The Oculus
185 Greenwich Street | also 50 Church Street | Financial District | built 2009
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1971
The new World Trade Center PATH station opens and replaces Hudson Terminal
Hudson Terminal closed on July 2, 1971, for a three-day changeover, and the new station opened on July 6 just west of the old one. Larger loops let it turn 10-car trains, where the old tight loops could handle six at most. The $35 million station had nine high-speed escalators between its platforms and mezzanine and tied into the new towers through an underground concourse.
“The new PATH station opened on July 6, 1971, west of the original terminal.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1993
The 1993 bombing brings down part of a PATH station ceiling and traps dozens
The station took what the Port Authority called minor damage in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, but a section of ceiling collapsed and trapped dozens of people. Within a week the Port Authority had restored PATH service to the World Trade Center. By 2001 the station was handling about 25,000 passengers a day.
“…a section of ceiling in the station collapsed and trapped dozens. Within a week, the Port Authority was able to resume PATH service…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2001
A PATH trainmaster halts World Trade Center service before the second plane hits
Trains from New Jersey were arriving at the station every three minutes when the first plane struck on September 11, 2001. Retired trainmaster Richie Moran, working at the control center in Jersey City, gave the order to stop the trains, and service into and out of the trade center was suspended before the second plane hit, 17 minutes after the first. Dispatcher Donna Martinez smelled fuel after leaving her windowless office five floors below street level and told the crew of a Hoboken train to evacuate instead of reloading.
Source: nj.com
- 2001
Engineers paddle a flooded tunnel and find PATH car 745 still waiting on track 3
On Sunday, September 30, 2001, Port Authority engineer Peter Rinaldi and others entered the PATH loop through an intact emergency hatch on West Street near Vesey Street. The tunnel was flooded, so they used small rafts and reached the station's north end, where car 745 stood with its doors open. It was the lead car of a seven-car Hoboken train that had reached track 3 around 8:52 a.m. on September 11 and been evacuated. Rinaldi resolved to save it, and the car touched down on trolley museum rails in August 2015.
Source: heritagerail.org
- 2003
PATH trains return to the World Trade Center site through a temporary station
Train service into the World Trade Center site resumed on November 23, 2003, when a temporary PATH station opened where the original had stood. Port Authority chief architect Robert I. Davidson designed it, and it was built for $323 million. The first train to arrive was the one used to evacuate people on September 11. The station had a canopy entrance on Church Street and a mosaic mural called Iridescent Lightning by Giulio Candussio of Italy.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2004
Santiago Calatrava unveils a winged station house for the World Trade Center site
The Port Authority hired Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava in early 2004 to design a roughly $2 billion transportation hub, and he revealed his scheme that January. It called for an above-ground station house with curved supports reaching outward like wings and a skylight running its length. Calatrava described the idea as a bird being released from a child's hand, though security concerns later forced the soaring spike to be scaled back.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2005
A StoryCorps booth opens in the temporary PATH station to record stories of 9/11
The temporary PATH station housed a StoryCorps booth that opened in 2005, where visitors could arrange to record oral histories about the September 11 attacks. It stood in a station built to replace the one destroyed at the World Trade Center. Construction work on the site closed the booth in the spring of 2007.
“The station was also home to a StoryCorps booth, which opened in 2005.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2007
A 37-foot tent shelters the Church Street entrance to the temporary PATH station
From June 2007, a saddle-shaped tent of polyester and aluminum, 37 feet high and 85 feet long, covered the Church Street stairs into the temporary PATH terminal. Voorsanger Architects designed it for $275,000 with an upbeat look meant to signal a brighter future, and a tent maker in Surrey, British Columbia, built it. It came down in April 2008, when the entrance closed and a plainer Vesey Street structure took over.
Source: cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com
- 2008
Construction of the hub begins in earnest as budget cuts end the opening roof
The first prefabricated steel ribs for the walkway under Fulton Street went in on July 8, 2008, which marked the real start of work on the Calatrava hub. The same year the design lost its mechanism for opening and closing the roof, dropped because of budget and space constraints. Skanska won the $542 million contract for the Oculus structure in summer 2010, with an opening first hoped for 2009 or 2010 slipping by years.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2013
The West Concourse opens, linking the hub to Brookfield Place under the West Side Highway
The West Concourse, a pedestrian passage beneath the West Side Highway, opened on October 23, 2013, connecting the station mezzanine with Brookfield Place in Battery Park City. Its southern wall faces the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, so shops line only the north side. Costing $225 million, it earned a reputation as the priciest pedestrian passage anywhere.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2016
A baby girl is born on the Oculus floor with help from Port Authority police
At about 11 p.m. on Wednesday, October 12, 2016, Mariam Suleman went into labor in the Oculus while traveling from New Jersey to Lenox Hill Hospital. Officer Matthew Binkowitz and two other Port Authority officers laid her down and screened her with blue tarps, and the baby girl, named Naheeda, was born within about ten minutes. Suleman said she would never forget having her child in so beautiful a place.
Source: Internet Archive
- 2016
A pre-9/11 passageway reopens with a rescue team's spray-painted door preserved
On December 19, 2016, the restored E Subway Entrance passageway reopened, linking the Chambers Street subway station to the transit hub. Its travertine floor, handrails, steps and doors date from the 1970s and are the last remnant of the original World Trade Center concourse. One door, behind protective glass, still carries the orange marking MATF 1 and 9 13, left by Massachusetts Task Force 1 when it searched the area on September 13, 2001.
Source: The New York Times
- 2016
The Oculus opens to the public at a cost near $4 billion, years behind schedule
The World Trade Center Transportation Hub opened on March 3, 2016, with only the west end of the Oculus and the mall corridor toward 4 World Trade Center in use. Its cost was about $4 billion, and it opened years behind a plan to finish in 2009, after a leaking roof pushed the opening into early 2016. Port Authority director Pat Foye declined to hold a celebration, calling the project a symbol of excess.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2016
Westfield World Trade Center opens in the Oculus with a John Legend concert
The mall opened on August 16, 2016, with 125 retail spaces, making it Manhattan's biggest shopping center. Opening day included a concert with John Legend and Leslie Odom Jr., a food court and stores such as Apple and Pandora. It took the place of the underground mall of the original World Trade Center, which was completed in 1975 and destroyed in the September 11 attacks.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2017
A woman falls to her death from an escalator handrail in the Oculus
Jenny Santos, 29, of New Jersey, fell about 34 feet from an escalator early on Saturday, February 11, 2017, landing on the marble floor of the main concourse, and she died at Bellevue Hospital. Officials who reviewed video said she had been lying on the handrail as if flying before she lost her balance. The death drew attention to the height of the glass barriers beside the hub's escalators.
Source: nydailynews.com
- 2019
The Oculus skylight cannot open for the 18th anniversary of September 11
Calatrava's design was meant to let the skylight open each September 11 for 102 minutes, the span between the first tower being struck and the second falling. After the 2018 anniversary the skylight's rubber seal broke, and in 2019 it could not open as scheduled. The timing also nodded to an earlier master plan by Daniel Libeskind, which had proposed a wedge of sunlight falling on the tower footprints.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- World Trade Center station (PATH)Wikipedia
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