Silverstein intent on bringing miracle to the City.

Piled on a table for the perusal of visitors in the reception area of Silverstein Properties' headquarters, there are a number of hardcover books that are dedicated to Manhattan's architecture and incomparably photogenic skyline. A number of the books focus on the Twin Towers and one of them, a small but handsome picture book, presents a collection of shots taken throughout the two buildings' lifetime. One series details the towers' climbing ever higher during their construction, while another shot, taken from the Jersey City shore, shows the buildings rise up seemingly from right out of the water. A picture taken somewhere in Brooklyn captures the distant gray towers swathed in a bluish Manhattan summer haze, standing so high they could almost be floating.

Can Larry Silverstein's plans for the rebuilding of the site achieve the iconic status that the Twin Towers had attained by the time of their demise? One need not look much further than that very same reception room to get an idea of the answer. Just down the main hall that leads into the firm's office area there is a meticulously crafted scale model of the Freedom Tower that stands well over six feet tall. While some of the much-published renderings of the structure depict it as a totem, tall, thin and melodramatically shimmering with light, this model more prominently conveys both the magnitude of its torqued girth and the handsome web of diagonal latticework that ascends past the glass sheathed portion of the structure and frames the building's unoccupied, skeletal upper region.

Another, smaller model of the entire site shows the density of new development that will be achieved while simultaneously sparing ample room for a large memorial park that will have as its centerpiece two large pools filling the footprints of the Twin Towers. According to Silverstein, that memorial park and the public space included in the design will occupy 11 acres of the original 16-acre World Trade Center site, a feat achieved by utilizing the space now filled by the soon-to-be demolished Deutsche Bank building at the southern tip of the site and by erecting towers 2, 3, and 4 on the site's eastern fringe. Cattycorner to the Freedom Tower and adjacent to the planned WTC memorial museum will be the World Trade Center transit hub, a structure that looks something like a giant Venus fly trap designed by renowned architect Santiago Calatrava. A performing arts center, to be designed by Frank Gehry, will flank the Freedom Tower to the east.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the new site mimics the old in its bold vision, but adds to it the promise of increased diversity. The site will have cultural, memorial, retail and office components and will offer more open space, better vehicular and pedestrian access and convenient public transportation. While none of the site's components match the gothic grandeur of the Twin Towers on their own, together they synergistically exceed the sum of their parts.

To add to that diversity and to appeal to the many tastes of the project's spectators--the Port Authority, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Governor and the families of the victims of 9/11--Silverstein says that Towers 2, 3, 4 and 5, while echoing aesthetically the sleek, airy designs of 7 World Trade Center and the Freedom Tower, will each display the unique vision of a different world class architect.

"What makes for excitement in design is variety," Silverstein said.

Sitting in a board room plastered with various maps and plans for the site, Silverstein, 73, speaks about the vast project of rebuilding with the energy and enthusiasm of a man half his age. It is his passion and his legacy, he says, a project that in his mind must weather the test of time and come to stand as one of Manhattan's great developments. In order to attain this rank, Silverstein knows it is necessary to right some of the old site's shortcomings, principally by eliminating the super block, bringing the site down to grade and establishing once again the city's street grid.

Achieving the latter goal was challenged in the rebuilding of 7 World Trade Center because the original 2 million s/f building swallowed up Greenwich Street, an artery Silverstein insisted on re-introducing. Silverstein toyed with ideas to allow a tunnel through the building, to preserve its size while allowing a corridor for traffic, but the plans "just didn't look right." Instead, he opted to significantly slim down the tower, allowing Greenwich Street full passage. What was left was a triangle of land framed by West Broadway and Greenwich Street. Again, Silverstein pondered the option of developing the small site, perhaps erecting a condominium tower.

"They would sell like hotcakes," Silverstein said of the potential for developing residential condos. "We could have put up a building there and made $450 million from it. But I wanted to do this thing right and I could see condos just weren't right. Ten years ago I might have put those condos up, but age changes you and certainly what happened on 9/11 changed me."

In a move more harmonious with the surrounding development, Silverstein decided that the plot will be converted into a small, tree-lined public space with benches to give the lobby area of 7 WTC some breathing room.

"It's going to be a little gem of a park," Silverstein said.

Silverstein first thought of buying the Twin Towers at the finishing ceremony for the original 7 World Trade Center in 1987. With then mayor Ed Koch and governor Mario Cuomo at his side, Silverstein said he gazed up at the two buildings and thought "wouldn't it be fantastic to own those?" Beating out heavy institutional competition in 2001, he finally realized that dream only to see it shattered six weeks later. But Silverstein seems to be a man who doesn't wallow in self-pity. Rather, after the initial shock wore off, he was motivated to restore what was one of the biggest economic engines of the state and defy the terrorists' desires to crush America's way of life.

"The immediacy of the need to rebuild drove me," Silverstein said. "Prior to 9/11, that part of lower Manhattan produced between 40-45% of the total gross wages of the entire state of New York. We lost 100,000 jobs that day--thus the need to bring it back as quickly as possible."

"There were also the emotional reasons. This was an attack on our values and our way of life, an attack on our freedom and thus it was absolutely essential to put this back in defiance of what the terrorists are seeking to accomplish and that is our destruction. We're coming back bigger and better and to show terrorists that we will not succumb. And so one of [my] earliest discussions with the governor after 9/11 was how to do it."

The first step was to rebuild 7 World Trade Center, a task that is now nearly complete. The original building contained a large Con Edison power station, responsible for providing energy to much of the surrounding area and whose fuel tanks fed a fire that caused the building's collapse. It was essential to quickly rebuild that power station, a need that hastened the construction for 7 WTC.

Again, the power station sits in the building's belly, but this time the structure will be near impervious to fire. Constructed with the strongest grade of concrete and incorporating central stairwells encased by a shaft of concrete that runs the full height of the building, 7 WTC exceeds nearly every standard for strength and safety. It is such a fine example of elegance fused with sturdiness that the rest of the buildings Silverstein constructs on the site will be designed to meet its standard.

Today, 7 WTC stands nearly complete, marking the first finished chapter in the rebuilding of Ground Zero. The specter of the Twin Towers still haunts the area, the silhouette of their footprints still vaguely visible in the sunken pit that was their home just across the street. Soon that area, now just a bare excavation site, will be transformed too.

"Miraculously, I was spared and so were the lives of both my son and daughter, who work with me," Silverstein said. "It was a complete miracle, we could have just as easily been in that building and perished. I feel I have a responsibility to rebuild this site the right way, to make it even better."