Put tower on ice
To The Editor:
The Freedom Tower shouldn’t be placed on hold, it should have been canceled a while ago (Editorial, Dec. 30 – Jan. 5, 2006, “Put the Freedom Tower on hold”). There were never any tenants for it. The reason why nobody wants to rent space there is because many businesses find it to be nothing more than an illegitimate replacement for the Twin Towers, which should have been there in the first place. I don’t think that anybody should be celebrating the groundbreaking just yet, because in the past there have been delays when Governor George Pataki said it was being built. It is very possible that April will just be another false start as other so-called dates for the groundbreaking were on July 4, 2005 and even back in 2003 when the Freedom Tower plan was released.
Tal Barzilai
Pleasantville, N.Y.
It’s real estate, not culture
To The Editor:
Re “A winning coalition for W.T.C. arts and culture” (editorial, Dec. 16 – 22):
It was the intent of those who controlled the W.T.C. 9/11 memorial process to produce a memorial that was as much culture as it was memorial to the events of 9/11. To do this, they sought a minimalist, abstract design that did not literally refer to the attacks.
The high-culture crowd wanted culture first, memorial second, and “Reflecting Absence,” though it met an underwhelming response from the general public, was praised as exactly that by the high-culture crowd.
Now, however, we see that it was all a ruse. The memorial, which was selected precisely because it was culture, well, isn’t enough culture. In fact, a minimalist design was chosen not because it was culture, but because it left open space, both actually but also emotionally and intellectually, for whatever else the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation board and the Agnes Gunds and Tom Healys, and Tom Bernsteins, etc., wanted to put in that incredibly prime real estate that had suddenly opened up (and all at public expense).
When he introduced “Reflecting Absence,” Vartan Gregorian, the memorial jury chairman, recommended that all artifacts of the W.T.C. be relegated to the underground museum so as not to “interfere with the integrity of the memorial.” While the facade and the sphere or crushed fire trucks, artifacts that speak directly to the attacks, would interfere with that integrity, apparently a massive building dedicated to Sudanese dissidents and Tibetan monks and putting the 9/11 attacks in “historical context,” or an art center featuring contemporary art whoose premise is “nothing is sacred,” (at a place made sacred by death and sacrifice) would not.
We have been played, all of us by the L.M.D.C. and their cohorts. The one driving force behind the redevelopment of the W.T.C. site is not “freedom of expression” (Healy and Gund define that as “freely expressing what we like,” — on the tax dole — Tom “we’re here to make people think” Bernstein as people have the freedom, well for a small charge — to listen to what he wants to express) and it sure isn’t a genuine and lasting commemoration of 9/11. It’s what driven everything on this island since the Dutch made that deal with the Indians for $24. It’s real estate.
If the terrorists had wiped out a housing project in the Bronx, Agnes Gund and the Drawing Center would not be there, claiming right to the space because their little world is what the terrorists really attacked (note to Agnes: they came to destroy the Twin Towers and kill as many Americans as they could and they accomplished that if you did not notice.) Tom Bernstein would not feel that any brainstorm of his was “born of that place;” Roland Betts and John Whitehead would not be there. There would have still been destruction and death; the F.D.N.Y. and N.Y.P.D. would have still responded with courage and compassion and perhaps sacrifice. New Yorkers would still have responded with compassion and concern. Politicians like Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg would have showed up, said a few words, dedicated a small memorial and been on their way. In the end, ironically, without money, the whole thing would have remained pure, as pure as the response to 9/11 was in the first days and months, when it was left entirely to the people.
Michael Burke
Brother to Capt. William F. Burke, Jr., Eng. 21, who was killed Sept. 11, 2001.
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