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Viewing Platform Lets Visitors Pay Their Respects at Disaster Site
The debris is gone now. What’s left at the World Trade Center disaster site is a gaping hole spanning several square blocks.
New York City has come to understand that people need to see it, that visitors from across the country and around the world want to show their respect at the place where nearly 3,000 people died on Sept. 11.
Toward that end, the city has built a viewing platform next to St. Paul’s Church just east of the blocks where the twin towers stood. It will be up at least through the summer and is open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.
Tickets are needed to enter the platform, but they’re free and easy to get. They are available at ticket booths on the dock at the South Street Seaport, on the East River at Fulton and South Streets about eight blocks from the platform.
The tickets are time-stamped, giving you access to the platform for a half hour. You can’t request a particular time; you are simply handed tickets for what’s available next, with 250 tickets allotted for each half hour. On a recent Friday, for instance, people in line at 10:30 a.m. were given tickets for the noon to 12:30 p.m. slot.
The ticket booths, which serve the seaport museum, are open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and the lines move quickly. You’re allowed up to two tickets per person. You can get tickets for 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. by lining up the day before you want to visit the platform.
Tickets in hand, walk east on Fulton, past the fish market and oodles of street peddlers. Many are hawking tacky, if not tasteless, souvenirs, from “Ground Zero” ball caps to World Trade Center snow globes and disaster post cards.
As you approach the viewing platform you’ll see the collective memorials left by visitors. Take time to walk around St. Paul’s Church, where the black cast-iron fence is barely visible behind homemade banners, pictures of victims, flowers, children’s drawings, flags, T-shirts and caps left by firefighters, police officers and other workers from across the country and many other tributes.
Along the plywood platform walls, thousands of people have signed their names and scrawled words of sorrow and compassion. If you want to add your sentiments, for best results bring a felt-tip pen along.
As you exit the platform you’ll see a striking life-size sculpture of 11 men in hardhats on an iron beam. Italian Artist Sergio Furnari created the 6,800-pound work to honor the immigrants who built New York’s skyscrapers.
Though the piece is based on a 1932 photograph, four decades before the World Trade Center was built, Furnari has placed his sculpture near the site. A sign says “A tribute to the hard hats at the World Trade Center: America’s forgotten heroes.”
New York City has come to understand that people need to see it, that visitors from across the country and around the world want to show their respect at the place where nearly 3,000 people died on Sept. 11.
Toward that end, the city has built a viewing platform next to St. Paul’s Church just east of the blocks where the twin towers stood. It will be up at least through the summer and is open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.
Tickets are needed to enter the platform, but they’re free and easy to get. They are available at ticket booths on the dock at the South Street Seaport, on the East River at Fulton and South Streets about eight blocks from the platform.
The tickets are time-stamped, giving you access to the platform for a half hour. You can’t request a particular time; you are simply handed tickets for what’s available next, with 250 tickets allotted for each half hour. On a recent Friday, for instance, people in line at 10:30 a.m. were given tickets for the noon to 12:30 p.m. slot.
The ticket booths, which serve the seaport museum, are open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and the lines move quickly. You’re allowed up to two tickets per person. You can get tickets for 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. by lining up the day before you want to visit the platform.
Tickets in hand, walk east on Fulton, past the fish market and oodles of street peddlers. Many are hawking tacky, if not tasteless, souvenirs, from “Ground Zero” ball caps to World Trade Center snow globes and disaster post cards.
As you approach the viewing platform you’ll see the collective memorials left by visitors. Take time to walk around St. Paul’s Church, where the black cast-iron fence is barely visible behind homemade banners, pictures of victims, flowers, children’s drawings, flags, T-shirts and caps left by firefighters, police officers and other workers from across the country and many other tributes.
Along the plywood platform walls, thousands of people have signed their names and scrawled words of sorrow and compassion. If you want to add your sentiments, for best results bring a felt-tip pen along.
As you exit the platform you’ll see a striking life-size sculpture of 11 men in hardhats on an iron beam. Italian Artist Sergio Furnari created the 6,800-pound work to honor the immigrants who built New York’s skyscrapers.
Though the piece is based on a 1932 photograph, four decades before the World Trade Center was built, Furnari has placed his sculpture near the site. A sign says “A tribute to the hard hats at the World Trade Center: America’s forgotten heroes.”