Survivors’ Stairway May Survive

The Survivors’ Stairway, previously thought to be threatened, may be preserved in some way after all:

There is an extremely slim chance that the staircase will be left in place while the foundations for Tower 2 are excavated around it. There is a greater chance that the 21-foot-high, 64-foot-long staircase will be moved in its entirety, perhaps ending up in another location at ground zero, perhaps returning to the Tower 2 site.

“If the decision is that it does stay there, that’s a challenge,” Lord Foster said. “We’ll work with that challenge.”

Robert Silman of Robert Silman Associates, an engineer who is preparing cost estimates for the New York Landmarks Conservancy, a preservation group, said either approach would be feasible.

To keep the staircase on site during construction, it would have to be turned into a 91-foot-high mesa in the middle of an excavation pit, stabilized by X-shaped bracing. Mr. Silman said the job of holding up the staircase would be made somewhat easier because one existing support already extended to bedrock.

To move the whole staircase, Mr. Silman said, three layers of steel beams could be inserted below the structure to create both a platform and a track system. The structure could be cut away from its surroundings by water jets, jacked up, rolled out along the track beams and then lowered onto enormous dollies.

A more likely outcome — at least at this moment — is that the surface of the staircase, which still has original stone treads in its upper flight, would be cut apart from the big bulkhead that contains it, divided into sections for easier transportation and storage, then reassembled later as a memorial artifact.

Ouroussoff Speaks

He’s not particularly impressed:

The designs unveiled last week for three sleek glass towers at ground zero rise above the mediocrity we have come to expect from a planning process driven by political opportunism, backdoor deal-making and commercial greed.

But for those who cling to the idea that the site’s haunting history demands a leap of imagination, the towers illustrate how low our expectations have sunk since the city first resolved to rebuild there in a surge of determination just weeks after 9/11.

Designed by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Fumihiko Maki, the towers are solid, competent work by three first-rate talents. But each of these architects is capable of far more. Lord Foster has shown us better work recently in Midtown Manhattan, where his faceted Hearst Tower plunges through the top of an existing 1920’s building with impressive force.

Architectural merit aside, the most telling features of the ground zero master plan remain those in which the city’s anxieties bubble up to the surface: in the paranoia implied by David Childs’s heavily armored Freedom Tower, for example, or the defiant grandiosity of Santiago Calatrava’s transportation hub. By comparison, the three new towers are about forgetting. Conservative and coolly corporate, they could be imagined in just about any Western capital, paralleling the effacement of history in the remade, blatantly commercial Potsdamer Platz in Berlin or La Défense, the incongruous office-tower district just outside Paris.

. . .

It is far from clear that these three towers will be built in their current form. It is almost inevitable that the Police Department will raise security concerns, challenging the abundance of glass at street level, for example.

But at least we are beginning to see a real architectural composition emerge, one that for all its flaws, represents a serious effort to raise the level of conversation at ground zero. The question is whether our fortunes slowly turning, or whether cynical politics will erode the genuine merits of the designs before us today.

Nicolai Ouroussoff, Help Me Understand What This All Means!

After near–unanimous dislike of the project’s intitial designs, a new plan is unveiled:

The developer of the new World Trade Center unveiled the designs yesterday for three gargantuan skyscrapers at ground zero that would serve as steppingstones to the Freedom Tower and, with it, remake the New York skyline.

Each building has a different famous architect — Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, both of London, and Fumihiko Maki of Tokyo — and a distinct design. Known simply as Towers 2, 3 and 4, they would occupy three parcels between Church and Greenwich Streets. Together with the PATH terminal by Santiago Calatrava, they would be the trade center’s front door to the rest of downtown, with the signature Freedom Tower rising to the west.

Taken in a single sweep, the designs presented yesterday by the developer, Larry A. Silverstein, offered the most comprehensive picture to date of what the finished trade center might — just might — look like in 2011 or 2012, if development unfolds as planned.

That is something it has stubbornly refused to do so far. Mr. Silverstein still needs tenants and financing. And the Police Department, which will review the security, has only just received the plans. Its objections to the original Freedom Tower forced a redesign last summer. Foundation work finally started in March.

Odds and ends:

Construction of Tower 2 will require the removal of the Vesey Street staircase, also called the “survivors’ stairway,” which is the only aboveground remnant of the original trade center that still stands where it did on 9/11.

That answers that question . . .

Plus, there’s this charming feature:

In the 146,000 square feet of retail space at the base [of Tower 4], Mr. Maki has proposed a multilevel public chamber at Liberty Street, through which commuters bound for Wall Street will pass. He has also proposed a restaurant overlooking the memorial plaza, offering the public an elevated vantage.

Unsafe At Any Deed

That million-dollar luxury conversion you just bought in DUMBO is a dangerous firetrap:

In addition to a leaky roof and a substandard ventilation system, the luxury Bridge St. building owned by scandal-ridden developer Joshua Guttman would burn to ashes in no time because of a host of fire hazards — including a wooden parking garage and wooden staircases.

Exposed wires, virtually no fireproofing, and drywall that would burn twice as fast as the minimum standard required by the city fire code were attacked yesterday by condo owners who paid as much as $1 million to live there.

“I really believe that if there is a fire and people are not awake or don’t smell it, they aren’t getting out alive,” said attorney Adam Leitman Bailey, who filed a $36 million lawsuit on behalf of 38 condo owners.

Guttman is the owner of the Greenpoint Terminal Market — which burned down last spring under mysterious circumstances.

According to the report by Rand Engineering & Architecture, many of the walls are made of drywall and so flimsy it would take just one hour to turn them into ash.

. . .

Mark Shacket, a Broadway show manager who moved into the building in 2004, said that besides shoddy structural work, one of his biggest fears is escaping a fire.

“It’s sort of like you have to close your eyes and pray,” said Shacket, 34. “I’m at the end of a dead-end hallway so you just have to hope the sprinkler system is up to code.”

Guttman, who has owned five buildings that have caught on fire since 1992, did not return calls for comment.

See also: Greenpoint Terminal Market Fire.

See, The Thing Is Was . . .

If you found it problematic getting from Manhattan to Brooklyn on the Lexington Avenue line yesterday, rest assured that it was only this way because of a fraction of an inch:

Work crews involved in a major overhaul of the Wall St. station on the Lexington Ave. line installed temporary ceiling beams and panels too low — causing some trains to scrape against them.

The Transit Authority slowed trains before finally halting service for four hours so repairs could be made.

No. 4 train service was suspended in both directions, from Nevins St. to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall, about 2 p.m.

“Rider safety was never in jeopardy because of this incident,” TA spokesman Charles Seaton said. “It was just a fraction of an inch too low. It never came in contact with the front of any train, only certain sections of the roof, on a limited number of cars.”