New York rises from the ashes of 9/11 tragedy as Freedom Tower is built within pit of Ground Zero
BY Corky Siemaszko
DAILY NEW STAFF WRITER
Saturday, September 11th 2010, 4:00 AM
Ground Zero was still smoldering when plans were hatched to rebuild where the twin towers once stood - and show Osama Bin Laden we were not broken.
Nothing rose from The Pit in the first years after the tragedy. Workers collected bodies. Mourners wept. And New York's scar, the nation's scar, remained an open wound.
By 2004, the rubble was cleared and construction workers descended down the ramp that rescue workers once used to bring up the living and the dead.
Five years later, nearly a dozen construction cranes could be seen rising from soil made sacred by the blood of more than 2,700 victims, rising like shoots of progress after a long and especially cruel winter.
Now the Freedom Tower, the $3.2 billion, 1,776-foot answer to the terrorists, has reached the 36th floor.
A pair of iconic steel tridents that stood watch over the ruins for many months have made a triumphant return.
Four hundred newly-planted white oak trees will soon take root in hallowed ground.
Bin Laden remains on the run, but nine years later he can no longer lay claim to his monument to madness. It has been transformed.
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