May 20, 2005

Raise High the Roof Beam, Donald

"If the Statue of Liberty was destroyed, you wouldn't replace it with the Eiffel Tower," Donald Trump said at a Wednesday morning press conference in New York. You certainly wouldn't replace it with the Freedom Tower.

Trump is proposing an 11th-hour scrapping of the plans for the World Trade Center site, specifically the much-maligned Freedom Tower, in favor of what he calls Twin Towers II. His idea is just what it sounds like -- a rebuilding of the original towers, a bit higher for good measure, with enhanced safety features.
[Actually, the plan for WTCII includes more fire stairs and better fire-proofing, among other things--Jen] His timing is terribly late and his motives unclear, but his aim is true. Who would have thought that nearly four years after the attacks of September 11, Donald Trump would represent New York's last chance for a dignified redevelopment of Ground Zero?

Trump says that he wants to build "a taller, stronger, more beautiful version of the Twin Towers." He also says, more memorably, that the Freedom Tower is "the worst pile of crap architecture I've ever seen in my life."
[No argument here, The Donald!
The Freedom Tower is pretty lame.]
Given that Trump is an authority on crap, his assessment carries weight, but more importantly his view of the Freedom Tower is widely shared. Beyond its creator, the German architect Daniel Libeskind, few are in love with the monstrosity that is the Freedom Tower. Trump describes it aptly as a "skeleton," and it does have the appearance of a starved-out, postmodern pastiche of a skyscraper, or a sort of nightmare architectural vision of America conquered by the European Union.
[Dare I add that it would also embody the idea that the "Terrorists had won?"
Because that what it look likes to me.]
For those who point out that the original Twin Towers themselves were hardly an aesthetic ideal, the Freedom Tower reminds us of how much worse things can get.

I disagree with the author on this: I really liked the Twin Towers and there's not a time when I don't see a picture of the NY skyline post- 9/11 that I don't miss them and wish that they were back.
When I see them in pictures taken before the attacks, I admire with them with great love and affection, as if they were old twin friends.

The Freedom Tower project has had nothing but problems: it's completion has been put back for years because of "security concerns," they had to hire another architect to "correct" the problems created by Libeskind's design, the 9/11 victims' families have split into various contentious groups, each with their separate "needs" for the complex and the developer has yet to sign a single tenant for the proposed building.
Building the Towers back would be not only a fitting tribute to the victims, but it would also be an act of defiance, pride and patriotism.
NYC will continue to be the epicenter--the Mecca, if you will--of World Trade.
The Towers symbolized our prosperity, ingenuity, and even, in a charming way, our hubris and certainly our courage--the WTC was the tallest building in the world when it was built and it achieved that distinction using innovative engineering techniques, architectural creativity and robust American investment capital.
Along with the Statue of Liberty, visitors (pilgrims?) coming to New York were greeted by these 2 monuments to American prosperity, modernity and Life.
Trump is right: the Freedom Tower's a skeleton (the top 30 floors are a windmill or something), which would be a pathetic excuse of a replacement for the Towers which had made such a statement
of American economic and global power that the Islamist terrorists had to try twice to destroy them.
I say we should be as determined to build them back. Now.
The fact that almost 4 years have passed since jihadi murderers destroyed them and everyone in them is inexcusable.
Is the Big Apple a "Can Do" great American city or not?
(Small bonus: One of the 2 architects of WTCII is a black man, Kenneth Gardner.)
I'd also like to send out patriot kudos to Donald Trump for using his high public profile to champion WTCII; the man has his faults (heh-heh), but he knows what's good for New York and he loves the Big Apple and the USA.