Part Two: Photos of 9/11 taken from 310 Greenwich and undiscovered until now

Sometime in the mid-2000s, a resident of 310 Greenwich — Maryann Puglisi — gave her photo albums to her sister, Frances Utz. Frances stashed them away for a time, and then about four years ago, passed the albums on to her daughter and grandson. Just last year, Maryann died, and her grand-nephew, Liam Enea, 19, decided to flip through the photos.

He found a series of snapshots taken from what is obviously one of the southside balconies of IPN — overlooking Washington Market Park — of the collapse of the World Trade Center and then some of the recovery afterwards. They are remarkable pictures, and it made my heart race just to look at them — to watch those events from her perspective. It looks like she must have waited until the last minute to retreat into her apartment as the dust cloud came north.

Liam, who scanned the photos this February and then published them on Reddit, was kind enough to allow me to download them here, for this one-time use. I am running them in two consecutive posts. This is the second.

 

6 Comments

  1. I lived through this here. It is my home. I am living down here over 30 years. It was a very hard time for all who lived through this here. It took a long time for the clean up and the rebuilding of the area. It also took a very long time mentally for all of us. Some of us have PTSD. No joke. We were happy when the the Freedom Tower came! We were told it was “safe” to live here. The EPA came and tested our place. We who worked and lived here were lied too. It was not safe. Some of us died and are sick from living down here. We need to fight for downtown to stay safe. After all this work down here I refuse to lay back and allow criminals mentally ill to take over our neighborhoods. I am sure I am not alone. Hopefully with a new Mayor that is for safer streets we can get back to normal. Lets never forget 3000 souls are down here. Its sacred ground.

    • Could not agree with this comment more – you are most certainly not alone and action needs to be taken ASAP to save this area.

      Tribeca Citizen – I think it would be useful to share more info on the mayoral candidates that have a common sense approach to safety and those aren’t just concerned with appearing to be ‘woke.’ It’s devastating to see these beautiful downtown neighbourhoods deteriorate so dramatically. We need leadership that cares about the tax-paying, law-abiding residents – the ones that have invested and built this community. Having criminals and mentally ill/drug addicted homeless running wild and attacking residents on the daily is simply unacceptable and it must be stopped.

      • Thank you! We need to come together to fight for our neighborhoods downtown! We need new leadership that fights for US! a SAFE CITY is the only way this city makes it.

        • Absolutely! There are some groups on Facebook that are dedicated to minimising the extreme damage that DeBlasio is causing: Downtown New Yorkers for Safe Streets and FiDi Residential Improvement. They’re in need of legal donations to try and thwart all of these destructive moves, so it would be great to spread the word to people in your network so they can unite people that have the common goal of preserving some degree of safety around here.

          Hopefully someone gets into office that will refund and respect the NYPD – we need them more than ever in these horrid times.

          • Yes, I am a part of that group and did and will continue to donate. I am praying for downtown and hope we don’t become prisoners here and to afraid to go outside because of what is going on. Homeless Hotels etc! Deblasio needs to be accountable for what he has done. The destruction of our city!

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