New York City has changed in many ways in the 25 years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The area surrounding the former site of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan may be among the most transformed parts of the city since that tragic day in 2001. New photographs taken by ABC News ahead of Sept. 11 show just how much the neighborhood has changed, or in some cases remained largely the same, over the last quarter century. A look at the comparisons reveals how Lower Manhattan has evolved since the twin towers fell. In Weehawken, New Jersey, a nighttime view of the Manhattan skyline from January 2001 contrasts with One World Trade Center and the Tribute in Light shining across the skyline on Sept. 4, 2026. At Church Street and Cortlandt Way, the wreckage of World Trade Center buildings 2, 3, and 4 from Sept. 12, 2001, has given way to all-new development at the former World Trade Center Plaza location. Near Washington and Rector streets, thick dust and debris from Sept. 11, 2001, have cleared to reveal a nearly direct view of One World Trade Center 25 years later. A Burger King restaurant at Church and Liberty streets that served as a temporary NYPD headquarters after the attacks still stands at the same location with few exterior changes. The ground level of One Liberty Plaza, once featuring a destroyed Brooks Brothers store next to a wrecked NYPD patrol car, now hosts a Chopt Creative Salad Co. restaurant while keeping its original stairs and architecture. At Church and Vesey streets, wreckage between the former World Trade Center 5 and a federal office building housing a post office on Sept. 12, 2001, has transformed completely, with only the post office building remaining. The 1982 sculpture ‘Double Check’ by John Seward Johnson II, which served as a makeshift memorial in Liberty Plaza Park, has been relocated to a bench at Liberty Street and Broadway across from Zuccotti Park. On John and Nassau streets, the dusty aftermath captured by Associated Press photographer Amy Sancetta on Sept. 19, 2001, has evolved into a busy intersection three blocks from the twin towers site. Dey Street, sealed off by police five days after the attacks, now features the Fulton Center transit and retail complex alongside the historic 195 Broadway skyscraper. An NYPD officer wearing a protective mask near the New York Stock Exchange in September 2001 mirrors a modern view looking north on Broad Street at Exchange Place. The original St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, built in the 1830s and destroyed as the only house of worship lost in the attacks, was rebuilt on Cedar Street as a new church and national shrine completed in 2022. Finally, the Brooklyn Bridge view framing the twin towers on Sept. 8, 2001, now frames One World Trade Center in a similar angle captured in August 2026.
Source: abcnews.com
