New WTC: Trump Says Build It Right, Build It High
Thank God for Donald Trump. Only minutes ago, Trump uttered aloud on Sean Hannity's radio show what many New Yorkers have long been grumbling in private. He said that the design currently approved for the new World Trade Center complex looks like a "junkyard" and was designed by an "egghead" who knows nothing about building.
The currently approved "Freedom Tower" design by Daniel Libeskind and David Childs features a cluster of squat, assymmetrical structures, none of which rises as high as the fallen Twin Towers (except for a "symbolic" steel tower which would be a mere skeleton and not a real building).
Trump wants to build a very different sort of complex, featuring a rebuilt World Trade Center which will not only be stronger than the old one, but slightly taller — say, by a single storey — just to make a point; they can knock it down, but we will always rebuild it bigger and better.
Trump's proposal is timely. Earlier this month, the NYPD demanded design changes in the "Freedom Tower" for security reasons. Instead of fine-tuning this architectural atrocity, perhaps now would be a good time to trash it altogether.
Trump needs the approval of Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to proceed with his plan.
35 Comments:
It's about time that someone called that hideous monument to political correctness what it is - an ugly apology for greatness.
The New Towers should be bigger, stronger and built in record time just to show that we may hesitate, but once we get going nothing will stop us.
Personally, I would like to have the Statue of Liberty moved to the top of one of the towers.
Mr Poe
I hate Donald Trump but he is 100%
right. The majority of NYC residentds want the towers rebuilt.
The towers were a part of my city and I am a survivor of the 93 blast.
I was at Ground Zero this week and I want my Towers back. The Freedom
Tower is not what I want to see. Rebuild them and make them taller and place a statue of GW , Pataki ,
Rudy ,Kerik and Michael Judge at the bottom.
What to build on the site of the World Trade Center? I propose rebuilding the Twin Towers and using the top floors to house a future United Nations coalition, The League of Democracies. That way, God forbid, should the site be attacked again, there will be no confusion what is being assaulted.
Richard
I am a Native NYC resident and I do not want the UN downtown. I want my city restored the way it was. Let the Saudi's move their embassy to a top floor.
I too agree with Trump. On this he speaks for a lot of people -- probably the majority of Americans, and probably a supermajority. The current design is architectural cowardice and a product of PC processes. I'm just surprised it took someone this long to state that the emporer has no clothes. Build 'em again. Build them higher. Don't give those terrorists any room to bray.
I too, was born in NYC. The Empire State Building was my favorite structure and not just because it was the tallest building in the world back then. It was just plain beautiful.
When I was older I found out the story of why it was built and I came to love it even more. In the depths of the depression the Empire State Building was built in defiance of the economic misery around. It was a symbol of men unwilling to be broken by despair.
The New Towers must do for us what the Empire State Building did for our parents and grandparents; remind us that suffering is transitory and that triumph over it is inevitable.
I think the hole in the ground at Ground Zero memorializes the day more than anything.
Think about the USS Arizona Memorial exhibit. Don't rebuild the WTC at all. There is no way to do it justice. It won't be defiant enough. Not as defiant as wearing the scar.
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Good God Mr. B, I was thinking the same thing!
Certainly not in those words, but I swear I thought of the USS Arizona, and that perpetual, slow oil leak.
GOOD STUFF DUDE, THAT PLACE IS HOLY GROUND, AND SHOULD BE A DAILY REMINDER OF THE EVIL WE ARE DEALING WITH!
Mr. Meyer writes: "Personally, I would like to have the Statue of Liberty moved to the top of one of the towers."
Ha ha! A bold suggestion, Mr. Meyer, if not a particularly esthetic one.
My wife got a kick out of it. However, she proposes instead to crown one of the towers with a gargantuan sculpture of a raised middle finger.
My own preference for the rooftop decor is a fully-automated Aegis antiaircraft system. That seems much more practical.
Oh, and needless to say, the new towers should be rendered in the Art Deco style of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. This style perfectly expresses the majesty and wonder that is New York. No more Bauhaus-inspired glass boxes.
Say whatever you may about The Donald, he didn't get to where he is without knowing what other people want. This places him in sharp contrast with those who would try to dictate to us what we SHOULD want
That cabal of little Ward Churchhills that runs the LMDC chose a creepy German expressionist solely on the baisis of his one and only archetectural work, the German Holocaust Museum, because they want to make the statement that we Americans are as guilty of causing 911 as the Germans were of causing the Shoah.
They set up 7 straw entries against it and had the New York Times manufacture consent for the "contest" in the best Chomskyan tradition.
