http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/nyregion/the-resurrection-of-greenwich-street-lower-manhattan.html 2016-09-26 11:44:02 The Resurrection of Greenwich Street A section of the Lower Manhattan street was closed when the first World Trade Center came along. It has re-emerged as the area is rebuilt following Sept. 11. === A quarter-mile stretch of Greenwich Street disappeared from the map of Lower Manhattan in 1967, then from the face of New York on Sept. 11, 2001. Now, it is reappearing as an important boulevard. Three of the four World Trade Center towers have their entrances on it, as does The future of Greenwich Street includes a Greenwich Street is also where the last unresolved battle over the future of the World Trade Center is being fought. The city and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation favor the construction of housing on a parcel known as Site 5, where the All this activity is occurring along a roadway that dates to the early 1700s, when a route was carved along the Hudson River from the southern tip of Manhattan Island to the village of Greenwich, about two miles north. New York City swallowed up Greenwich Village. Landfill separated shoreline and roadway. But Greenwich Street kept its name and its role as a north-south thoroughfare, until the first World Trade Center came along. Parts of Greenwich, Fulton, Cortlandt, Dey and Washington Streets were closed a half century ago to create the 16-acre superblock on which the center was constructed. Greenwich Street was further cut off by the 7 World Trade Center tower and a Consolidated Edison substation immediately north of the superblock. Critics deplored the trade center’s insular nature. No one imagined there would be a chance to rethink it. Once presented with the opportunity, however, many planners agreed that streets should crisscross the site again and knit the new trade center into the fabric of its surroundings. Greenwich Street was the test case. It was vital to the recovery of downtown that the electrical David M. Childs As it has emerged since then, the new Greenwich Street is largely traffic free. Security barriers limit it to authorized vehicles. It functions as a pedestrian zone but feels like an eerily and inexplicably abandoned thoroughfare, since the paving is neatly stenciled with lanes, turning arrows and crosswalks. Yet it also offers a jumble of incongruous impressions, as the best city streets do. A cafe in the new The cosmopolitan tone set by the park and cafe is broken by a welter of security obstacles at Vesey Street, where Greenwich Street turns into a pedestrian chute squeezed between ventilating equipment for the transportation hub and the abandoned former PATH station. At Fulton Street, the Oculus spreads its enormous wings. To the west, a dense grove of swamp white oak trees and a silvery polygonal pavilion mark the Opposite the south memorial pool are Mr. Silverstein’s At Liberty Street are the quarters of Amanda M. Burden, who was then the chairwoman of the City Planning Commission, told me in 2002: “Greenwich Street is not only symbolically important, but it is an important first step. It’s about beginning to interconnect the totally disconnected elements of Lower Manhattan.” Flaws and all, it feels as if the connections are taking hold. And given how this column began 14 years ago, that is as good a note as any on which to bring it to an end.