This archive report was first published on 15 November 2019.
The Mystery of the Tiny Twin Towers ¶
Published on November 15, 2019
Clear skies and a high around 50 are expected this week, with a chillier and breezy weekend ahead.
Alternate-side parking regulations are in effect until November 28, Thanksgiving Day.
At the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, a miniature replica of the World Trade Center, carved into the western facade, was destroyed in an act of hate, church leaders believe.
The original carving, created in 1990, depicted the World Trade Center and other iconic New York buildings cracking and collapsing amid a nuclear mushroom cloud. Below this modern reimagining of the biblical apocalypse were depictions of rebuilding and resurrection.
Since September 11, 2001, the scene had attracted the attention of conspiracy theorists who hypothesized whether it somehow foretold the terror attacks.
Then, sometime between last Christmas and January 2, something heavy crashed into the top third of the cathedral's twin towers, breaking them off and leaving a jagged scar behind.
No other carvings were damaged, and church officials filed a police report, but nothing came of it.
The cathedral faced a mystery: Who destroyed its twin towers, a conspiracy theorist or someone else? It also faced a choice: Should it restore the towers or leave them broken?
Some weighed in against restoration, including Simon Verity, the master stone carver from Britain who led the overall work at the Portal of Paradise. Joseph Kincannon, the actual carver of the twin tower scene, said he understood that thinking.
“Things that are broken,” he said, “that's another part of history as well.”
However, the Rt. Rev. Andrew M.L. Dietsche, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, felt strongly that the towers should be fixed.
So Mr. Kincannon, now 58 and living in Texas, was asked to return and rebuild the towers.
Up on the scaffold in late October, Mr. Kincannon pointed out how he had added a bit of his own personal history to the work: his brownstone on West 112th Street.
He filed a small piece of Indiana limestone to the shape of the towers and checked to make sure it would fit into the gap where the new towers would sit.
Ultimately, he agreed with the church's decision to restore the carving, the purpose of which had always been to transform tragedy into art.
