The one site in New York that Jen and I both wanted to see this weekend was the World Trade Center site. My first thought was to see the new building. Jen’s first thought was the memorial. I didn’t think we’d be able to get tickets to get into the memorial but it was easy and they were free. Prepare to be bombarded with pictures from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The new building is officially known as 1 World Trade Center, but unofficially known as the Freedom Tower. It is now the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. Counting the height of the antenna on top, it is 1,776 feet tall. It’s not quite finished, but it is freakin’ gigantic.
I thought the construction elevator was cool for some reason. At this point I had my zoom lens on and I couldn’t get the entire building into one shot. I’ll fix that later.
You can see the one little section that still doesn’t have the glass outer wall.
1 World Trade Center won’t be the last building built. This is a construction site next door. I have no idea what this is.
The pictures so far were all taken in front of St Paul’s chapel. I’ll let the building describe the importance of the building.
During the chaos that was 9/11/01, we all heard about the church that stood right next to the twin towers and how it magically survived the collapses. This is that church.
Forgive me for getting a little off topic, but I love old cemeteries, and I love old cemeteries inside of modern cities, and I especially love seeing places in New York where the pre-skyscraper age sits next to the modern super skyscrapers. This is pretty much the perfect spot.
My favorite skyscrapers are glass skyscrapers, because you can get pics like this.
After we picked up our memorial tickets I was able to switch to the wider lens. Now you’ll get a little better idea of the size of the Freedom Tower. It’s a huge sucker.
I promise the street lights were not meant to be part of the shot. They just slipped passed my eyes.
I was a little disappointed that the line into the 9/11 memorial had to include a sign that said no guns or knives or weapons. That was one of those losing-faith-in-humanity moments.
The memorials speak for themselves. This was the site of the South tower.
This is the one tree that stood in the World Trade Center grounds on 9/11/01 that survived. It’s been moved a couple of times since then, but now it’s back where it belongs.
I told Jen that I hope someday this site becomes just another park where people go with their families. Humanity has a long, long way to go before we get there though.
The next few are from the North Tower memorial.
With the exception of all of the pictures that have my wife in them, this is my favorite of the weekend.
This is back at the South Tower again.
I am very thankful that we had the opportunity to see the 9/11 memorial, as well as the new building. They are both absolutely worth a visit.
Inside the Red Head's Head 