World Trade Center Continues Upward Despite Blizzard
The chaos of the blizzard seems to have bypassed the site.
[ As the World Trade Center continues its ascent, The Architect's Newspaper will be checking in each week for signs of progress at one of the country's most exciting construction sites. ]
The blizzard did little to deter holiday crowds from flocking to the World Trade Center this week. With few office workers in town, hundreds of tourists crushed onto the slushy sidewalks of Church Street. From behind St. Paul’s Chapel, a cacophony of languages could be heard. Construction moved forward with few signs of delay or disruption from this week’s snow and by Wednesday afternoon the site was humming as usual.
Weekly World Trade Pic
Another row of windows and corner facets began to emerge this week.
[ As the World Trade Center continues its ascent, The Architect's Newspaper will be checking in each week for signs of progress at one of the country's most exciting construction sites. ]
The pre-holiday bustle reached a lull today at the World Trade Center site as much of downtown seems to have headed home. Even the cranes were moving at a sluggish pace; but they’re still moving. This week, the facets that form elongated triangular corners began to reflect the sunlight a bit more and another row of windows found their way onto the western facade. The holidays are taking hold, too: At dusk, sparkly lights that run the length of the cranes emerge like stars.
Slideshow> Weekly World Trade Photo Update
One World Trade is beginning to rival Seven. (Photo: Tom Stoelker)
The Architect’s Newspaper‘s main office is just two blocks from the Word Trade Center site, so we’re keeping a photographic eye on increasingly visible developments at the site. One World Trade will soon break the skyline and all throughout the site there are signs of vigor. Over the last couple of weeks, windows began to appear on some of the structures.
It’s hard not to be awed, regardless of how unfashionable that may be in an area where locals studiously observe a nonchalant protocol, as though the massive tower were just another visiting celebrity. So don’t mind us as we join the out-of-town gawkers and snap away.
Calatrava PATH Station Takes Flight
It’ll be at least 4 years before Santiago Calatrava’s scaled-back, over-budget World Trade Center PATH station is completed (though as our upcoming feature on Lower Manhattan showcases, everything’s been a long time coming, but it seems to have finally arrived). Still, from the start of the interminable process, we’ve had some of the flashiest renderings around to tuck us in at night. Now comes an illustrated video courtesy the Journal‘s Metropolis blog that gives us our clearest view yet of just what’s planned, as well as what Calatrava meant when he told the New Yorker a while back that he was striving for something akin to Grand Central—a truly great room where the interiors, not the exteriors, would be what truly matters. If this video is any indication, despite all the cutbacks, he’s succeeded grandly.
The Public-Private Pit
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If you build it... Well, will ya? (D-Box/Courtesy Silverstein Properties)
The most recent deal to get the final pieces of the World Trade Center site off the ground was supposed to be, or so the players involved made it seem, the final one. No more handouts, no more delays. But as our colleague Eliot Brown over at the Observer points out, this is far from the first deal that has been brokered between the Port Authority and Silverstein Properties. It is in fact the fourth, and it quite possibly has brought the public’s total investment in the private portion of the site—to say nothing of such public expenditures as the $3.2 billion (formerly $2 billion) PATH station—to possibly $2 billion. “While the ultimate public tab may never come to be that high, what is clear is that the amount of public assistance for what is now to be two private World Trade Center towers with 4 million square feet is exceptional, and far more than ever advertised or anticipated when the rebuilding plan was sold to the public,” Brown writes. Read More
Ground Zip, Zero, Zilch
A photo of the World Trade Center site from January 12 shows progress on the memorial (center), 1 WTC (top left) and Tower 4 (bottom right) but not Tower 2 or Tower 3 (top right). (WTCProgress/Flickr)
That’s how much the Port Authority owes developer Larry Silverstein, after an arbitration panel’s ruling yesterday, which Silverstein Properties announced in a press release today. The developer had been seeking monetary damages and reduced rents because, Silverstein argued, the PA had delayed in turning over the sites of Tower 2 and Tower 3, also known as 200 and 175 Greenwich, designed, respectively, by Norman Foster and Richard Rogers. The arbitrators, who Silverstein tapped in July, found this not to be the case, though it is not entirely clear why as their decision has not been publicly released. Read More
Calatrava Publicly Speaking
The World Trade Center Transportation Hub. (courtesy Queen Sofia Spanish Institute)
At the opening of the exhibition on his World Trade Center Transportation Hub, on view now at the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute though August 31, Santiago Calatrava’s presentation was impeccably well mannered. He juggled questions with ease, balancing the answers on the tip of his nose, before finally pulling the “child releasing a dove” formal metaphor out of his sleeve. Like his work or not, he is a magician, charming the public with form, feats of engineering, impossibly white compositions, and notions of public service. Read More
Back on the Map
Two versions of the MTA subway map found on the authority's website. One represents the Cortlandt Street R/W as closed with a gray dot. In another version, it appears to be in operation. (Courtesy MTA).
It may not have a marquee name attached to it, but work on the Cortlandt Street R/W subway station is another sign of the slow but increasingly steady progress at the World Trade Center site. Closed since 9/11, the heavily damaged station has stood as an eerie reminder of that day, visible to the thousands of riders that pass by it everyday as the trains creak and twist toward Rector Street. Read More
Freedom for Pataki
George Pataki, back in his gubernatorial days, walks through the temporary PATH station. (DTE)
And here we thought they’d dropped the name Freedom Tower awhile ago, around the time Freedom Fries went out of fashion. But according to the reports seemingly everywhere today (it was front page news in both the News and the Post), now it’s official–the Port Authority has dropped the name. The man who came up with it, however, has quite a few things to say to that. According to the Observer, Pataki was none too pleased about the decision: Read More
Up, Up, & Away
Up she goes. (TOKEN FYP./Flickr)
No, we’re not talking about the progress on Tower 1, though that is impressive. We’re talking about news of the building’s new, fastest-in-the-hemisphere elevators. Call it jealousy: We’ve been having horrible problems lately at A/N HQ with the elevator. First, it was grinding and creaking. Then it was getting stuck between floors. They say it’s fixed but we’re still taking the stairs. Can we be blamed for looking longingly to the south from 21 Murray Street after this ecstatic report from tomorrow’s Times: Read More
WTC Model to NYC
The National September 11 Memorial and Museum has just announced that it has been given Minoru Yamasaki’s final presentation model (he built 108 different prototypes) of the World Trade Center Tower Project. It has been donated by the American Architectural Foundation in Washington, D.C., where the model is currently on view until January 15. Read More
Columntrava
courtesy Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
This week, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PA) and Santiago Calatrava released renderings of the scaled back World Trade Center Transportation Hub. Read More
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