Reborn from the ashes of 9/11
The exhibition gloomily evokes downtown’s moribund state in the ’90s. The rise of the Twin Towers in the early 1970s was supposed to arrest the district’s decline. But it was a false prophecy — they remained half-empty until the mid-’90s, when Gov. Mario Cuomo moved much of the state government there even as the zone around them further atrophied.
We’re reminded of misguided efforts to bring back lost glory. There were proposals for a new NYSE building even as digital advances reduced the need for trading floors, and for a 400-foot-tall Guggenheim Museum on the East River.
Incremental improvement was noticeable by 2000. An influx of dot-com tenants helped to cut office vacancies from 28 percent to 15 percent. There were glimmers of hope, too, in proposals for what the exhibition calls “intriguing, often provocative projects.” Fanciful notions, including a redesigned South Street Seaport, “planted the seeds” for future resurgence.
Yet the message didn’t reach the street. When I reviewed the nowdefunct restaurant Bayard’s at Hanover Square in early 2000, I wrote of the “weirdly deserted” after-dark Financial District — the “loneliest streetscape this side of film noir.”
These nights, you might have more company than you want — folks eating at Stone Street’s dozen-odd cafes, stroller moms and tourists searching for Broadway’s “Charging Bull” statue.
For all the good will of the ’90s, today’s downtown couldn’t and wouldn’t exist had 9/11 not catalyzed a flood tide of $24 billion in direct federal aid plus state tax benefits — and an emotional commitment by people willing to move there.
Companies like Condé Nast, GroupM and Spotify, anchors of the new downtown office economy, would not have moved there without new skyscrapers that replaced the Twin Towers.
We can take heart in our contentious, ultimately heroic response to 9/11 — and to the major damage caused later by the 2008 Wall Street crash and 2012’s Hurricane Sandy.
But — although we may recoil from the notion — little or none of it could have happened without a satanic stroke of destruction to reset the stage. Let’s give thanks for what we built in evil’s aftermath, but never lose sight of the evil itself. Remember it next time you’re sipping wine at downtown’s gleaming new restaurants while the memorial waters outside pour into the abyss.