I’ve been working for a client I had last worked for before September 11th, 2001. As a matter of fact, the number of times I’ve ventured to lower Manhattan since September 11th could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Anyway, I didn’t come down here that much before the event (which I’m a little sad about now), since I really hadn’t any reason to. After 9-11, while I can’t say I’ve intentionally avoided the area, I also haven’t come down to gawk. There is something I find distastefully morbid in the people who make the pilgrimage to see an open pit where the World Trade Center once stood.
That being said, over the last few nights, I’ve had my first encounters with the site since the event happened. Usually, it’s been after a particularly long day, when I’m tired and in the back of one of those ‘black cars.’ The driver has made their way over to the west side and we’ve driven past the site.
Like a kid, I find myself perking up as we pass trying to see what it looks like. While I don’t have the morbid fascination, I will admit to being curious to see what it looks like if I’m going by it.
Usually, it’s at a time of day when the city is very quiet, those wee hours of the morning that are the domain of garbage haulers, newspaper and bread delivery men. The area has these large, large floodlights illuminating the pit. They’re the kind of lights they’ve been using on night highway construction sites over the last few years.
There’s just this big open space where the complex once was. No rising smoke anymore, no heavy machinery, just a big pit.
It’s Manhattan‘s answer to a big gaping wound.
I’ve ridden past it a few times now on both the Church Street side and the West Street side - it’s all very, very strange to put it mildly.
I had gotten into a conversation with one of the drivers about it - he was amazed I hadn’t been downtown since 9-11. Over the course of the ride he began telling me about all the other changes there were downtown. Apparently a bunch of streets are closed off permanently.
Sunday, I went down and we walked around Chinatown trying to find a decent Dim Sum place. Afterward, even though it was cold, I (and my Dim Sum companion) walked around and explored.
I had wanted to see what the parking situation was downtown. I had been working down there the last few weeks and there had been a bunch of times when I had driven in but, not knowing what street parking was like wound up parking much further uptown.
I remembered at one time there was a public parking garage but, I couldn’t be sure it was still open anymore and wanted to check.
So, we made our way southward...
Chinatown is bounded by Worth Street to the south and just south of Chatham Square, Park Row branches off to run under the Brooklyn Bridge approach and down along the side of City Hall park (it’s where J and R electronics and also the place where the WTC’s antecedent the Woolworth building stands).
As you make your way down Park Row, there’s a bunch of Federal, State and City government buildings located along the street and to the west of it (between Park Row and Broadway). You have the Tweed building, One Police Plaza, DMV, a couple of courthouses and the federal building. The infamous ‘tombs’ (the Manhattan jail) is just on the northern edge.
So, we walked around and made our way south, through Chatham Square and lo and behold just below Chatham Square, Park Row was indeed closed!
“[The] city has [secured] a…greater area than apparently is necessary to provide security for One Police Plaza,” said State Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub at a court hearing June 27. Residents of Chatham Green and Chatham Towers, and several local politicians have filed a lawsuit against the city to force officials to issue an environmental impact statement on the closing of Park Row and nearby streets to most vehicles. Judge Tolub, according to court transcripts, also told the city’s attorney that “you seem to have undertaken a rather massive approach to a security problem without any thought as to the impact on the community.”
As we walked down Park Row, there were a great many cameras and guard shacks. Each guard shack had the emblem of a different government agency.
The Gray Hole
There was an eerie feeling as if you were stepping into another land. It was like walking into a world that Orwell had envisioned, cameras and police on every corner. A checkpoint at each corner.
I found it very sad. I actually felt like crying. There was something that was just so wrong about the whole scene, it wasn’t New York. It wasn’t my New York. Certainly, not the one I grew up in and drove a taxi in.
We passed a policeman in a guard shack just north of Reade Street and just south of the intersection a Federal Marshall came out of his shack and asked if he could help us. Obviously we had crossed some invisible line into the forbidden zone.
It was surreal, to say the least. Don’t get me wrong, the guy was a nice guy and everything, it was just the circumstances, being on a public street in the middle of Manhattan and which was now closed.
I explained to him the story about my conversation with the taxi driver and he was quite understanding. I asked if the street would be open again and he replied he didn’t think it would ever be. I also asked him about the parking garage and he pointed me in its direction.
We walked another block or two (around 1 Police Plaza) and it turned out the garage was actually in Police Plaza.
There were two more guard shacks there. I asked the policeman if you were still able to park but, he said the garage had been closed since before 9-11.
July 9, 2001 -- FIELDS FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST CITY FOR CLOSING OF MUNICIPAL PARKING GARAGE IN LOWER MANHATTAN --BOROUGH PRESIDENT SAYS CITY OFFICIALS KNOWINGLY VIOLATED CHARTER REGULATIONS
Between the concrete barricades, the checkpoints and the guard shacks, it made a sad statement on our city.
There was this oft stated phrase that ended with... “won’t the terrorists have won, then?!” in the days and months immediately following 9-11.
All I could think of walking around downtown was that they had.
We pride ourselves on living in a free and open society. While the truth is our society isn’t quite as free and open as we may like it to be, it’s by far much better than a lot of the world. In every discussion about terrorism and the fight against it, no one wants to address the basic tenets of the struggle.
We are fighting extremists, groups who don’t like the fact that our citizens can live their lives the way they want as long as they’re not impeding on someone else’s right to do the same. When we sacrifice those freedoms to a false sense of security, we do ourselves a disservice as a nation and as a people.
To the Barricades Over a Police Barricade
By KELLY CROW May 11, 2003. New York Times
Danny Chen cannot invite friends, or even relatives, to his apartment anymore. That's because Mr. Chen, a software engineer, lives in Chatham Green, a 21-story co-op on Park Row that sits just inside a police barricade installed after Sept. 11 to protect Police Plaza across the street...
Doesn’t it strike anyone as odd that although New York was attacked, none of the attacks originated from New York, they originated from elsewhere but, somehow because New York was the target, security was intensified here as opposed to the places the attacks originated from?
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