Ghost Riders in the Skyline
Looking Away from the World Trade Center
BY JERRY SALTZ
The New York skyline is New York. Or it was. That swelling, jig-jaggy
camel-backed saw-blade profile going from south to north, from the
Battery, instantly rising at Wall Street, then ascending to its
monolithic twin-heights, rapidly falling into the old cast-iron and
brick warehouses of Tribeca and SoHo, plateauing in the Village with a
slice-shaped ping at the Flatiron Building, steeply spiking to the
majestic beacon of the Empire State Building, falling slightly, then
rising to the dense-pack porcupine towers of Midtown, right through the
high-rent apartment buildings of the Upper West and Upper East Sides,
north of Central Park ....
.....
Come what may, right now on some psychic level New York has no skyline.
The spirit that was in the skyline has fallen to the street, into the
neighborhoods with all their rich, thrilling, insane activity. The New
York skyline has come back down to earth—where all skylines begin.
Be that as it may, we remain in shock. Flying into New York can look
like flying into Houston or Cincinnati or Frankfurt. No matter what they
build, at least one day New Yorkers, America, and the rest of the world
will have something to look at rather than only something to look away
from. This period of looking away, of knowing that we didn't know what
we had until it was gone, has been excruciating.
cont'd....
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