MESSAGE
| DATE | 2008-03-09 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] WTC Progress?
|
March 10, 2008 Revered Relic of World Trade Center Is Moved By FERNANDA
SANTOS
The steel cables tensed, like a sprinter’s muscles at the start of a
race. Then, the crane’s engine roared as the operator pulled a lever,
moving the staircase off the ground and 180 degrees from south to north.
And that was how on Sunday the staircase became the last visible remnant
of the World Trade Center to be removed from the place where it had
stood on Sept. 11, 2001.
The stairs’ relocation marked a brief yet momentous occasion
for the engineers who had spent months planning the operation, the
preservationists who had spent years trying to save the staircase from
destruction and the hundreds of people who had used the steps to flee
the complex before the twin towers fell.
It also started a new phase in the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan. With the
staircase out of the way, the construction of Tower 2, a 1,278-foot-tall
skyscraper, can continue unimpeded, with workers and machinery now free
to move about without risking damage to a piece of 9/11 history. Tower
2 is one of the five towers being built at ground zero.
“You were pitting memory and preservation and loss and family against
redevelopment and construction, as if you could have one or the other,
but you couldn’t coexist,†Avi Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan
Development Corporation, told reporters at ground zero. “What we proved
is in fact they could coexist.â€
The staircase will stand opposite a park outside 7 World Trade Center,
about 200 feet north of its original spot, until the end of the summer.
Then it will be moved again, this time to the western edge of the 16-acre
trade center site, and lowered 70 feet, almost to the bedrock, to where
the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum will be built, said Joseph
C. Daniels, the museum’s president.
At 21 feet high and 64 feet long, the staircase, which has come to be
known as the survivors’ stairway for the vital role it played as an
escape route, had stood largely obscured, first by debris and then by
fencing and equipment.
Its 38 steps, which once connected Vesey Street to the north end of the
trade center’s Austin J. Tobin Plaza, were hidden by a thick concrete
partition that served as their support. From the street, the stairs
could easily be mistaken for a free-standing wall.
In January workers began to chip away at the concrete, and by this month
they had extracted the staircase from the bulkhead and the rest of the
structure, including a fragment of the Tobin Plaza pavement that remained
attached to the top.
The steps suddenly became visible, rising from the dirt into the air.
“If it wasn’t for those steps, I probably wouldn’t be here today,â€
said Tom Canavan, 48, after watching workers moving the staircase.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Canavan was working at the Union Bank on the 47th
floor of the north tower when the building was struck by a hijacked
plane. He fled the office, eventually reaching the trade center’s
concourse, where he found himself buried by debris from the south
tower’s collapse.
“By the time I tunneled my way out, to the plaza,†he said on
Sunday, “the only way I could get out was through the stairway on
Vesey Street.â€
Hundreds of others are believed to have escaped the trade center site
by going down those stairs, said Peg Breen, president of the New York
Landmarks Conservancy, one of the preservation groups that worked to
save the staircase.
“This a terribly important part of the 9/11 story, a story of survival
in the midst of so much destruction,†Ms. Breen said. “It’s a
story that we now know will be told.â€
In 2006, state officials announced plans to demolish the staircase to
make way for the new tower, dismaying preservationists and angering many
survivors. The officials said that only one or two of the steps would
be salvaged.
Last August, however, the Spitzer administration offered an alternate
solution: Move the staircase from its original spot, and eventually
reinstall it in the museum, alongside the steps and escalator that will
be used by museum visitors.
Preparations for Sunday’s removal had been in the works for three
months, said Steven Plate, director of World Trade Center construction for
the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site. It
involved the removal of the bulkhead and the construction of a steel
framework to run beneath the staircase.
Crews used a 500-ton crane to move the staircase, which weighs 65 tons,
Mr. Plate said. The cost of the removal is estimated to be $2 million.
Home
* World
* U.S.
* N.Y. / Region
* Business
* Technology
* Science
* Health
* Sports
* Opinion
* Arts
* Style
* Travel
* Jobs
* Real Estate
* Automobiles
* Back to Top
--
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://fairuse.nylxs.com DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming sharecroppers to our own cultural heritage -- we need the ability to participate in our own society."
"> I'm an engineer. I choose the best tool for the job, politics be damned.<
You must be a stupid engineer then, because politcs and technology have been attached at the hip since the 1st dynasty in Ancient Egypt. I guess you missed that one."
© Copyright for the Digital Millennium
|
|
