General Discussion

Last edited Fri Sep 12, 2025, 03:40 AM - Edit history (1)

As someone in Art and Architecture College 70-74...where I sometimes hung out with the architect students as they were being built. Jokes about them being "the boxes" the real buildings came in.
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But then I worked there. I fell in love with them, bc I saw them in all kinds of weather, and the surfaces would reflect the different lighting conditions mid day, sunsets, sometimes glimpses of clouds in the windows. They could be bathed in fog, with glow from some of the windows beginning to fade completely as the fog got thicker higher up. This was later Fall/Winter leaving from work; dark by 5PM. In fact there were occasions when we couldn't see out our windows up there!

I spent many visits down by the site from Nov 01 onward as they took things apart, and then eventualy began building the new tower. These were my buildings, my work area. Now, I actually spent time from 1971 onward by City Hall bc of a fabulous record shop. CH was only ?4 blocks north, one Avenue east of WTC.

I took many photos of the process over the months+. I went to a service at St John the Divine soon after where I finally got to see my sister. We hugged deeply. In the gift shop there was a woman w a "Ohio 🩷 NY" T shirt. Many people out of the NY/NJ/CN area came to help with the clean up!

🚨 Graphic just this paragraph
In '16 I was on Switzerland visiting my aunt and uncle to make art w my aunt. It was during 9-11. There we x hours later afternoon looking back to here in the morning. Like I tended to do I look on line at 9-11 stuff that day. But totally forgetting that Europe didn't censor the photos like here in the USA. So a half smashed body! A street with gigantic blood splotches all the way the block! My uncle was the squeamish type sobI couldn't emote to him. And my dear aunt was suffering with Parkinson's so I wasn't going to burden her. Just had to deal w it. Luckily it was early in my 3 week stay, and soon forgotten in the amazing adventure I was on! //end of ick.
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Meanwhile, in the late '70s, or all early '80s my cousin George became a Fire Marshall.They go through all the training the fire fighters do. We were so proud. I ran into his brother a few days later who told me he was working on The Pile. What the FF's called the ruins. Woah.
Unfortunately, decades later cancer got him, like a lot of others down in the area who spent a lot of time there.

Lots of visits to the eventual beautiful memorial. The Survivor Tree is a callery pear that were the ones ringing the edge of The WTC Plaza in big planters. It was found, and taken to a big nursery to be tended to. It now blooms before the many oak saplings (then planted) begin to green up.

Later they made an additional small memorial within the big one of a boulder with strips of metal embeded into it to commemorate the fighter fighters, police, and ? who died later from illnesses contracted by the contaminated air they breathed in.

BMPM- They made 2 collection anthologies of 9-11 art created by comic book artists. I bought both. Got to the exhibit of the original B&W art, too.

Finally- The Trubute in Lights. One of the most memorable, beautiful things of that type (a memorial) ever created. The lights climbing onto the heavens. I could see them in the distant some years from my hilltop neighborhood in The Bronx.

But they were on (at night) for a whole 6 months that first year they were lit. I could see them rising above our low apartment, and brownstone buildings on our block in Brooklyn. So beautifully poignant.