I was born and raised in NYC. I have no memory of the buildings going up. It has always stood there as part of the NYC skyline, something that you took for granted.
The first time I ever went to the observation deck was in the early 90s. My brother and I took my niece. The only memory I have of that day is actually visiting the actual roof. I remember seeing Phillipe Petit's signature, and the guy who scaled the tower in the 70s -- I can't remember his name. I have TERRIBLE vertigo, and had to sit down.
The second -- and last time, as it turns out -- I visited the observation deck was in July 2001, two months before 9/11. I remember this visit well, because my then four year old son, upon walking into the buildings and about to go through the security checks, became absolutely terrified. He hung onto my hand, and kept saying, "we need to go" and "we need to leave right now." At the time, of course, I didn't think much of it, but now, of course, it gives me the spooks.
I remember the photo we took in the lobby. Us smiling. I still have the photo, but I hardly look at it. I still have the ticket stub, too.
As others have posted, I remember the whoosh of the elevators as it seem to fly you to the observation deck. Idle trivia from the day: it took 60 seconds to reach the observation deck. Something like 80,000 people went through the towers each day. The WTC had its own zip code, if you coud believe it.
I remember the public ladies room was quite messy. I remember the stunning view from the windows. It truly took your breath away. I remember originally not wanting to spend the $16 bucks on the souvenier photo that we had taken in the lobby. I remember literally walking away, then something tugging at me, pulling me back. I paid the $16 bucks for a photo I rarely look at.
As we took the elevators back down and were out on the street, walking to the car, I remember us taking a moment to look back, to look up, to see how high we were. I remember us standing there, in utter belief, at how high up we were.
And then, two months later, it all came crashing down. I was working at NYU -- which is about 30 blocks away from the WTC. I will never forget the crystal blue skies, the line of black smoke, the hole in the side of the north tower, my niece mouthing the words to me as she listened to the radio on her CD/radio/walkman, "a plane hit the building."
My eyes still look for the towers to this day.
Thank you for the kind person who posted the link to the article Phillipe Petit wrote about 9/11. Thank you to the kind person who posted the picture that appeared in the New Yorker. Thank you to the person who posted photos of inside and around the WTC -- some made me gasp out loud, because I had forgotten. Thank you to the OP for this very thoughful thread and discussion. Man on Wire, which my son and I watched last night, was beautiful. I cannot imagine what it must have been like, to have one foot out, leaving the roof, to be planted on a wire, suspended over nothing.
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Rabipelado
16 years ago
Thanks for sharing your World Trade Center memories, niara. There was a man sitting near me in the cinema when I saw "Man on Wire" last summer who seemed to be suffering terrible vertigo from the movie itself (he was moaning and groaning whenever pictures from the top were shown)...and this was from seeing 34-year-old footage in a movie theater, so I can't imagine how he would've felt standing where you were on the actual rooftop! It's cool that you got to see Philippe Petit's signature (I believe the climber you're thinking of whose signature you also saw is George Willig).
On your second visit, did your son eventually calm down and enjoy himself once he reached the observation deck or was he still terrified of being in the tower? Does he remember anything from that WTC trip? Thanks for sharing those interesting bits of trivia. Somebody actually uploaded a video of the elevator ride onto YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOgqSkiEWdU. Here's some more info that I found on the zip code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10048_(ZIP_code).
What was the observation deck like? It was a good thing you decided to buy that souvenir photo and keep your ticket stub. Did you take any pictures on either of your visits to the top? As mentioned in a previous post, I was transferring flights at Newark in August 2001 and had an opportunity to photograph the Twin Towers which I didn't do (I lacked a zoom lens and since I planned on visiting NYC and the WTC the following summer, figured I'd save my film for then), and still regret it to this day (I remain grateful that I got to see them with my own eyes that one time, though).
I'm terribly sorry that you and your niece had to experience the horrors of 9/11, firsthand. Is she the same niece that you and your brother took to the WTC roof in the early '90s? I also miss seeing the Twin Towers in the NYC skyline. Modern pictures of the Statue of Liberty (on a side note, I'm really happy to hear that the crown is reopening to the public on July 4, 2009) and Brooklyn Bridge just aren't the same without them standing tall in the background.
I'm glad that you liked the New Yorker picture and am happy to have started this thread. I had been wanting to start such a thread for some time and felt the message board for this wonderful movie was the perfect place, since it memorializes a happy time in the WTC's history. It's nice to see that more and more period flicks are reinserting the Twin Towers back into the NYC skyline (I hear they're also seen in a flashback sequence in "Madagascar 2"). They even appeared in a 2006 PS2/Xbox/Wii video game called "Driver: Parallel Lines" which is partially set in the late '70s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGYY7w1gjZ0. I hope that you and your son enjoyed "Man on Wire". It truly is a beautiful film that deserved the Oscar it won and I hope it gets released on Blu-ray, soon.
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onepotato2
16 years ago
Everybody here is caught up in mythologizing the towers now that they're gone.
When I visited, I found them pretty unremarkable, and in some details even poor. The design style was late-modernism. Architects didn't know what they could do, but they knew if they tried anything to far from modernism thye'd get reamed. so curves were added here and there to routine modernist forms (boxes), the only accpeptable architectural form/solution for about 20 years.
You entered the lobby which was open to one story below, and there was garish red carpeting. It was really tawdry. You get in the elevator. You go up. You instantly realize that the insistant vertical striations up the walls create a major problem for a viewing deck. There is no way to get a panoramic view (you know, thepoint of going on top oof something tall) because it was three feet of window, three feet of colum, three feet of window, three feet of column, etc. The decor up there was cheesy as hell. Bright colors, steel tubes whipping around to create barriers. You had to step down a little as you got closer to the windows, where dozens of other suckers were squeezing their heads into the window gaps (between those damned columns) to even be able to look out the damned windows.
Lastly, the experience was so lame that although there was no line to get up to the observation deck, there WAS a line to leave the damned thing. Droves of people would go up, realize the space and experience were dissapointing, and rapidly go back to the elevators to leave, causing lines to form.
WTC had a lousy observation floor. The building itself will be eclipsed in its lousiness by the David Childs (SOM) powerfully llousy new WTC.
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