Honoring September 11th: Memories of the WTC — King Kong, Carol Channing, and Ground Zero
by Charles WinecoffI never liked the Twin Towers. As a boy, I watched them go up - slowly, for years – from the terrace outside my parents’ bedroom. My dad, who was an architect, griped about them: they were too big, they lacked style, they were monstrous. They sat vacant for years, a folly of the Port Authority.
And they ruined the skyline.
We all loved the Empire State Building, for decades the tallest building in Manhattan, even the world. The Empire State Building inspired loyalty. It was a marvel of engineering and design. It was a class act. And King Kong had died for love on it.
Of course, we went to see what the WTC was all about. The lobby was tacky, grandiose yet bland, like an airport or a ballroom in a chain hotel. The elevators were fast – a cheap thrill, like a ride at Disneyland – but when you debarked, the mundane, office hallways were an anticlimax. Nothing special.
But the view was terrifying. The flat rooftop and the walkway around the perimeter offered nothing but open space – no comforting, Art Deco core to take you in if the cold wind and the swaying of the tower made you nervous. And sway those towers did, as they cast ominous, icy shadows over lower Manhattan.
In 1974, when the disaster movie craze was at its peak, my family dined at Windows on the World. For a teenage boy, it was thrilling to be in a setting that looked straight out of Irwin Allen’s The Towering Inferno. Wouldn’t it be exciting if something happened and we were trapped on the 107th floor, our lives in danger against the glittering backdrop of New York at night? What if we had to be rescued by helicopter – or, even scarier, via impromptu pulley (made of ladies’ pantyhose, of course) across to the south tower?
Didn’t happen, and the food was forgettable.
Two years later, a Hollywood publicity stunt drew me back. I read in the paper that Towering Inferno director John Guillermin would be shooting the final scene of his King Kong remake in the plaza between the two towers – and the public was welcome to come and participate as volunteer extras. What better way for a young, wannabe screenwriter to slip a script to a real director?
Thousands of people, probably bridge and tunnel, turned out to gawk at the movie lights – and at the giant (fake) dead ape that had been placed in the middle of the plaza. An unknown model-turned-actress named Jessica Lange, a dot in an evening gown, played her tearful farewell to the inert mountain of fur.
For us extras, the subway-at-rush-hour pushing and shoving didn’t allow for glamorous fantasizing. (I did, however, get my script to Guillermin by pretending I was a messenger – and got a form letter back.) Lange, of course, went on to become an Oscar-winner and, after the Twin Towers were no more, a world-class Bush basher.
We used to joke that the city should have kept the dead Kong in the plaza - because it was the only thing that made the WTC remotely interesting.
In later years, I sometimes went down there to buy cheap Broadway tickets at the TKTS booth in the lobby of one of the towers. The last time was in 1996, for a revival of Hello, Dolly! – still starring Carol Channing. To get there, I took the IRT train down to the final stop beneath the towers, and walked up through the mall-like promenade of stores to the lobby.
But I always wanted to get in and out of there as quickly as possible. It was not a place to dawdle.
Maybe it was the memory of the 1993 bombing – although that seemed to have made little impact on anyone, including myself – or maybe it was just all the years of bad-mouthing the place, but the WTC always made me ill at ease. Even from the street outside, along the river, I couldn’t bare to look up at the towers, as impressive as they were. They frightened me. And I had been told if someone blithely tossed a penny from the roof, it could go right through your skull.
When the towers fell, I was thousands of miles away, in Hollywood. Like most people, I watched them burn and collapse on television – as bumper-to-bumper LA became a timid ghost town. Part of me was grateful that I’d been spared seeing the attack in person, probably from our old family terrace.
Another part of me felt like I’d let my home town down. Never again. Now my country is my city.
Those tragic towers became part of history in a way no one could have foreseen. Well, no one I knew, anyway. Funny how you only miss some things after they’re gone.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Tips & Feedback
34 Comments
My husband was staying at the Marriott (located between the towers) on 9-11. It was destroyed along with the towers that day. Luckily, my husband was already safely away at a meeting several blocks away. I was supposed to be visiting him that week while I was between projects, but got called to DC to do some consulting. Luckily I flew in on Monday, Sept. 10. and got a rental car (something I would not normally do there). I was able to drive to Jersey, pick up my beloved and drive home crying the whole way.
God Bless the lost and the left behind. No, I will never forget.
Wow, I really like this article!
