American Experience
The Center of the World: Interview Outtakes

Carol Willis:
video | transcript

On Rebuilding at Ground Zero 1 -- Opposition to the World Trade Center2 -- Tall Buildings3 -- The Public's Opinion of Skyscrapers4 -- On Rebuilding at Ground Zero

Mike Wallace Pete Hamill Carol Willis Guy Tozzoli
Leslie Robertson Camilo José Vergara Niall Ferguson Philippe Petit
William Langewiesche Ed Koch Mario Cuomo Ada Louise Huxtable

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I think now, post-9/11, that there is a desire to see an image on the skyline which inspires pride, which makes people identify once again with a unique image of New York rather than a banal image of the skyline anywhere. That kind of depreciated identity that lower Manhattan skyline seems to have right now, I think, fills people with a desire maybe not to see the Trade Center specifically revived, but a kind of image of New York retrieved, so that people feel that they possess the place again, that they know where they are. And I wouldn't have expected that to be a part of the New York psyche five or ten years ago, because I think there's been an animus against tall buildings in this last decade. But now I think there's a sense that these buildings belong to us all, instead of belonging to individual investors; that they're part of our collective experience of this city and part of our collective identity. And that's one thing I think we lost when the towers fell, and that we want to reclaim again as a city.