From Newsday

Cherished WTC 'survivors' staircase' moved

The "survivors staircase" is seen at the World Trade Center, Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2007 in New York. Construction crews stationed the stairs about 200 feet to be stored on site until it can be installed at the Sept. 11 memorial. (Mark Lennihan, Associated Press / March 6, 2008)

BY REBEKAH LOGAN | Special to Newsday

8:23 PM EDT, March 9, 2008

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NEW YORK - In those horrifying hours after two planes slammed into the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, a staircase served as a escape route for thousands on a desperate dash to save their lives.

Six and half years later, the staircase -- known as the Vescey Street Stair -- was the last remaining stucture not reduced to rubble by the attacks or the Ground Zero rebuilding.

Until Sunday.

And while it will no longer sit where it stood before the attacks -- 37 stairs that once connected the outdoor plaza outside the twin towers to the street below -- it will most certainly survive.

Yesterday, a 500-ton hydraulic crane hoisted the stairway to its temporary new home in a storage facility until it's placed permanently in the National September 11 Memorial and Museum when it opens at Ground Zero in 2011.

"The privilege we have to accommodate the last remnant of the World Trade Center is incredible," said Alice M. Greenwald, executive vice president of the museum's foundation. "The stairway is a metaphor -- everyone is a survivor."

The staircase move followed a controversial 2006 plan that included demolishing the structure to make way for new construction.

State officials had announced that they would demolish all but one or two slabs of the staircase to make way for a new office tower, undeterred by a preservation group that named the steps one of the nation's most endangered historic places.

The site's owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said at the time that the 22-foot staircase could not be taken off the trade center site because it was too tall for traffic lights and overhead poles and possibly too heavy for bridges.

Leaders in Gov. Eliot Spitzer's administration worked out a compromise last year to separate the stairs from their concrete base and install them at the Sept. 11 memorial.

"You can honor memory, you can honor the day, and you can honor survival yet respect and understand the need for rebuilding to go forward," said Ari Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. "Instead of bulldozing the Survivors' Stairway, it will be installed and stand along the main stairway of descent at the Memorial Museum."

Schick said when the staircase is unveiled at its new locaton on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, it will serve as "a symbol of survival for the city and the country."

Tom Canavan survived the attacks and used the stairs to get out after tunneling out of debris that buried him when the World Trade Center's south tower collapsed.

He watched workers slowly move the staircase yesterday, and said memories of the events of Sept. 11 remain fresh.

Canavan said he wanted the stairway to remain where it was but he realized that was not possible.

"They have to do what they have to do to preserve it," Canavan said. "Even though the day was a tragedy, part of the original trade center and the people survived."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.