PATH trains reopen post-9/11

[Jon Abbey]

some of you probably saw that the PATH trains running between NJ and the former home of the WTC started operating again on Sunday for the first time since 9/11. I've lived in Jersey City for 15 years, right across the Hudson from where the WTC used to stand, maybe a mile away, you could see it from my front steps. I used to take the train through the WTC all the time, including the afternoon before 9/11, with my mom on our way to lunch in Tribeca.

after that crazy day, I haven't been to that part of town almost at all, I don't have many reasons to go down there, and I wanted to avoid breathing that air for the first year or so, rightfully so in retrospect with what's come out about what was in it since.

anyway, I was on my way to Tonic on Sunday night, and I planned to take the other PATH train, to 9th St., then the F downtown, that's a little shorter trip. but the WTC train came first, so I jumped on that. I had happened to put Loren Mazzacane's Haunted House CD in my Discman, relistening to it for the first time in a few years after some conversations about it with people, but this bore no relation to the PATH reopening, at least consciously.

anyway, as the PATH comes into the WTC now, instead of going underground all the way like it used to, it comes out into open air, and straight through the pit filled with construction equipment, but still so empty of actual buildings. the emptiness is still shocking, two years later.

a few of you may know this already, but Loren Mazzacane is the only musician I know who actually recorded anything while watching what was going on that day, about ten minutes of music from outside his apartment in Brooklyn, poignant, intense music, unsurprisingly. all of this came together in my head, a bit unexpectedly, it shook me a little bit. then the train pulled in, to the same tunnels, and you exit up through a similar-looking platform with a newsstand in the same place. the walls are totally covered with massive overhead pictures of NYC and quotes from celebrities about what a great place NYC is, then you exit into open air, on the east side, facing Century 21.

anyway, a pretty surreal and wild experience, thought I'd share it. below is the NY Times story that ran today, page 1 of the front section:

=========================================================

Again, Trains Put the World in Trade Center

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

And yesterday, the people returned to ground zero.

Not those who were impelled to work there or compelled to grieve there, but the many more who have been waiting. People without passes and badges, hard hats and breathing masks; people with no more credentials than curiosity or longing. Or the simple desire to spend a beautiful afternoon in the city on the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

The World Trade Center PATH Station opened at 2 p.m. after a $323 million, 16-month reconstruction, to applause and tears along the platforms and aboard the trains. On the sides of the cars, ruby-red "WTC" destination signs glowed once again.

For the first time since the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, ground zero throbbed with ordinary life and resonated with hundreds of vibrant voices.

"I'm making part of history right now," Robert Conard of Silver Spring, Md., said into his cellphone just before 2 p.m., as he was swept with the crowd under the winged entrance canopy on Church Street and into a succession of open-air spaces leading to train platforms 70 feet below ground.

Those pouring in from upstairs met and mingled with passengers getting off the first trains to link Lower Manhattan with New Jersey in more than two years. Before the attack, PATH, the Port Authority Trans-Hudson commuter rail system, carried 67,000 passengers a day home from the World Trade Center.

Since then, commuters have struggled with alternate, round-about routes that have included taking PATH trains that come into Manhattan farther uptown or switching to ferry service. So this morning's rush hour will surely eclipse yesterday's opening.

But that was lively enough. As destinations were announced by a worker with a megaphone — "Journal Square and Newark, track No. 4!" "Track 3 for Hoboken!" — a sea of dark winter coats surged through bright gray and shimmering silver rooms. The spaces are surprisingly luminous and generous in their proportions. But because so much of the station is intended to be temporary, it is deliberately spartan in details, with concrete and exposed steel where there once was travertine.

Wind-breaking screens wrap the main rooms, so the view of ground zero changes under different light conditions from misty to gauzy. It is the first time the public has been able to look around the trade center foundations from within the giant bathtub formed by the rugged slurry walls.

Elsewhere, on interior walls, are giant photographs of Lower Manhattan, accompanied by graphics showing the pattern of streets and skyline. The single amenity is a Hudson News stand on the mezzanine.

A permanent $2 billion PATH station is being designed by Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect whose bridges and terminals have been likened to poetry. It is to begin serving passengers in 2006. Like the current station, it will be linked with numerous subway lines.

On "PATH Hill," the broad bank of eight escalators from the mezzanine to the concourse, a defining feature of both the old and new stations, a woman could be overheard explaining to disbelieving companions as they ascended: "There was absolutely nothing here. Nothing. Everything is absolutely new."

Not quite everything. About 50 feet of travertine flooring and six shallow travertine steps from the old World Trade Center concourse can still be found in the vestibule between the station and the E train platform.

Keeping them was "the right thing to do," said Robert I. Davidson, chief architect of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who designed the station, working with the engineer Jerrold Dinkels and the Pentagram studio.

There were those in the crowd yesterday, many of them relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 attack, who worried that the Port Authority was not keeping enough, because of its plans to expand the station over more of the twin towers' footprints. Some were also angered that the Port Authority was keeping too much: the World Trade Center name, unmodified, as if the towers themselves were still there.

