From our first issue in the overwhelming immediate aftermath to last week’s examination of the still-growing number of victims, New York has spent two and a half decades trying to illuminate and grapple with the meaning of the horrifying attack on our city on September 11, 2001. For this year’s anniversary, we’ve compiled just some of the most compelling coverage from our archive, including a number of digitally restored articles and cover stories which newer readers might not be familiar with.

For our first issue following the attacks, more than three dozen reporters compiled a gripping chronicle of individual New Yorkers’ experiences from across the city on September 11 and the next two days. From the introduction:

The TV and the newspapers called it an attack on America, which was true, but, in the moment, irrelevant: It was an attack on us. We didn’t experience it through the mediation of CNN, but on sidewalks or rooftops or terraces or parks – if we were lucky enough not to be in the midst of it. The bursting, pulsing fireballs, and the smoke billowing off over the Woolworth Building toward Brooklyn, held a terrible beauty – until we realized that, yes, those were people jumping from the towers. Our neighbors were dying, and we were watching; it’s hard, days later, to remember this without fighting away tears.“Daddy, is it real?” a son asked a father, seeing the towers aflame on TV. “That can’t happen in my house, right?” What a hard question to answer, now. The week progressed from shock and amazement to a deep grief for our neighbors under the rubble and their families.Still, the terrorists – people who understand nothing about us, by the way – dealt a blow to something else: our cynicism. Throughout the week, there was a sense of civic nobility, exemplified by the heroism of the firefighters, climbing the stairs against the human current toward what they knew was an inferno. That’s one of the stories of last week. There is a city full of others.

The TV and the newspapers called it an attack on America, which was true, but, in the moment, irrelevant: It was an attack on us. We didn’t experience it through the mediation of CNN, but on sidewalks or rooftops or terraces or parks – if we were lucky enough not to be in the midst of it. The bursting, pulsing fireballs, and the smoke billowing off over the Woolworth Building toward Brooklyn, held a terrible beauty – until we realized that, yes, those were people jumping from the towers. Our neighbors were dying, and we were watching; it’s hard, days later, to remember this without fighting away tears.

“Daddy, is it real?” a son asked a father, seeing the towers aflame on TV. “That can’t happen in my house, right?” What a hard question to answer, now. The week progressed from shock and amazement to a deep grief for our neighbors under the rubble and their families.

Still, the terrorists – people who understand nothing about us, by the way – dealt a blow to something else: our cynicism. Throughout the week, there was a sense of civic nobility, exemplified by the heroism of the firefighters, climbing the stairs against the human current toward what they knew was an inferno. That’s one of the stories of last week. There is a city full of others.

Read the rest of the story …

. Written in the Dust at the Corner of Church and Vesey

In the same issue, Mark Jacobson detailed what he saw and heard near what was left of the World Trade Center hours after they fell down:

What was there, now so sifted through by 24/7 coverage, remains an adrenaline haze. The flutter of Port Authority memorandums (“To: M. Zoch, From: R. Catlin, Subject: Major Project Delays and Underruns”), circling in the wind like buzzards, stuck in trees. Éclairs and carrot cake melting in glass, soot-covered bakery cases like Zagat’s Pompeii. A roofless, crushed city bus beside the flaming 7 World Trade Center, the ad for Arnold’s Collateral Damage unscathed, opening October 5. Two men came out of a supermarket carrying boxes, asked, “You from the insurance company?” and offered to point out “a leg.” And in the center of it all: what was left of the towers, which was almost nothing.“What happened to the rest of the buildings?” I asked a weary fireman.“It’s underneath your shoe” was the reply.Down there was only dust. Which made it very clear exactly what had happened, and how complete the nightmare was.It is mighty, an unfathomable gathering of energy, when 8 million people with 8 million things on their minds suddenly think only one thing. The vibe can be felt. A man on a pay phone at the corner of Second Avenue starts to scream: His wife had a breakfast appointment at Windows on the World today, he didn’t know until now. “Not Dem Laden, Ben Laden,” one bum screams at another. A flower-shop owner says business is slow now but he knows it will “pick up.”

What was there, now so sifted through by 24/7 coverage, remains an adrenaline haze. The flutter of Port Authority memorandums (“To: M. Zoch, From: R. Catlin, Subject: Major Project Delays and Underruns”), circling in the wind like buzzards, stuck in trees. Éclairs and carrot cake melting in glass, soot-covered bakery cases like Zagat’s Pompeii. A roofless, crushed city bus beside the flaming 7 World Trade Center, the ad for Arnold’s Collateral Damage unscathed, opening October 5. Two men came out of a supermarket carrying boxes, asked, “You from the insurance company?” and offered to point out “a leg.” And in the center of it all: what was left of the towers, which was almost nothing.

“What happened to the rest of the buildings?” I asked a weary fireman.

