Steel work starts for Freedom Tower beams
This is exciting to me because the World Trade Center and I go way back. Wall Street was my stomping grounds during the go-go 80's and I knew WTC well. By 2001 the firm I worked for, Salomon Brothers, had been acquired by Citigroup and was located at 7 WTC. It was the third building to go on 9/11/01.
December of 2001: It was a cold, blustery, pretty day and the sun was shining brightly. It was a great day to be an American. I had business in the city and when you take the train into the city, there's a point where you come around this curve and the panorama of the Manhattan skyline is before you in all it's glory. It looked so empty without the Twin Towers. It was like a kick in the gut. A feeling that intensified on the way downtown in a cab driven by a guy named Achmed who dropped me off as close as he could to 'the site', as it was now being called. The thing you noticed first was the acrid smell - a brassy smell that hung heavy in the air. The next thing you noticed was the dust, the powder fine microparticles of some mysterious, ash gray composition that covered each and every thing and carpeted the sidewalks. Finally you noticed the hushed demeanor of everyone around you. People were reverent, and when I say people I mean people of each and every stripe. It was like a pilgrimage and the mood of the people was in sharp contradiction to the sounds of hydraulic power tools, cranes and construction that emanated from 'the site' itself. I watched a crane pick up a steel beam that had been twisted and mangled to look like someone had bent it like a paper clip. The crane lowered the beam onto one of the long line of flatbed 18 wheelers that had snarled traffic on the narrow bumpy downtown streets. Traffic was so gnarly the 18-wheeler and I made about the same pace around Manhattan's tip. I followed the truck with it's single steel beam load all the way around Manhattan to the docks over by 55 Water Street. Another crane was situated there. The truck pulled up and the crane lifted the beam off the flatbed, swinging it gracefully onto a barge tethered at the dock. A tugboat guided the barge away from the dock and out into the East River, final destination Fresh Kills, Staten Island.
I'll never forget it.
Steel work starts for Freedom Tower beams
(snippets)
Inside a cool and barren building comprised of concrete and steel, workers Friday were assembling pieces of American pride.
Banker Steel of Lynchburg is fabricating massive steel columns that will prop up New York City’s new Freedom Tower, which will stand at the site where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood.
(This is a great story and one that you probably won't be reading in the MSM.)
“My little brother has just returned from Iraq,” said Richard Plant, the operations manager at the plant. “I was behind that. This is just rebuilding something that someone took away from us.”
(Like me, Banker Steel has a history with the original Twin Towers.)
December of 2001: It was a cold, blustery, pretty day and the sun was shining brightly. It was a great day to be an American. I had business in the city and when you take the train into the city, there's a point where you come around this curve and the panorama of the Manhattan skyline is before you in all it's glory. It looked so empty without the Twin Towers. It was like a kick in the gut. A feeling that intensified on the way downtown in a cab driven by a guy named Achmed who dropped me off as close as he could to 'the site', as it was now being called. The thing you noticed first was the acrid smell - a brassy smell that hung heavy in the air. The next thing you noticed was the dust, the powder fine microparticles of some mysterious, ash gray composition that covered each and every thing and carpeted the sidewalks. Finally you noticed the hushed demeanor of everyone around you. People were reverent, and when I say people I mean people of each and every stripe. It was like a pilgrimage and the mood of the people was in sharp contradiction to the sounds of hydraulic power tools, cranes and construction that emanated from 'the site' itself. I watched a crane pick up a steel beam that had been twisted and mangled to look like someone had bent it like a paper clip. The crane lowered the beam onto one of the long line of flatbed 18 wheelers that had snarled traffic on the narrow bumpy downtown streets. Traffic was so gnarly the 18-wheeler and I made about the same pace around Manhattan's tip. I followed the truck with it's single steel beam load all the way around Manhattan to the docks over by 55 Water Street. Another crane was situated there. The truck pulled up and the crane lifted the beam off the flatbed, swinging it gracefully onto a barge tethered at the dock. A tugboat guided the barge away from the dock and out into the East River, final destination Fresh Kills, Staten Island.
I'll never forget it.
Steel work starts for Freedom Tower beams
(snippets)
Inside a cool and barren building comprised of concrete and steel, workers Friday were assembling pieces of American pride.
Banker Steel of Lynchburg is fabricating massive steel columns that will prop up New York City’s new Freedom Tower, which will stand at the site where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood.
(This is a great story and one that you probably won't be reading in the MSM.)
“My little brother has just returned from Iraq,” said Richard Plant, the operations manager at the plant. “I was behind that. This is just rebuilding something that someone took away from us.”
(Like me, Banker Steel has a history with the original Twin Towers.)
"Banker Steel’s predecessor, Montague-Betts, fabricated some of the steel for the original twin towers in Lynchburg."
“It’s kind of interesting that it has come home to us,” Campbell said. “I think this shows the American spirit. We’ve picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off and got right back to business as quick as we could.”
This is no small undertaking When the work is completed, the columns will weigh about 1,500 pounds per foot.
The sentimental value may carry even more weight. (I agree)
“We want to do a good job to bring something back to the people of New York,” Campbell said. “This is a good thing we’re doing.”
Over the next month, the company will put together 14 columns, the first set for delivery to New York by Dec. 18. “They will have a celebration in New York on Dec. 18 and the first column will be set,” Banker said.
Before the columns are shipped, some of them will be taken to City Stadium on Dec. 8 and 9, where the public will be allowed to sign them or write messages of encouragement to the citizens of New York.
The columns will be painted and decals, including American flags, will be applied before they are signed. “We’ve had communities from all over call and ask to participate in the signing of the beams,” Banker said...“They wanted to have the beams come to their community,” Banker said. His plan is to have the beams touch as many people as possible.
“Three columns will go out,” he said. “They’ll go on different routes so a lot of people can participate
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