story5838.xml

story5838.xml

born-digital

story

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2002-09-12

Early on the morning of September 11, I was awakened by a phone call from a friend in New York City, telling me to turn on my tv immediately. He knew that I had worked in the World Trade Center and how much I had loved it. As I watched the scene of destruction unfold, so many images of my days there came to mind with such intense and painful clarity.

The next day, I wrote down everything I could remember so that the "life" of the buildings should not be always overshadowed by their "death." What follows is my account of a real place and time:

From the late 70's through the early 80's I worked for the New York State Department of Labor at Two World Trade Center on the 72nd floor. Many state agencies were re-located into the South Tower of the WTC when it opened, since commercial tenants were in short supply. Most of us in government service were accustomed to working in old undesirable space in "undesirable" neighborhoods. It seemed astonishing to us that we had been re-located to such a new, wondrous place. When we arrived for work the first day, we discovered that the powers-that-be had had our desks placed with our backs to the windows so that we wouldn't be "distracted" from our work by the view. By the end of the day, almost every desk had been turned, some 90 degrees and some 180. I remember our moving from office to office to help each other move the furniture.

When people came to visit me at work, I would immediately take them to the window of my office and encourage them to stand on the heat riser to press against the glass and see the view. Some climbed right up, and others retreated, somewhat pale, to the doorway and said "Oh, yes, it's very nice, but I can see just fine from here."

The first time the winds rose up, we were astonished at how much the building swayed. If you focused on a fixed point on the horizon, such as a neon roof sign in New Jersey, you could literally see/feel yourself moving toward it and then back.

Using the bathrooms, which were located in the core, was a particularly lively experience. You had to hold on to the toilet seats and keep your feet firmly planted on the floor. We were assured by the building engineers that swaying was "good" and to think of it as akin to being on a ship. We may have felt "seasick" but we didn't feel "unsafe." On foggy, rainy or snowy days, we couldn't see the streets below. If conditions were right, what we would see were the floors above us reflected on top of the clouds at a 90 degree angle. It was an eerie sight and felt like being in Brigadoon. There was much debate as to who had the "better" view. The south offered Battery Park and the harbor and the Statue of Liberty. But north, especially in the wintertime, one could see all the buildings uptown turning pink and crimson and silver and gold as the sun began to set and the building lights began to go on.

The concourse was still under construction and was a "hard-hat area." We walked through plywood tunnels, and the first restaurant open to the public had a construction site motif. Tools and signs were hung from pipes and beams and the ashtrays (one could still smoke in public areas then) were hexagonal rivets. Some of the earliest businesses were Plymouth Shop and East River Savings Bank. Every week brought new enterprises and new delights. It felt like being a first settler of a new city. You could shop for clothes, buy a Mothers' Day card, bring in your dry-cleaning, get new heels put on your shoes, order a dozen roses, deposit your paycheck, get a newspaper or the latest best-seller -- all without stepping outside. It got better and better and better.

There were jazz concerts at lunchtime on the plaza and after-work drinks at Windows On The World, because it was someone's birthday, or just because. If we wanted to stay "in" we could eat lunch at the State Employees cafeteria on the 43rd floor or the Custom House cafeteria in Building 5 or the Restaurant on the 44th floor in Building One. Or go out to Popeye's Chicken out the "back door" or walk a few blocks to Rosie O'Grady's or the Japanese dumpling place. It was our place of work and it was our playground. Movies were made there -- Three Days of the Condor and The Wiz, which transformed the WTC plaza into the Emerald City of Oz. (I hope some filmographer will provide a full list sometime soon.)

Philippe Petit walked the tightrope, and even if/because it was forbidden, we loved it. Years passed, the WTC became a sought-after address, and the state agencies were all designated to move out, to be replaced by commercial tenants paying commercial rental rates. On the night we were scheduled to be moved, a colleague and I volunteered to stay with our department's furniture and belongings to be sure that the movers got it all. Several floors of offices were to be moved that night and we were given a schedule which indicated that the movers would reach us at 7:00 P.M. They arrived at 4:00 the next morning. We spent the night sitting in our packed-up office, looking out at the city by night, reminiscing about all the days and places and talking about how "lucky" we had been to work in the WTC. As those hours of waiting passed, we were impatient to get going; now I think how wonderful it was to have had that last long night for a long goodbye. In my mind and in my heart, the towers stand.