From any of the 60 stories of One Chase Manhattan Plaza, a modernist icon in lower Manhattan, workers can see disaster.
Only two blocks away from the Liberty Street edifice - which has come, by default, to be the tallest structure in lower Manhattan is an excavation site littered with twisted spikes of steel, the girders that once held aloft the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
One Chase Manhattan was built by David Rockefeller before he became the companys chairman as a symbol of its might and aspirations. Although it is now an auxiliary property of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which has headquarters in midtown, it is still home base to powerful executives from Morgan Chase and other market-leading firms, such as Zurich Capital Markets.
Despite the buildings literal and symbolic strength, conversations on Wednesday with people who work there indicate that few still feel safe in the former bastion of financial security. Nerves are frayed and emotions tense among the buildings occupants, most of whom bore all too much witness to last weeks mass destruction and murder.
Executives in suits declined to talk to a reporter as they slipped in and out of One Chase Manhattan Plaza, their gazes stony. Security guards and other workers, including some from the buildings cafeterias (which have been dispensing free food), said they felt traumatized by what they had seen and anxious about returning to work so close to the scene.
On the day of the terrorist attacks, hundreds of employees from One Chase gathered on the eponymous outdoor plaza, which is one story above street level, to watch the blaze in Tower One. Minutes later, when the second tower was hit, workers began running toward the waterfront as they were told to do, or down into the subway station beneath the building.
You felt the whole building shake, and then there was an announcement saying, Go back to your offices, said Erving Goris, 25, who works on the 37th floor as a Web system administrator at MCM Inc., a subsidiary of Informa PLC that provides analysis of the financial markets to financial services firms. Some people went back I didnt. I dont care what some building announcer says; I trust my gut.
Maura OConnor, 32, a sales executive at MCM, reported for work on Wednesday the 19th, but with trepidation. Its eerie, she said. Were one of the tallest down here. All the plane had to do was make a small turn, or the pilot bump his elbow, and it would have been this building.
Johnny Cruz, 42, who works in the cafeteria of the law firm Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy, said he no longer feels safe on the highest floors of the Chase building. I dont like to go higher than 47, the floor on which he works, he said. Francisco Garcia, 38, who also works in the Milbank cafeteria, said he has spoken with grief counselors hired by the firm to help employees.
At headquarters, J.P. Morgan Chase executives declined to talk about the buildings proximity to the disaster site. One source within the company said that J.P. Morgan Chase cleared another downtown building, 55 Water Street, for occupancy on Wednesday and aims to be able to clear its other downtown properties, including One Chase Manhattan Plaza and 60 Wall Street, by Monday. None of the buildings were damaged, the source said.
While One Chase Manhattan Plaza may offer no solace to its tenants, observers will notice that in the new skyline of lower Manhattan it now seems to loom large over its neighbors, which include the Trump and Helmsley buildings. Chase Manhattan Bank commissioned the building in the 1950s, and construction was overseen by Mr. Rockefeller. This influential modern skyscraper architecture critic Paul Goldberger once called it the box all the others came in is a massive rectangular solid made oddly ethereal by a repeating design of clear glass and silver steel.
The raised plaza surrounding the building, normally open to the public and now closed off entirely, holds a 25-ton fiberglass sculpture by Jean Dubuffet and a sunken sculpture garden by Isamu Noguchi. Along Nassau Street, the marble base of the plaza is now broken up in several places, scarred by the debris that swept fiercely through the corridors of the neighborhoods streets.
Last Wednesday, maintenance crews were busy cleaning the facade of the building, the west side of which is covered with white soot. Dozens of security guards were manning the building, blocking entrances, checking identification cards, and redirecting customers from the closed Chase branch on the ground floor to another branch some blocks away on Water Street. Guards said all mail packages were being inspected before they were allowed to enter the building. If something comes off a truck, the whole truck has to be inspected, said one guard, who did not wish to be named.
On the south side of the building, a sign proudly explains that the Chase building launched a new round of downtown development when many financial companies were moving to midtown. Fifty years later, tenants of the financial district may be forced to resume the move.
Outside on Pine Street, several office workers pointed to their neighbor One Liberty Plaza, a tall black skyscraper which was reported to have suffered structural damage from the World Trade Center collapse. The building, which does indeed appear tilted, may now pose an immediate threat to both the Helmsley and the Chase buildings.
But the more modest Chase branch on 214 Broadway at Fulton Street, just one block north of Liberty Plaza and directly east of the World Trade Center, has clearly already suffered damage. Tourists and passersby stopped to take pictures of the inside of the branch, a chilling scene of broken glass, overturned water coolers, and a dust-coated deposit slip counter with a date calendar frozen at TUES SEPT 11.
According to one security guard at One Chase Manhattan, fewer than half the buildings employees were reporting to work there eight days after the attacks. Some were likely working from temporary offices in other locations, but that did not help the local merchants.
The owner of a newspaper kiosk on the empty southeast corner of the plaza said he was waiting for Monday the 24th to see if people would come back and bring him some business. Jerry Liberatos, the owner of Koyzina Cafe, across the street, said that a lot of workers came on Tuesday to pick up their papers but said they did not plan to return again soon.
This whole area is hit, Mr. Liberatos said. I cant even pay my employees. He said the cafes regulars from the Chase building told him that less than 10% of the building was occupied. Were hoping for Monday. If it continues like this, I dont know what well do.
