The World Trade Center 1984

In 1984-85, we lived in Jersey City, about two blocks from the foot of Montgomery Street/Exchange Place. All we had to do in order to see the World Trade Center was to step outside of our building and look towards the Hudson River two blocks away. My daily commute during those years involved a 10 minute PATH Train ride under the Hudson that ended on the concourse level of the Trade Center. This image was taken a few blocks from our building around that time. It's hard to measure everything that has changed in the intervening 26 years. Although I was never personally fond of the Trade Center towers from an architectural perspective, they certainly provided a rather immense anchor to the southern tip of Manhattan. I'm not sure how I would have managed after 9/11 had we still been living that close to Ground Zero. We did visit our old neighbor maybe a month and half or two months after the attacks. One could still see the pile smoldering and still smell death in the air across the river (probably a little more than a mile away). It's an image that will never leave me, but one that I couldn't yet photograph.

Although I was never personally fond of the Trade Center towers from an architectural perspective, they certainly provided a rather immense anchor to the southern tip of Manhattan. I'm not sure how I would have managed after 9/11 had we still been living that close to Ground Zero. We did visit our old neighbor maybe a month and half or two months after the attacks. One could still see the pile smoldering and still smell death in the air across the river (probably a little more than a mile away). It's an image that will never leave me, but one that I couldn't yet photograph. Those of you who never lived there, never worked there and who think you know, you don't know. Even living across from it, I have to say I don't know. Some things are unknowable. We personally knew people who lost loved ones there and I'm not certain they even will be able to get their arms around what happened.

Although I was never personally fond of the Trade Center towers from an architectural perspective, they certainly provided a rather immense anchor to the southern tip of Manhattan. I'm not sure how I would have managed after 9/11 had we still been living that close to Ground Zero. We did visit our old neighbor maybe a month and half or two months after the attacks. One could still see the pile smoldering and still smell death in the air across the river (probably a little more than a mile away). It's an image that will never leave me, but one that I couldn't yet photograph. Those of you who never lived there, never worked there and who think you know, you don't know. Even living across from it, I have to say I don't know. Some things are unknowable. We personally knew people who lost loved ones there and I'm not certain they even will be able to get their arms around what happened. If you weren't then, and maybe even if you were, you can't really know.

I tend to be more a bit of pacifist, no fan of war, not one who wants to see young men and women being sacrificed. But, I'm proud of those men and women and happy that Bin Laden is dead. It doesn't change the moral and existential calculus much if it all, but for a moment it does feel a little bit better.

This one was shot at the foot of Montgomery Street/Exchange Place at about the same time period.

 

This one was taken in Liberty State Park.