A First Look at the Freedom Tower’s One World Observatory By Edward Rothstein
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-first-look-at-the-freedom-towers-one-world-observatory-1432678928
Offering vistas previously limited to photographs from helicopters.
The first time I visit—propelled upward a quarter of a mile in an elevator to One World Observatory—it is clear that something momentous is being promised. The observatory, which opens on May 29 at One World Trade Center, calls these five elevators “Sky Pods.” They are enclosed with three walls lined with floor-to-ceiling LED screens so bright and crisp, they could be windows on lower Manhattan. But as we whoosh from the bedrock to the 102nd floor in 47 seconds, instead of seeing the cityscape receding below, we see time-lapse images representing 500 years of history. Lenape wigwams and longhouses give way to early Dutch settlements, and onward: the growth of Wall Street, the evolution of the Battery, the proliferation of skyscrapers and the sounds of contemporary life. For a few seconds, as decades of the 20th century race by, one of the World Trade Center towers fills the eastward screen, then suddenly disappears.
There is no intention here to mourn the destruction; that is reserved for ground level for the 9/11 memorial and museum. Here we are in a building meant to replace those destroyed towers; the preoccupation is not with the past, but the present.
So after leaving the Sky Pod, you enter a long, narrow and high-ceilinged room. One wall is a composite of screens, sparkling with prismatic light, echoing the sliced reflective geometry of the new tower. Then comes a thumping two-minute video paean to New York—“dynamic, diverse and ever-changing”—a kaleidoscope of city life. “Prepare,” we are also told, “to see forever.”
ENLARGE As the music reaches a climax, the screens in the darkened room begin to rise. On my first visit, as the screens lift, a wall of windows begins to let in a wash of light. We look outward. And we see—nothing, a uniform whiteness. When we are ushered into the circular observatory wrapped around the building, allowing a 360-degree survey of the cityscape through two-story-high windows, they still show an unbroken blankness. The building is cloaked in mist and rain.
There are compensations for such occasions, including four guides who are called “global ambassadors.” Each is stationed at the center of a ring of HD video screens that respond to the guide’s gestures, offering visitors high-tech surveys of the city. For a fee, a tablet is available that provides an interactive survey of the surrounding landmarks. There are also three dining areas. And a gift shop. But some significant portion of the expected three million to four million annual visitors are bound to be stymied by weather and may not be able to try again. That is unfortunate.
Because when I return the next day, the cinematic unveiling reveals, through the windows, a magnificent north-facing aerial view of a great city. From the top of the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, New York looks as it has only been seen in photographs from helicopters; you can note its contours and contortions, its areas of thrust and repose, the way its harbor and rivers still pose as its lifeline, though it now has uncountable pulsing arteries.
The observatory will, I think, quickly establish itself as a premier tourist stop, offering something not easily found, even at other observation points. The company operating it, Legends, which has experience managing popular spectacles, is selling timed adult tickets for $32 (with an additional $15 for the tablet); up to a thousand visitors an hour can be accommodated. (Hettema Group was the lead designer, with features created by Local Projects, Blur Studios and Mouse Trap. MADGI was the lead architect.)
Many cities now have similarly elevated vistas, some with even more extreme offerings. In Dubai, one observation deck at Burj Khalifa is on the 148th floor, more than a third of a mile high—including a portion that is outdoors. The Willis Tower in Chicago (formerly the Sears Tower) includes four glass boxes that protrude past the sheer edge of the building, providing the sensation of being supported in space.
The Chicago and New York examples are quite different. In Chicago, because of the city’s history, the view lays out a map before our gaze whose regularities extend to the horizon and whose irregularities intrigue. The transparent ledges add a sense that this immense and well-ordered world is also potentially precarious.
Here, at the One World Observatory, there are no open-air sections and sensations of precariousness or vertigo are avoided, partly, perhaps, because of recent traumas. But there is also a transparent circular area that you can walk on; it seems as if you are staring straight down at the street below—and not at video screens mounted under the floor showing live images from outdoor cameras.
But clearly, the urban observatory is no longer the traditionally static platform equipped with mounted binoculars. It is meant to be an “experience.” Staging is crucial. And here, not all of it is successful. Before you reach the elevators there are introductory galleries with walls of video screens showing fragments of interviews with construction workers, engineers and others, praising the new building and associating it with recollections of 9/11. The point is quickly made, tediously emphasized, and accomplished to far greater effect next door in the 9/11 museum. Then comes a long walk through mock bedrock on which uninformative facts about the building’s foundation are projected. Why, when at the museum we see actual exposed bedrock? Here the effect is of unenlightening, hokey artifice.
Luckily, except on occluded days, all of this is quickly forgotten. The viewing spaces are stunning. I recall the old World Trade Center observatory as cramped. Amazement had to be pried out of it. The street was seen by peering through strips of window. Here, though, broad expanses extend in all directions.
And what, finally, do we see? We generally associate great height with superior vision, with an ability to perceive what those below can only guess at. We imagine, too, that it confers a kind of detachment, an elevated perspective, far above combative street life. And perhaps it grants a sense of power as we look down on things that once loomed large.
But those aren’t the sensations we get here. This is partly because the height is so great, and partly because of the character of New York. We are downtown, near the earliest settled parts of the city. And as we look out in all directions, we see what was emphasized in the elevator: signs of continuous transformation. During my visit, the harbor is marked by scattered thin white curves of wake, as military vessels and smaller boats proceed uptown for Fleet Week. The city’s buildings seem to undulate in all directions, changing in heights and styles as they spread out, the tastes of wildly different eras intertwined. Looking north we see swaths of older buildings that here and there, under the pressure of later enterprise, begin to rise. And in the distance are towering thrusts of urban ambition, with the Empire State Building near the center. New York here seems like a force field captured in concrete, steel and glass. We see not an object, but an organism.
What preliminary exhibition or presentation or experience can match that? And why would it try to?
Mr. Rothstein is the Journal’s critic at large.
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