VOLUME 27, NUMBER 7
SEPTEMBER 11-SEPTEMBER 24, 2014
THE GENERATION THAT BARELY REMEMBERS 9/11 BY D U SI CA SU E M A LE S E V IC ophia Gasparro was in preschool when the planes hit the Twin Towers 13 years ago. “I think it is a really interesting thing to grow up in the aftermath,” said Gasparro, now a 16-year-old senior at Millennium High School. “I feel it is a real thing around all the time.” Gasparro lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, but wanted to go to high school in the Financial District. Millennium High School was founded in 2002 after 9/11 to bring youth back into the neighborhood, she said in a phone interview, and the school’s mascot is a Phoenix, the mythical creature that rises from the ashes. Her family spends Sept. 11th with her mother’s good friend, who lost her firefighter husband that day. Gasparro says that even when she goes to college next fall, she will make sure to call her mom’s friend. She and three of her friends at Millennium spoke to Downtown Express about their views on 9/11 — all said they had vague memories of it in separate phone interviews, even though they were only 3 or 4 at the time. Gasparro is interested in studying international relations and said that the events of 9/11 are present when they talk about the U.S. Patriot Act or the Iraq war in her history and government classes. Deena Finegold, 17 and a senior, was also at preschool on 9/11. Her father had dropped her off at school and was going to drive her mother to work in the Financial District — her office building was right across from the Twin Towers. While on the
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Downtown Express photo by Milo Hess
It continues to get busier around One World Trade Center, which officials hope will open this year.
Editor’s Letter
The change is real this year at the World Trade Center
T
B Y J OSH ROGERS
he funny thing is the inevitable World Trade Center briefings every September didn’t seem much different this year. The optimism was the same, so was the mutual admiration, the congratulations, and all of the talk of working well together. The difference this year is there was much more truth to many of the proclamations. For the first time since the 2001
attack, part of the 16-acre site is open to the public, thanks to the opening of the 9/11 Museum in May. Yes, the memorial plaza opened three years ago, but the ticketing system denied strolling residents, commuters and the wandering tourist access to the site. For better or worse — and some nearby residents say things have recently gotten worse — a large part of the site is now open. “It is no longer a plan for the future, it’s a real place,” architect
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Daniel Libeskind, who developed the site plan, said Tuesday at a briefing in 4 World Trade Center. Libeskind, a Downtown resident who defi nitely doesn’t agree with some of his naysaying neighbors, said he walks through the memorial almost every day to get from his home to his office. But surprisingly, even with the addition of roughly eight acres of Continued on page 6