Divided We Stand: A Biography of the World Trade Center

302 Pages·2011·2.37 MB·English

by  Eric Darton

history D
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R With a neW introDuction and afterWorD by the author
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“a fine social history of the towers.”—aDam Gopnik, The new Yorker
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N
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hen the World trade Center was erected at the Hudson River’s edge, it forever
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changed the character of the American city. In Divided We Stand, Eric Darton
chronicles the life of this billion-dollar building, using it as a lens through i
v D i v i D e D
which to view the broader twentieth-century trend toward urbanized, global culture. Drawing
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on political, social, and personal history, Darton pioneers a new, hybrid genre of architectural
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biography, revealing the convergence of four volatile elements in contemporary urban life: super-
tall buildings, financial speculation, globalization, and terrorism. e
ten years after the towers were destroyed in a terrorist attack the story of the building of D
the World trade Center still resonates with readers of architecture, social history, and urban W e S t a n D
planning, as well as with anyone who experienced with wonder or chagrin, the poetics of a W
particular place. Now with a new introduction and afterword, Divided We Stand remains a
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meticulously researched historical account and a contemporary indictment of the prevailing

urban order—a book that invites us, wherever we may live, to re-imagine the city as we know it.
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“A compelling cautionary tale that deserves to be read by [those] who care to understand
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what is at stake when irresponsible power is permitted to design the world to its liking.” A Biography of the
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—toDD Gitlin, The american Prospect
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World Trade CenTer
5.625 x 9.25”
“Eric Darton recounts the little-known history of how and why the World trade Center was B: 13/16”
built and in the process reveals layers of city history obscured by popular myth. Darton
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demonstrates how what started as a rail-freight mission evolved into a real estate project, how
o A BASIC
it accelerated the erosion of the city’s manufacturing base and decline in port activity and r B “an engaging book, and often beautifully written,
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why this is an important early chapter in the city’s romance with large-scale urban renewal l i intercutting vignettes of local history with a chronicle
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planning. A must for understanding New York both before and after the towers came down.” T g of the political, ideological, and financial tides that
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r once swept through the city, leaving the trade Center
—roberta branDeS Gratz, author of The Battle for Gotham a 4/COLOR
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p in their wake.” —THE Wall STrEET Journal
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ERIC DARtON is a New York City-born cultural historian and fiction writer. Ce y o FINISH:
n f gritty matte
$16.99 US / $19.99 CAN T th
Cover design by Alyssa Stepien e e
Cover photograph © Rue des Archives / ISBN 978-0-465-02765-1 51699 r
the Granger Collection, NYC
E R I C D A R t O N
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
9 780465 027651
www.basicbooks.com
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PRAISE FOR DIVIDED WE STAND
“Eric Darton’s Divided We Standis a model not only of writing but of citizen-
ship. It fuses analytical brilliance with personal feeling. He shows us how to
confront all that has been done to our town, and how to live through it and lay
claim to the city as our own.” —Marshall Berman, author of All That Is Solid
Melts into Air
“A mesmerizing history of how deep-seated struggles over architectural
aspirations, economics, city planning and the exigencies of democracy under-
gird the New York cityscape.” –Publishers Weekly
“More than an eloquent meditation on one of New York’s most recogniz-
able architectural markers, Eric Darton’s Divided We Stand pops with lumi-
nous insights into the social, economic, and cultural contradictions of a city
and a time.” —Stuart Ewen, author of PR!
“A zesty, succinct contextualization of the World Trade Center, its seami-
ness and semiotics.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A riveting drama.” —Time Out New York
“Darton brings an uncanny vividness to the building itself . . . it is a tes-
tament to his writing that a building so formally disengaged from everything
around it could become the subject of a book that informs us so richly about
the city.” —Choice
“Informative and critical. Darton acutely analyses the political back-
ground of the scheme, a pet project of banker David Rockefeller and his
brother Nelson.” —Times Literary Supplement
“Divided We Standgoes beyond the World Trade Center’s iconography to
look at its influence on the geography of lower Manhattan. Under that lies an-
other story entirely, one that he tells in rewarding detail: how the combined
forces of government and private institutions, money, power, and New York
City’s changing role in the economy endowed the WTC with such weighty
authority.” —City Limits
“An entertaining, highly informative architectural biography of New York
City’s most recognizable architectural structure, critiquing it as a symbol of
the disastrous consequences of undemocratic planning and development and
charting the history and impact of Manhattan’s architecture on international
and local life.” —Book News
“An amusing and insightful look at urban architecture, politics, and
commerce.” —Booklist
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D I V I D E D
W E S TA N D
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ALSO BY ERIC DARTON
Free City: A Novel
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D I V I D E D
W E S T A N D
A Biography of New York’s
World Trade Center
E R I C D A R T O N
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
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Several selections from Eric Darton’s journals in the afterword were previously published in
slightly different forms by Designer/Builder Magazine and Hunger Mountain Literary Re-
view. The essay “Minoru Yamasaki, Mohammad Atta and Our World Trade Center” first ap-
peared in OpenDemocracyin October 2001. It subsequently was published in the anthology
After the World Trade Center: Rethinking New York City, edited by Michael Sorkin and
Sharon Zukin (Routledge, 2002) and a literary review, American Letters & Commentary,14
(2002). Its writing was triggered by an article in the October 10, 2001, New York Times, “The
Mastermind; A Portrait of the Terrorist: From Shy Child to Single-Minded Killer,” by Jim
Yardley with Neil MacFarquhar and Paul Zeilbauer.
Illustration credits
Frontispiece: Photo by Frances Roberts/NYT Pictures.
Tower in clouds. Paul Strand, Wall Street, New York 1915.© 1971, Aperture Foundation,
Inc., Paul Strand Archive.
Skyscrapers of lower Manhattan: From King’s Views of New York, 1908–1909. Courtesy of
the New York Public Library.
Picture puzzle: Collection of author.
Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and Mayor John Lindsay with model for Battery Park City photo:
New York Daily News, May 12, 1966.
Construction, c. 1968 photo: Thomas Airviews. Courtesy of the New York Historical Society.
Tower and water, photo: Todd Watts, World Trade Center 3, 1972. Courtesy of Todd Watts.
View of city photo: Eric Darton, 1999.
Bacardi Limón ad: Courtesy of Bacardi-Martini U.S.A., Inc.
The Space Between: Photo by Philip Greenberg / NYT Pictures
Copyright © 1999, 2011 by Eric Darton
Hardcover first published in 1999 by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
This paperback edition published in 2011 by Basic Books
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be re-
produced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books,
10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022–5299.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
HC ISBN 978-0-465-01701-0
Pbk ISBN 978-0-465-02765-1
Ebook ISBN 978-0-465-02816-0
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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To Frank G. Jennings and Franklin C. Kehrig;
and to my grandfather Meyer Kroll,
who loved the utopia of the Automat.
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C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments ix
Note to the Reader xi
Part I
1 Fair Warnings 2
2 Maneuvers Toward a City of Towers 18
3 Port Authority Rules 38
4 Billion-Dollar Baby 60
Part II
5 The Coming Thing 88
6 The Thing Itself 112
7 Being There 144
8 Ripple Effects 164
The Space Between 188
Afterword 225
Selected Bibliography 263
Index 271