WorldTradeCentre2025: A GROUND LEVEL IMPRESSION OF GROUND ZERO, NYC
By Rita Devgan, BLANDARCH
Any time I get to travel, I view it as a privilege. A trip to New York City was a blessing bestowed upon me in winter 2025. My daughter wanted to take an “adult visit” to the World Trade Center, having been there as a visitor to the top of one of the towers with her brother, just a month before the tragic terrorist attacks in August 2001.
Not being eager to learn more about another of history’s tragedies, I didn’t really want to go and be reminded of it in close proximity. I was worried that it would be dingy & gory. My closest friend had been living in nearby Tribeca when the Towers came down, and had not been able to return home for seven months, as her building had no power and the windows were blacked out by soot. I could only imagine the huge cleanup on all the buildings in Lower Manhattan that must have been required. But my daughter talked me into it.
My first impression of the WTC memorial was almost overpowering. From the arrival on the lower retail level of the Path WTC Station, the soaring roof of white angel wings of the building’s overhead span offered a continuous reflected lightness to the massive open floor laid with large white stone slabs.
My initial intent was to find evidence of artistic commitment in the ground-plane experience of the Memorial Plaza, which is admittedly of utmost importance to the art-and-design-obsessed among us. I recalled my visit to the Financial District decades ago to see the now-disappeared Street Sculptures such as Louise Nevelson’s Sky Gate and Alexander Calder’s Bent Propellor.
In the Financial District, seven public works were incinerated in situ. In addition, much corporate-owned Lobby art and top-tier artworks in studios and corporate offices, such as Rodin sculptures, were also lost due to destruction and early looting. The loss has been estimated at $110 million, much of which was not fully insured of interest groups.
In Memorial Plaza, no expense was spared in providing a flow of beautiful Scandinavian benches with the feel of outdoor streams that draw you past the “lift-off” side of the WTC Path Station building by Santiago Calatrava.
During our visit, the gloom of a low-hanging February fog added to our impression of the building by framing its uplifting roof line, which must be a dream location for parkour devotees everywhere.
My daughter’s key strategy in convincing me to make the trip was to put it into the context of paying our respects. She pressed me to see all that was offered in the below-ground Museum, knowing that even there, we could choose to avoid the room that contained the more graphic side of the building remains. No one under the age of 10 can go into this room, and even those under the age of 18 must be accompanied by an adult. We were still able to learn about the history of possibly four design competitions and a multitude of projects by community groups participating in the resurrection of this major city block.
When I asked our volunteer docent for an overview of the Plaza features, she painfully described the water elements as “Two Voids,” marking the footprint of the Original Twin Towers. I thought that I could keep my tears down, but when she said that, they came to the surface.
These “Two Voids” that dominate the Plaza consist of two massive, exquisitely crafted black granite sculptural depressions, forming pools beneath a moving volume of water that pours over the rounded edges of their surrounding walls, to suggest an unending torrent of everyone’s collective tears. It made me think of Ariana Grande's song No More Tears Left to Cry. This, combined with the rustle of the oak leaves overhead, transported me away from the flotsam and jetsam of New York City in this dense and resilient part of the Big Apple.
Surrounding the perimeter viewing level, at the edge of each Void is a spectacular metal plate with victims' names carved into it, with light playing through the empty letters.
The tradition of throwing coins into a fountain is addressed by a nearby Cube that visitors are invited to throw coins into, to support the families of the victims.
“The Grove” is a stand of oaks lined up in a grid that ties the Plaza together and offers a grand avenue for those crossing the block in a hurry or looking for an uplifting stroll down the allée. By choosing the mighty oak, with its leathery leaves that are retained throughout the winter and rustle when the wind blows, the designers have created a source of white noise that muffles the din of the surrounding city. It was the designer’s wish that visitors could move and relax in this peaceful oasis of beauty and serenity and forget about the bustle of life around them. As the grand canopy of this commanding urban forest develops over the decades, the natural shape of the trees will create a cathedral-like effect that will reinforce the drama of the visitor experience.
But the oaks aren’t the only trees that have a story to tell. We learned that, as a remarkable example of resilience, a solitary ornamental Callery Pear Tree that had existed on the site before the tragedy, had managed to survive. With a charred trunk, seared bark, broken roots and branches it stood bravely at the end of the day on September 11, 2001. Through a sustained community effort, a committed WTC Tree Rescue Program spent nearly a decade of loving professional nursery care to bring The Survivor Tree back to health before being returned to grow again in the WTC Memorial Plaza.
Over the next decade, the community created a Survivor Tree website to spread the remarkable story and to offer seedlings from the tree to other cities around the world. On the website, you can see the list of The Survivor Tree Seedling Recipients. Each City Recipient was chosen as a show of solidarity and resilience in the wake of its own catastrophic community event.
A stroll around Lower Manhattan revealed that the perimeter of the Plaza holds other examples of resilience. I had a coffee at the edge of the Plaza on Cortland Street, in an unusually ornamental Starbucks, located in a vintage office building which somehow survived the disaster.
As a lasting memento of our visit, we came away with a wrist band, which also serves a reminder of the community of people that share the memory of the terror of 9/11.
There are many ways to engage with the Memorial Place in 2025. It's clear that those who were (or are) too young to understand the loss suffered on that dreadful day have agreed to a learning commitment with the help of Taylor Swift-inspired friendship bracelets.
For my daughter and me, the visit to the WTC memorial was both an artistic and truly uplifting experience. It has left us with memories that we will never forget. For those who can’t visit in person, a visit to the 9/11 website connects you with the community and gives you the chance to be on a mailing list, a volunteer committee or simply to be informed of the upcoming events being held at the WTC Memorial Plaza.
AFTERWORD
A project of this scale usually involves a consortium of professionals. The Landscape Architect specialist Peter Walker, with concept architect Michael Arad surely worked tirelessly to weave together the layers of design intention. A quick online search unearths many cultural rivers of interest groups flowing through the Wall Street community. The artist-based residents, the BIA and all manner of other interest-group citizens have worked to create a new Place for the future.
