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Earlier today, Port Authority chairman Anthony Coscia explained that the agency will be referring to the tallest building at Ground Zero not as Freedom Tower but as its legal address, 1 World Trade Center. The Daily News reports Coscia as saying, "As we market the building, we will insure that it is presented in the best possible way - and 1 World Trade Center is the address that we're using. It's the one that is easiest for people to identify with - and frankly, we've gotten a very interested and warm reception to it."
Is this the Port Authority's way of detaching itself from the protracted design process for the skyscraper and more than a little bit of jingoism? The tower's 1,776-foot (with antenna) design was revealed in 2003 and dubbed the Freedom Tower by Governor Pataki then also, only to be re-designed a few times and have its architects change. According to the Observer, "the name has never been popular with the Spitzer and Paterson administrations and it seems to have been slowly (or delicately) drifting off official references."
Coscia also said, "There are a lot of buildings that have popular names. If the Freedom Tower is the popular name as people think about this, that will be the choice of the people and how they think of downtown. On the other hand, this is a piece of real estate. It has an address. Legally, it is 1 World Trade Center." A tourist from North Carolina disagreed, telling the Daily News, "New Yorkers, you live here! This is part of your everyday lives. For us out-of-towners, it's not like that. Those buildings must be remembered differently. They need to stand out."
Coscia also announced that Chinese firm Vantone will be leasing 190,000 square feet of 1 World Trade Center, the first non-government tenant in the building that is expected to be complete in 2013.
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Good for the Port Authority for naming it 1WTC.
I've always thought Freedom Tower sounded corny and generated by politicians in a crappy attempt to make people feel better. Same goes to Ground Zero too. It was the World Trade Center and it will always be the World Trade Center.
i agree with thenebula, and as far as that tourist is concerned, who really looks at office buildings as tourist attractions anyway? stay in times square where you belong
Can I get a third opinion on the name?
freedom tower was an unsuitable and orwellian name. how does an office building with an armored base have anything to do with freedom?
let's call it the 'unicorn tower' for sentimental reasons and the single antenna.
Yeah, the word "freedom" is really corny and overrated. I hope you lose it one day.
Yeah, the word "freedom" is really corny and overrated. I hope you lose it one day.
Wahhh! We're not gonna get to keep an expresion of post 9/11 jingoism! Wahhhh!
Actually "freedom" to me is not about 9/11. Never has been. I was refering to the use of the word. Freedom to me is about Martin Luther king and the civil rights movement. Its about Nelson Mandela. Its about Gandhi. Its about Abraham Lincoln. Its about Winston Churchill. Its about Bob Marley. I know the word freedom is not pc now and "corny" but all of these people mentioned I'm sure would disagree. Some having paid the ultimate price for "freedom".
Dude, it's a fucking office building.
FTW
Bob Marley = Freedom?
Really?
He died for freedom or from smoking too much pot?
Actually he died because his religion did allow him to have a surgery.
Freedom Tower sucks and always has, a kind of Bush-speak bullshit we should be rid of.
But I'm not sure if I'm marketing the building that One World Trade Center is the best way to go either. It's kind of like naming a new cruise ship the Titanic.
Congrats to the Port Authority for showing some rare common sense. I work downtown and to this day people ask me where the World Trade Center is. Now, blessedly, they can continue to ask me where WTC is and never have to ask about the Bush-propaganda-named Freedom Tower.
It's just to attract foreign tenants from countries where 'Freedom' isn't so important, like China.
Dear Tourist from North Carolina,
Dude ... shut up.
Love,
NYC
How 'bout this: we'll officially name it "Freedom Tower" the moment when one is allowed to sit in its courtyard and light up a big fat spliff w/o fear of legal consequence.
adeez FTW
Maybe World Trade Center 1 is more appropriate considering this country seems to love money more than its freedom. Bush might have raped and piledged the word "freedom" but the real crime is the idea losing its value. Voted for Obama by the way.
Bless you Anthony Coscia, Bless you.
NARWHAL TOWER YEAAAAHHHHH!!!
