Winter Garden of World Financial Center - Recent pictures

[Edward]

The pictures of Winter Garden of World Financial Center taken on 26 January 2002.

[Edward]

This is a May 2000 picture of the Winter Garden and the World Trade Center towers

[CityGod5]

Is is open again? *I remember going in there on my first trip to the city...very cool place. *I liked the idea of palm trees in Manhattan. *Now that's not something you see everyday!

[Fabb]

The palm trees are dead, but hopefully, they'll be replaced.

The winter garden should be extended to the new WTC. That would be a great city-within-a-city...

[Edward]

NEW YORK TIMES February 5, 2002
World Financial Center Reopens a Bit
By GLENN COLLINS

For a while yesterday, office workers near ground zero could entertain the illusion that life was back to normal at the World Financial Center.

There were 18 lunch hounds queued up at the newly opened California Burrito. Bill Anastasakis, a florist who lost $100,000 worth of flowers on Sept. 11, was rewarding regular customers with stems from his riotous new stock. And the recently polished marble of the food court near the still-ravaged Winter Garden, once begrimed in dust and debris, echoed again with the laughter of employees lounging at the lobby tables.

"It used to take us half an hour to get to the food over at Chambers Street," said Theresa Xanthos, a secretary at Merrill Lynch, delighted to order an Escondido bean burrito without having to put on coat and gloves.

She and the other employees were permitted for the first time into the previously off-limits space yesterday — the courtyard between World Financial Center office towers 3 and 4 — in an in-house, trial visit to five reopened stores.

Today, the public will be invited into the food court and to navigate a new 300-foot-long walkway connecting them to another reborn restaurant, SouthWest NY, in 2 World Financial Center. Ibrahim Merchant, the restaurant's owner, said he had spent $500,000 on the restoration — including the cost of replacing the $90,000 computerized order system, which was destroyed.

"Being here, it's like coming home," said Royanna Commisso, a nurse who was heading through the walkway back to the Merrill Lynch clinic in 4 World Financial Center. "But I don't think that the North Bridge is ever coming back."

She referred to the famously missing pedestrian walkway that carried 80,000 scurrying people over West Street between the World Trade Center and the Winter Garden on weekdays. It was crushed by the collapse of the north tower.

The new walkway, like the old, is intended to protect pedestrians from the elements as they trudge between mammoth office towers. The old one was a multimillion-dollar, climate- controlled bridge of concrete, steel and glass. The new one is 10 feet high and constructed from blue-painted plywood. Covered with corrugated iron, it cost $60,000.

The World Financial Center was once home to 40,000 workers; now it is 25 percent occupied, and its buildings, all of which survived, are slowly being recolonized. Many of the 50 former Winter Garden stores like Godiva Chocolatier, Watch Station and the Coco Marina Restaurant are now sheathed in plywood. But a temporary new Godiva has arisen — a kiosk on the south side of the courtyard. A Starbucks Coffee shop, the World Financial Center Florist and the Faber, Coe & Gregg newsstand will also be opening to the public today.

Before the twin-tower disaster, office workers used to migrate from the four World Financial Center office towers to shopping opportunities by traversing the Winter Garden, the glass-enclosed 45,000-square-foot public space that served as the centerpiece of the World Financial Center. But now the Winter Garden is verboten to all but the workers toiling to complete a $50 million restoration by this fall.

The new walkway runs from the lobby of 2 World Financial Center outside onto the Hudson River plaza. It wends past the North Cove Yacht Harbor on its way to the south vestibule of the Winter Garden, which opens on the courtyard where, yesterday, the Starbucks had finally reappeared.

Anton Schubert, a fixed-income trader at Merrill Lynch, ordered his first coffee there since Sept. 11 (a grande, black, one Equal). "We could go to our cafeteria, but the feeling was claustrophobic," he said. "Being able to return here — it's a watershed event."

[Ptarmigan]

That's nice to hear for a change. Life resumes, even in the worst terrorist attack in world history.

[Edward]

The restored Winter Garden and the new palm trees.





The view of Ground Zero from the restored Winter Garden.

[Jessica]

Does anyone still have the silhouette looking picture? *It was posted before the forum was lost.

[Merry]

Jessica.

Hope you get my e-mail with pic attached (hope it's the right one!).

(Edited by Merry at 6:36 pm on Oct. 29, 2002)

[Fabb]

The palm trees look good and healthy.
I hope they'll adapt to their new environment.

[Fabb]

Also, from the winter garden, the Millenium Hotel (or whatever its name is) really looks like the TWT.

[NYC kid]

wow, its looking really nice. *I'm definately making this one of my destinations for my next trip to New York this winter. That glass wall looks like it gives a good view!

[Jessica]

Quote: from Merry on 6:35 am on Oct. 29, 2002
Jessica.

Hope you get my e-mail with pic attached (hope it's the right one!).

(Edited by Merry at 6:36 pm on Oct. 29, 2002)

Thanks Merry!

[ZippyTheChimp]

Got this word of mouth:

WFC owner Brookfield Properties is considering a major alteration or complete demolition of the grand staircase in the Winter Garden.

At a Feb 02 CB1 BPC Committee meeting, a Brooklfield rep said that the staircase was originally built to lead to the North Tower bridge over West St that was destroyed on 09/11. With the bridge gone, it's become a "staircase to nowhere."

Actually, it was never a primary route to the bridge. The office employee exits to the four towers are all on the second level, same as the bridge. The staircase became something more; a place to sit in groups, space defining.

The other reason mentioned was that the new underground concourse from the WTC would lead pedestrians to "a dead end behind the staircase."

I somewhat agree with this, although the "dead end" is really a wide horseshoe shaped corridor. The problem as I see it is that workers would now be entering the complex on the first level, and would have to get to the turnstiles on the 2nd level. Besides the staircase, there are two escalators at the opposite end of the Winter Garden.

At street level, the entire east side of the WFC is poorly designed.

Any change in the structure would be considered a major modification of the property, and BPCA approval would be required.

[HoveringCheesecake]

Ugh. I like that staircase.

Here's an article from last month that we discussed in the commercial real estate thread.

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article...FREE/100119903

http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/sh...t=4949&page=70

Derek2k3 had a really good idea in that thread.