9/11, Twenty Years Later: Remembering Minoru Yamasaki, the Local Connection

[image source] What can I possibly say about September 11, here on the 20th anniversary of that still-vividly-remembered day, that I have not already said, over and over again, in the span of those years? Well, there's one thing, only recently discovered, which I think is very cool: the architect of those original twin towers, Minoru Yamasaki, was not only native to Seattle but has an enduring local architectural legacy as well. Let's go through them!
Architect Minoru Yamasaki, born of Japanese immigrants in Seattle in 1912, designed what was originally called the United States Science Pavilion for the Seattle World's Fair (also called the Century 21 Exposition) in 1962. The guy evidently had quite a thing for arches, often cathedral-like; the Pacific Science Center's own history page refers to his work as inspired by "Gothic cathedrals, Islamic temples, and Japanese gardens."
A recent Crosscut piece about Yamasaki described the Science Center arches as blending those influences to create "a sacred space for science." When the Pacific Science Center's original structures were completed, Yamasaki would have been 50 years old.
Yamasaki's next local, Seattle project would be what was then called the IBM Building and is now just 1200 Fifth: completed 1964, 276 feet tall, 20 floors. This building has arches of its own at its base, and a facade very similar to a whole lot of his other buildings—including the World Trade Center. He designed a ton of buildings of varying heights and shapes but several other recognizably similar skyscrapers he designed include One M&T Plaza in Buffalo (1967, 318 ft, 21 floors), Century Plaza Towers in Los Angeles (1975, 571 ft, 44 floors), and Torre Picasso in Madrid (1988, 515 ft, 46 floors).

[image source] The World Trade Center was finished in 1972, 1,368 ft for one of the Twin Towers and 1,362 ft for the other, both of them 110 floors, replacing the Empire State Building's 40-year record as the world's tallest building for two years until Willis Tower (then the Sears Tower) was completed in Chicago in 1974. This old photo illustrates the cathedral-like arches at the buildings' base, which are very similar to those at Seattle's Pacific Science Center. (Side note: prior to their collapse in 2001 making everyone suddenly nostalgic for them, the design of the World Trade Center was widely reviled.
Finally, back to Seattle again, Rainier Tower, on its infamous, 11-story tapered pedestal, was completed in 1977 (514 ft, 41 floors). Aside from that pedestal though, Yamasaki's well-worn design aesthetic to the building strikes me as pretty clear and recognizable. I can't say I'm especially fond of it in any of these buildings—ironically considering my love of skyscrapers, I think the Pacific Science Center "Space Arches" are by far his best work—but, I do love that he designed two of the world's most famous skyscrapers in history, and that his legacy lives in indefinitely not just in several other cities, but especially his birth city of Seattle. (Thanks to Karen Gaudette Brewer for alerting me to this local connection; it appears the book about him referenced in that Crosscut article is not available at the Seattle Public Library, which is disappointing; I may make a truly rare move and actually go to a local bookstore and buy it! The aforementioned Crosscut article is well worth a read.) [posted 8:14 am]

never forget some of it

-- चार हजार तीन सौ और बयासी -- I took myself to yet another movie last night, choosing last night since Shobhit had a Braeburn Condos Board meeting to attend at 6:30. My movie didn't start until 7:30, but whatever. I saw Searching, and as it happens, I liked it a lot less than I expected it to. Giving it a C+ felt generous, although I had to concede it had good editing and, at least, okay acting on the part of some of the cast. It was at the Regal Meridian 16. It was the first time in several weeks I used my MoviePass rather than the AMC A-List membership. It's one of the rare movies not playing at the AMC theatre, and is only at Regal. And it's been out a couple of weeks, and not a major blockbuster studio release, so it did not have the typical MoviePass restrictions. In fact it was the first time I used the MoviePass since all that bullshit with them nearly crashing and burning at the end of July, and since before I started paying for the AMC membership. I even has trouble with one of the kiosks, telling me I had been charged but they were having a printer error. I was waiting in the line to deal with a live person when a lady went and fixed the ticket printer on that kiosk, and I could see my ticket was actually printed on the strip she had torn out of it. So I asked her if that was my ticket, and when I confirmed what movie it was for she gave it to me. The forecast changed midday yesterday, so I had not taken my bike to work when I really could have. With no more rain in the forecast for the evening, I went ahead and rode to the theatre and back. -- चार हजार तीन सौ और बयासी -- -- चार हजार तीन सौ और बयासी -- Should I say anything about 9/11? Back in the day, I used to write something about it every year on its anniversary. It only lasted a few years, but the first anniversary of it was during the first year I started my LiveJournal, in 2002. I started it in February of that year, when 9/11 was all of five months in the past. Now it's 17 years in the past. Only three years until its twentieth anniversary. We really have much more pressing matters to be concerned about at the moment, but my Google Homepage is sure packed with links to memorial news pieces on it. Here are some random things I remember about 9/11: *I had never been to New York City and would still not get there for another nine years. I had always wanted to visit the observation deck of the World Trade Center one day, and obviously never made it to the Twin Towers. The reconstructed One World Trade Center wasn't even topped out until 2013, about a year and a half after Shobhit moved from New York to Los Angeles. *I'll never forget Barbara shouting my name as soon as I walked in the door at the Seattle Gay Standard that day, her telling me the World Trade Center collapsed, and my refusal to believe that could possibly be true until I found confirmation at the Washington Post website. *I sang in the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Chorus at the time, and back then, as it was well before social media as we know it now, we were all connected via LiveJournal. I had a lot of choristers as LiveJournal friends, and one of them, Rafe, had a birthday on September 11. It pretty well ruined his birthday for many years. *Tori Amos released her first overt concept album, Strange Little Girls, exactly one week later, on September 18. Everything still felt sort of surreal even by that point, and although she obviously had no idea 9/11 was coming, the stark darkness of many of the tracks on that album felt like a surprisingly appropriate soundtrack to the time. Here is a line I am now rather struck by from my written accounting of that day (written nine months later, but that still makes it far fresher a memory than 17 years later): By the time a television was brought into the office, I got rather sick of seeing the repeated clips of the collapsing buildings. I saw them over and over again so many times, not even my fucked up memory can get rid of the images. I see that now, and I'm like ...Huh. Even though footage of the towers collapsing gets shown at pretty regular intervals even now, they are far from relentless the way they were in the immediate aftermath, and I can barely conjure the images now. Which is fine, really. -- चार हजार तीन सौ और बयासी -- [posted 12:35 pm] [older september 11 posts]