(This personal posting is not related to our regular topics of digital communities, mobile phones, covergence, advertising etc.)
Before an interest in technology and marketing, ever since I was 6 years old I wanted to be an architect. What I loved most of all were skyscrapers and suspension bridges. Born in Finland, that is a nation particularly devoid of both tall buildings and iconic long bridges. In 1967 our family spent a few months in New York City and I visited what was then the tallest building in the world, the Empire State Building. I loved it. I thought it was amazing that from street at ground level you could not see the top of the building (which mostly is due to the shape of the top of that landmark). I also soon learned that if I really want to be near the tallest buildings and iconic suspension bridges, I'd have to live in New York at some point in my life.
As my youthful passion was skyscrapers, I also of course learned of the interests to build the world's tallest building, the World Trade Center, as a twin towers modern building, to the Southern tip of Manhattan. I saw drawings of the building and then images of it as it stood from 1970. I loved modern architecture, and that twin towers form was one I admired from its inception. For me it became the definition of New York. More than the Statue of Liberty, or the Empire State Building, or the Chrysler Building or the United Nations building.
I did not get to visit the World Trade Center until as a young adult, when I was studying in Pennsylvania and visited New York in 1984. In 1987 I moved to New York City myself, and then for the following 8 years the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were part of my daily view of my skyline.
I visited the observation deck and that to me was mildly disappointing. The Empire State Building actually had a better view, because it is in the middle of the island and you really felt you were on top of the world. The World Trade Center view was more like standing on the edge of the world than on top of it. To me whether seeing the towers from the highway arriving from JFK airport, or driving in from New Jersey, or walking down Eigth Avenue, or from the top of the Empire State Building, or from the observation deck on the top of my last apartment in New York, a 36 storey building in midtown, was always the best view of the Towers. To see them. This was New York. No other city had such a monument.
I loved that building. There is a big subway station underneath the lot, and lots of shopping in and around it, and I would visit that area of Manhattan at least once per month for the eight years I lived in New York. When I had visitors, I would take them on the Staten Island ferry which leaves from a harbor where the towers were not visible. Then as the ferry departed, the 50-storey-tall Wall Street skyscrapers appeared first, and then moments later, the giant twin towers seemed to grow almost menacingly above the Wall Street area buildings. From the bay you could then see that the Twin Towers were twice as tall as their nearest rival buildings.
I left New York City for Finland in 1995. By that time the first attack (the bomb in the basement of the tower) had already happened, so we all knew the Towers were an active terrorist target. Still nobody was prepared for what happened..
We all know what happened on September 11, 2001. I want to send my thoughts to all of my friends who were involved or closely touched by that day. The boss at my first employer, Gilbert Harrison of Financo, used to have an office on the 102nd floor of the 110 floor World Trade Center. This was a few years before I joined his company, but he - and many of my other Financo colleagues - worked in that building for years. My second employer, OCSNY, supplied computer networking solutions for many customers in the building, and our staff would visit the building regularly. And from my student days at St John's University, the brother of one of my best friends is a New York City cop, and was on duty that day, and lost many friends.
One of my first business trips to New York was a little over a month after the attack, and I could still smell the dust and visited of course "ground zero". I - like I am sure all who had known that building - felt a profound sense of loss. That was a truly iconic building.
So in a small way of remembrance and tribute, I have always loved that building.
In my personal photographs I have two of the Towers. The first is when my cousin Jari Lundgren visited me in New York in 1989. He is here waving at me down below, taking my picture of the towers from below.
The second image is at my departure from New York. I left in March of 1995, but in the winter of 1994-5, I took my Audi and went on a tour of Pennsylvania, upstate New York, New Jersey, Virginia etc, to go visit many friends and say goodbye.
On that trip, from the Brooklyn side of New York, I took this night time picture of me, my car and of course the Twin Towers.
Nowadays watching any movie about New York that was released more than five years ago, will feature the World Trade Center, and every time a small part of me weeps inside.
We lost a beautiful building five years ago, one that I had admired from before it was built.
And obviously on this day of remembrance I don't mean to ignore the three thousand people who died, and not to ignore the attack on the Pentagon, and the fourth airplane that was (luckily) unable to hit its unknown target.
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