As an architecture student in the early 1970s, I felt the sky was the limit — literally. I would look out the expansive windows of my 10th-floor Brooklyn apartment and watch the construction of the World Trade Center. It was mesmerizing. Walking from room to room, I had a clear view — Statute of Liberty to the south, the downtown and midtown skyscrapers framed by approaching bridges and, at the center of it all, the rising Twin Towers. Every part of that dynamic skyline, every bridge, every building, every park and every street had an interesting story, and here was this brash newcomer, the architectural wunderkind, elbowing in without any sense of deference. And why not? This was New York.
In the half dozen years I lived in that apartment, I never lost that awe. Changes of season and weather ensured that the view was constantly different.
I always had my camera loaded with film, and I probably took hundreds of pictures. Sometimes the towers disappeared into the clouds like the legendary beanstalk. Other times only their tops could be seen floating in the sky. Occasionally they were the only buildings visible on the horizon, spotlighted by dramatic shafts of light from the heavens. I would often catch the fire-red glow of sunrise shimmering off their metal skin and run for my camera. One year the Goodyear Blimp circled lower Manhattan, and I patiently waited by the window for the precise moment when it appeared to be tethered to the towers. I needed great shots like that to justify the considerable expense of my new telephoto lens.
Even before the structures were completed in 1973, the Twin Towers offered strong validation for my career choice. There was no limit: We could change the face of the earth. The buildings were so structurally advanced they were designed to sway in the breeze. To move thousands of people through them required both express and local elevators. And those views were dizzying, whether you were looking up or looking down. While we students had many heated discussions about their aesthetic implications, such musings were mostly silenced by a visit to the site. We were looking at the future. A thousand years of architectural history led to lower Broadway, and it was very difficult to take issue with anything so awe-inspiring.
My perspective on the World Trade Center evolved after I moved out of my Brooklyn apartment. Awe turned into a more comfortable and even blasé familiarity. I mostly thought of the towers as a reassuring compass point when emerging from the subway, but occasionally they would find an important place in my memory. My first date with my future wife was at the River Café under the Brooklyn Bridge, where we had a magical view of the Towers across the East River. While new architectural wonders would inspire and challenge me, I still enjoyed bringing out-of-towners to the observation deck and sharing in their wonderment at the view. Special occasions still warranted an elegant dinner at the Windows on the World restaurant. But without really thinking about it, I had moved on to other touchstones.
I last saw the World Trade Center in late 2000 while visiting New York with my wife and four children from our new home in Minnesota. Now we were the tourists on the observation deck. But for me it was going home; I could look down on nearly 60 years of my life, see the hospital where I was born, the South Street Seaport where I had worked, the old apartment in Brooklyn where I had lived, and the River Café. The towers were now a place for looking into the past and not the future. Of course, I had my trusted camera and posed our children for the usual tourist pictures. I also took individual portraits. Maybe I hoped that each photograph would someday provide them a personal connection to this remarkable place.
When the buildings were toppled 10 months later, killing nearly 3,000 people, our 16-year-old daughter placed her picture from the observation deck on the bulletin board in her room. The wind had swept her hair as she peered down on the city from what was now a hole in the sky. It was impossible for me to walk into her room without being drawn to that image, much as I had been 30 years earlier to the view outside my window.
Brian McMahon is a retired architect and architectural historian who studied communications at Notre Dame and architecture at Pratt Institute. He resides in Stillwater, Minnesota.