30 years ago | World Trade Center, New York City, USA | 23rd January 1994

Thirty years ago, I did something I never thought I’d do. Something that could have been described then as ‘once in a lifetime’ and something which, thanks to events that we’re all well aware of, sadly forever became, for me, just that. I went to the Top of the World observation deck on the 107th floor of the South Tower at the World Trade Center…

I’d first become aware of – and beguiled by – these iconic towers when I’d read a piece about them in my 1980 Swap Shop Annual. I’d marvelled at the sheer exoticism of pictures of Maggie Philbin stood 1,350 feet above downtown Manhattan, surveying the Hudson, the Statue of Liberty and, beyond that, New Jersey. Like any child of the 1970s, it was fully expected that I’d never get to actually see it for myself. New York seemed so remote, so unreachable, I might as well have been fixated by the Martian Trade Centre.

Fourteen years later, I was stood there, taking in the same view, albeit in the grip of a particularly cold snap in an Eastern Seaboard mid-winter. We’d travelled to the States to combine two trade fairs, in Denver and New York, with a week’s skiing in the Rockies and a couple of days’ sightseeing around Manhattan. I was in my second year at University and had to get permission from one of my Tutors to be absent for over two weeks. I figured my best chance of getting it was to ask the American one, Dr. Susan Auty. I’ll never know if this tactic made the difference but I got the permission and was able to take the trip.

We only had a long weekend in the ‘city that never sleeps’ and with a day at a gift fair at the colossal Jacob Javits Convention Center on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan, we were basically left with a Sunday to fit in the usual ‘tick list’ of New York sights; the Big Apple’s ‘big five’: The Empire State Building, Central Park, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty and, in those days, The World Trade Center. The other four were chalked off pretty quickly – although we did kind of cheat with the Statue of Liberty, by taking the helicopter tour from the West Side, which used to encircle the famous statue in hair-raising, forty-five degree tight turns.

We obviously didn’t know it at the time but the most poignant sight would be this one. Even then, though, the clues were there: its underground car park had been the target of a foiled bombing attempt by Al-Qaeda the previous year. I remember being dimply aware of the terrorist connection as we entered The South Tower’s impressive ground floor lobby, complete with an exotic mezzanine level, but being British and having lived through numerous IRA campaigns, we barely troubled ourselves with anything approximating a concern.

We took the turbo lift to the top floor and walked around the entire level, looking out in all four directions, over 1,300 feet below. We resisted the charms of the sprawling souvenir shop that took up most of the rest of the floorspace but, thankfully, remembered to take some video footage. As you can see, even from the grainy 1994 camcorder footage, the views were quite a sight to behold. One shot, eventually focuses on a small plane flying lower over the Hudson, a visual precursor to another of New York’s most infamous days.

And then, just over seven years later, what had been a relatively unspectacular claim suddenly became an irreplaceable memory. Travel invites you to believe you own a connection, an intangible part of the places you visit. This largely irrational belief is generally a harmless lie, a benign illusion that the sights we have taken in are more to us than places we just stood at, but these memories sustain us, like faith, and become a constituent of your very soul. Generally, this illusion is benign.

On September 11th, 2001, the polarity of this connection was reversed. Rather than being a place we’d appreciated and belonged with us, its loss was one we felt more profoundly, like the loss of a part of one’s being. We all mourned the loss of life and the affront to humanity but we also grieved for the loss of an icon.

And one day, I’d like to go back to New York and visit the place built in defiance of the 9/11 attacks, New York’s Freedom Tower. I promise the video footage will be better…