Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2002 19:08:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Louis Epstein Subject: WTC Rebuilding #106:Responses to Muschamp I include below the letter I just sent to the New York Times Magazine about Herbert Muschamp's multi-architect "Masters' Plan" that was published today under the title "Don't Rebuild.Reimagine". The Muschamp plan is pretty much as I describe it in the letter,the buildings tending to be bizarre inhabited modern sculptures.I didn't pick up the cause of the Battery Park City residents who consider relative disconnection from the rest of the city a desirable defining characteristic of their community,but I know they like their letters short. The twin towers proposed in the Muschamp collage are of a twisted shape they say is intended to make them LOOK strong, though they may be empty...why not build stronger for real? One is on the present Deutsche Bank site while the other is just west of One Liberty,abutting but largely south of the former Hudson Terminal on Church Street. A letter of mine was among many pro-rebuilding ones printed in the New York Post today (I've seen it on the web,have no hard copy). The letter column was all about rebuilding and overwhelmingly in favor,though they did print a news story indicating that a bare majority in one poll were against rebuilding as tall.:( There seems to have been a near news blackout of the September 5th hearing,to my annoyance...though WABC,Channel 7 in New York, did have a good story and the ABC website (as mentioned in my previous email) has covered it also...both making mention of our "YES I'd Work on the 110th floor" stickers,the television story apparently quoting them correctly and saying "just about everyone" was wearing them! Reports of just what Koch said on Friday have varied,some say he has turned his back on rebuilding the Towers,others say he did not quite say that. ==>YOU'RE ON THIS EMAIL LIST,MAYOR KOCH...DO YOU WANT THE TWIN TOWERS BACK,OR NOT?<== (He has declined an approach to serve on the board of NYSTC, as he does not join advocacy groups).I note that he opposed them when they were first planned,according to the article on their history in the same NY Times Magazine as the Muschamp nonsense. One ray of sunshine in the above-mentioned media silence is a syndicated op-ed piece by a David Read Johnson,co-founder of the Post-Traumatic Stress Center in New Haven.Rubisco posted it to the NYCS board yesterday,having read it in the St. Paul Pioneer-Press though it is syndicated by the Los Angeles Times- Washington Post Syndicate.He wants the Towers back as they were, so he can return to Windows on the World,and is tired of the new designs.(Let's see what receptions Muschamp's madcap experimentation gets). Looking historically I wonder if blame for megamemorialism can be traced to Gloria Salas or Joan Kroc.Salas led the campaign in July 1984 against the reopening of a McDonald's that had been the seen of a massacre by a deranged gunman in San Ysidro, California...she wanted a memorial park.I remember being horrified at the suggestion,granting the killer such a lasting legacy; but,influenced by Joan Kroc,the philanthropist just widowed by McD's so-called founder (he built up what the McDonald brothers started),McDonald's caved in within days. Of course,one McDonald's more or less doesn't begin to compare with the loss of the Twin Towers,but this whole idea of turning massacre sites into memorials at the expense of the activities that the massacre violated being allowed to continue there I think began with this incident. We are planning to move ahead on getting a permit for the October 11th rally at City Hall.We want the rally to be design-agnostic,footprint-agnostic,broad-based...the point is to show support for rebuilding at least as tall by every measure,by whatever means.Keep up the pressure! Petition and leaflet work should continue between now and then. The rebuilding resource links are at http://www.put.com/wtc/ and remember the mailing list archive (all but most recent) at http://www.put.com/wtc/archive.html See you on the 111th floor on 9-11-11! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2002 18:19:51 -0400 (EDT) From: Louis Epstein To: magazine@nytimes.com Subject: Don't Reimagine,Rebuild! Herbert Muschamp's attempt to justify his indulgence in architectural radical chic(Sept. 8) expresses the same disconnection with reality conveyed by some of the designs.The six July proposals were derided largely because they did not offer ENOUGH "going back" to the lost World Trade Center,not too much of it.Remember that the largest complaint about them at the largest public forum was that the buildings were too short! For all his commitment to "reimagine",Muschamp embraces a crippling common denominator of the six plans for too many,too short buildings, the obsession with completely restoring Greenwich Street that ruins any cohesion that a plan for the site can have. I also deplore the dangerous symbolism of allowing both footprints of the lost Twin Towers to remain completely empty...we can not be blind to the encouraging message this sends to future terrorists that what they destroy will never rise again.Likewise,the new twin towers should have OCCUPIED space rising at least as high as the old. This is not the time or place for casually tossing aside the world of those thousands who were slaughtered for avant-garde experiments in urban design,transforming the scene unrecognizably.Buildings designed to look like twisted wreckage and a stadium designed to look precariously balanced are not signs of recovery but continued injury. A 2100-foot broadcast tower would be fine as the crown of a new world-inspiring office building,not an excuse to demolish the New York Stock Exchange! New plans for the site should be efforts to improve on and surpass Yamasaki's,but very much committed to continuing in the same direction and carrying on in the footsteps of those who fell. Louis Epstein R.D. 13 Carmel,New York (845) 225-4848 [le@put.com] ---------- End forwarded message ---------- -=-=- The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again, at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.