The new “temporary” entrance to the PATH station at the World Trade Center, facing Vesey Street, will serve commuters until 2011. This picture was taken on Monday evening, hours before its scheduled opening. (Photos: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)
The 50,000 PATH commuters heading into Lower Manhattan on Tuesday morning will find a new direction — north — to leave the World Trade Center terminal.
This is the third temporary
PATH
terminal entrance and exit to have been constructed since 9/11. The modest structure stands on Vesey Street,
at the confluence of Greenwich Street and West Broadway, opposite the 7 World Trade Center plaza.
Like the current station and the one that was destroyed, it has an
imposing bank of escalators
running between the mezzanine and concourse levels. It will be in use until 2011, when the final version of the terminal, designed by Santiago Calatrava, will be completed.
The current entrance on Church Street is to stay open about two more weeks. Once it is shut down, the entire west side of Church Street, between Vesey and Liberty Streets, will be closed to pedestrians. (That means
Philip Belpasso, the street flutist who ceaselessly plays “Amazing Grace” at ground zero, will have to find a new perch.)
“This will be the last ‘temporary’ entrance,” said Steven Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. “The next time we announce an entrance, it will be
the permanent entrance to the Calatrava station.”
Besides the convenience of the Church Street entrance, PATH travelers will also lose one of the best public viewing spots around the trade center site: a fence running along the edge of the concourse level, offering
views directly into the construction area, where people often stepped out of the commuting tide to reflect quietly.
There is really no such thing as quiet any longer on those 16 acres.
On the mezzanine level of the existing station, the route to the new Vesey Street escalators is already clear.
What will be lost in the transition is the viewing area on the concourse of the Church Street entrance. Commuters could glimpse through this fence at the construction activity at ground zero. It was one of the best public vantages available anywhere around the site.