A plan for the World Trade Center site by Think includes an esplanade running from the foot of St. Paul's Chapel. Within this park, it would relocate St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church.Posted on 01/10/2003 1:15:33 PM PST by Destro
January 9, 2003
Looking for God in the Details at Ground Zero
By DAVID W. DUNLOP
A plan for the World Trade Center site by Think includes an esplanade running from the foot of St. Paul's Chapel. Within this park, it would relocate St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church.
DOES God have a place at ground zero?
This is not a metaphysical inquiry but a planning question, although the quick rejoinder to both might be: which god? Or, whose god? Or, what god?
As it happens, there is an answer. Among the program requirements laid out by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for the design studies of the World Trade Center site were the rebuilding of the nearby St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which was destroyed Sept. 11, and the "recognition of the historic role of St. Paul's Chapel in the Fulton Street corridor."
To judge from the studies, however, the response of most architects to these requirements ranged from diffidence to indifference, though some attributed an innate overall spirituality to their projects. (The United Architects team likened the enclosure created by its five interconnected towers to the domed sanctuary of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.)
The guiding principles for a memorial, released yesterday by the development corporation, speak of respecting the "sacred quality of the space" and encouraging "reflection and contemplation." Yet some visitors will surely wish to do more, to worship or pray.
Perhaps the last major public work in New York that placed organized religion on a prominent architectural footing was Tri-Faith Plaza at Kennedy International Airport, which stood from 1966 to 1988, with individual Jewish, Protestant, Roman Catholic sanctuaries overlooking a lagoon. The synagogue was the most explicitly iconographic, its facade composed of a 40-foot-high evocation of the tablets of the Ten Commandments.
Today, you would need at least a Quad-Faith Plaza, if not a Faithplex, with room set aside for those alienated or troubled by the presence of religious sanctuaries in the first place.
But leaders of the two religious institutions with the biggest stake in the redevelopment of the trade center site, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and Trinity Episcopal parish, insist that the churches' presence be acknowledged.
"We want to be part of the plan," said the Rev. Samuel Johnson Howard, vicar of Trinity, which includes St. Paul's Chapel. "Can St. Paul's and St. Nicholas continue to be good citizens and servants of the neighborhood? Make that possible for us."
"The designers and architects can make the memorial so bland, mundane and secular as to reduce its spiritual power," Father Howard said. "And they can certainly turn their backs on St. Paul's Chapel and any kind of restored St. Nicholas. They can isolate the site from the church and in so doing attempt to keep God out. But God is always going to be there."
Father Howard said Trinity appreciated those designs that provided open space around St. Paul's, in some cases reaching all the way to West Street.
Just such a greensward was proposed by a team including Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, whose overall plan has a dense cluster of towers. This would serve the transportation goal of extending Fulton Street river to river, said Roger Duffy, a partner at Skidmore.
"It so happens that St. Paul's is there and has become, de facto, the memorial piece," he said. "It had its own sacred quality and it has acquired new sacred qualities." Mr. Duffy said the greensward would offer a memorial site that could be used almost immediately.
IN the Sky Park proposal by a design collaborative known as Think, an inclined, elevated esplanade would run west from the foot of St. Paul's. Within this park, at Vesey and Church Streets, Think proposed relocating St. Nicholas.
"We thought it should be given a more prominent location," said Frederic Schwartz, one of the architects. "We do think the church is going to take on a new life and new meaning."
Under the Memorial Square proposal — notable for five fingerlike towers, one with a chapel on top, interlaced by horizontal crossbars — St. Nicholas would be relocated to a triangular parcel on Vesey Street, between West Broadway and Greenwich Street.
"It becomes part of the portal into the site," said Richard Meier, one of the architects behind Memorial Square. With St. Paul's only two blocks away, Mr. Meier said, the effect would be akin to the Piazza del Popolo in Rome, an entrance to which is framed by two 17th-century churches.
But Archbishop Demetrios, the spiritual leader of Greek Orthodox Christians in America, said his church's strong preference, buttressed by commitments from Gov. George E. Pataki, was to rebuild on its historical location at 155 Cedar Street, even though the new St. Nicholas would be more of an ecumenical pastoral center than a parish church.
"It is good," the archbishop said, "to have a symbol of the beyond and the unspoken."
Even in raped captivity, Hagia Sophia continues to inspire.
To the Greek Orthodox ground zero is doubley sacred ground, since a relic of the remains of St. Nicholas was stored at the chapel's reliquary and like the chapel itself was ground to dust.
To move the location of that chapel would be an abomination.
What would the idiot Falwell say? Since Jerry says God lifted His protective shield and allowed 9/11 to occur it would be interesting to see how he twists and flips scripture to come up with the answer.
Is that so? Do the Orthodox hold to the sacred ground, sacred object idea? Some do and some don't, right? Just like some people view Jerusalem as the Holy Land, and others don't and may consider such a belief a form of idolatry.
The Story of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church
By: Dimitri Stastinopoulas
The terrorist attack against the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center that killed an estimated 5,000 people also destroyed the tiny St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, located about 500 feet from ground zero.
On Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, Fr. John Romas, pastor, attempted to go to his church but was turned back by police. Wednesday, he was permitted to visit the site to view what was left of the church. "It would break your heart," he said of the devastation he witnessed. "It's one thing to see it on TV, and another thing to see it in person. St. Nicholas is buried under debris. It is the worst thing." He described steel girders and concrete from the towers burying the building.
Greek immigrants established St. Nicholas Church in 1916 and purchased the structure for $25,000. Among the church's unique characteristics are its small size and its icons, which were a gift from the last czar of Russia, Nicholas II. Fr. Romas expressed hope he would be able to salvage some of the icons.
Fr. Romas also said he is attempting to locate a site in the area to hold church services and plans to ask permission from city officials to allow him to retrieve the church's holy relics: those of St. Nicholas, St. Katherine and St. Sava. They were kept in an ossuary on what had been the top floor of the four-story building.
This is a view of the WTC looking up from St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, right across the street. This is an old photograph that shows the shade from the Church's top Cross and Bell, falling onto the World Trade Center.
Until last Tuesday.
God bless them all.
Other religions are like that, too. Islam doesn't view Jerusalem as holy land, in spite of talk about Dome of the Rock and all that. Neither does Judaism, although there are factions within that do. Islam doesn't even view Mecca as holy land. It's idolatry, some say.
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