I am glad that Freedom Tower is becoming a quagmire and hope it dies, because I know we can do a whole lot better.
We didn't try to build the Pearl Harbor Memorial while we were still fighting the war, and there is no shame in letting the ground lie fallow until we get a design that truly reflects the American spirit. Better to suffer a few whiners and naggards in the meantime than let the LMDC turn South Manhattan into the world's biggest pity pit.
Mr Poe has a valid point about style. The most elegant building in NYC is the Trianular Flatiron.
This is not an option.
The Chrysler Building is the next most beautiful structure. However that style may be too much to wish for. The Chrysler Building is even more beautiful inside,
The Freedom tower was an ugly design. I agree with Trumps view of the design. This is what happens when designers try to out create each other. I can not think of an uglier design.
NYC residents want the towers back as they were. However the prospect of a real Art decco design has never been offered. I guess elegance is out of style.
beakerkin writes: "NYC residents want the towers back as they were."
Well, there's something to be said for that. As a Gotham resident myself, I understand the sentiment.
Part of me resists the idea because of Thomas Wolfe's haunting admonition, "You can't go home again." Part of me resists it simply because I oppose, in principle, the modernist, "proletarian" style of architecture which Mies van der Rohe popularized and which the old Twin Towers epitomized.
But then I think of Moscow's magnificent Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer which Stalin dynamited in 1931. When the Muscovites rebuilt it in 1997, they created an exact replica of the original.
Their faithfulness to the original plan made a powerful statement, one must admit.
Mr. Poe
You're right about the poor esthetic of the Statue of Liberty on top of the Towers.
There is a lot to be said for your wife's idea and since it appears that the planners never actually look at the designs (what else could explain the ugliness of the "Freedom Towers"?) it might be possible to slip that finger past them.
Narwal said:
They set up 7 straw entries against it and had the New York Times manufacture consent for the "contest" in the best Chomskyan tradition.
That would explain a lot how such an ugly design was chosen.
I saw the competitors drawings and what struck me was the poor quality of the renditions. The drawings looked like they were sketched by second rate architectural students rushing to complete them for the final exam of Arch 101.
No one bidding for a multi-billion dollar contract would ever submit drawings like that.
The Arizona Memorial covers a tiny speck of water in an island chain so remote that it wasn't even a state when it was attacked, the Vietnam Memorial inhabits a small patch of grassland that was already part of a park to begin with. How can we equate those sites with twelve full acres in the middle of the financial district of our greatest city?
The Arizona and Vietnam memorials suceed because they are a reflection of their surroundings. For the WTC Memorial to suceed it must be made of the same stuff that New York is; steel,cement,glass, and most importantly, people.
I have been advocating the use of the Aegis system to defend our cities ever scince 9-11. Placing the antennas atop the tallest possible building will greatly enhance both their range and their ability to engage low-level surface skimming targets. The missiles can be stored in underground launch tubes safely out of the view of children (or more accurately, the mothers who claim to speak on their behalf)
Much has been said about the inherent vulnerability of tall buildings by people who willfully ignore ten thousand years of military history which clearly shows that the "high ground" is the most defensible position to have, provided that you choose to defend it.
The current regime in charge of "redevelopment" believes that New York, and by extention America, isn't worthy of defending in either a retorical or physical sense and that the 9 out of 10 Americans who want to see buldings that equal or surpass the originals are less important than the one woman who says "I never want to see the buldings that killed my husband again."
It may sound cruel, but somebody has to say "Look, lady, buildings didn't kill your husband, Islamic fundamentalists did." But such an insensitive comment is Verboten in the PC press. It is this kind of repression that has given rise to blogs such as this one which will only grow in number, power and infuence while the MSM languishes.
The battle to reclaim the WTC site for the living will be fought here, now, in cyberspace.
NOW WHO'S WITH ME?
Not I, said the crazy guy.
I don't think a new structure should replace the WTC complex.
The Buddhists of Bamyan, Afghanistan saw their 9th century Buddha carvings dynamited from existence by the Taliban. Instead of replacing them, they now sit and contemplate their absence.
To me, that's more beautiful than anything they could have replaced in that shattered spot.
We're not fighting this war because a building got knocked down. We're fighting for the people who perished inside of it.
Turn not their grave into a Walmart.
Narwhal:
I agree that the buildings need to be replaced. Leaving a hole in the ground would create a monument to helpless resignation. It would constitute a virtual admission that the World Trade Center, and by implication America itself, had no right to exist.
