The cryptic markings on this door from the original station — preserved since the 9/11 attacks — shows the markings left by search-and-rescue teams as they scoured Ground Zero for survivors.
BY DENNIS LYNCH
The Port Authority finally re-opened the travertine-floored entrance to the E train platform at the Oculus transit hub earlier this month after the agency shuttered it in 2005 to construct parts of the World Trade Center Transportation Hub.
The corridor was part of the original World Trade Center concourse built in the 1970s. Unlike some other parts of the site, it survived the 9/11 attacks intact. The U.S. Department of the Interior designated it a historic area and the Port Authority deliberately sought to preserve much of it as it was, including the original travertine floors, wooden ramp, glass doors, and handrails.
The Port Authority also left a somber reminder of the days following the 9/11 attacks — a cryptic spray-painted message on a glass door leading to the passage: an X-marked box with “MTF1 9 13” written next to it.
The MTF1 stands for Massachusetts Task Force Force 1, a search-and-rescue team out of the Bay State that came to the WTC site following the attacks 15 years ago to help local emergency responders. A task force member painted that on the door to mark that they had searched the corridor for survivors on Sept. 13, 2001. The X-marked box denotes that it was a dangerous area for rescuers, a Port Authority spokesperson said.
The agency has set the door-turned-artifact behind a glass cover to protect it, along with a sign explaining its significance.
The passageway connects to the Oculus at the northwest end of the hub and allows riders to transfer between the E train and the PATH train without heading above ground as they have during the transit hub’s decade-long construction.
The Dec. 19 opening was the last major step in the completion of the WTC Transportation Hub, which now connects the PATH train to 11 subway lines via a concourse to the nearby Fulton Center station, as well as providing an underground passage to the Hudson River ferries docking at Battery Park City.
The vintage corridor, built long before the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, is not currently handicapped accessible, and although the Port Authority says it will install a new accessible entrance in the future, it has not specified when.
