Lecture sheds light on past, future of World Trade Center

David Brownlee studies and teaches the architectural importance of a variety of monuments from across the globe — but this Sunday, the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, there were only two monuments on Brownlee’s mind: the iconic twin towers of the World Trade Center.

To commemorate the tragic events of that day, Brownlee — an Art History professor — presented his lecture “Making a Monument: The Fall and Rise of the World Trade Center” at the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Speaking to a packed audience of about 150, Brownlee recounted the story of the World Trade Center’s evolution over the years.

When architect Minoru Yamasaki first built the twin towers in the early ’70s, they received much criticism, Brownlee said. Although Yamasaki was aiming for a modernist approach with basic geometrical structures, his two 110-story forms were critiqued endlessly for being too large, too simple and too disconnected with the surrounding historical architecture.

“They possessed neither sufficient historical romance nor sufficient artistic vigor of the two competing architectural fashions of its day,” Brownlee explained.

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However, he noted that eventually the city began to accept “these two large awkward giants, simply because they were there and inhabited by 30,000 workers.” Slowly but surely, the towers found their way into New York postcards, snow globes and even into King Kong and Superman comic books.

Although the World Trade Center was still overshadowed by older city monuments like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, this all changed during the whirlwind of events on Sept.11, 2001.

“The World Trade Center emerged not as villain or victim, but as defender,” Brownlee said. The south tower was able to withstand the fire for almost an hour, while the north tower remained standing for nearly two hours — a blessing that enabled many to escape.

“So in its death, the World Trade Center accomplished what it could not in life,” Brownlee explained. “In its way of dying, it became a symbol of American talent and self-sacrifice.”

Brownlee also discussed future plans for the site, such as the Freedom Tower and the design for the memorial titled Reflecting Absence. This outdoor memorial “takes the two immense pits that were the foundation of the twin towers and lines their walls with perpetually sheathing water,” Brownlee said. These fountains in turn will constantly cascade under the marked names of the victims.

College of Liberal and Professional Studies student Abby Eron appreciated how Brownlee revealed the real critiques that the structures faced before they became the treasured towers that Americans have now grown to admire.

“I thought it was a great perspective of how buildings and their meanings can change in light of a historic event,” Eron said.

Local Philadelphian Karen Rosenberg also found Brownlee’s lecture intriguing. “It was so interesting to see how the World Trade Center was made in the context of the time,” she said.

At the end of his talk, Brownlee left the audience with his final thoughts on the symbolic evolution of the twin towers: “I think it takes only a moment of reflection, on this day of reflection, to recognize that the World Trade Center that we now remember is not the World Trade Center that we ever knew.”

This article was updated to reflect that water in the memorial flows under the names of victims rather than over.

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