TOP OF THE WORLD
Fourteen years after terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers, the public returns to the skies above Manhattan with the opening of One World Trade Center’s observation deck
NEW YORK— High above Manhattan, on a spring evening in 1999, David Checketts stared down at New York City from the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Checketts, then-president of Madison Square Garden, the company that owns the New York Rangers and New York Knicks, was celebrating with Wayne Gretzky.
It was Gretzky’s retirement party and he was surrounded by hockey legends including Mark Messier, Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr. That was the final time Checketts would drink in New York’s skyline from this vantage point before the building was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.
“I never thought I would see this view again. That night the city just sparkled,” said Checketts, 59, who in the past has also owned the St. Louis Blues.
He was in Boston when the Twin Towers collapsed. Today, Checketts is chief executive officer of Legends, the company operating a new technologically enhanced observation deck at One World Trade Center. Checketts led a press tour of the new space, dubbed One World Observatory, a few days before its grand opening.
A dimly lit hallway with screens on either side broadcast stories from New Yorkers who helped built One World Trade Center, along with some historical and structural tidbits about the building. “We invested heavily in technology to teach people about what they’re seeing and what New York really is,” said Checketts. Once in the elevator, its interior morphed into a cubic screen, portraying a 500-year 3D animated time lapse of New York.
“I never thought I would see this view again. That night the city just sparkled.” DAVID CHECKETTS
In the 47 seconds it took to climb 1,300 feet and 102 floors, Manhattan evolved from a lush and unoccupied coastline to a skyscraper jungle.
For Eric Robinson, an actor and talent coach for the Hettema group, the design firm that conceptualized One World Observatory’s technology, the grand opening was emotional.
“It captures the New York sentiment — it’s emotional, it’s dramatic, it’s just brilliant,” said Robinson, 39, who was in a college acting class on 9/11.
Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, New Jersey, the Hudson River and East River were all visible. The Empire State Building was so distant and opaque it resembled a matchstick. The Statue of Liberty was microscopic.
Through the use of gesture-based recognition technology and Bluetooth connectivity bracelets worn by One World ambassadors, a ring of high definition video monitors, called City Pulse, spewed more New York-centric facts. Then there was the Sky Portal, a 14-foot-wide circular screen that’s designed to be walked on, which used real-time footage of the streets and traffic beneath to mimic the feel of standing on a pane of glass suspended above the city.
The Twin Towers were the world’s tallest buildings when they were completed in 1973. Today, the futuristic Burj Khalifa in Dubai dwarfs One World Trade Center by nearly 1,000 feet. But One World Trade is still the world’s fourth-tallest building and the tallest in New York, surpassing the Empire State Building’s 1,454-foot vertical.
One World Trade Center was built to the exact height of the Twin Towers — 1,368 feet — but factoring in its antenna the modern structure rests at 1,776 feet, or about 540 metres. One World Observatory’s proximity to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum lent an especially haunting aura to the experience.
Robinson, who compares his commute to work at One World Observatory to that of a salmon swimming upstream, says he and other New Yorkers thrive on the building’s chaos. “It’s crazy and it’s nightmarish and it’s amazing all at the same time — it’s what New York is,” said Robinson. Dorian Geiger is a multimedia journalist living in Brooklyn, N.Y. Geiger is the editor of Sleepless in Singapore, a Southeast Asian cultural travel blog, and his work has appeared in the New York Times, VICE, and the BBC. Read more of his work at doriangeiger.contently.com and follow him on Twitter at @dgeigs.