Weekend blog: Items from the past, #4.

June 10, 2002.

Early in the afternoon, members of the National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE) went by subway to the closest remaining station to the WTC site. It was like a school outing, with group leaders in red caps leading the way. We emerged in the bright sun at Church Street, which runs on the east side of the site. The wooden fencing at street level makes it look like nothing more than an enormous construction site.

Turning west, we followed a long, enclosed construction-area scaffolding tunnel along the former Liberty Street, which at one point passed by a closed fire station, the one closest to the site, its entrance plastered with photos and memorials of all descriptions. The tunnel led to 2 World Financial Center, part of a complex close to the Hudson River that had survived and is partly open, but largely devoid of people even now. Our group was scheduled to meet on the 12th floor of the building, in former Merrill Lynch offices. From that vantage, I saw the entire sweep of the 16 acres or so of the WTC site.

(Notes written on the 12th floor of 2 World Financial Center:

(From here you can see the world’s most famous vacant lot. It’s quite large, and deep, looking something like an active quarry, but you don’t realize its scale until you focus on the earth-moving equipment and the workers, who are almost specks off in the pit. Faced with this hole, I’m having trouble visualizing what used to be here. Maybe that’s because the last — and only — time I saw the Twin Towers close up was on a visit to the top in 1983, but another man standing at the windows remarked that he felt the same way, though he used to see them often.

(It is a haunting place to see, and I’m reminded of other sites of great violence that I’ve seen in person — even greater violence, in terms of the number of people killed, since I’m thinking of Hiroshima and Auschwitz. All very different in character and historic circumstance, but with the common thread of mass death.)

The conference involved a handful of speakers discussing the debris removal at the WTC site, an amazingly complicated effort, and the hurly-burly involved in redeveloping it. Then, to add to the surrealness of the day, NAREE held a cocktail reception afterward on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, which isn't far away. It's a primary rain forest of electronic equipment — the guts of the capitalist beast — no, the sinews of the Invisible Hand. At the conclusion of the function, I left the Exchange and lingered for a while on the steps of Federal Hall. That sort of thing appeals to someone historically minded like me, since Washington was inaugurated on those steps on April 30, 1789.

You’d think that would be enough for one day, but no. I walked south to the tip of Manhattan and caught the Statton Island Ferry. The purpose of the trip was simply to ride the Statton Island Ferry, since I rode it back as soon as I got there. And I was rewarded with a sunset view of Manhattan. Even that was strange. The skyline looked like it had lost its two front teeth.