survivor stairs

An Uncertain Fate for 'Survivor' Stairs

By Carl Glassman
SEPT. 1 , 2006

Standing on the Vesey Street side of the World Trade Center site, Richard Zimbler peered through the double fencing that stood between him and the concrete ruin he is trying to save. There, on the northern edge of the 16-acre void, are the stairs to nowhere, concrete remnants of the staircase that led from the trade center’s Austin J. Tobin Plaza to Vesey Street. On Sept. 11, they provided the path to safety for hundreds of workers fleeing the burning north tower. Now, they are all that is left, above ground, of the World Trade Center.

And they are in the way. Larry Silverstein’s Tower 2 will be built there, and Zimbler, a member of a group called the World Trade Center Survivors Network, insists that there must be a way for them to remain on the site.

“Looking at it, I feel the weight of history, and the sadness. It reminds me of all the horror of Sept. 11,” said Zimbler, a Tribeca resident who was working in an office on Church Street, across from the towers, on the day of the attack. “But at the same time it also has beauty to me. It’s so symbolic of strength and the will to survive.”

“What’s the point of preserving it?” he asked rhetorically. “The point is so we can tell the story to future generations. Clearly, you can’t tell the story if it’s chopped up in five pieces and locked up somewhere.”

Despite its beat-up appearance, the surviving section of the staircase—60 feet tall, 20 feet long, and weighing 175 tons—was largely unscathed on Sept. 11. Its wrecking resulted from the recovery operation at the site. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority halted the demolition because the structure became an access point for rebuilding the subway station for the 1/9 lines.
Only the upper part of the staircase, with its smooth granite facing, is well preserved. Most of the relic, though clearly recognizable as stairs, is little more than battered, concrete slabs.

Only the upper part of the staircase, with its smooth granite facing, is well preserved. Most of the relic, though clearly recognizable as stairs, is little more than battered, concrete slabs.

“Nonetheless, it is an authentic reminder of the World Trade Center that once stood here,” wrote the National Trust for Historic Preservation in its designation of the staircase as one of America’s 11 most endangered historic places.

In a recent presentation to Community Board 1, Peter Rinaldi, of the Port Authority, said the authority is studying three options: leave the staircase in place; move it intact; or disassemble it and move it in parts.

Leaving it in place, he said, would necessitate suspending the stairs 90 feet in the air during excavation for Tower 2 and the PATH terminal. “A daunting task,” he called it.

As for moving the object in one piece, “I don’t think it’s feasible to pick up something like this with a crane,” Rinaldi said. “So that means we would have to jack it up somehow, find something you could roll it on to, and then you’d have to know where you’re going to transport it and store it.”

Rinaldi said it might be possible to disassemble and save the upper portion of the structure, which has the only pieces that are in their original state.

CB1 passed a resolution in July urging the Port Authority to avoid any action on the stairs that would delay reconstruction of the site or reduce the retail space planned for Tower 2.

Before the vote, board members and other speakers expressed differing opinions on the value of the stairs and the cost of preserving them.

“This has the potential to slow things down,” said board member Bill Love. “It’s right within the footprint of Tower 2, and it would be in place of the retail on Tower 2.” When preservationists call for saving the remnant, Love said, they fail to mention the price.

John Delaportas, founder of the Coalition to Save West Street, a Battery Park City residents group, was more blunt. “It’s no more significant than any other debris that was hauled off,” he said.

CB1 member Marc Ameruso disagreed. “We’re so caught up in the economics and the retail and what stores are going to be there,” he said. “To label it as not historic or significant, I think we lose our perspective.”

“If economic value trumps all concerns over that staircase, if that’s the sense of this community right now,” Zimbler said to the community board, “then shame on us.”

For some of those in the World Trade Center Survivors Network, the value of the stairs is both personal and priceless. Tom Canavan, a securities specialist who worked on the 47th floor of the north tower, walked down to the lobby concourse after the first plane struck and was buried in rubble there when the south tower was attacked. Freeing himself, he walked toward Church Street to escape raining debris and plunging bodies. But that side of the plaza had caved in.

“I just looked to the left and I remembered, here was the escalator going down to Vesey Street. I made my way over there and two Port Authority employees waved me over and I ended up going down those steps.”

By the time Canavan got to the street, possibly the last person to make it down the stairs, Tower 2 collapsed. “Without those stairs being there, I’d be gone,” he said.

The fate of the stairs lies in the hands of the Port Authority and Silverstein Properties.

A statement issued by Dara McQuillan, a spokesman for Silverstein, offered encouragement to those who want to save the stairs in some way. But it did not say how it would be done. “We would like to see the staircase preserved and believe that it can be,” the statement said.

Zimbler noted that the architect of the new Tower 2, Norman Foster, has found ways to incorporate historical elements in other buildings he has designed, and insisted that Foster can do it again here. “Somebody that brilliant can think of something,” he said.

For Zimbler, the reasons for making the effort were vividly clear as he stood with a reporter at the fence on Vesey Street. Nearby, a middle-aged woman in a blonde ponytail gazed in the direction of the remnant, and quietly wept.