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Now you can experience Calatrava's St. Nicholas Church at the 9/11 site also digitally

2024-09-10T19:53:00-04:00

A new digital recreation of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine has been released in time for the 23rd anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks in Lower Manhattan.

The creative team behind the new app's development, G&A, says they wanted to find a way for those located outside of New York City to share in its inspiring and symbolic rebirth in a lasting way that harkens to the spiritual mission undertaken by church leaders since its establishment during the first World War.

In-app visual. Image courtesy G&A

Using drone-enabled 3D photogrammetry, Santiago Calatrava-designed architecture and recovered original iconography can be experienced in detail along with supplementary text, audio, and short films relating the story of its history and documenting the $95 million worth of contributions that led to its eventual regeneration in 2022.

In-app visual. Image courtesy G&A

"We’re proud of th...

Calatrava-designed new St. Nicholas National Shrine lights up in ceremony honoring the lives lost during 9/11

2021-09-15T12:56:00-04:00

St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church hasn't been open for two decades. The church was located steps way from the World Trade Center, and it was completely destroyed on September 11, 2001. But this week, just ahead of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church will be reborn.

The 80-year-old church has been rebuilt near the One World Trade Center, and last Friday, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11, it was lit up from within for the first time. The original church, located at 155 Cedar Street in Manhattan’s Financial District, was founded in 1916 by Greek immigrants who purchased a tavern as a community house. As noted on the church’s website, this location was one of the first stops for Greek immigrants in America after departing Ellis Island.

During the events of 9/11, the church was destroyed in the collapse of the south tower. In the years that followed, Ground Zero was transformed with the construction of One World Trade Center and a new transportation hub, and an agreement to rebuild St. Nicholas was made between the church and the Port Authority. The resulting decision was to construct the new church at 130 Liberty Street, a location nearby the original site and close to the 9/11 memorial.

Previously on Archinect: Santiago Calatrava's G...

Twenty years in the making, EarthCam pays tribute to the World Trade Center site with an epic time-lapse video

2021-09-10T15:32:00-04:00

Twenty years after 9/11, the popular geographic livestream site EarthCam has revealed its commemoration of the tragedy using footage taken from two decades of loss and rebuilding.

EarthCam founder Brian Cury installed the camera in the days following the attacks to document the monumental recovery effort taking place in lower Tribeca. The twenty-five-year-old company, which is headquartered just across the Hudson in Upper Saddle River, NJ, has been continuously recording the site since then, making it the longest-running time-lapse project in EarthCam history.

Now, with unseen footage taken by cameras that captured every day of the past twenty years in thirteen million individual photographs, the interregnum has been reduced to a six-minute encapsulation of the transformation of the sixteen-acre site from an active crime scene to an eerie void and finally to its current form as a tourist destination and memory site visited by over 6.5 million people per year.

“This creative time-lap...