I had friends in high school that went to New York as part of a Chorale Field Trip – the choir director absolutely loved musicals and decided to put on Chicago (very controversial for our little country high school!!) and seeing the musical on Broadway was something he thought the choir students would enjoy. My friends came back talking about the World Trade Center, and that triggered memories of an old movie starring a young newbie actor named Tom Hanks – do you remember that one? The movie based on D&D and how Tom Hanks went psycho and started refering to the WTC as The Two Towers a la Lord of the Rings and he was some kind of Frodo-type character? But that was all I really considered when it came to those two buildings…until Sept 11, 2001. And then it was as if it were right there in my living room…and the humanity of it struck me when I heard about Barbara Olsen being on the plane that hit the Pentagon. I had never known fear like that. God, it was so surreal to have to move about town that afternoon.
Never forget. Never.
It's comforting to know that I'm not the only one that never cared for the Twin Towers. I grew up in awe of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, so the World Trade Center always seemed like a swaggering bully sashaying its way into the neighborhood. I don't miss them as an architectural element of the skyline.
That said, I would never have wanted them to suffer the fate they did, and more importantly, I grieve for each and every person who died at that site 8 years ago.
Nice personal tale Charles! It was a bit unnerving standing at the bottom of those two towers.
I feel anger bumbling in my veins every time I see a shot of the towers on a rerun of Friends. I would gladly pull the trigger to take out those responsible, myself. Love them or hate them, those towers were a symbol of American capitalism and all that it is capable of. Those that hate capitalism (IE Jessica Lange types) probably were probably secretly happy to see them come down. Like a scene out of Atlas Shrugged.
RIP to the towers and those that lost there lives there 8 years ago. This American will NEVER forget.
Ever.
I feel anger bumbling in my veins every time I see a shot of the towers on a rerun of Friends. I would gladly pull the trigger to take out those responsible for their collapse myself. Love them or hate them, those towers were a symbol of American capitalism and all that it is capable of. Those that hate capitalism (IE Jessica Lange types) probably were probably secretly happy to see them come down. Like a scene out of Atlas Shrugged.
RIP to the towers and those that lost there lives there 8 years ago. This American will NEVER forget.
Ever.
Speaking of stunts at the Towers remember the Frenchman who had to walk across the 2 on a wire?
What a great remembrance! No aesthetics in their architecture but their engineering underneath that hideous facade was intrinsically beautiful. You nailed it with the undercurrent of fear they engendered. You knew intuitively that it must be hubris to build something that pushed the envelope that high in the sky. Gravity constantly beckons. It was like what you feel when you're swimming in the ocean; it's beautiful, yes, but… you can't see past your dangling feet and images of what may or may not be circling beneath you never quite leave your head.
Although the Twin Towers were regrettably ugly and seemed like a callous lack of effort on the part of the developers, they were built on a foundation of American soil. When terrorists attacked them they attacked every treasured architectural edifice and every American. Yes the Towers were ugly but they were OUR ugly Towers. Now they're an eternally beautiful memory and symbol of the greatest country on earth!
I remember the towers in sort of fuzzy way. I visited New York City as a little girl with my Mom and spent most of the time feeling very small. I saw them, but, really have no recollection. The next time I was in New York was in 2004 for a film premier. The towers were long gone but when we flew into the air port I looked out the window and saw the city shining brightly and it seemed odd. I realized it….no towers. I was in DC on 9-11 and after the attacks my friends and I went to a hill over looking the Pentagon. Seeing the horror before your eyes sort of adds to the reality of the situation. I cannot imagine what the magnitude of disaster New York attained in reality. TV seems to box in and contain things. God bless those who died in the towers. I won't ever forget….we will never forget.
I visited New York 3 times. And I never once even thought of visiting those two ugly buildings. They were ugly cubes stuck up into the sky and the only thing remarkable about them was that they were so damned high. I sat on that rattling bus as it drove downtown from Staten Island and the Statue of Liberty (whose elevator was out AGAIN) and as it rattled over the potholes, I never once thought "if I stop here and get off, I can see those two buildings' . When I left New York on the plane, I peered out the window to see the Empire State building – but not those two ugly cubes.
Then on 9/11 I stared at my television in my studio in San Francisco and saw them both crumple and fall to earth. And I thought my heart would break for those 'two ugly cubes'.
I never cared much for the Empire State building, I always thought it was too…fussy-looking, for lack of a better phrase. I liked the Twin Towers, I felt they were sleek, elegant, just the perfect example of New York City.
