). From Memorial Day to Veterans Day, for an hour or so each morning and for hours more on weekends, Mary nurses, nurtures and sings show tunes to flowers and trees in 100 or so boxes up there.
Many a summer night we would sit on the roof with friends, and as night descended wed point out some of our favorite skyscrapers, their lights festooning them as artful as a Disneyland castle. Stand here and you can see both the Empire State Building and the Woolworth Building, I would say, civic pride mingling with aesthetic awe as we indicated the worlds tallest glamorous building and its downtown elder brother, Cass Gilberts neo-Gothic Cathedral of Commerce. Then, sotto voce, Id add with a dismissive wave, And the World Trade Center. In our glittering family of commercial monuments, the towers were the hulking twins who could aspire to nothing more lofty than playing right and left tackle for the Jets.
The WTC monoliths tried to make up in size what they lacked in grace, splendor or architectural intelligence; they were to the Empire State Building what the 1976 King Kong remake (in which the beast falls from the top of one or both towers) was to the 1933 original (which concludes you-know-where). As Nicholas Von Hoffman wrote of the Twin Towers in last weeks New York Observer, They were a couple of ugly and ill-proportioned buildings of egotistical dimensions and heartlessness. They had nothing noteworthy about them but gross altitude. I always thought of them as two stacks of staples in Gods office supply closet.
Now theyre gone; as someone said, its as if the New York skyline were suddenly missing its two front teeth. Standing on our roof, we can see its absence and smell its remains. Because the towers have vanished, the light is different: late in the afternoon, the Woolworth Building gets a golden sunbath. We also have a view (that view) of Ground Zero. In the past week a huge American flag has been draped from an older building nearby.
This weekend I walked down from the roof and sat on our buildings stoop, occasionally helping folks who stopped to ask, Wheres the World Trade Center? (Well, two months ago, it was right down there.) There was brisk and heavy foot traffic, mostly parents and their kids visiting Manhattans own theme park of death and remembrance. A mother and daughter walked north wearing particle masks. Two women passing them shot them a stern look, as if to say, This aint no stinkin biohazard zone, and the mother turned to argue, then kept walking away. Another family — mother, father, son — passed the masked duo, and the boy asked if it was safe down here. Its safe for being here, mom said. Its not so safe for breathing. They kept walking toward the site.
Just as many of us suspect that any bad news today must be connected with Islamic terrorists, I had the feeling that the people walking past me were as wrapped up as I was in the spectacle of post-Sept. 11 anxiety. Then I caught sight of three girls, maybe third graders, running exultantly up Hudson Street, their arms raised high, grins stretched wide, singing, We won! We won! We won! We won! Who, I wondered, could dare to be happy these days, and why? In reply to my quizzical look, one of the girls ad libbed a coda to the song — We won! We won! Our soccer game today! — and disappeared with her teammates around the corner of Jay Street.
In Tribecastan, life goes on.