Off The Record
This Historic Photo Has Never Been Edited – Take A Closer Look Down And Try Not To Cry When You Learn The Eerie Truth Behind
A few moments ago, a spectacular picture of the Twin Towers in Manhattan with a gorgeous beach in the foreground appeared on my phone’s screen.
As though they were in a tropical paradise, people were relaxing in the sand. Could this be genuine, though?
New York City’s forgotten beach oasis
It’s almost hard to think that there used to be a beach along the shoreline if you walk along the seas close to Battery Park, which is where the Twin Towers used to be.
The neighborhood is now dotted with modern structures and busy streets, and the sound of the city permeates the atmosphere. The Statue of Liberty can be seen in the distance as the sea gently laps against a contemporary promenade.
In actuality, though, people used to sunbathe here, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the World Trade Center’s shadows. Manhattan’s harbor welcomed people looking for a unique moment of peace and quiet, and the city’s hustle and bustle looked worlds away from this neglected seaside haven with its own sandy beachfront.
However, this sandy retreat was an unplanned oasis created by the World Trade Center’s construction delays in the middle of the 1970s.
Wasn’t meant for public use
In order to create a temporary beach along the waterfront, workmen dug up soil from the neighboring basin as the Twin Towers’ huge foundation took shape.
Manhattanites swiftly adopted it as their own, transforming it into an unexpected refuge even though it wasn’t intended for public usage. Under the looming shadow of the World Trade Center, readers found their quiet place by the sea, volleyball matches broke out in the sand, and sunbathers relaxed in the warm light of the sun.
Battery Park Beach is the name given to the stretch of sand that was formerly a building site and turned into a hidden beauty.
Amazingly, some people, like Suellen Epstein, can still recall what it was like to bathe on that beach. She is shown in the photo below, enjoying the summer sun in 1977 while growing up in the adjacent Tribeca area.
Suellen talked about her beach recollections in an interview with Tribeca Citizen, pointing out that the sand wasn’t really the fine, soft kind you’d find on a tropical shore. Naturally, the ocean waves never kissed the somewhat coarse sand.
Hey, though, it worked.
“We didn’t have resources to go out to the Hamptons,” Suellen told Tribeca Citizen and continued: “We were out there on the beach any sunny Sunday—as long as it wasn’t wet. It was a great place to get through the whole Sunday time.”
Suellen and her partner had a rare moment of alone time in the picture above. The beach was all theirs on the day the Times photo was taken.
”You felt like you weren’t in the city—like it was the Manhattan countryside,” Suellen recalled.
Hosting the largest anti-nuclear rally in history
In addition to providing a tranquil haven, the “acres and acres of landfill” that were finally turned into the beach also served as a potent platform for social change. A famous black-and-white image from September 23, 1979, shows a sandy no-man’s land turned into the center of a sizable anti-nuclear demonstration.
As 200,000 people gathered at the tip of Manhattan for what would turn out to be the biggest anti-nuclear, pro-solar rally in history, hundreds of people sat in the sand, enjoying the sunny sky, free music, and a wave of controversy.
The beach was crowded with celebrities who were speaking out for the cause, so it wasn’t only the crowd that made the day memorable. Jane Fonda gave a moving address, while artists like Jackson Browne and Pete Seeger performed.
The national protest movement, which had mostly waned following the conclusion of the Vietnam War in 1975, was revived by the demonstration.
Nuclear power was now the cause, and the Harrisburg nuclear accident earlier that year served as the impetus for this fresh vigor.
Striking installations
Tribeca Beach, also known as Battery Park Beach, was a vibrant creative venue that was teeming with artistic activity and entertainment. Artists could really afford to live and work in the city, and many tiny dance groups were flourishing. At that time, a grant was awarded to the public arts group Creative Time to bring art to the beach, which included a visually arresting installation by Mary Miss, a local environmental artist.
Nancy Rubins, a young sculptor, had a rare chance to leave her stamp on this unique site when the beach was transformed into the stage for Art on the Beach in 1980. She was amazed by the site’s enormous size and the engineering that went into it, even at the age of 27. She provided a piece made from discarded objects that she gathered in large quantities from several Goodwills, including lampshades, hoses, and small appliances.
In the end, her artwork grew into a rubbish tornado 45 feet high.
“It was very humbling to work at that site. I was young, and it was so huge,” she told The New York Times.
A gigantic wheat field
Agnes Denes’s installation Wheatfield—A Confrontation was another eye-catching piece on the property. The two acres of wheat she planted, facing the Statue of Liberty and only a few blocks from Wall Street and the World Trade Center, was a startling reflection on the contemporary towers.
Denes worked 16 hours a day to make it all work, and she and her colleagues planted the wheat for a month. The article’s goal was to raise awareness of the pressing environmental issues in the nation’s financial hub.
“Planting and harvesting a field of wheat on land worth $4.5 billion created a powerful paradox. Wheatfield was a symbol, a universal concept; it represented food, energy, commerce, world trade, and economics. It referred to mismanagement, waste, world hunger, and ecological concerns,” Denes describes the project on her website.
Don’t you believe the pictures of this project are nearly as breathtaking as the beach itself?
The truth behind the Manhattan beach photo
I was initially drawn to this story because of the same creative spirit that led Chris Galori and David Vanden-Eynden to the beach. They are the ones in the picture below, which was captured by Fred Conrad, a former New York Times photographer. The image was taken in 1977.
David, an environmental graphic designer, recalled the scene in an interview with The New York Times in 2019: “There was nothing there yet, and there were spectacular views of the towers and across the river.” He also revealed that some areas of the landfill were fenced off from the public, though not all of it was restricted.
I was initially drawn to this tale because of the creative spirit that led David Vanden-Eynden and Chris Galori to the beach; they are the ones in the picture below, which was captured by Fred Conrad, a former New York Times photographer.
The image was taken in 1977.
In a 2019 interview with The New York Times, environmental graphic artist David recounted the scene:
“There was nothing there yet, and there were spectacular views of the towers and across the river.” He also revealed that while some areas of the landfill were fenced off from the public, not all of it was restricted.
The eerie truth behind the pictures
What became of this nearly unreal place, then?
The New York Times claims that when around 3,000 individuals moved to Battery Park City in 1983, things started to change. Today, the area feels more like a suburban office park than a real city neighborhood.
Almost all of the old landfill had been developed by 2000.
However, something that happened in 2001 gives these pictures a completely different perspective. The images of those sun worshippers peacefully relaxing make it difficult to avoid thinking about what occurred to the Twin Towers on that tragic September day.
On the Beach, Manhattan, 1977
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We already know what they were unable to have: the World Trade Center’s terrible demise, which would permanently alter New York City’s environment.
There’s a certain elegiac and unsettling quality to these photos now. One person, reflecting on the images, noted, “My God! This picture contains it all: life, death, youth, age, stillness, anticipation.”
The weight of that sentiment is difficult to ignore. The carnage that would transpire years later was unimaginable to these joyful sun worshippers.
“So much could be said,” another continued. “But I’ll just look, and cry.”
We are also reminded of the unsettling reality as we gaze at these now-iconic pictures: everything changes as time passes, frequently in unexpected ways.
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