13 January 2002
Three top photos source: Hardcopy New York Times, January 13, 2002
See location of ramp view in center of photo below. The cross-braced spaced columns are the sub-grade portions of the North Tower's south wall exterior.
Visitor viewing stand located just off bottom of photo at lower right.
This view is located in the photo above just below the Subway 1 and 9 notation
looking west. The view is considerably deeper than it appears due to
foreshortening by the telephoto: the building in the background is the American
Express Building across West Street, part of the World Financial Center.
The equipment marked "N.Y. Crane" can be seen in the two photos, as can the
yellow canvass-covered shed in front of American Express.
See earlier photos and news reports of viewing stand: http://cryptome.org/wtc-platform.htm
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/13/nyregion/13PLAT.html
New York Times, January 13, 2002
By DEAN E. MURPHY
Visitors at the viewing platform overlooking ground
zero on Saturday. Relatives of many of the dead see
the site as an open grave, something intensely private,
and object to the throngs of people who want to visit
the rubble. (NYT)
The view from the newly-opened public viewing platform
of the wreckage of the World Trade Center in downtown
New York on December 30, 2001. New York Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani announced the opening of several public viewing
platforms around the site, citing an 'undeniable need' for the
public to see the site. (Brad Rickerby/Reuters) At photo
right is the American Express Building with middle-left
corner removed for damage repair (a portion of the
collapsing North Tower speared the structured).
It is such an emotional topic that Antoinette Rubino cannot talk about it without sobbing. Mrs. Rubino's daughter, Joanne, was killed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. She has been inconsolable about that loss, but what really has Mrs. Rubino crying now is the viewing platform at Fulton Street.
"It is like a freak show, these people passing by curious to see if they find a body or a head or something," Mrs. Rubino said. "It is horrible. That is supposed to be a sacred place now. My child's body is all over that place."
While visitors to Lower Manhattan have swarmed to the first of several platforms planned for the perimeter of ground zero, relatives of the dead and missing say they are deeply offended by it. For many, the sense of outrage is worsened by the city's decision last week to control the big crowds by issuing free tickets at the nearby South Street Seaport.
"It is like they are running the TKTS thing," said Sally Regenhard, comparing it to the organization that sells discount theater tickets. Her son, Firefighter Christian Regenhard, is among the missing.
Since opening late last month, the 16-foot-high platform has been praised by the tens of thousands of onlookers at ground zero. Many of them are tourists with no other vantage point to see the devastation. By most accounts, the vast majority of the visitors have been respectful, reverent and deeply moved by the experience. It is not uncommon to hear the quiet recitation of prayers from the wooden deck.
But the negative reaction among some of the families of the dead and missing shows how difficult it remains for city officials, now four months after the terror attacks, to balance the conflicting demands and emotions at the 16-acre site.
For the relatives, the former World Trade Center remains an open grave, something they regard as intensely private. For the visitors, it is a place of international significance that needs to be seen to be understood. With the building of the platform, the balance between the two views seems to have tilted toward the visitors.
"We have created a system to assist people in viewing the sacred area of ground zero by also alleviating some of the crowding conditions there," said Francis E. McCarton, a spokesman for the mayor's Office of Emergency Management, which has overseen the platform and ticket operations. "We feel the system is working."
Mr. McCarton said he was not aware of complaints about the city's arrangements, but several relatives of the dead said they have made their unhappiness known to city officials. One of them, Tim Gray, a lawyer in Manhattan whose brother Christopher is among the missing, said he wrote letters to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and the platform's architects to complain.
"Perhaps I will be lucky and my brother's corpse will be rescued, but if it is, it absolutely sickens me to think that it will be done in plain view of a frenzy of onlookers, who, as I bore witness to earlier, will be readied with all forms of technology to record the event," Mr. Gray wrote in one of the letters. "I once wished that my brother's body be recovered, now I wonder if I should pray that it remain entombed in Lower Manhattan forever."
For Mr. Gray and the other relatives, the problem is mostly one of timing. They believe the platforms should wait until the site is cleared, all bodies and remains are recovered and a permanent memorial is built. Mr. Gray said it was the only decent and respectful thing to do.
"I feel it is me and the victims' families versus the public, and the public is going to win out," Mr. Gray said in an interview. "Part of me understands their need to be there, but I don't want them there now."
The tension is not a new one. Becky Lyons, a park ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park, said there were ill feelings after the Civil War battle there between people who lived in the area and the outsiders who came to see the carnage.
"People in the town were saying they should be cleaning up the town instead of sightseeing," Ms. Lyons said.
If more recent places of tragedy, like Oklahoma City, offer any guidance, it could be years before family members feel differently about the hole in Lower Manhattan, according to Kari Watkins, executive director of the Oklahoma City National Memorial, which was erected after the bombing in 1995 of the Alfred P. Murrah building.
"It was very hard for family members here who resented people coming," Ms. Watkins said. "It took two or three years for many survivors and family members to get to the point where they accepted this belongs to everyone."
Ms. Watkins said the authorities posted traffic officers near the Murrah building to keep onlookers moving in their cars and also erected a chain-link fence around the property. The fence became such a fixture that it was ultimately incorporated into the permanent memorial, she said.
Though there were no viewing platforms in Oklahoma City, Ms. Watkins said she understood why they might be necessary in New York City. "They are dealing with so many more people than we were," she said. "I know the city has done an incredible job of trying to do the right thing."
But Jeannine Gist, whose daughter Karen Gist Carr was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, said it was a mistake to make the World Trade Center site so accessible to public viewing. Mrs. Gist said she understood the desire of people to visit ground zero — she did so last month at the invitation of some family members of the missing — but she said there should be no hurry.
"I am sorry, they should have them wait," Mrs. Gist said. "I think the victims and the survivors should have first priority and when all of the loved ones are recovered, let the whole world see it. Until then, they need to stand back."
Mrs. Gist said one of the things she was most sensitive about in 1995 was the frequently heard claim that the tragedy in Oklahoma City "happened to the entire country." She has heard the same thing said about the World Trade Center attacks, she said, and though true at one level, she finds it quite false at another.
"I would love to have not lost my daughter," she said. "The same is true for the people in New York. It did affect all of us, but you can't put all of us in the same category."
One of the widows of Sept. 11, Christine Huhn, said she was resigned to the fact that big crowds will converge on Lower Manhattan, regardless of when all the dead are recovered. Ms. Huhn said she has also come to consider the platform as a potential friend rather than a determined enemy.
"My husband's ashes are scattered throughout those 16 acres, and it will make me very upset if anything but a memorial is built on the site," Ms. Huhn said. "I just hope that the people on the platform, when they see the enormity of this open hole, will realize the whole site should be devoted to a memorial."
Others, like Mrs. Regenhard, said they would be consoled if the authorities scaled back their plans and did not build the three other platforms. Mr. McCarton, the emergency office spokesman, when asked if the city might reconsider its plans to build the other platforms, said, "They are still very much in the early planning stages."