[john williams]

I enjoyed your vivid recounting of your experience at WTC site and felt I could almost see what you described even though I have never been there. Beautifully written and yes it sure sounded like a surreal experience.

[Gary Sisco]

Good post, Jon. I've also used that PATH train many times, from Hoboken, when I used to drive down before Jet Blue started flying to NYC from Burlington. And having been stationed twice on Governor's Island, I've been through the WTC and surrounds more times than I can count, aboveground and underground. It must really be a trip when you come up above ground on the train, now. I haven't been that far downtown since 9/11, either. I had planned to, last trip, but it was raining like crazy that day. My favorite spot in all of New York is the tip of Battery Park, where you can look out on Guv's Island and the Statue of Liberty, with the granite monuments listing the names of the sailors who died off the coast during WW2. That's where I used to go to be alone when I was stationed there, and, pre-9/11, I'd always made a tradition of going there to smoke a pipe and look out on the harbor and river. Not to sound crass, because not intended, but I hope that I get to take that train ride before they build again on the site, but if I don't, I can always remember your post.

The year prior to the first JCS Hang, I met up with three former comrades so that we could make one last trip to Guv's Island (where we'd all met, as 19 year olds) before they hauled down the flag for good out there. Because one of the three is a grand puba in the corporate world these days, we got to spend the weekend at the Millenium, right across the street from WTC, for $140 each for the whole weekend. Strange to think of it, now.

Stranger still to think of, for me, and also a bbs connection, is that one night in 2000, I ventured downtown one night, the last time I walked through the WTC, to meet up with Hearsay (Brent Sroka) and listen to him play at a gig in the bar that was all the way up on top of it. Can't remember which tower. The only time I'd ever gone up there. It was raining and only clouds could be seen through the wall-sized windows on two sides of the club.

[Jon Abbey]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
the last time I walked through the WTC, to meet up with Hearsay (Brent Sroka) and listen to him play at a gig in the bar that was all the way up on top of it. Can't remember which tower. The only time I'd ever gone up there. It was raining and only clouds could be seen through the wall-sized windows on two sides of the club.

Windows on the World was the name of the restaurant up there, there was an associated club which had a different name, not recalling that now. when I was in college at Columbia, my parents took my girlfriend Whitney and I to dinner there, it was the first time they had met. they picked us up uptown, and my gal was ultranervous. we got to the buildings and went to take the elevator up 120 flights or whatever it was, and Whitney excused herself, ran to one of the little ashtray/garbage cans in the lobby, and threw up out of sheer nervousness. then we all went upstairs and ate dinner, pretty memorable also.

[Brian Olewnick]

I took the WTC PATH train yesterday morning and had pretty much the same experience as Jon. It was the first time I'd been at the site since 9/11 (I was beneath the WTC about 45 minutes before the first plane hit that day). When the train emerges from the tunnel into this enormous space, it's pretty disconcerting. Still feel it's a little....ghoulish just staring at the area. Took it home yesterday too, getting out at the Fulton Street stop. Walking toward the site was the strangest of all, this new entryway to the station in front of a vast empty space.

[Monte Smith]

Fucking jihadis.

[Gary Sisco]

I was thinking it must really be a shock from Guv's Island today. The towers seemed to loom right over you, from out there. They filled much of the sky.

[Al in NYC]

I was out on Governors Island with some clients last year, and for one who spent a lot of time on the island in previous years (girlfriend in the Coast Guard, worked for the Coast Guard as a civilian employee myself for a short time) it is indeed shocking, strange, and quite sad not to see the towers looming there anymore. Although the towers were tremendously prominent from GI, because one saw them across all that open water (my girlfriend's room used to look out across the harbor directly at the WTC), it's also missed in vistas from a lot of places around NYC. For instance, even after 2+ years I still can't get used to not seeing the towers looking straight down West Broadway in Soho.

[chuckyd4]

I remember me and my then-girlfriend going to the WTC one afternoon in September of 2001, on one of those days when you start out leaving your apartment to run to the deli and end up spending the whole afternoon wandering around the city, catching random trains to random neighborhoods. Anyway, it was early evening (still warm in September), and we ended up there, planning to go have a few drinks at the Windows on the World... we didnt realize there was a dress code, so we were turned away and kept walking. I'd actually never been to the top of it, and a few days later etc etc etc...

Thanks for sharing, though Jon.

[Gary Sisco]

Al -- I'm hip. They were also for me a quick reminder of which way I was facing when coming out on the street from unfamiliar subway exit. It's very strange to walk downtown and not see them. Indeed, I've been very much aware of them not being there every time I've been in the city, since. They were really incredible from G.I., though, huh? They were also an amazing feature of the golf course out there, from which vantage point it really did seem like they were looming over you, *right there.* Incredible. I hope they do something worthwhile and good with that island. I have very fond memories of it and look forward to being able to go out there again someday.