The World Trade Center Survivor -- Fritz Koenig's "The Sphere"

The Sphere, rededicated as a memorial to the victims of The World Trade Center - photo by Alice Lum

From the earliest conception of The World Trade Center, art was to play an integral part. Works by esteemed artists Louise Nevelson, Joan Miro, James Rosati, Masayuki Nagare, Alexander Calder, Roy Lichtenstein, Cynthia Mailman, Germaine Keller, Romare Bearden, and Kenneth Snelson were displayed in the two soaring silver towers. In addition to the works commissioned for the buildings, the Cantor Fitzgerald offices housed some 300 sculptures and drawings by Auguste Rodin.

In the plaza, a fountain by Elyn Zimmerman served as a memorial to the victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

The World Trade Center buildings were not only a place of business, but a place of beauty and art.

On the morning of September 11, 2001 it all came to an end.

In the five-acre plaza, prior to that morning, there stood an abstract sculpture by Bavarian artist Fritz Koenig titled “Kugelkaryatide” or “Great Spherical Caryatid.” The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, owner of the World Trade Center, commissioned the piece five years before the buildings were completed.

Koenig cast the 25-foot high bronze and steel piece in 52 segments. He intended for the 45,000-pound sphere to symbolize world peace through world trade. Ironically, when finished it was installed amid a circle of fountains designed by Minoru Yamasaki, simulating the Grand Mosque of Mecca with the Kugelkaryatide standing in place of the Kaaba.

The Sphere as it appeared before the morning of September 11, 2001

Over the years World Trade Center workers who gathered around the sculpture to eat lunch or relax gave the sculpture the unofficial name “The Sphere.”

On the morning of September 11 when the enormous Trade Towers fell, the artwork inside and around them was obliterated. Of the priceless bronze Rodins on the 104th Floor, nothing remained. Masayuki Nagare’s black granite sculpture “Cloud Fortress” and James Rosati’s stainless steel “Ideogram” were reduced to unidentifiable particles. “Commuter Landscape,” “Path Mural,” and “Fan Dancing with the Birds,” three decorative murals by Cynthia Mailman, Germaine Keller and Hunt Slonem, respectively, were lost forever.

But amazingly, as workers slowly removed tons of rubble and twisted steel beams, Fritz Koenig’s Sphere began to emerge. Although damaged, the sculpture that was meant to symbolize world peace had survived.

Inside a gaping hole ripped open at the top of the sphere, workers found a Bible, an airliner seat and documents from one of the upper floor offices. Koenig said later “It became its own cemetery.”

The Sphere was carefully dismantled and sent to storage near JFK International Airport. Almost immediately, the prospect of re-erecting the sculpture as a memorial was discussed. The artist was opposed. It was, he said, “a beautiful corpse.”

Yet as it was the only remainder of the World Trade Centers left essentially intact, Koenig relented. He personally supervised the re-erection of the sculpture in Battery Park. Fifteen iron workers and four engineers worked to create a new base for the Sphere. Six months to the day after the barbaric attacks on the Towers, The Sphere was rededicated on March 11, 2002.

Koenig remarked, “It was a sculpture, now it’s a monument. It now has a different beauty, one I could never imagine. It has its own life – different from the one I gave to it.” An eternal flame was lit on September 11, 2002 to the victims of the attack.

Upon completion of the National September 11 Memorial at Ground Zero, The Sphere will go home again.

John Seward Johnson II's "Double Check" -- Zuccotti Park

Double Check by Seward Johnson, ©1982 The Sculpture Foundation

John Seward Johnson II was expected to work in the family business, Johnson & Johnson.  And he did.  Until his uncle Robert Wood Johnson II fired him in 1962. 

Now without a job, the 32-year old turned his attention to painting and, later, to sculpture.   With an eye for everyday people and situations Johnson was able to create astonishing art from the mundane and commonplace.  Like Charles Dana Gibson or Norman Rockwell before him, the subjects for his life-like sculptures were regular people going about their ordinary lives. 

One such sculpture was the life-sized bronze titled “Double Check.”  Created in 1982, the artist loaned it to Merrill Lynch to be displayed in Liberty Plaza Park in the Financial District.  Johnson’s businessman sits on a bench, sifting through his briefcase to make sure he has everything in preparation for a meeting.  For nearly two decades it delighted tourists and made frenzied stock brokers and bankers smile. 

And then came September 11, 2001. 

When the World Trade Towers came down, plunging New York and the country into mourning and disbelief, grey ash covered the ruins of Liberty Park.   As the clouds of debris cleared and emergency responders flooded into the area, some mistook the statue for a dazed survivor. 

Liberty Plaza Park and "Double Check" were covered with debris and grey, gritty ash on the day following 9/11/2001 -- photo punditpress.com

In the following days and weeks, “Double Check” became a symbol of the World Trade Tower victims, murdered for simply going to work.  The statue represented the common, working guy in a suit who died trying to make a living for his family.  Candles, flowers and notes were left by the sculpture. 

Although it was jarred from his base, the statue survived, albeit a little banged up.  “Double Check” was no longer just a sculpture, it was a memorial.   It gripped the hearts of New Yorkers. 

Eventually John Seward Johnson removed the sculpture to his studio where he cast a duplicate, adding the objects left by mourners—now bronzed—and giving the statue a grey patina.  The new sculpture received the fitting title “Makeshift Memorial.” 

The original statue was refurbished by Johnson.  He left the damages caused by crashing debris of the towers as a permanent reminder to the world of the holocaust of that morning in September.    It was returned to Liberty Plaza Park.  The businessman sits on a granite bench facing the site of the Towers. 

A plaque was affixed to the returned statue that informed passersby that “Double Check” is “a poignant reminder of hope and endurance for us all.” 

In 2006 Liberty Plaza Park was renovated and renamed Zuccotti Park, after John Zuccotti chairman of the park’s owners, Brookfield Office Properties.   “Double Check” continued its role as an unofficial memorial to the murdered Financial District workers of 9/11. 

The park took on a new personality about five years later when it became base for the Occupy Wall Street protestors.  In their fervor to denounce anything remotely capitalist, they stuffed trash in the sculpture’s briefcase, tied a mask around his face and a bandana on his head.   The statue that had become a memorial to the deaths of 3,000 innocent lives became a symbol of decadence to the protestors. 

In their passion to make a point, protestors defaced a memorial -- photo punditpress.com

Their misled zeal was widely condemned by shocked and offended New Yorkers.

Double Check by Seward Johnson, ©1982 The Sculpture Foundation

The garbage in the bronze briefcase has been removed and “Double Check” has regained his dignity.  The statue that was intended to be a passing comment on everyday life along Wall Street instead became a poignant symbol of survival and a tribute to the common working man.