From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS The final betrayal of the plan for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site--the news two weeks ago that the performing-arts center has been dropped from the $500 million fund-raising campaign for the memorial and museum--was consigned to an inner arts page of a Saturday edition of the newspaper of record, where weekend stories go to die. Picked up by an astute reporter, Robin Pogrebin, the latest development in the downward slide of the ideals and aspirations embraced for Ground Zero was buried in the hoopla of the announcement of the fund-raising committee.
The death of the dream has come slowly, in bits and pieces, not as a sudden cataclysmic event. It has not been a casualty of the more obvious debate over whether the replacement of the lost 10 million square feet of commercial space demanded by the developer is an economic necessity or the defilement of the land where so many died. This has been a subtler, more insidious sabotage, through the progressive downgrading and evisceration of the cultural components of Daniel Libeskind's competition-winning design.
The plan, by nature and necessity, was schematic, a framework within which the objectives could be realized in a number of ways. New Yorkers are realists, and we expected a long period of adjustments and accommodations, political and otherwise, a process in which hope springs eternal and serendipity is often an ameliorating factor. As our architectural expectations plunged, they were revived again in 2003 by the Port Authority's surprising commission of Santiago Calatrava for its Transportation Hub, a stunning, spirit-lifting building that spectacularly refocused the site.
But whatever the compromises, four essential components needed to be maintained. There was the iconic image to replace the Twin Towers, achieved by a spiraling ring of skyscrapers increasing in height until they reached their tallest point in a building called the Freedom Tower, for a strong visual and emotional impact on the skyline. The importance of memory was stressed by a single powerful element that was the design's basic theme--the retention of the rough concrete slurry wall that held back the river from the Trade Center's foundations, to be preserved and exposed as a reminder of the tragic event, a symbol of destruction and salvation.
The area's creative renewal was symbolized by the central position of the arts and cultural buildings, which included a performing-arts center and a museum. Clearly designated social space at ground level provided parks, promenades and street life to vitalize the new construction and tie the community together.
Legitimate factors soon presented serious obstacles to the design and contributed to the disintegration of its physical and symbolic aspects. The inevitable difficulties of translating a schematic idea, taken much too literally by many, while respecting and retaining its most significant features, took their toll. The 16 acres of Ground Zero are a jungle of jurisdictional and infrastructural conflicts. The restoration of working transportation was an immediate priority, forcing irreversible decisions. Mind-bending complexities of grade changes, utilities, circulation, traffic routes and transportation lines, public and private use and access had to be resolved, as well as the incompatible needs and desires of local communities with those dedicated to a single, overriding purpose--memorializing the dead.
There have been demonstrations of graceless greed and ambition. In a New York-scale Catch-22 dilemma, the developer, Larry Silverstein, must make enormous payments to the Port Authority for a rental contract on the Twin Towers executed shortly before the attack or risk forfeiting the contract and the right to rebuild, which he cites as one of the document's obligations. He also claims that he must rebuild at the same size (a combination of height and density equal to the previous construction) to meet those financial obligations or default and lose all. Violins, please. Obviously, the size of the gamble and the potential payoff do not encourage selfless or public-spirited behavior, but then, New York real estate has never been a humanitarian calling.
And there was the unedifying sight of an architectural marriage made in hell--a shotgun arrangement between Mr. Silverstein's architect, David Childs, and Daniel Libeskind, the architect of the plan, over the design of the Freedom Tower. Alas, poor Libeskind; both he and his tower were aggressively co-opted by the more powerful duo, and the unfortunate result of the architectural arm-wrestling--an awkwardly torqued hybrid of the original offset, prismatic form--speaks more of ego and arrogance than art.
Something has been terribly wrong with the approach to the cultural components from the start. A selection process that was to bring a significant representation of New York's creative institutions downtown ended as an exercise in bland cultural tokenism. What except fear of elitism and the determination to be incongruously evenhanded could have eliminated the New York City Opera, desperately in need of its own home and willing to devote energy and commitment to its funding and construction? Not that any of those chosen are unworthy or undeserving, but none is the strong cultural anchor required. This was such a conscious leveling of art to the most acceptable common denominator that it is impossible to divine any effort except the terminal safety of political correctness.
The lovely little Drawing Center was shoehorned into a museum meant to commemorate freedom, an odd couple at best. Called the International Freedom Center, but still largely undefined in its program or purposes, this building, with the memorial, is marked for immediate fund raising; the Drawing Center appears to be barely hanging in there.
A match was made between the Joyce Dance Theater and the Signature Theatre Company for the promised performing-arts center to be designed by Frank Gehry, whose name has given more cachet than immediacy to the project; he is waiting for an unscheduled go ahead and nebulous funding, perhaps due in part to the fact that no one knows yet where to put it. We are told that a program for the arts must come before construction plans, something not yet discernible for the apparently more fundworthy Freedom Center, but where, in this dilatory and evasive chaos, can one exist? When officials were questioned about the elimination of the arts center from the fund-raising effort, their explanation was a vaguely pious disclaimer about a "second phase," when, of course, there will be little if any money available for a building estimated at $400 million after the completion of a half-billion-dollar campaign. Or as any true New Yorker would put it, succinctly and without hesitation, you should live so long.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. has just issued a detailed report on how carefully it has listened to the public in the disposition of its funds. Clearly, some voices have been louder than others. The most vocal and best represented are those calling for restricting the fund raising to "9/11 related" elements of the plan. That is an abdication of the need to temper an unrelenting drive for commercial maximization of the site with something more than an aching emptiness at its heart. The slurry wall is now a relic, its relevance as history and metaphor replaced by an enormous competition-winning void within the Twin Towers' footprints, a memorial so vast few accurately understand its size.
Because the entitlements of loss and grief are the third rail of the rebuilding effort, no one has challenged the subversion of the aims and intent of the plan. The parts that speak of hope and the future have not been able to survive the pressure for a singleminded commitment to the tragic past. Even at Ground Zero, not all the bereaved share the sentiments of the most politically active survivors. Some quietly want to get on with their lives, and there are those who would like to see a more constructive renewal as an antidote to grief.
The poet Wallace Stevens reminded us that art helps us live our lives. Yet no one has had the courage, or conviction, to demand that the arts be restored to their proper place as one of the city's greatest strengths and a source of its spiritual continuity. We have lost what we hoped to gain--a creative rebirth downtown. At Ground Zero, what should be first is last. An affirmation of life is being reduced to a culture of death.
Ms. Huxtable is The Wall Street Journal's architecture critic.
Death of the Dream
There won't be a creative rebirth at Ground Zero after all.
BY ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE
Wednesday, April 20, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