We need no monuments to human suffering. We need a monument to the indomitable human spirit that once built America.
A hole in the ground can only be viewed with a bowed head, a posture that implies submission. There should be no element of submission in the new structures. This must be something that people can look up at, something to remind them that what was attacked was the best of America.
God forbid that there be 12 acres of open space here for people to remember what happened, and just maybe relax for a moment.
Hey, it's your city New Yorkers, and I hope it works out for the best.
YOUR THE ONES THAT TOOK IT ON THE CHIN, AND YOU HANDLED IT PRETTY DAMN WELL!--GOD BLESS YOU AND BEST OF LUCK WITH IT!
Mr. Beamish writes: "The Buddhists of Bamyan, Afghanistan saw their 9th century Buddha carvings dynamited from existence by the Taliban. Instead of replacing them, they now sit and contemplate their absence."
Contemplating emptiness is a quintessentially Buddhist act, Mr. Beamish. Whatever satisfaction the Buddhists find in this austere practice, they are welcome to it.
For myself, having contemplated the emptiness at World Trade Center Plaza for the last three years, I have no wish to contemplate it any longer.
narwhal writes: "The missiles can be stored in underground launch tubes safely out of the view of children (or more accurately, the mothers who claim to speak on their behalf)."
Children are much tougher than we realize. I know a man who was teaching at a grade school very close to Ground Zero on 9/11. The children saw everything, including the falling bodies.
I asked this man how the children reacted, thinking they must have been paralyzed with shock (as was self-styled war hero John Kerry, by his own admission).
However, my friend told me that many of the children actually showed anger during the attack. They understood clearly that bad guys had struck their city, and it angered them.
I forget the precise age of the children, but they were quite young.
beakerkin: "A quick question: does the future of what is placed at the WTC site
belong to all of America? Has this become a national Issue or even a global issue?"
National? Global? Absolutely not. This is a New York issue, for New Yorkers to decide.
The momentum is building…
"What Are We Afraid Of?" by Deroy Murdock (National Review, March 11, 2005)
"Trump: Build `Twins'" (New York Post, May 6, 2005
"Scrap the Freedom Tower" by Deroy Murdock (National Review, May 9, 2005)
"Trump's Towers" (Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2005)
"As for us, we'd like to steal a line from Mr. Trump and say to Governor George Pataki, Mayor Mike Bloomberg and the Ground Zero redevelopment team that has failed the city, the state and the country in this important effort: You're fired. This is a job for a man who knows what he's doing, not for a bunch of bungling apprentices. Mr. Trump's detractors hate him because he puts up impossibly tall, glassy, gaudy, sightline-destroying buildings. In other words, given the current failed thinking about Ground Zero, he's the perfect man for the job."
"Trump Calls Freedom Tower `Disgusting' and `a Pile of Junk'" (Hardball with Chris Matthews, May 12, 2005)
Technically the "graves" are a landfill in Jersey, Mr. B. What we have down at the site is more like a crime scene.
I can appreciate your desire to preserve tne "scars" left by the attack and the reluctance of many to work, live or shop where so many have died, but there is a difference between a scar and an open wound and there is plenty of buildable space on the site in locations where nobody was killed.
I don't object to turning the building footprints into memorials, although I would much rather see them terraced in concentric, descending squares and landscaped with greenery, instead of the currently proposed ocean of concrete that only a skateboarder could love.
That's what you do with a "grave", after all, you fill it with dirt and cover it with sod.
My problem is with those who would super-size their grief by claiming the entire 12 acre parcel for the purposed of perpetual bereivement. This is not being respectful, it is more like the Wailing Wal Mart.
The new towers don't HAVE to be commercial in nature, (although a Starbucks is probobly inevitable) they can house the UN, apartments, or even a damn parking structure for all I care, just as long as they are at least as tall as the originals and are done with grace and style.
Trump has shown through his previous buildings, that he knows what New York is supposed to look like and he would make an excellent arbiter for a REAL design competition. Now THAT would be a reality show worth watching.
"Lower Manhattan Development Comittee; You're Fired"
Mr Poe
Like you I am a NYC resident and those towers were a part of my life. A big hole in the ground is not the way I want to look at that site.
Going to ground zero has almost religious dimensions for me as I was an eyewitness on 9-11. It is heart breaking that anarchists hand out conspiracy literature on the site of ground zero. Sadly the first amendment protects cranks from disrespecting our historic sites.
