All artwork, writing and photography Karen E. Stober © August 2002

Remains of the South Tower, December 27, 2001

As part of my mixed media project, I planned to go to Ground Zero in mid-December. The morning dawned with rain. Blech. Making the day even drearier than the subject already was. So I held off until December 27. Unfortunately, the last standing remnants of the South Tower came down shortly after my aborted first attempt. Got to Ground Zero Thursday, December 27, 2001. I did not realize I was so close until I saw the sign "WTC trucks this way". A cop at the corner pointed to the humongous empty space, mostly hidden by the American Stock Exchange building. Remembering back to what it was like a year earlier when my cousin and I were last in the area, it was spooky, all gone. The second thing that hits you are all these persons, new to America, enjoying the generous spending of tourists. These vendors operate from sidewalk tables, hawking roasted nuts, patriotic hats and scarves, and Twin Towers memorabilia, mostly made in China. These merchants were not unlike leeches on hapless victims. They are right up against the curtain surrounding the rubble pile. It's hard to believe that those two buildings, Borders and a couple others were right there. The 16 1/2 acre site looks too small for them. My 76 year old cousin Dorothy and I kept recalling our last visit to the Towers, November 30th, 2000, for the noon Bob Fripp Soundscapes concert. Tower was here, Tower was there, Borders, Merril Lynch, US Customs house, the lobbies, the elevators with the security guards, little vendor booths in the “International Market”, palm trees, sushi, Starbucks, fruitcakes, Jamaican Habanero Chicken subs (didn't get it, was going to next time but will never happen now), bakery, trains, the only public restooms in the area, people, bright, blinking joyous Christmas stuff. This de-construction site looks like a construction site now.

There's a place on one side where the curtain and fence is always wide open for trucks and vehicles to pass through. There one can see not only the entire pile but the dark, pitch black maw that leads to what used to be the bright, busy, noisy concourse level of shops, restaurants, subways and parking. So why wait four hours in line for the viewing platform?

I kept looking at the clean neighborhood and thinking of the photos and films of September 11. All that dust, smoke, office papers, terrified fleeing people, flames and chaos. Most businesses have re-opened. Two buildings, American Express and another, are in really bad shape and have yet to start their rebuilding. The World Financial Center Marriott Hotel is re-opening January 7. The Embassy Suites is gutted, nothing but a single cheap looking vinyl padded chair in the dusty lobby. I don't think they will re-open. Can't get around the front of the block to see the Millennium Hilton. They are supposed to re-open someday. However, 98% of their customer base is gone forever, or at least ten years. It's some of the most valuable office property in the world and it will be rebuilt, but I'd be awfully spooked to work on that site.

They hope to have a new train & subway station in operation in 2003. Three stations are closed. For obvious reasons, the World Trade Center stop. Destroyed. Cortland Street is intact and the subway goes through it but it falls right at the edge of the one block perimeter. I don't know why it is closed because one walks right up and over it when crossing Cortland street. [I later found out it was closed because it was within the one block perimeter of the WTC site.] Maybe some of the walkway is destroyed. I don't know what the other stop is. To get to Ground Zero, take any subway that stops at Rector Street. I think it is the “R” train. I got off there, walked up one block, past the cemetery and back of Trinity Church and The American Stock Exchange. Looking up, I saw a street sign, “WTC trucks” and saw a couple of dusty huge dump trucks lined up. Then I realized how so very close I was..there is a huge (for Manhattan) open space at the end of the building - that's where the entire WTC complex was. At that intersection, Rector and South Liberty, the rubble is mostly hidden from view. But not from several other points. The barricades and the cops are in front of me, with a knot tourists standing there. One block down is where that public viewing platform is. It was supposed to open last Thursday, but wasn't completed and was delayed until Friday. The Christmas Tree and Menorah at the site that were shown on TV are small and colorless. There are several trees, one being very pretty. All donated. Signs for “SS Comfort” around the back by the Winter Garden.

The Winter Garden Theater is the only surviving part of the complex. It was decorated, as it was last year when I attended a Bob Fripp Soundscapes concert there, with the three twinkling wreathes above the stage. The glass dangles and the metal frames are twisted but much of the structure is sound. It is the inverted horseshoe seen in photos.

Amazing that most of those office buildings stood, and ONLY because the Towers collapsed in on themselves and did not fall sideways. There is a firefighters memorial directly behind the Winter Garden, near the water. Even a banner from a German firefighters group is there. The banner in the photo is from Massachusetts.

The Circle Line Boat Tours of the remains are packed. So are the double decker bus tours going around the site. Biggest tourist trap in NYC. Mob scenes all over the place. There are police barricades on the streets because the sidewalks aren't wide enough to handle all the tourists.

These two are the back side of Ground Zero, looking towards St. James Church.

Here, you'd never know my back was to Ground Zero. I am looking towards the New York Stock Exchange.

Guiliani is here

Ran smack dab into Guiliani after he gave his farewell speech at St. James Church. “Roo-DEE roo-DEE roo-DEE” the crowd chanted. Couldn't get near him so I got a shot of the sea of heads. I've drawn a little arrow pointing “Guiliani is here” on the photo. Like a circus on the street, such a horde with cameras.

The NY Stock Exchange (not the American Stock Exchange) has a really nice American Flag in lights all over it's facade and a huge Christmas tree. I took this shot from the steps of the Treasury. That's George Washington's hand. He was inaugurated on these steps. This was the first capitol of the USA, right here. And, no, I did not get to Fraunce's Tavern.

Nobody knew where the Battery Park Memorial was. I said it's the one that is on TV all the time, that the people living near want removed, that is several blocks long. They said which one? What street? There are memorials all over the place. So I left something for someone from Cantor-Fitzgerald that I knew from high school but hadn't seen since then, at the St. James Church memorial. One evening, I was just reading a list of locals missing and ...“I used to know that man in high school!” It was Vinnie DeFazio. We sat next to each other in the back of the schoolbus. He cleaned himself up very well, and died, leaving behind a wife and children. So I passed the info onto people I knew who remembered him. In fact, after just starting up a conversation, turns out that, just three cubes away from me, at a past job for IBM, sat a man who was married to a classmate of his, Ellen Lipman. Another blast from my past. She was in my Girl Scout troop. Ellen took out her yearbook and looked him up. She, like everyone else I spoke to, remembered him well. It was very sad to read about his death. He was a sports star and quite a character in the class of 1976 at Watchung Hills Regional High School. A woman walking by me said “I am very sorry.”, as I laid my litle addition to the memorial.

Trinity Church graveyard is closed. The man working at the door of the church said they are under siege and do not plan to ever re-open the graveyard to the public. The man also gave us the impression that he was doing us a favor by answering my cousin's questions and we annoyed him with them, and that he really didn't want to be bothered. I said to my cousin, within earshot of the door minder, “What siege? I think that's the wrong choice of words to use.”. Whenever rubble is moved dust and sometimes smoke billows up. Nothing but bones remain of victims now. I shot through the bars in the fence. That is the American Stock Exchange in the background.

Part of my project was to ask people how they felt Manhatten was coming back. They all replied the same. New Yorkers were much nicer and they hope it stays that way.

They are not wearing gloves at the PO any longer. Either they are irradiating the mail here in NJ, got their vaccinations or just got tired and gave up on the entire anthrax situation. It's apparently all over the place in minute quantities. The rubber gloves did nothing as stamps stuck to them, tore them open and the clerk was exposed to whatever. We all sit here and wonder what's next for NYC and NJ. All this and more became a part of my Autumn In New York mixed media project. Return To Top Any comments or suggestions for this webpage? Send them to Karen E. Stober