Photograph by Soohang Lee

by Michael Sorkin

Ground Zero has, at long last, begun taking on its final shape. After spending billions of dollars, what exactly have we wrought?

When does mixed use become mixed metaphor? At Ground Zero, from the moment the decision was made to rebuild as both a memorial and a vast office and commercial complex, the conflict between auras was on. The question has long been how close mourning and profit can be squeezed. Now that the museum and memorial are complete, buildings one and four are ready for occupancy, building three is back on the rise (thanks to yet another bailout for developer Larry Silverstein), and the Santiago Calatrava–designed PATH station is framed, it’s possible to get a sense of the texture, proportion, distribution, and artistic register of the site. And it’s clear that the contest between dignity and banality has been resolved on the side of the latter, decisively and consistently.

I walked down to visit the museum a few days ago—I live in the neighborhood and have been in daily touch with the site for years—approaching along Greenwich Street, much touted by the planners as the eventual key to the reknitting of the site into the city and the grid, a healing suture for a wound that preceded the attack. For the moment, Greenwich is still blocked by the temporary PATH station, and, when it’s demolished, the street will pass along the rear of the three skyscrapers fronting Church Street and Calatrava’s porcupine to the east and the memorial plaza to the west. The entry to the site from the north will cross the little plaza—festooned with its pathetic Jeff Koons balloon flower (which will eternally trivialize the tone for arriving visitors)—in front of 7 World Trade Center, and then between towers one and two, both of which will be higher than the Empire State Building. Somewhere in this “gateway” space, an art center may eventually rise if cash and a sufficiently noncontroversial tenant can be found.....Continue Reading

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