The cranks always blame the Likud,Neocons, CIA , Haliburton ,
the military industrial complex and Larry Silverstein. The only two neocons 3/4 of these dopes can name are Pearle and Wolfowitz. The common thread among the suspects is obvious.
I love your idea about a new Art Decco style structure. Something in the style of the Chrysler building would be ideal. The beloved Flatiron building would be too much to ask for.
I guess I'm an old-softie-in-training. I can't imagine going to the site of the greatest atrocity ever commited on American soil and seeing WTC version 2.0 standing in its place, the stark reminder of why we fight sanitized from view. To me it's like raising the Arizona and turning it into a museum with guided tours. "Right here is where the shell that sank her struck, and we raised it right back up to teach those Nips a lesson about American resilience."
Maybe I'm about this all the wrong way. But every argument I've seen for building something in that sacred spot has followed along the crass lines that it's a "waste" of "prime Manhattan real estate" to do nothing with it. I'm as uber-capitalistic as the next guy, but there's something unseemly to me about approaching the project with financial loss instead of human loss being the driving force behind rebuilding.
I just can't see how replacing the towers doesn't smack of "nothing to see here, move along please."
Richard Poe writes:"contemplating emptiness is a quentissentially Bhuddist act..."
and believing without question in the inherant superiority of all things non-Western is a quentissentially Moonbat act, which is why the proposed monument is a monsterous suckhole called "Reflecting Abscence" by a guy named Arad.
Just how much emptiness is required for contemplation anyway? Some say the entire 12 acres, and even though I disagree, I would rather see a park on that site than the Feardumb Tower, for two reasons.
1. Although a park would make us look like lazy cowards, at least there wouldn't be a P.O.S. archetectural train wreck assaulting everybody's eyes in every movie, TV show and sporting event set in N.Y.C..I'm with Trump on this one; do it right or don't do it at all.
2. At least with a park, you have a chance to reconsider your decision. When New Yorkers have finally had a belly full of the tinfoil coiffed nutjobs that Beakerkin decribed, and watched them turn that site into a Moonbat Mecca while haranguing hapless office workers on their way to and from (shudder) work, they will see the light and build it right. Bad archetecture, on the other hand, you are stuck with until your great,great, grandkids finally tear it down in disgust.
Raising the Arizona, that's a good one, Mr. Beamish. No, they didn't do that, but they did build a 2.0 version, It was called the Missouri and is where they signed the surrender that officially finished what the Japanese started.
Of course the Japanese concept of honor, much like our own, involves taking responsibility for one's actions, not killing female family members (that pesky cultural relativisn again)
I fear thet even after we send every killer, operative, and mastermind of Jihad to their richly deserved rewards, they will still be some sheiks and princes beyond our reach because they provided funding but avoided direct involvement.
As they sit drinking their forbidden liquor in their 150th floor penthouses in the Burj Tower, I want them to see images of a building that will haunt their dreams and induce erectile dysfunctions that no harem can cure.
No, Beakerkin, the Saudis can't have a room on the top floor, they don't deserve such a nice view and we don't want them near any critical components of the defensive system.
Just as a precaution, I'll be knocking 'em back at the Windows on the World bar, ready to give free skydiving lessons to any Saudi national who tries to lay a finger on that radar array.
Cheers
Of course the Japanese concept of honor, much like our own, involves taking responsibility for one's actions, not killing female family members (that pesky cultural relativisn again)
The Rape of Nanking was a greater horror than the destruction of the Towers. The death toll was one hundred times greater and approximately 80,000 women were raped.
When you speak of honor, you have to be very specific. In the Second World War, honor, in the Western sense of respecting non-combatants (women and children), was unknown to the Japanese forces.
If you doubt this then ask any Fillipino above the age of 70 about the honor of the Japanese troops.
When you think of the Japs think pirates!
Few know that piracy was a way of life for them for centuries.
That is why Pirating all the Wests technological marvels was childs
play for them.
MacArthur hung 9 or 11 hundred! There should have been 10 times that many!
Mr. Beamish writes: "[E]very argument I've seen for building something in that sacred spot has followed along the crass lines that it's a `waste' of `prime Manhattan real estate' to do nothing with it."
Do be fair, Mr. Beamish. No one on this thread has made such an argument. We have spoken from the anguish of our hearts, not from greed.
Like beakerkin, I watched the towers burn and fall with my own eyes. Good friends of mine survived the hell of Ground Zero, and at least one close relative of my wife survived it as well. Thank God, we lost no loved ones that day. But we will never forget.
I still dream of 9/11 sometimes. In my dream, it's happening all over again, and this time I sense that I'm supposed to do something different, something better than what I did before. But I'm never sure what.
