In the weeks after the attacks of 9/11, O’Hara’s Restaurant and Pub on Cedar St. had no power or gas. Still, the owners kept their doors open, operating as a refuge for first responders digging through rubble, searching for bodies, and for construction workers hauling out debris.
“A lot of the firemen from the area knew us, and a lot of construction guys at one point or another had done a job down here and knew us. So all these guys came down. The Red Cross set up food stations here,” bar owner Mike Keane recalled.
“I mean, it was messy, but it was just better than over there. And it was just a place to get out of that,” he said, referring to the 1.8 million tons of wreckage coined ‘the Pile.’
“You just put your head down and do what you have to do,” Keane said.
It was a common refrain 25 years ago. Looking back, it was an approach that helped fuel a stunning rebirth in lower Manhattan from a toxic hellscape to a vibrant part of the city and home to some of its most expensive real estate.
“There was a sense of resilience and optimism that it would take time, but that you never bet against New York, and ultimately it’s one of the greatest comeback stories of all time,” said President of Downtown Alliance and lifelong New Yorker, Jessica Lappin.
Doubts
Even so, many people had “tremendous doubt” that anyone would want to live or work downtown ever again, said Lappin, who was working for city councilman Gifford Miller at the time.
“That’s what’s remarkable. We had around 24,000 residents on 9/11. Today there are 70,000 people who live downtown, and if I had told you that on September 12, nobody would have believed me. I wouldn’t have believed myself. It’s become the fastest-growing residential neighborhood in New York City.”
Some business owners were defiant about staying in the neighborhood despite the challenges.
Todd Spodek was in college when the Twin Towers collapsed, about a half mile away from his father’s law firm’s office.
“We wanted to stay there; we weren’t going to just give up, and we wanted to be part of the recovery. This was all very personal,” said Spodek, who now owns the firm.
It was more than a year before the firm took on any new cases, he said.
“Slowly but surely, life does go on, and people would call, cases would come in,” Spodek said. “Business ultimately bounced back and grew exponentially in the years afterwards, but certainly in the beginning it was a slow process.”
Other business owners feared the worst in the wake of the attacks and began planning their exit.
“I thought it was over,” said Pete Travlos, owner of Stage Door Deli on Vesey St. near Church St.
Travlos, 76, who managed to flee the deli with his son and make it over the Brooklyn Bridge before the first tower collapsed that day, said nearly his entire customer base was comprised of office workers from the World Trade Center.
Emma Seiwell / New York Daily News
Pete Travlos, 76, owner of Stage Door Deli, and his daughter, Angela Travlos, 41. (Emma Seiwell / New York Daily News)
Anticipating his business would fail, Travlos opened up a second location in Midtown six months after the attacks. But quickly, the deli on Vesey St. became a mainstay for everyone helping in the recovery efforts.
“They became our new customers, and then, to follow, when they started building the Freedom Tower, those construction workers became our main customer base. Today, because of 9/11, it’s tourists,” said Travlos’ daughter Angela, 41.
O’Hara’s opened up again on April 1, 2002, after Keane, his employees, and many friends of his spent months clearing out debris and repairing the bar. Their insurance covered the damages, and they also received some grant money from the government.
The devastation took its toll on the businesses in the neighborhood. Roughly 32 small businesses that were in Lower Manhattan before 9/11 still stand today, but many other small businesses were not as fortunate and either relocated or closed following the attacks.
After reopening O’Haras, Keane said he was “constantly” learning that regular customers died in the attacks.
“There were so many people who you knew had passed right away, and then there were so many others that you just knew like, ‘Damn, I didn’t know who she was or who she worked for, but you’d find out six months later, ‘Remember so and so? Remember Jeff?’”
Keane said many of the same people he provided sanctuary to in the weeks after the attacks and regular customers went out of their way to spend money at his bar and other nearby businesses in the years that followed.
“For years they did that. A lot of people really came together to help each other out,” he said.
Recovery and transformation
As small businesses in the area fought to stay afloat, an injection of federal cash helped the effort. The federal government provided New York City $21.4 billion in recovery aid. Private contributions for rebuilding the area totaled roughly $10 to 15 billion more.
The cleanup took about eight months before the focus shifted to rebuilding the 16-acre Ground Zero campus, whoch included creating the memorial site. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation launched an international urban planning contest in August 2002, and Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind’s master plan titled ‘Memory Foundations’ was selected.
Tom Wright, President of the Regional Plan Association, said Libeskind’s calculated design was key to the neighborhood’s recovery and transformation.
“We were restoring commercial office space, so that there would be a business district in Lower Manhattan again. At the same time, it was clear that Lower Manhattan was becoming more of a residential neighborhood, and we wanted to support that,” Wright recalled. “By creating a beautiful memorial, a 9/11 museum, plus it has a streetscape and public spaces that are attractive, plus it has modern commercial office buildings that businesses do want to move into.”
Wright pointed to the plan’s emphasis on creating active pedestrian life that helped turn the area into what it is today.
“When you look at the vitality of the retail and the diversity of shopping, and all the things you have today, that’s a direct result of very conscious efforts to do so,” he said.
Before 9/11, roughly 66% of the jobs in lower Manhattan were in finance or insurance, compared to about 33% today, Lappin said.
“If you look back to 9/11, it was men in ties with briefcases leaving as soon as the stock exchange rang the closing bell. That is not what you see today. What we’ve seen, which has been key to our success, is technology, advertising, and media firms moving in,” Lappin said. “Condé Nast announcing they were moving to One World Trade was a game-changer in terms of the perception of the neighborhood, and the companies that followed include Spotify, Uber, StubHub, and other cutting-edge tech companies, and advertising companies.”
The Freedom Tower opened in 2014. In June, American Express broke ground on its new world headquarters at 2 World Trade Center. The new tower, set to be completed in 2031, will rise 1,226 feet and is expected to serve up to 10,000 employees, according to Downtown Alliance.
Spodek said it was “of no surprise” that the neighborhood, and the city as a whole, bounced back.
“I think that’s the ethos of New York. This is a tough city to survive in, and you have tough people from every background, every religion, every ethnicity, and I think that New Yorkers come together in hard times and good times.”
Despite the changed neighborhood and its remarkable comeback, Keane said memories of 9/11 have a permanent place in the back of his mind.
“As far as my feelings, nothing has changed in how I feel about what happened here. Being here every day… People that are outside of this area don’t think about it, even on the day of 9/11. The couple of days before 9/11, I get that same sick feeling. I don’t know what it is, but you just feel different for a couple of days,” he explained. “Being here every day, dealing with this every day, walking through it every day. Things really don’t change.”