Authorities can try to get people to refer to it as One World Trade Center, but everyone calls it the Freedom Tower. I do, Chris Rock does…everyone calls it that. In any event it finally opened today, all 94 stories and 1776 feet of it, and man, what a butt-ugly monument to mediocre visions. The original design by Daniel Libeskind was, to me, elegant and off-center beautiful, but “security concerns” raised by the New York Police Department and Governor Pataki resulted in a new hypodermic needle design of architect David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Nine years ago N.Y. Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff described the obelisk-shaped Childs tower as “a gigantic glass paperweight with a toothpick stuck on top.” Last weekend Chris Rock called it the “never goin’ in there tower”….funny.
The original Daniel Libeskind Freedom Tower, which would have been beautiful if the NYPD and then-Governor George Pataki hadn’t stepped in and fucked everything up.
