World Trade Center Remembered

World Trade Center

From The Vault:

I watched the World Trade Center going up and I would eventually watch thse majestic towers fall.

Only days before September 11, I had moved from the New York City I loved to one of its  leafy suburbs. Without cable or satellite hooked up there was no television service, so was dependent on an old Zenith radio to keep me in touch with the news of outside world.

News of the 9/11 tragedy found its way to me through the antiquated airwaves of a vintage Bakelite radio making the experience similar to listening to London during the Blitz. The news of the first plane hitting the Tower was rife with rumors and uncertainties. Was it a small private plane, perhaps  an accident?

September 11 was my husband’s  first day as a commuter. When he got out of the subway near his office blocks from the World Trade Center he called me onhis flip phone. As we anxiously discussed the plane hitting the tower and the advisability of whether I should come into the city that day to finsh packing up our apartment , I heard him gasp as he watched a second plane hit the second tower.

Our communication was disrupted. There was no uncertaintly now. We were under attack.

I rushed back to my old radio to see what I could learn.There was a deep poignancy to the manner in which I learned that sad news. The radio, you see had once belonged to my cousin Max.

 

 Radio Row

vintage radio ads 1940's 50's

Vintage radio advertisements (L) General Electric portables 1948 (R) Crosley Radios 1951

Long ago, the very land that the twin towers stood on had once been the site of  Radio Row, that part of lower Manhattan that contained congested block after block  of radio  and electronic stores, the largest such collection in the world.

Cousin Max had owned such a store on Cortland Street since the late thirties when radio was as booming as his business. A mecca for the do it yourselfer, even the NY Times called Radio Row “ a paradise for electronic tinkerers.

Visiting that dark, grimy store filled from dusty linoleum floor to ceiling with vacuum tubes , transistors, antennae kits, high-tech tchokes of every shape and size was always an adventure for me as a child, transporting me into a mysterious world of electronics.

There were over 300 identically jammed  street level stores and over 3 times as many on floors above them reached through creaky stair or equally creaky antiquated elevators

But by the 1960s, the death knell for these mom and Pop shops was about to sound and it wasn’t because of changing technology.

 World Trade Center

Plans for a World Trade Center located in lower Manhattan had been in the work for years.

In 1946 NY legislators authorized a “World Trade Corporation” to develop the proposed World Trade Center and appointed Winthrop Aldrich chairman of Chase bank ( and uncle to David and Nelson Rockefeller) to explore the feasibility of the project.

Plans began in earnest by 1960 as the Port Authority took charge, and began planning for  the project to develop along the East River. Objections from NJ changed the site to a 16 acre parcel of land along the Hudson River, which included Radio Row.

The die was cast. Many neighborhood businesses would go bust.

Protest

In June of 1962 Max along with hundreds of other commercial tenants, property owners and residents protested the eviction notices, filing an injunction challenging the Port Authority’s power of “eminent domain”.

Court battles ensued until finally in April 1963 the NY Court of Appeals upheld the Port Authority’s right of “eminent domain” saying the project had a “public purpose.”

Construction

World trade Center Site Plan

The World Trade Center Site Plan 1971. The World Trade Center scheduled for completion in 1973 will have the worlds tallest buildings, 2 110 story towers surrounded by 4 low-lying plaza buildings

By March 1966 demolition of existing structures on the site had begun  and most of the stores on Radio Row became condemned.

In August  of that year, workmen turned the first spadefuls of earth marking the beginning of construction.

The World Trade Center was on its way.

Hardly a day passed without the machine gun staccato sound of jack hammers, the bone chilling blasting of dynamite and the constant thud of huge swinging wrecking balls followed by the crash of crumbling walls.

Whole blocks were being vaporized, toppled with the abandon and swiftness of a child dismantling his wooden blocks. In place of century old buildings,  and grand old granite office buildings would rise new modern structures. The centerpiece- 2 soaring towers would rise majestically from the rubble.

Sky High Hopes

World trade center Tishman ad

Vintage Ad Tishman Realty & Construction Co. 1971
Tishman was the nations No. 1 builder of high rises office buildings, but the copy in the ads says “we took a deep corporate breath when we were selected as general contractor for the World Trade Center in NY.. Nobody ever built anything like it before. It is the most complex building project ever undertaken.”

World Trade Center Advertisements 1971

Vintage Ads for the World Trade Center 1971. All who had a hand in the construction of the Twin Towers proudly pointed out their contribution to this great project. (L) York Air Conditioning. “NY Port Authority selects York to air condition the tallest buildings in the world. To cool the World Trade Center complex of buildings that will cover 16 acres requires the largest water chilling system ever built for air conditioning. 49,000 tons of cooling power!” (R) Con Edison “Salutes the World Trade Center!”

I often traveled to lower Manhattan with my family to watch along with heartbroken Max as excavation and construction began.

The wail of sirens and the cacophony of street noises did nothing to distract from the deafening shake rattle and roll of construction that was ever-present, echoing off the gaping crater where once had stood crowded commerce. Besides the noise, a continual fine mist of dust filled the stagnant air settling into every nook and cranny.

Worse still, you could feel the tremors blocks away, as much from the construction as from the outraged protest of hundreds of New Yorker’s still vehemently opposed to the demolition.

Privately my father’s heart swelled with a sense of joy, and vigor looking out at the vast horizons of mans great progress. Just as out of the unsightly ash dump of Flushing Meadow rose the World of Tomorrow as envisioned by Robert Moses, so out of these still smoldering ashes would rise 2 grand structure worthy of it’s name-The World Trade Center. It was to be a feat of engineering a beacon and symbol of American Economic strength

It was a fitting name he pontificated, for a mighty country.

World trade center Model 1971

Advertisement Feb 28, 1971 NY Times Supplement
model of the 16 acre World trade center under construction in lower Manhattan by the Port Authority, as it would appear when completed in 1973

Editors Note: this post was originally published on Sept. 12. 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream
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One comment

  1. Reblogged this on silverapplequeen and commented:
    A must read.

    Liked by 1 person

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