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September 6, 2011
How the Twin Towers Transformed New York
The Indypendent
by John Tarleton
As New Yorkers mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it’s hard to imagine that the 16 acres in Lower Manhattan that were once home to the Twin Towers ever served another purpose. Fortunately, we have Eric Darton, a locally born and bred historian and novelist to remind us of the origins of the World Trade Center in his recently re-released history of the towers, Divided We Stand.
In his book, Darton reaches back to the beginning of the 20th century to explore the intellectual and aesthetic ideas as well as the political and economic forces that eventually produced the 110-story behemoths that dominated the New York City skyline for almost three decades. In doing so, he reminds us that while the World Trade Center eventually became “sacred ground” to millions of Americans, it was originally conceived as a power play by local elites. Darton recently spoke with The Indypendent about the World Trade Center’s past and present impact on New York, the joys of writing history and why another set of skyscrapers at Ground Zero is exactly what we don’t need.
...JT: What is the relationship between the World Trade Center and other mega-developments that have followed here in New York?
ED: Eminent domain was used in 1966 to erase Radio Row, a perfectly viable commercial neighborhood that had scores of small businesses located in the footprint of the future World Trade Center site. This moved a bunch of legal goalposts and certainly moved people’s expectations. Once the powers that be get away with something like that, it’s tempting to keep on going. This can be seen in the Atlantic Yards project in downtown Brooklyn, in which eminent domain has been used to advance a massive, undemocratic and useless project.
Posted by eric at September 6, 2011 9:46 AM