World Trade Center tales...

[Joelio]

I understand that for some people the original World Trade Center was very important to some people and I thought it would be interesting if we could all share our special memories of those buildings as a way of remembering the buildings themselves. I can't start everyone off, but I do have a particular interest in the architecture and the way the towers (in particular) were designed. I particularly like the way the lobby columns branched off into several smaller ones making the outer facade which, from far away, made the impression of being one flat wall, and from close up gave the impression of train tracks extending into the distance...

No 9/11 stories please and nothing to do with conspiracies. Thanks :)

[USSManhattan]

...but I've got one.

My dad and I were in the City in '97. It was my first time, and as an 12 year old, "awestruck" roughly describes how I felt.

It was our last night in town, and Dad wanted me to experience a Rangers game. Not being a sports fan, I was less than thrilled and wanted instead to see the Trade Center. Dad suggested a compromise: If we could get into the Garden, we'd see the game and visit the towers before we left town. If we couldn't, we'd go tonight and just head out that morning.

Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out at the Garden, and the way it happened left me pissed off and betrayed (I'd rather not say in public). Dad did keep his word, and we went down to the Trade Center. I rambled about something stupidly, Dad got annoyed with me and what had happened, but still kept his promise, and we went up. When we reached the indoor deck on the South Tower, I stormed off.

I wandered into the helicopter simulation, and rode on it. As I was jerked and jossled around, seeing the Manhattan skyline flowing beneath me, I realized that Dad had taken time and money out of his busy life to bring me here, the city I'd wanted to visit since I was, like, seven. So, I went back out, found him looking morbidly over Midtown, and gave him a big hug and said "I forgive you." He hugged me back. It's the only time we've had such an interaction in public. I then spent the rest of the time eagerly showing him what I knew of New York City.

Four years later, events in my life had moved New York from a place I liked to visit to the center of my life; from a hobby to an inspiring passion, a goal that was the only thing to survive the worst year of my life, as a sophmore in high school. It was a transformation no one had imagined.

And so, when I spent that Tuesday morning looking aghast as my city burned, I remembered what had happened there. Just after I realized that memory, the South Tower crumbled into oblivion, taking the site of that dear memory with it.

Nealry six years later, I have mixed feelings about what's going there. I was a restoration for sometime immediately after, but I had way too much to work out and on to really focus on that, and it became a non-issue. I think what's going up could be better, but in time New York will accept what goes up. But when I manage to disconnect the irony of sheer hatred taking out a place where fatherly love had happened, it is that memory that I keep closest to the World Trade Center.

[Viktorkrum77]

My story is far from exciting.

I've visited the buildings twice, both towers, in '98 and 2000. I also have a friend who worked in 7 WTC, but I've never been there, and he has no pictures of the building or his office for that matter, which makes me sad.

[BrooklynRider]

I remember way back when they were being built. I went to an art show in the first completed tower with my grandfather and we looked at paintings by the construction workers. It was pretty fantastic. There was also the memory of seeing the towers going up: silver on the bottom, the rust color above, with the yellow plastic bubble going around two or three foors in the middle. It was breath-taking to see from a distance.

[DMAG]

I visited many times....I actually have video of me and an ex-girlfriend in the indoor ob deck on YouTube from back in 95....I'll shoot the link over here later on today.

[Ed007Toronto]

I proposed to my then girlfriend on top of tower two. Then we went for dinner at Windows on the World.

[lofter1]

"The Wiz" is on TV right now (Tv1HD; TW Cable Channel 790).

The Emerald City sequence, a Disco Extravaganza, was shot in the WTC plaza in 1978 ...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgqWlIw2rwM

[TallGuy]

I am native to and grew up in New Haven, CT, so NYC was a place we visited often and we listened to and watched NY radio and tv stations. I spent time at and within the WTC during and after high school. The WTC was a symbol of NY as much as the ESB, and when I later moved to Virginia in my late 20's they were the first and last site of the city I would see from the NJ Tpk. Their absence created a void visually, emotionally, and historically in terms of my personal experience. This past Christmas Eve I returned to the actual site for the first time when I visited the Memorial with my young family, including my 5 and 3 year old, who were both too young to experience the original. Yet, taking them to the very spot, and creating new memories, with young, new lives in the shadows of the rebirth in the forms of 1, 4, and 7 WTC's, was a very moving experience.

[BigMac]

Lofter: thanks for posting that clip. 'The Wiz' was one of my favorite movies as a child, and perhaps the only movie to have featured the World Trade Center so prominently.

[Statun-Ilandur]

I always liked the west lobby of 2WTC back in the late seventies before they built the hotel that blocked the view or really the light coming into that lobby. I am color blind but I think around 1978 the carpet was a light blue and the light coming in off the late afternoon sun set off the white marble and stainless steel elevator doors etc. It was one of those great lost spaces in NYC kind of thing. And the volume of space put the whole thing on a cathedral sized scale of place.