Book Review: 'Up from Zero' by Paul Goldberger

Up From Zero: Politics, Architecture and the Rebuilding of New York. Paul Goldberger. New York: Random House. 2004. 16 pages of b&w photos. 273 pages including index. 8 pages b & w photos. ISBN: 1400060176. Available from Amazon.com for $15.72.

Manhattan’s World Trade Center, designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, was completed in 1973. It consisted of two towers, four smaller buildings and a 47-story high-rise. The towers were the tallest buildings in the world for a whole year, until the Sears Tower in Chicago surpassed them. The towers became known as a symbol of New York, and were prominently featured on every postcard of the Manhattan skyline. 50,000 people worked there, from all over the world.

Then came September 11, 2001, when life, not only in the United States but around the world, changed forever. In a well-coordinated attack, terrorists hijacked passenger planes and crashed two of them into the towers. In the aftermath, all seven buildings in the complex were destroyed and almost 3,000 people died. What was once a thriving center of life became a site of desolation - Ground Zero.

Paul Goldberger writes:
 “There is no instruction manual to tell a city what to do when its tallest buildings are suddenly gone, and there is a void in its heart. There is no road map to lead its officials and its citizens along the route of renewal, no guidebook to help them figure out whether renewal, in fact, is what they even want. When the twin towers of the World Trade Center - the two tallest skyscrapers in New York and each the second tallest in the United States - were destroyed on September 11, 2001, there was not only no precedent for dealing with the enormity of the loss, there was no system for figuring out what should happen next: