Century 21, the department store
Century 21, the department store on Church Street that has been closed since September 11, reopened on February 28. So, too, have the streets running west off of Broadway. The small park near my office between Broadway and Church Streets remains fenced off, the trees and benches gone. Folks used to eat lunch there, and play chess at folding card tables. It’s now home to Porta-Potties and the mobile offices of Tully Construction. Ground Zero, once so immense at 16 acres, has gotten smaller, and more discrete—if a six-story hole in the ground can be called discrete. The piles of smoking wreckage have been trucked away, and the loaders and diggers are slowly propelling the site back through time to 1970, when all that existed of the World Trade Center was the vast, empty foundation.
