Jersey City used to be good for three things: it was a good place to park the car before getting on the ferry to New York, it served as the butt of many a poor joke by Manhattanites, and offered a fantastic view of the skyline across the Hudson. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre destroyed the latter, at least for the time being. Though not the prettiest buildings to many, for 25 years the twin towers dominated and defined Manhattan. They were usually the first buildings you would see as you neared the island, and also served as a useful reference point if you got lost when walking downtown.
| Manhattan: it will never be the same | ||||||
The jokes are largely gone as well, though they will return. Jersey City, and New Jersey as a whole, has become a temporary refuge from the destruction for several of the larger financial institutions. Barclays and Salomon Smith Barney spent much of the first two weeks after the attacks deeper into New Jersey, and have now all but returned to the city.
But for Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, and a host of other firms, Jersey City is going to be home for several months at least. Bankers who live in Manhattan have long mocked their bridge-and-tunnel colleagues (those who live off the island and need to use the city’s network of bridges and tunnels to get to work). Now they have to cope with a struggle of a commute to get to the PATH train system on Manhattan’s Avenue of the Americas, which takes them across to Jersey. Meanwhile their Jersey colleagues are quietly gloating at the shortened commute they now enjoy – were it not for the circumstances, they’d be crowing with delight.
Despite being just across the river, and only 10 minutes on the PATH, Jersey City is a completely different world. Well, certainly a completely different state. Not even the retail banks are the same – with First Union offering the main ATM facilities, rather than Chase or Citibank. For those used to the bustle of Manhattan, the rows of shops, restaurants and street stalls, it’s a shock. The small financial district is centred on Exchange Place down on the waterfront, with an unenviable view of its destroyed counterpart across the water.
But to get there from the PATH train involves at least a 10-minute walk; there is a stop at Exchange Place, but it’s on the route to the World Trade Centre so has been closed down for now. For now you get out at Grove station, set in the centre of a small square typical of so many American towns; but not of a financial hub. Once past the square, there is little to catch the eye, or entice the wallet, until reaching Exchange Place.
Even with the influx of bankers, it’s quiet; there’s nowhere to go. A bar here, a bar there, the odd sandwich shop. But most important, complain many of the traders at Lehman Brothers, which occupies 15 floors of the tallest building in the area and has just leased more space in Datek’s building across the road, there is a distinct lack of pizza joints. For now, Lehman has been making do by offering its employees free food – sandwiches, pasta, and huge cookies among the favourites.
From the commuting point of view, Merrill Lynch has it easier. Its trading floors are in the office of Nasdaq trading house Herzog Heine Geduld which it bought last year, and that’s right opposite the Pavonia PATH stop, the first one out of Manhattan. But the area looks more like an industrial estate than anything else. There is a handily-located sandwich shop next door, part of the Cosi chain, but not much else – unless you count a black she-male wandering around the street high on drugs at 9.30 in the morning as entertainment.
Back across the Hudson river, things are gradually returning to some semblance of normality. The collective grief etched on everyone’s face has gradually dissipated, and midtown, at least, appears to be bustling again, with the streets returning to gridlock. The local newspapers are starting to report on more than just the attacks, and fewer conversations revolve entirely around where you were when it happened, who you know who was killed, and who you know who escaped.
Even visiting dignitaries are finding time to do more than just pay their respects. A pub full of football-mad Englishmen are nursing Friday night hangovers with a few fresh beers, while watching Manchester United play Ipswich over a satellite link at 10 in the morning. Suddenly there are several black-suited gents watching with us, the coiled telephones reaching up to their ears telling us we were in the presence of, who, the FBI? No, they were the bodyguards for the mayor of Jerusalem, sitting in front of us wearing a red Manchester United jersey. He stayed till the end of the game, his convoy of limos waiting outside on a block cordoned off just for him.
But the after-effects of the attacks are everywhere. “We’re all glad to be back at work, and glad to be back in the building,” says Tom Kalaris, CEO of the Americas for Barclays Capital. “It feels like business as usual, if in a slow environment. Until you look out of the window, that is.” Kalaris has, after two weeks operating out of offices in New Jersey, just taken his firm back to its offices on Fulton and Broadway. It’s a block from the disaster, and is the closest building to the scene to which people have been allowed to return.
The National Guard is still downtown, and police still check the IDs of those travelling down to work there, and those who go to look at the devastation. And people are not that keen to stick around after work. On Monday September 17, the day the New York Stock Exchange reopened, those back at work downtown left the area as soon as they were done, heading straight for the subways and the increased ferry services. Regular post-work haunts such as Harry’s Bar and the North Star pub remained closed.
Moving uptown, the situation gradually improves. Occasionally, though, if the wind changes or storms roll in, you can smell the disaster site as far up as midtown four miles away.
Getting into Manhattan has become a trial of patience. At a push, the journey from Jersey City to Manhattan by car might take up to an hour. It’s turning into three or more. Police regularly search every third or fifth car, and in the last week of September the city imposed car-pool restrictions: between 6am and noon, no cars with just one person inside will be allowed onto the island.
Almost the entire city stopped to listen to president Bush address Congress nine days after the attack. Entire bars and restaurants went silent. In the midtown bar we were in, a couple of drunk twentysomethings whooped it up throughout the speech. No-one paid them much attention, until they accosted a new arrival to the bar. One of them made a remark about his colour, which started a fracas only stopped by the burly 70-year-old doorman. As the two were led out the back, one of them shouted “Don’t forget the fallen at Cantor Fitzgerald!”
We can repair the phones, we can return to work, return to our old haunts in the evening. But there is a gap in the skyline at the foot of the island, now no more than a temporary resting place for the 6,000 or more who perished in the attacks. It might seem bizarre to mourn the loss of a building, but the twin towers were New York City. We’ll move on, but it will never be the same.
