[00:00] With this being the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11, what if we've overlooked a witness? The architecture itself. Buildings are time capsules. They preserve the decisions of the people who designed them. And when buildings reveal connections to each other, their testimony can become evidence.
Shakespeare told us all the world's a stage. What if we took that literally? Then let's examine the stage. Let's read the script written into its architecture, and let's look for fingerprints. Fingerprints of an invisible hand. And this stage has a name: Ground Zero. First, there was the original World Trade Center, pre-9/11.
Then came the World Trade Center we know [00:30] today, post-9/11. Let's start with The Cannon. That's what I call the Winter Garden atrium at the World Financial Center. The atrium opened in 1988. Look through the glass. That's the North Tower. So we know the Winter Garden atrium was already standing long before 9/11.
In the animation I'll show you at the end, I call it The Cannon, not just because of what it looks like, but because of where it's aiming. And look carefully. The atrium is not aimed [01:00] at the center of the North Tower. The atrium's center line passes just north of center. Now watch what happens when that line reaches the North Tower.
It flashes on contact. And look exactly where it hits, the north side of the inner Memorial pool. Remember, the buildings are our witnesses, and we're looking for fingerprints. The cannon was already here in nineteen eighty-eight, and here it is after the towers [01:30] came down. But nothing like this inner pool existed inside the original North Tower. In twenty eighteen, I stood in that sight line and took this picture. The cannon and the inner pool are both in view. That geometry belongs to the 9/11 Memorial. That's Act Two. Act One appears to point directly into Act Two. But Act Two couldn't take the stage while Act One was still standing. Stage [02:00] cleared for Act Two, and Act Two gives us its centerpiece: The Oculus.
Beauty or the beast? Its architect described a dove rising from the hands of a child. Others have seen a beached whale, a dinosaur, even a turkey carcass. Me? I see a dead fish. But oculus means eyeball. So what do you see? A dove or a [02:30] reptile's eyeball? Now look at the Oculus again. A dove or a snake's eye?
And whose idea was it to celebrate the twenty twenty-five Chinese New Year by putting a one hundred fifty foot snake inside it? I was standing in the sight line in twenty eighteen when I took this picture. The line of sight reaches the back of the Oculus. Like light inside an eyeball, watch what happens.
It reflects, aligned by [03:00] its vertical pupil, right through where I was standing. Remember, the buildings are our witnesses, and this witness just corroborated its testimony. And the line keeps going and flashes again. Look closely. That's not today's memorial. It's the northeast corner of the original North Tower.
It belongs in Act One because it's pre-9/11. Now follow the line of sight. It grazes the southwest [03:30] corner of One World Trade Center. It's Act Two, post-9/11. This time, back to Act One, pre-9/11. The American Express Tower, badly damaged on September eleventh. Restored, its original geometry remains. Now look where our line of sight goes. Straight down the middle. One tower becomes two. Mirror image twin towers. Another witness. Now [04:00] you've seen the pieces. Watch what happens when we put them together. Pre-9/11. Post-9/11. Post nine eleven. Pre. Post. Pre. What if Ground Zero was the stage? The Twin Towers, the principal stage props of Act One.
Then came September eleventh, the darkest performance imaginable. The [04:30] curtain fell. The set change began, and One World Trade Center rose for Act Two. What else do these buildings know? Perhaps we should listen to the buildings of Boston and Cambridge, especially Harvard, because there, the geometry is older.
My investigation didn't begin at Ground Zero. It began driving Uber in Greater Boston. I followed the testimony of its buildings, and the [05:00] investigation grew. And Greater Boston has twin towers of its own: Harbor Towers, Longfellow Towers, Museum Towers. Is this the invisible hand? A picture that becomes even more disturbing when we remember where flights eleven and one seventy-five began their final journeys on September eleventh: Boston's Logan Airport.
What do the buildings of Boston know, and when did they know it?