Viewing Fence Will Encircle WTC Site

By Carl Glassman

It will be months before they decide what will go on the World Trade Center site. But now there’s no mystery to what will go around it.

The Church Street segment of a "viewing wall," which will eventually encircle those 16 acres as they are being rebuilt, is expected to go up in September. Once completed, the fence will be the frame and focal point around Ground Zero for years to come.

Last month, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. (LMDC), the agency charged with rebuilding Downtown, began taking comments on the design concept for the wall, which will protect the multitude of Ground Zero visitors while giving them a close view as well. First proposed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as a towering, opaque construction fence shielding the vast pit from the public eye, the new design is intended to engage the crowds drawn to the site. "The issue is visibility," said Rick Bell, executive director of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and a member of the volunteer planning group, New York New Visions, that came up with the new design. "The reason people are going to see Ground Zero is to get some connection or closure to it, which means what’s needed is the opposite of a fence."

The wall, which could be reconfigured as the site changes, will stand 13 feet high and run the perimeter of Church, Liberty, West and Vesey streets.

Along Church and Liberty streets, a transparent steel mesh fabric would be built into the fence’s steel frame to allow viewing. Those areas would be inset into alcoves, to keep visitors out of the pedestrian flow.

The wall would also contain a series of white fiberglass panels. Some would give information and history about the site, others would serve as "tribute panels," erasable slates on which visitors can write messages and leave notes and memorabilia that would be periodically removed.

The plan also calls for a wide public plaza along Church Street, possibly up to 40 feet deep, to accommodate the thousands of visitors to the area as well as some 60,000 commuters who will be using the PATH station.
Five view corridors along Church Street would be marked by 13-foot glowing cubes.

Andrew Winters, the LMDC’s director of design and development, showed the concept last month to his agency’s advisory councils and board of directors. On May 6 he was expected to present it to a public meeting of Community Board 1’s Land Use Committee. (See Community Calendar)

With the debris removal operation nearing an end, Winters said that he sees the wall as a symbol of transition.
"It’s partly a way of moving on," he said in an interview, "and partly a way of recognizing that people who come to the site are not looking at the remains of the World Trade Center, they’re not looking at a recovery operation, they’re looking at a site. And what’s going to happen on that site we don’t know yet."

Winters said the Port Authority, which will retake control of the property from the city’s Department of Design and Construction when the recovery effort is complete, wants the Church Street section of the wall, including the pedestrian plaza, completed by September.

At his presentation before the LMDC’s Residents Advisory Council, Winters heard concerns about tourist bottlenecks and view corridors blocked by the glowing cubes.

There were also worries that the wall would turn into a makeshift memorial, much like the nearby fence around St. Paul’s Chapel.

"I think I’ll shoot myself if I see one more teddy bear in the rain," said one resident.

But Manhattan Youth director Bob Townley disagreed. "I don’t think that a lot of people are necessarily tired of memorials and teddy bears," he said. "We have to sacrifice a little bit of monotony."

Winters recalled that the solid construction fence around the bombing site in Oklahoma City became a major shrine and the focus of debate among victims’ families over whether it should be preserved as a de facto memorial.

"If your idea is to not put anything there at all, forget it," said Winters. "It’s not going to happen. So you take what you think is going to happen and control it."

Winters said he expects to present a final design soon after receiving comments from the public this month.