Preserving the View
There’s a rather remarkable artwork at the New York Historical Society that was done in response to Sept. 11. “In Light of Memory” by Christopher Evans is an incredibly detailed 360-degree painting of New York (and Jersey) from the top of the WTC south tower. The painting is on a sphere and you walk around looking at it to get the view you would have seen looking out from South tower’s observation deck.

A few days after Sept. 11, “it suddenly struck me that that view from the top was also gone forever,” Evans writes in the description of the exhibit. He used pictures he had taken from the south tower and then set off on this search to clip images from magazines, newspapers, postcards, street maps and satellite images from the Web. Then he sent about painting “the city bathed in the golden light of a winter sunset.”

The detail was incredible. I could pick out the former Reuters office building on Water Street and The Archive building, 2 miles up Greenwich Street, which would have just blocked the view of our former apartment building two blocks up.

There are pictures of the sphere online, but it doesn’t quite do it justice. Look here for views toward the Brooklyn Bridge, the North Tower, the Woolworth building and Wall Street.
- posted by Amy @ 9/21/2002 10:55:00 AM