Fall of towers leaves big gap in skyline and in N.Y. psyche

NEW YORK — As she looked out the window of her downtown apartment, Carol Willis struggled with the present tense.

"I have a view of the towers from my balcony," she said, and then corrected herself. "Had a view. I had a view."

Before the events of this week turned lower Manhattan's twin skyscrapers into clouds of ash and terror, long before the dual symbols of American prosperity collapsed, Carol Willis, director of The Skyscraper Museum, had been planning four fall lectures on the design and construction of the towers.

"Over the last month, I have been speaking with men who were structural engineers on the towers and other people who built them, especially people from the Port Authority who've managed the buildings over the last 15 years," said Willis, adjunct professor of urban studies at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation at Columbia University.

After Tuesday's attacks on the Trade Center, the city, the nation and the world are left to contemplate the huge gap in the planet's most celebrated skyline, literally and figuratively.

It was not the first attack on the high-profile structures: In 1993, a van loaded with explosives detonated in the center's underground garage, killing six people and injuring more than a thousand.

First planned in the early 1960s and completed in 1973, the two towers — designed by Seattle native and University of Washington graduate Minoru Yamasaki — were made of 200,000 tons of steel. At 1,368 feet and 1,362 feet, they were the tallest buildings in the city, beating the icon of another era, the Empire State Building, by more than 100 feet.

Despite its aerial appeal — the enclosed deck and open rooftop promenade at Two World Trade Center were tourist magnets — the seven-building, 16-acre complex had earthbound draws, including a huge underground shopping center and a network of subways that served 150,000 commuters every day.

The Manhattan towers weathered their share of criticism, from gripes about their wind-tunnel effect to complaints about the lack of aesthetic merit in their "bigger is better" style.

The towers' real significance was symbolic, said Angus Gillespie, a professor and the author of "Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's World Trade Center." "Just as Big Ben is a symbol of London or the Eiffel Tower is symbolic of Paris, the twin towers had become a symbol of ... American capitalism — and hence of the American way of life." For that reason, said Gillespie, the World Trade Center was — as an icon among architectural icons — an obvious choice for terrorists.

And now, the nation has lost a landmark — a psychological one as much as a physical one.

Gail Satler, an associate professor of sociology at Hofstra University who specializes in the effect of architectural design and spaces on people, called it cognitive mapping, using as an example a neighborhood candy store where you met friends and created fond memories. "If it moves or is sold, you'll always go by there and say, 'That's where the candy store was.' Now it's going to be 'Before the World Trade Center' and 'After the World Trade Center.' "