NYT: Staircase at Ground Zero on List of Endangered Historical Places

Staircase at Ground Zero on List of Endangered Historical Places
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: May 10, 2006


(Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)
The last above-ground remnant of the World Trade Center — a battered but still—recognizable staircase down which hundreds fled to safety on 9/11 — has become one of the most endangered historical places in America.

The last above-ground remnant of the World Trade Center — a battered but recognizable staircase used by hundreds to flee the inferno of 9/11 — is one of the most endangered historical places in America, the National Trust for Historic Preservation said today.

That is because it stands in the way of an office tower designed by Norman Foster of London and planned by Larry A. Silverstein, president of Silverstein Properties.

"Silverstein Properties has not made a commitment to preserve the staircase and we're urging them to do so," said Richard Moe, the president of the trust, a private, nonprofit organization that uses persuasive influence in place of any regulatory power.

"It will be the most dramatic original piece of the site that will have meaning to generations to come," Mr. Moe said. "This obviously has national significance because 9/11 had such a cataclysmic effect."

The decision by the trust to place the "survivors' stairway" on its much-noted annual list of 11 endangered historical places will undoubtedly raise the profile of an overlooked but significant architectural artifact from Sept. 11, 2001....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/nyregion/10cnd-stair.html

last week--about the slimy bastards who want to strip the entire location of its meaning in American history.

Pataki and his ilk--no to the "footprints" and the staircase--the only remaining original objects. BASTARDS.

New Yorkers--on behalf of all Americans, take a stand and don't let them sterilize this sacred place.

Edit: I've visited the Pearl Harbor memorial and the location of a Japanese internment camp--I felt SOMETHING there because they hadn't disturbed the remains.

Very sobering stuff.

wtf is the matter with these people?

there's a patch of the old floor leading to the subway that I walk on again from time to time and sometimes I don't cry. I don't need a fancy monument. that bit of floor and wall reminds me just fine.

MILLIONS of people passed by there everyday, making business deals, chatting, flirting, shopping, and working.

What makes a better tribute than their spirits in the infrastructure.

I just became sick watching that "Bullshit" episode. Sometimes P&T royually piss me off, but they were dead=on straight with this one.

There's LIFE in that cold steel--and along with it HOPE.

It's an artifact and it should be honored as any historical ruin--hands off.

The NPR report this afternoon (I heard a bit on XM while driving home today) had this quote from a survivor who fled on the stairs now endangered by the "rebuilding" of the site:

Richard Zimbler (sp?) a member of the World Trade Center Survivors Network: "It's strange to think that something that's - that's derelict and pock-marked, and - and ugly to look at is a symbol of hope, but it really is. I see this every day from my window and I look at it and I say 'If that can survive, I can survive, too.'"

And from Patty Clark, a Port Authority worker who says she owes her survival to those steps: "If you think of everybody who survived, everybody went up or down steps. And you look at them: and the top, they are as healthy as they were September 10th. And yeah, the bottom, they - they're damaged, but kinda aren't we all a little damaged after September 11th? So it's -- to me it's a symbol of the people that worked in the building, lived in the building, the strength of the building."

More: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5397044&ft=1&f=1003

as a memorial of that day, The Survivor's Stairway should also remain as it is for the very same reasons.

used such a very light touch in preserving it.

I'd klike to see the same at the WTC.

Arizona.

I prefer the buildings, thank you very much.

A nice quiet "rememberence place" some where - like a vest pocket park would be more appropriate.

Don't give in to the terrorists by letting THEM define our future.

I like the idea that they are going to build it bigger and better.

An eternal "middle finger" to religious extremists everywhere - even our own.

Build the buildings.