I, too want to cry when I see shots of the towers in movies and on t.v. I always wanted to go to NY and tour the buildings.
I remember the man who walked between the towers, there was a documentary with him that aired after 9/11.
My first memory of New York City is coming out of the PATH station into a construction site with wood board floors and open construction lights hanging from the ceiling and my mother telling me that they were going to be the tallest buildings in the world. While I did like the Empire State Building more, I enjoyed the observation deck of the WTC more and I always liked walking through the WTC when I was downtown. While it wasn't a beautiful building from a distance, the arches in the walls looked quite nice up close.
The movie was Mazes and Monsters.
I was a lieutenant in the New York City Fire Department. I remember looking at the towers and praying that I'd never have to fight a multi-storey fire in the place. I was selected to be an officer in 10 Truck, but I had enough seniority that I turned down the assignment and stayed in the Bronx where we faught "real" fires.
I retired shortly after the first attack, had an oportunity that I couldn't turn down. I was a thousand miles away when I saw the planes hit the towers and wondered if the guy who took my place in the assignment was still on the job. Life is really a series of chances, on seeing the towers fall I believed that then, and believe it still.
God Bless those who perished in the attacks, one day perhaps we'll meet again
Lost a high school friend on one of the planes. Nope not forgetting. lovely essay, Charles. Just because something was ugly, doesn't make it's absence any better.
One of the more impressive views of the WTC from a movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1YL6W1iuSY
I live in Los Angeles. The reality of the 1993 bombing, it's potential forewarning, did not really penetrate, altho I cared that people died. The photos of the towers were always disturbing, like they did not belong, too stark, too utilitarian, too overwhelming the rest of the city. In 1994, we sent for our 10 year old French g'son to meet us in DC to sightsee, learn about America, then on to NY where we went to the Towers. I'm sorry to the architects/builders/designers–they lacked any vibrance for me. But the g'son loved everything, the horse carriage ride, the subway, the Towers–their height & the view–awesome. We offered the same trip to the younger g'son, but he chose instead to spend several days on Catalina doing things with his Mom. After 9-11, he said that now he'd never get to go to the top of the Towers. There was a bit of regret, but he still had that memory of time alone with his Mom. All in all, it was a good choice. My heart aches for all who were lost in such a senseless tragedy.
I too watched those towers rise as a child and I was fascinated by them. I was awe struck the first time I stood at the base of those towers and looked up. The first time I visited the observation decks I was stunned to realize they put handles on the inside of the windows so you hold on and look straight down the side of the tower. As an adult, I will always remember driving into Manhattan from New Jersey, on the turnpike, heading to the Holland Tunnel. The towers were visible, rising from downtown Manhattan from many miles away. To this day, when I head back to the east coast, I cannot bear to look at the NYC skyline anymore. The absence of those towers tears at me when I return to my hometown. However ugly some may have found them, they were special to me and I will never ever forget or forgive what happened to them.
My mother had not been to Manhattan since before I was born and had to give a presentation 6 blocks away on 9/11. She flew in on the Saturday before and bought a ticket to a Broadway show at the TKTS booth right there. As she was giving her presentation, she could see the emergency vehicles streaming south. On 9/12 she tried to enter a train station but was stopped by a policeman with a M-16 due to a bomb threat. When she finally return home, she put her house on the market because she never wanted to smell a fireplace again. If I mention the smell of the smoke from 9/11 even today, she gets very upset. God bless all the were effected as well as those that perished.
My wife asked, "remember how the country stood together after the attacks? How all the politicians stood on the steps." Yes, I remember. And as they stood there, about half of them were plotting how they could use this most gruesome event for political gain. An it wasn't a few weeks before they started in earnest.
I feel saddness intertwined with anger when I watch the reruns of Friends or Sleepless in Seattle or any other movie/show that shows the old New York Skyline…
Excellent piece and thx for that photo too. You hardly see that awe inspiring perspective in the stock photos. "now my country is my city" indeed…
Exclusive Audio: 9/11/01: Reactions To Horror in Jerusalem's Old City – Jewish, Arab, Christian
Podcast: http://www.davebrianbender.com
"On the evening of September 11th, 2001, I visited Jerusalem’s Old City to gather reactions in the wake of the attacks, as a reporter for The Jerusalem Post newspaper. While some Palestinians celebrated, calling it a fitting response to US support for Israel, other Christian and Muslim Arabs were dismayed by the scope of the horror.