You do us an injustice, Mr. Beamish, when you impute to us financial motivations which no one here has expressed.
Sorry if my mention of Japanese "honor" drags us a little O.T. I agree that the actions of the Imperial Japanese were horrendous, and I don't think that the firebombing and nuking of their cities would have been approved had it not been for the Rape of Nanking and the Battan Death March.
What the Japanese lacked, and to some extent still do, are the concepts of chivarly and compassion, not honor.
They were brutal, but they never insisted on being called an "Empire of Peace" and when we came for them they stood their ground instead of scattering like roaches and hiding behind noncombatants.
Maybe we should have hanged more of their leaders at the end of it all, but they never gave us the chance because they offed themseves first, and in a much more agonizing and gruesome manner than the long drop and short stop that we would have given them.
Now if seppuku isn't owning one's actions, I don't know what is
The Japanese continue to steal Western technology, but they also steal our culture and values along with it and become more like us with each passing year. They are the enemy of my Grandfather's generation, and although they aren't exactly our friends today, they still have the sense to stay on our good side.
Although I can only imagine the horrors that radical Islam would inflict on the world if it had a military on par with ours, as Japan did back in the day, I shoudn't be wasting time on a thread that is about what should or shouldn't be built on the W.T.C. site with a pointless discussion of which enemy is worse; the ones who gave us Nanking or Darfur
Better to cite similarities than differences. Both the Empire and the Jihad were/are cultures that the world is/will be better off without that were/are out to kill or enslave as much of humanity as possible. Now, as then we are the only ones in a position to stand against them.
I only wish that we had a fraction of the consensus and resolve to do so that we had with Japan. What will it take to reawaken the sleeping giant from his moonbat reverie? the nuking of our cities? or would that too be dismissed by half the population as "roosting chickens"?
I doubt it, but not because it would change any minds, it would just change America's demographics because the 'bats would go up along with the cities
Sure, we could then rebuild them and repopulate them with real Americans, but I'm hopng that we can change enough minds that it won't come to that.
It's all about compassion.
Thanks for your patience, now can we please get back to the W.T.C. discussion before the thread drops off the front page?
Narwhal, words have meaning!--honor
The Japanese did not have it in WWII, and I doubt if they have it to the degree of us, now!
Narwhal:
I agree, back to the topic.
The contrast between the attitude of Americans during WWII and today is striking. Had the Empire State Building been bombed by the Germans there would have been a bigger building up within a year of the war's end. The only reason to wait was that the resources were needed for the war effort.
60 years ago, people mourned the dead quickly and then put all of their energy into winning the war. Monuments to the dead could wait for victory.
Today, they mourn forever, allowing the pain to sap their resolve.
Its true that the situation is very different. WWII took something like 60% of the GDP and everyone felt the effects of the war every day. Today's war takes less than 1% of the GDP; essentially it is being fought with petty cash.
There is no sense of urgency, no sense that the enemy can still hurt us. But most importantly, there is no sense that we can someday return to normalcy.
The New Towers are essential because we need to know that we can, once again, have normal lives. Restoring the towers means that evil is the abnormal, the transitory, the unimportant. We must make it clear to our enemies that they may be able to hurt us, but they can never stop us.
Let's just say that I won't consider my honor sullied if I don't get in the last word about the Second World War.
Right now the only relevant form of "honor" is the verb; How do we best honor the fallen at the WTC site(I hate the tern "Ground Zero", we are fighting a war to keep New York from becoming just that.)
There is a time to unite, and a time to pick a side, especially with an issue so emotionally charged that only democracy can settle it.
All Americans should have a voice, especially if federal funds are used, but New Yorkers should make the final decision.
For now, all of us opposed to the Freedom Tower, for whatever reason, should stand together against it.
After that battle is won, we can have the pro and anti rebuilding factions go at it, If the park advocates win, then that's the end of it -at least for now (dignified place of quiet contemplation? Don't bet on it!)
If the rebuilding advocates win, then they split into two factions, call them the "Boxies" and the "Pointies", and we hold two parralel contests, one for a bulding that outwardly resembles the original towers and the other for an entirely new design. The respctive winners get to face off in a New Yorkers only, winner build all showdown.
Needless to say, I have a few Ideas about how such a contest could be run, but I'm not sure if anybody still visits this thread.
It's a pretty safe bet that despite the support of the emperor's clothiers at the Times, Freedom tower is in trouble, and this topic will rise again.
So will the Narwhal.
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