Debora Dale Alt logo
ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
where fear and passion collide
Debora Dale Alt logo
ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
where fear and passion collide

The Freedom Tower is no more.

Apparently, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey feels the name is not marketable. Personally, I find that hard to understand. I mean, if they called it Satan’s Tower, well, then maybe I could see the problem. But a building in the heart of New York called the Freedom Tower is difficult to market?

What will the new name be? One World Trade Center. It’s not just the address, but the name. Because that’s so much easier to market? One and Two World Trade Center were destroyed on September 11th, and repeatedly on news channels throughout the following months. They retire numbers from baseball players who have made an impact and passed on yet they don’t see a need to retire these numbers but rather reuse them?

I know. It’s just a name. And yet it’s not. It’s a symbol. It’s our landscape. It’s our first responders and other innocents. It’s our community and we fought to survive its destruction. We pay tribute there annually as a way to insure we never forget the lives lost and destruction. The “Freedom Tower” was supposed to stand above the rest as a beacon of freedom over terror.

But the name is not marketable.

Interestingly, there’s only one tenant signed on at the moment. A Chinese firm. I wonder if the Freedom moniker would have been dropped if the first lease holder were not a company from a communist country. Can’t help it. I have to wonder because the name means everything to the average New Yorker.

Who, by the way, will continue to call this building The Freedom Tower the same as we call Avenue of the Americas, Sixth Avenue.

It’s not defiance, really. It’s not a New York flip-off. It’s just New York pride and sentiment. Freedom was threatened that beautiful September day. Freedom has struggled to survive around the world since. And for New York, at least, Freedom will soar high above the city once again in the Freedom Tower which stands, as a tribute, on the ground of One World Trade Center.