These Wings Will Not Fly - City Room

It was to have been an audacious gesture in an already daring design. As envisioned by the architect Santiago Calatrava, the enormous counterpoised wings forming the rooftop of the World Trade Center Transportation Hub were to have opened almost 50 feet wide to the sky, in fine weather and on each anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

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In the text of a speech prepared for delivery to the Alliance for Downtown New York, Mr. Ward also said: “Making this decision helps preserve the overall iconic nature of Calatrava’s winged design, but it will allow the Hub” to “literally fit better with the other buildings on the site; when the wings opened they came far too close to the surrounding office towers.”

When the idea was introduced four years ago, it was said that the operability of the roof would help clear the main

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