Fifteen years later, the human toll from the World Trade Center attacks remains shocking: 2,753 victims. There were other victims that day. The 9/11 Commission report issued in 2004 reported that "125 died at the Pentagon; 256 died on the four planes." The death toll surpassed that at Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
People who survived the Trade Center attack and other New Yorkers streamed out of the city that day, but it's hard to keep New Yorkers down.
On the 15th anniversary of that dark day, ThinkAdvisor remembers the victims and first responders. But we also celebrate the rebirth of a section of Manhattan that was devastated by 9/11. In the pictures that follow, many taken by ALM art directors and photograpers, we present how that area of lower Manhattan looked after the attack, and how it looks today. Remembrance and rebirth.
DESTRUCTION
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, two jets slammed into World Trade Center towers, as another plane hit the Pentagon and a fourth plane, United 93, crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. (Photo credit: Rick Kopstein)
The remains of one of the towers at what became known as Ground Zero. (Photo credit: Courtesy of the U.S. Navy)
It wasn't just the Twin Towers that were destroyed or damaged in the September 11 attack. The damage spread for blocks around the former World Trade Center site. (Photo credit: Monica Bay)
Plagued by political infighting and cost overruns, it took years to rebuild lower Manhattan around the World Trade Center site. Here is a view looking west from where the Twin Towers stood to what was then called the World Financial Center, where many financial services firms had and have offices. The complex, across West Street heading toward Battery Park City, is now called Brookfield Place. (Photo credit: Rick Kopstein)
Following the attack, first responders from across New York, the tri-state area, the nation and the world rushed to participate in the search effort, which quickly became a recovery effort. One of those who responded rests with his canine colleague near Ground Zero. More than 100 K-9 dogs worked at Ground Zero; the last of them–Bretagne, a 16 year-old golden retriever from Texas–died in June 2016. (Photo credit: John Disney)
CONSTRUCTION
One of the construction pits at Ground Zero. (Photo credit: Rick Kopstein)
(Photo credit: Rick Kopstein)
(Photo credit: John Disney)
RESURRECTION
Set within the footprints of the pre-9/11 Twin Towers is now The Memorial Plaza, a place of remembrance and repose, featuring the World Trade Center Memorial museum, two memorial fountains/reflecting pools and hundreds of swamp white oak trees harvested within a 500-mile radius of the Trade Center site. (Photo credit: Rick Kopstein)