As a native New Yorker who was born around the time the twin towers were completed, reading this somehow made me feel better. It's like something which was taken away was brought back, even if it's just a name.
Also as a native New Yorker, please tourist from North Carolina, don't ever move here, we have enough of your kind here already.
Also as a native New Yorker, I wish your parents or grandparents hadn't moved here, just so there wouldn't be another arrogant "native New Yorker" who thinks his own birth within the city makes him something special.
Well, to counter the blandness that seems to be sweeping in from the west, you need to stand out as special here. To be honest, there were times years ago I wished my parents didn't move here with the crime and such. Anyway, I stayed here, contributed to my community which I'm sure you did as well(?) and felt special for being from here, even when confronted by people in other states who presented negative comments about my hometown. Some of those people probably live here now.
Spiritof76, you're a prime example of why "native New Yorkers" have become so arrogant. They HAVE to be. How else are they going to preserve the uniqueness of a city from the ARROGANCE of out of towners like the tourist from NC who DEMANDS that anything in it has to be bastardized, changed, and catered towards them?
lets just name it Native Tower and be done with it.
Whatever you call it, it's the ugliest crap ever to grace a skyline so 1WTC works fine, as in "One Water Closet".
Would you prefer Gehry's Miss Brooklyn?
No sir, I wouldn't!
Freedom Tower has that whole Freedom fries thing to it. I dont like it
This jingoistic blight on the culture of New York City is more than welcome to leave. The name came out of the same period of rabid jingoism right around the time the war on the Middle East began and it's been tainted by this context. I laud Dead Himmler for making the point that freedom carries many different contexts, but the truth is that the one out of which this building's name was born is one that leaves a bitter taste in one's mouth.
Further, by associating the word 'freedom' with a building dedicated to free commerce and designed with Orwellian security features, the word carries a much dirtier meaning - almost cynical. Were the building really a symbol of freedom, it wouldn't have been limited to 108 stories with a 408FT spire just to top it off to 1776FT...this hardly does Dead Himmler's concept of 'freedom' justice. A building whose dimensions and feature set are bound by security and fear is not fit to bear the weight of being a symbol of 'freedom'.
perfectly put.
perfectly put.
us New Yorkers live here so it should be US who decide what the fuck to call it. I like how people from all these far-flung states get to lay claim on a place that they're usually condemning for being a godless liberal Babylon but when some evil fucks fly a plane into its buildings it's flag-waving time.
us New Yorkers live here so it should be US who decide what the fuck to call it.
Thank you. Couldn't have said it better myself.
And if we naming it whatever we want repels tourists like the NC person away, all THE BETTER. In the years following 9/11, I was disgusted by the conduct of certain tourists at Ground Zero-- people taking pictures of each other smiling and posing in front of the crater with a shit-eating, "OMG, we wuz here" grin, like they were posing in front of the castle at Disneyland. (Wheeeee! It's Ground Zero, y'all! What's next on the itinerary?!)
And of course when they weren't doing that, they were either buying "Never Forget/ NYPD/ NYPD" paraphernilia to satiate their jingoism or satisfy a morbid curiousity after having engorged years of 9/11 disaster porn (footage, video stills, photographs).
So I'm pleased as punch that we're renaming this tower. Doing so will weed out the jingoists and morbidly curious from the real tourists.
I've taken family members visiting me down there to see it; I let them look and gawk because they worried and wept for me on that day.
my first reaction is always to want to smack those people who act like it's something to see so they can go home and tell their friends they were there, but part of me wants to think of it like this: whether we like each other or not, we're all members of the same 'family'; they worried about us, they cried for us, and as it was an attack on part of the family, it was an attack on the family as a whole.
i just wish I believed that was their motivation.
"I like how people from all these far-flung states get to lay claim on a place that they're usually condemning for being a godless liberal Babylon but when some evil fucks fly a plane into its buildings it's flag-waving time."
fucking brilliant. well said.
"I like how people from all these far-flung states get to lay claim on a place that they're usually condemning for being a godless liberal Babylon but when some evil fucks fly a plane into its buildings it's flag-waving time."
