Whether or Not to Rebuild the Twin Towers

N E W   Y O R K, Sept. 21 -- As New Yorkers stare aghast at the twin towers' crumpled heap and mourn the thousands lost there, a refrain is growing louder: Rebuild, rebuild, rebuild.

A plurality of New Yorkers — 46 percent — say they prefer rebuilding the twin towers as they were, compared to erecting smaller office buildings or a memorial park, says a Marist College poll released Thursday. "Rebuild them exactly as they were," former New York Mayor Ed Koch also said this week.

Larry Silverstein, the developer whose company just took over a99-year, $3.2 billion lease on the twin towers complex in July, said he wantsto rebuild, but not "a carbon copy of what was." Instead, he said on Thursday he may construct four 50-story buildings.

The 110-story twin towers, though maligned in their early years by critics who considered them boring, gangly, environmentally destructive and even arrogant, eventually won the hearts of New Yorkers and others worldwide as symbols of soaring aspirations and bold financial success. The world watched in horror on Sept. 11 as passenger jets with terrorists at the helm tore into the towers, eventually crumbling them and leaving thousands missing — 6,333 at last count.

Wouldn't it be the boldest, most defiant move of all for the towers to once again rise from the ashes?

While wishing for a restoration of the famed Manhattan skyline is understandable, some say it might be an emotional, knee-jerk reaction rather than a practical one. "Emotionally, I'd love to see it rebuilt," says Angus Gillespie, a Rutgers University professor and author of Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's World Trade Center. "But rationally and intellectually, I don't think that's likely."

Rebuilding Could Take 10 Years, Billions of Dollars

Most would agree that whatever the future of the 16-acre World Trade Center site, a memorial must be built to pay tribute to the thousands who lost their lives there.

The trickier question is what else will be built on the site — replicas of the twin towers? One or several smaller buildings? Of similar or different design?