Today, another observation deck, hardly one story tall, allows visitors a view that was unimaginable before September 11, 2001: a vacant spot in the Manhattan skyline where two of the world's tallest buildings once stood.
Part memorial, part demolition site, and part tourist attraction, the 16-acre tract known as Ground Zero is best viewed from a new temporary wooden structure at the corner of Fulton Street and Broadway. The city offers a limited number of free tickets to the platform, and the same NYPD officers who once kept onlookers at bay on the streets now perform crowd control for the nearly 7,000 daily visitors who ascend the platform to grieve, remember lost loved ones, or simply witness the scene of the most destructive terrorist act in modern U.S. history.
Private Funds for Public Grieving
The deck, designed and constructed using private funds, was erected in early 2002 on the south side of St. Paul's Chapel, a 250-year-old structure that emerged unscathed when the Twin Towers collapsed. The ramp leading up to the viewing area abuts a cemetery behind the chapel, setting an appropriately somber tone for a scene that elicits gasps, tears, and utter disbelief.
"I'm not going to take any pictures," says Andreas Delgato, a 22-year-old Colombian visiting New York early this year with his parents. "I mean, it's not anything I want to remember in pictures, but it is something I just had to see for myself."
Clean-up and recovery efforts have progressed so quickly there is little left to see. The smoldering piles of steel and concrete from two hundred floors of offices have been hauled away, leaving a huge open pit where heavy machinery unearths the remains of the towers' subterranean floors.
From all outward appearances, the area could be the construction site of a new mall or office complex, but intermittent halts in the digging are sobering reminders that there is more than steel and concrete buried here: hundreds of bodies remain entombed in the rubble.
Most visitors don't come to see anything in particular. Rather, they reflect quietly, leave flowers, and sign their names to brief messages, a practice started by the platform's first visitor, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
New Yorker Suzanna Sayerson, who lost three friends in the disaster, has visited the site a half-dozen times. The visits comfort her, and she has been moved by the public outpouring of emotion.
"I'm just drawn back here because I'm so touched by the expressions of love," she says on a blustery January day that sends clouds of dust and sand swirling over the platform. Suzanna's own note, like the others scratched on wooden railings and walls, focuses on those who perished rather than on those responsible for their demise.
"God bless you," she writes in a bold cursive style, unsuccessfully holding back tears as her most recent visit comes to a close. "I love you all."
Sanctity Versus Safety
Initially, the city was criticized by some of the victims' families for officially sanctioning public visits to the area, but for New York City's Office of Emergency Management, it was a public safety issue.
"I understand the families' concerns, but our objective was to alleviate the overcrowding that was occurring on the sidewalks around the recovery area," says Francis E. McCarton, the Office of Emergency Management's Deputy Commissioner of Public Information. "I think we have succeeded in maintaining the sanctity of the area, and now people don't have to stand for hours out in the cold waiting to pay their respects at the site."
McCarton says that plans for the construction of three more platforms have been put on hold.
"The landscape is changing from day to day -- even from hour to hour at times -- so it's difficult to say what things will be like next month, or even next week. We're just trying to do the most appropriate thing for the moment at hand."
# Ground Zero Ticket Information Tickets are free and available on a first-come, first-served basis. They are good for half-hour time blocks and are given out in strict chronological order. You cannot choose a specific time to visit.
# A maximum of two tickets per person is allowed; 250 tickets are distributed for each half-hour block between noon and 8 PM the same day or between 9 AM and 11:30 AM the following morning.
# Tickets are available at the South Street Seaport Museum's ticket booth at Fulton and South Streets on Pier 16. The average wait for a ticket on a busy day is less than 20 minutes.
# The ticket booth is open from 11 AM until 6 PM or until no more tickets are available for that day.
# To prevent overcrowding on the sidewalks around the viewing area, visitors should not arrive at the platform more than 15 minutes before their allotted time.
# Police officers stationed at the viewing platform will ensure that only ticket holders are admitted and that every ticket holder is given sufficient time on the platform.
# Tickets are nontransferable and not for resale.
# For more information call 212/732-7678.
By David Downing
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