Trade center rises from ground zero

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Ten years after the 9/11 attacks destroyed the World Trade Center, an 80-story glass and steel tower is rising like a phoenix from the ashes of ground zero.

The site called a “hole in the ground” for years has cranes in the air, trains running underground and hundreds of trees planted around giant, man-made waterfalls to remember the dead of Sept. 11.

And the surrounding neighborhood — no longer just a financial district — is bursting with young families, new schools, a Whole Foods and a Barnes & Noble.

Tourists squint and point their cellphones at 1 World Trade Center, once known as the Freedom Tower.

“I’m kind of proud because I was here two weeks after 9/11, and this was a dust pit,” said Larry Brancato, 59, of Wallingford, Conn., walking by ground zero. “It just shows that Americans have always had a can-do attitude.”

After years of inertia and prolonged disputes between government agencies, insurer and a developer who had just taken out a 99-year lease on the towers when they were toppled, the development of the trade center is substantial, and the tallest tower now can be seen for miles.

“People can begin to see that this is no longer a hole in the middle of New York, but a real place is emerging,” said architect Daniel Libeskind, whose master plan serves as a blueprint for the site.

A memorial featuring waterfalls cascading into the footprints of the twin towers will open to the public Sept. 12, a day after families see their loved ones’ names around the pools for the first time. The skyscraper formerly known as the Freedom Tower is growing by a story a week and now stands 1,000 feet above the skyline as the tallest building in lower Manhattan. A transit station and a second office tower also are taking shape.

As the trade center lay in smoking ruins in 2001, New Yorkers debated the future of the 16-acre superblock that the twin towers had dominated. Some wanted to rebuild the two 110-story skyscrapers exactly as they had been.

Others said that out of respect for the nearly 3,000 dead, the entire tract should be a memorial or a park.