Downtown, fires burned, smoke plumed. The odor stood.
It was a city humbled and scared, where the possibilities of destruction had been recalibrated. It was Sept. 12, 2001. The day after.
So much has been said and written about what happened on 9/11. The following day is forgotten, just another dulled interlude in the aftermath of an incoherent morning.
But New Yorkers were introduced that day to irreducible presumptions about their wounded city that many believed would harden and become chiseled into the event’s enduring legacy.
Excerpted from ‘Remembering a Future That Many Feared,’ by N.R. Kleinfeld. Published in The New York Times, September 11, 2009.