“It’s underneath your shoe” was the reply.

Down there was only dust. Which made it very clear exactly what had happened, and how complete the nightmare was.

It is mighty, an unfathomable gathering of energy, when 8 million people with 8 million things on their minds suddenly think only one thing. The vibe can be felt. A man on a pay phone at the corner of Second Avenue starts to scream: His wife had a breakfast appointment at Windows on the World today, he didn’t know until now. “Not Dem Laden, Ben Laden,” one bum screams at another. A flower-shop owner says business is slow now but he knows it will “pick up.”

He also shared how his kids were reacting and a brief conversation he had with the Palestinian owner of his neighborhood bodega on the morning of September 12.

Who would storm into a burning building without a care for their own safety? Firefighters. But how do you carry on with 300 missing?

In our second issue after the attacks, Chris Smith detailed one firefighter’s terrifying escape from the collapsing towers and explored the profound impact of 9/11 on the FDNY:

Outside firehouses in the past two weeks, it’s often seemed that firefighters were comforting the public, instead of the other way around. Firefighters have grieved before, but their famously cheerful, resilient dispositions have always returned. This time, though, no one’s quite so confident. “Why do this job?” asks [Howie] Scott’s buddy John Ceriello, who found his own harrowing escape route. “When you’re young and dumb, it’s very exciting. Then with time you come to realize you’re good at it, which fuels your desire to keep doing it. And there’s a sense of invulnerability: ‘It won’t happen to me.’ ” The fourteen-year veteran, with too many near-misses to count, pauses and looks around the funeral home where one of his Squad 18 brothers lies in a coffin. “This time it did happen. To all of us.”

Outside firehouses in the past two weeks, it’s often seemed that firefighters were comforting the public, instead of the other way around. Firefighters have grieved before, but their famously cheerful, resilient dispositions have always returned. This time, though, no one’s quite so confident. “Why do this job?” asks [Howie] Scott’s buddy John Ceriello, who found his own harrowing escape route. “When you’re young and dumb, it’s very exciting. Then with time you come to realize you’re good at it, which fuels your desire to keep doing it. And there’s a sense of invulnerability: ‘It won’t happen to me.’ ” The fourteen-year veteran, with too many near-misses to count, pauses and looks around the funeral home where one of his Squad 18 brothers lies in a coffin. “This time it did happen. To all of us.”

Read the whole story …

. Should We Stay or Should We Go?

Urban warriors thought they’d seen it all. But will gas masks and barricades finally make us surrender?

Alex Williams wrote about the suddenly widespread fight-or-flight impulse among New Yorkers in the three weeks following the attacks:

The fantasy of escape. Who hasn’t at least considered bailing out for the yogic calm of California or cashing in for a couple of years and moving out to a 200-year-old Colonial with a wraparound porch in Litchfield County? Even in the best of times, New York is a deal we’ve all struck with ourselves. But now the terms of that deal present themselves with a new urgency. What is the price we are willing to pay to stay here? We know the old, pre-September 11 price: We put up with the obscene rents, the huge mortgages, the tiny apartments, and the ulcer-creating career anxiety. In return, we had the feeling of being at the center of things, the feeling of excitement, distinction, and, let’s face it, the superiority we all derived from being able to put up with these hassles. We set ourselves apart by what we were willing to endure. In the army of urban dwellers, New Yorkers are the Delta Force.But now we find ourselves facing new clauses in our personal contracts to live in New York: gas masks, bomb scares, three hour traffic-jams at checkpoints that can turn a journey from JFK into a nerve-fraying campaign. We didn’t sign up to live in a terrorist target. The night of the disaster, Kathleen Thomas, who watched the towers collapse with her 4-year-old son from their apartment on East 20th Street, sat down with her husband, James Casey, to discuss whether this was the moment they should finally leave the city that has been their home for 25 years. It was not the first time they’d discussed it; James had already been pushing to move to the suburbs. “New York is the city that never sleeps, and this is the conversation that never stops,” says Kathleen. “But now it’s in overdrive. Everyone’s asking, ‘Is this the moment where we say, Let’s just go?’ “

The fantasy of escape. Who hasn’t at least considered bailing out for the yogic calm of California or cashing in for a couple of years and moving out to a 200-year-old Colonial with a wraparound porch in Litchfield County? Even in the best of times, New York is a deal we’ve all struck with ourselves. But now the terms of that deal present themselves with a new urgency. What is the price we are willing to pay to stay here? We know the old, pre-September 11 price: We put up with the obscene rents, the huge mortgages, the tiny apartments, and the ulcer-creating career anxiety. In return, we had the feeling of being at the center of things, the feeling of excitement, distinction, and, let’s face it, the superiority we all derived from being able to put up with these hassles. We set ourselves apart by what we were willing to endure. In the army of urban dwellers, New Yorkers are the Delta Force.

But now we........

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