"The experience was, for me and photojournalist Mati Milstein, one non-stop, audio-grabbing lope from the Damascus to the Zion Gates through the echoing length of the Old City's exotic warrens and souk:"…
Read More and Podcast: http://www.davebrianbender.com
Thanks Charles,
As always, written from the heart.
In the 1974 book Worst, Best and Most Unusual by Mark Fowler, The World Trade Center was listed as Worst Office Building, and it was described in less than flattering terms along with a list of it's major flaws.
Thank you Charles for a very moving account.
I feel anger bumbling in my veins every time I see a shot of the towers on a rerun of Friends. I would gladly pull the trigger to take out those responsible for their collapse myself. Love them or hate them, those towers were a symbol of American capitalism and all that it is capable of. Those that hate capitalism (IE Jessica Lange types) probably were secretly happy to see them come down. Like a scene out of Atlas Shrugged.
RIP to the towers and those that lost their lives there 8 years ago. This American will NEVER forget.
Ever.
I went to the towers twice before they were destroyed. I was always IN AWE of them, but never MOVED by them. It isn't until now, watching 102 Minutes that Changed America that I am reminded that in their absence, they finally move me.
*MissQuinn*
One of the more impressive views of the WTC from a movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1YL6W1iuSY
(Full version of the song, but the shot of the WTC is clipped: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL7QAuQDflw )
Like the author I too didn't like the twin towers, at first, I guess for aesthetic reasons like his father. Although I'm not an archetect, like his dad. The Chrysler building is still my favorite skyscraper. However, living in NJ for over 20 years I got used to them, and working in Avenel for about 6 years, saw them everyday while driving on Rt. 9, except when it was too hazy. Now I can't say how much I miss seeing them, although I don't live in NJ anymore. I always marvel at them when I see older TV shows and films when they're shown, and the fact that we'll never see them again, and knowing why, and what happened there never fails to make an impression. As stated by LolaLola, LoneWolfArcher, and others, I WILL NEVER, AND CAN NEVER FORGET!!! May God Bless the families of the survivors of the twin towers, the pentagon, and flight #93. God Bless the USA!!!
What I miss most is the way you could, as a visitor, use the towers as a landmark to help you negotiate your way around lower Manhattan. Even when you couldn't see them, you could always take a few steps and see some part of them emerge behind another skyscraper, and use that to orient yourself. Up close they could cause reverse vertigo just staring up at them, but from a distance they had a monumental utility. All of this, of course, bears no relationship whatsoever to the people who died there – it's their absence that's more painful than that of the buildings.
That’s true; they made it so easy for a newcomer to the city to get his/her bearings (especially after exiting the subway). I moved here from LA in 1998. During my first year here I found myself at the WTC pretty often. Maybe because there was a MALL underneath and mall shopping is in my California DNA. I also took every single visitor up to the top – you were so high up there you were basically airborne. I don’t think it’s correct to call the Twin Towers “ugly”. They were too awesome to be dismissed.
I still can’t look at the tip of the island without feeling a combination of sadness, anger and disgust. At least I don’t tear up anymore.
The anger is for terrorists and their enablers. The disgust is for the bureaucracy in this city that can’t get it together and REBUILD THEM.
I loved those Towers. From a distance they were beautiful. Up close, they weren't. But they were imposing. They had huge heft. Weight. I had an office on the 93rd floor that faced North (I hadn't yet arrived that day). I was in a storm cloud once — it was amazing. The plaza was awful. Bare, white hot and a waste. Should have had trees and green and water because you could actually get a pleasant breeze off the Hudson. Looking downtown after they were gone was awful. There was nothing there. It was like feeling the hole your wisdom teeth leave behind when they're pulled. It was physical, not just emotional. No, they weren't pretty; they were not great architecturally. But, boy, they had presence. Like two linebackers to the Empire State's beauty queen.
My family and I just took our first trip to the East Coast. Being Californians, and a desert rat to boot, New York has never been anything more than a city I've seen on TV. But when I visited Hoboken and look over the river I could see how the city had changed. How there was a gaping hole where the towers once stood and how the skyline just didn't look "right" from what I grew up seeing on TV and in movies.
One of those moments when you finally get to see reality and you realize how you've built a place up in your mind. It's an interesting thing to confront. I will never forget 9/11, or my feelings of seeing the Real New York Skyline. Even if it was foggy and rainy, I finally saw it with my own eyes.
You must be logged in to post a comment.