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The twin towers, visible from far across the Hudson and East Rivers, were also the best place to take in the lay of the land: this photograph (taken from the north tower) shows the south tower's observation deck overlooking the East River and Brooklyn.
The WTC commands our thoughtful attention in one other respect besides heartbreak: the way that buildings in cities become constituent to the psyche. Despite unloveliness, it's the particularities of use, familiarity, and related experiential characteristics that usually make people feel strongly about buildings--and sometimes even love them. They enter one's personal equation. The WTC's very lack of inspirational architecture in formal terms makes the personal relationship terms especially clear. (Lincoln Center provides another New York example.)

The WTC got off to a bad start when the fine old Washington Market was ripped apart in the 1960s to make way for it, and it was scorned when bureaus like the Port Authority moved in after private companies at first wouldn't. But over the years, Lower Manhattan healed and revitalized itself around the towers. Office scarcity increased desirability. A wholehearted contribution to growing public goodwill came from the WTC's restaurants and bars, including Windows on the World, the Greatest Bar on Earth, and Wild Blue, all up near the top (redone by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer after the 1993 ground-level bombing), with less expensive cafés below and the Big Kitchen food court at street level. Battery Park City, the World Financial Center, and the new Stuyvesant High School were built nearby, and the WTC started to become the emblem of an admired and lived-in neighborhood. Not least, it grew to deserve its name, fairly claiming world prominence in trade and enterprise.

Architecturally it was no better at the end than it had been at the beginning, but it came to wear a mantle of respect and appreciation that commands recognition. In his book review, Goldberger brushed aside as "building huggers" those who treat unremarkable architecture as important because extraneous events happened there, such as Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theatre. But so what? We value everything according to our feelings. With the WTC, we might be excused for entertaining the building huggers' proposition--if only the buildings were still there to hug.

For the foreshadowing bomb attack of 1993 the terrorists chose their target with careful regard to its symbolic significance; and when destruction came on September 11, 2001, the WTC's authenticity as a powerful symbol of New York's spirit was everlastingly resolved. The horrific collapse of 180,000 tons of steel and even more concrete took with it thousands of lives. Great architecture or not, that violent sacrifice--exacted from the buildings and people of a peaceful city--transfigured the towers and exalted them. If we value everything according to our feelings, it seems certain that the destruction of the World Trade Center will stand in memory and sorrow alongside the bombing of Dresden and the explosion of the Parthenon.

What it should be replaced with has become the subject of eulogists and essayists, as well as the current landlord. I believe the replacement should be neither small monument nor mere real estate but a truly monumental and memorializing structure. It should be committed to a mixture of human uses, including commercial offices--because there is nothing profane about workplaces. Its form might evoke the World Trade Center's transfigurative history. I see clouds, glitter, and beacons.

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