Buildings become iconic not through the abstract designs of their architects, but the human stories that hang from them.
The Empire State Building was made human and heroic by photographs of its builders daringly posed high above Manhattan, relaxing on a girder in midair. The twin towers of the World Trade Center were made monumental by a high-wire walk between them.
Such dramatic images are emblems of the complex everyday human lives that intersect in the elevators and offices of modern buildings, tokens of the reality that a building is given meaning by the way we use it. The human and soulful quality of New York’s skyscrapers, which sets them apart from colder imitations elsewhere, has to do with this termite-like quality of habitation and life, as the energy in the streets finds its reflection high above.
Just days after it opened for business, One World Trade Center has produced a drama to warm hearts and images to make anyone miss a heartbeat:
No sufficient caption here, just hope these guys get out OK. pic.twitter.com/eXNrCu5qjL
— Michelle L. Dozois (@michelledozois) November 12, 2014
A photograph of a dangling window washers’ platform, its cables loose and swagging, 69 floors above the ground, says it all. The metal basket looks tiny and frail against the icy expanse of the new tower’s sublime glass. The thought that two human beings are inside is terrifying – especially at this site, with its terrible legacy of death.
But this is the reality of tall buildings: you can fall a long way.
Mercifully, this story has a happy ending. The New York fire department used a diamond saw to cut through a window and bring the two workers into the building. The episode draws attention to the dangerous conditions in which window washers work every day on tall buildings – this is not the first of such episodes, and they do not all have happy endings.
Yet beyond the relief and the fire department’s triumphant heroism, this is the sort of moment that gives meaning to buildings. Images of the platform precariously hanging against that glittering edifice instantly circulated as the crisis unfolded.
Window washing platform collapsing on 1 WTC bldg - just drove by pic.twitter.com/NZIsno6vNQ
— Zachary Prensky (@Zackfoot) November 12, 2014
People also watched from the ground – including, apparently, an architect of One World Trade Center himself. Looking at the damaged device so high above the city, its human cargo so dangerously exposed, inevitably has echoes that sent these pictures around the world.
The pictures unavoidably recall the dark memories that haunt this place, the ghosts of 9/11.
Because the infinitely greater, horrible drama in which this building’s twin predecessors were destroyed will haunt every perception of the new One World Trade Center. Is it a tragic glass gravestone, or a triumphant resurrection? A sentinel of the future, or a monument of the past?
In a strange and redemptive way, the image of the hanging basket – and especially the story of the heroic rescue that now accompanies it – has done more than anything else so far to free this new building from history and start it on a narrative course of its own. This time, everyone lived. This time, the rescuers and the rescued were OK. This time, the city triumphs, the people below are witnesses to victory instead of death, the watching world breathes a sigh of relief.
Suddenly, One World Trade Center has an identity that architect could not quite give it. Suddenly, New York has another human story upon which to hang its iconic hat.
