When Ray Nagin and Donald Trump agree
Ray Nagin said, about the failure to rebuild the World Trade Center in a timely fashion: “You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed and it’s five years later.” It’s a fair point. For goodness sakes, the Pentagon — the world’s largest office building — was built in sixteen months in 1941-1942. Five years is plenty of time to rebuild the WTC.
Sixteen months ago, Donald Trump (as channeled by Mark Steyn) said rebuild the ugly muthas, one storey taller. If the pace of construction of the Pentagon is a guide, the World Trade Center could have been rebuilt in the sixteen months since Trump spoke last year. As for the so-called Freedom Tower, Trump said with characteristic understatement: “It is the worst pile of crap architecture I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Ray Nagin and Donald Trump are both right: it’s long past time to see the World Trade Center rebuilt. The can-do America of 1941-1942 could have done so. It’s time to act like can-do America again.
UPDATE
While reading this Christopher Hitchens piece opposing a 9-11 holiday (which is a ghoulish idea: “What’re you doing for the Sept. 11 long weekend?”), it occurred to us even more strongly that the best remembrance would be to see those proud, ugly buildings rebuilt.
September 5th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
As you probably know, there has been a long process of consensus building these past five years with regard to the design of the replacement for the WTC. The project might have gone much faster except for the vortex of global emotion that orbits that piece of real estate. Were it merely a Trump project, something (God knows what sort of “pile of crap architecture” THAT would have been) would be standing in that site by now to be sure, but responsible New Yorkers, Americans and citizens of the world, have all had to weigh in on exactly what that thing will be, what it will look like ultimately and what the exact message to convey should be. This is no ordinary place. It is a memorial and deserves to be expressed in some special way. The problem is that no one can ever agree on what constitutes “special” and maybe nothing will ever be built there again because of this design-by-committee failure. True architectural vision can only be an individual response and will inevitably turn into a pile of crap when too many people have their hands in it.
September 6th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Actually, the original Towers construction would be the guideline. Construction began in 1966 and the second tower was completed in 1973. That’s 7 years of construction for a very difficult project. The Pentagon was a much easier project being laid out more horizontially than vertically.