Thank you.
That's exactly what I said when it first happened. We were some evil hell hole that the rest of the country had to "deal with" until they wanted to be a part of something and feel like they could also be "victms".
Eff you people.
This naming is the best news all week.
cue the 9/11 widows in 5, 4, 3, 2....
On a related note, can we go back to calling that airport off exit 14 of the New Jersey Turnpike "Newark Airport"? Thank you.
you mean instead of shithole international?
no but seriously - who doesn't call it newark? what do they call it?
Many radio stations refer to it by its post 9/11 name: "Newark Liberty Airport"
really?
yet another reason to avoid radio like the plague.
1 WTC works for me!
:D
Freedom Tower was a sop to that obnoxious "Victims' Families" lobby, few of whom live in NYC, fewer in Manhattan, instead mostly out-of-staters, not unlike tourists.
Their morbidity and obsession (not to mention greed at getting a nice fat settlement) caused the delays in constructing and this silly name for a tower.
Move on. It's been 8 years. Drop your morbid obsession.
Best line in the DN paper they cut out from the online version:
"It was initially derided by critics, who found it gimmicky and too self-consciously patriotic..."
Which is exactly what politicians, movie producers, and music execs do. They sell out words like "liberty", "freedom", and "independence" to get votes or ticket sales.
But this smart decision does not at all excuse the PA, the LMDC, the LMCCC, and all the other byzantine Lower-Manhattan agencies for being such lousy public-benefit corporations.
How about 'A.I.G. Tower'? You could save a few bucks and reuse the lettering they just removed.
Your Tax Dollars At Work Tower?
Freedom Tower would be a misrepresentation. If there is one thing the Port Authority is against, its Freedom. The Port Authority routinely violates the basic rights set out in the constitution, including illegal searches for customers entering their PATH train and violating first amendment free speech rights with a vigorous ban on photography. What's worse, is the people making these decisions are not even elected officials. If anything, 1 World Trade Center should be referred to as No Rights Tower or Suspended Constitution Tower.
1 World Trade fine, just FRIGGIN FINISH IT by 2016!!!
Operation Enduring Freedom - Freedom Tower - Patriot Act - Operation Iraqi Freedom
I can see why the Port Authority didn't want to be on that list.
rasputinsghost - "I like how people from all these far-flung states get to lay claim on a place that they're usually condemning for being a godless liberal Babylon but when some evil fucks fly a plane into its buildings it's flag-waving time."
Couldn't agree more.
Besides that our need to keep reassuring ourselves that we're so free is unsettling. I'm in Spain now and there's a lot more actual, usable freedom here. I'm free to have a joint in my pocket, to avail myself of a hooker. I'm free to drink wine in public. My female friends are free to sunbathe topless.
Thank god they've done away with that stupid, Bush-era moniker.
Thanks to a judicial ruling some years ago, women in New York State are free to bare their breasts.
where are you from fucking little clown. and what the fuck name do you have on this?? couldn't get a more retard name??
you little girls from Seattle make me laugh
Put my vote down for "I don't care what they call it, just build the damn thing already".
Put my vote down for "I don't care what they call it, just build the damn thing already".
I'm so tired of these tourists who expect NYC to be like Disney World and also claim the tragedy as if it happened in their back yard. These are the same people who, before 9/11, would say, "New Yorkers are so rude." "New York City is so dirty." "This never happens here, only in dangerous places like New York." Ponce off! It was WTC Tower 1 before and it will STAY that way. I can't tell you how sick I felt when I saw, just a few weeks after the disaster, a throng of tourists posing for pictures and smiling as the wreckage was the backdrop. So piss off Mr./Ms. North Carolina!
I think the addresses 1 WTC and 2 WTC should be retired.
How about naming it the Socialist Tyranny Tower in honor of Obama?
1 wtc soundz too plan jane . they want something More. No one cried about the name World Trade Center HUH?
Build the shit already anyway.
"The Tower" still needs a "commonly known as" name, though. Simply saying "World Trade" can refer to the whole complex.