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Do you think New York will ever have a restaurant like Windows on the World again?
Lomonaco - "I think in that spirit, New York will have something like this. I'm very happy to talk to you, because what I want you to understand is....That day, aside from the fact that I survived it...the greatest thing I could offer is doing what I was doing before, so that the memory of my friends and colleagues lost that day have honor. I feel privileged to wake up every day and do what I do. What I do, in part, is a tribute to my friends and colleagues."

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An average Saturday consisted of 1500 customers, and dozens of private parties in different rooms.

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The world was able to witness, understand, and respond to the horrors of September 11 largely through the medium of photography. The 9/11 attacks, in fact, were the most widely observed breaking-news event in human history, seen that day in still photos, on the Internet, or on television by an estimated two billion people, nearly a third of the human race. The following is the tale of one man, Mike Rambousek, who lost his son Luke that morning, five years ago this month. Rambousek, oddly enough, was able to channel Luke's memory through the power of a single, horrific picture.

Mike Rambousek sits in front of his Hewlett-Packard computer, pulling up a chair for a visitor. He fiddles with a file on the desktop and clicks on a photo, the one that he says is "not a bit pleasant." It shows people standing in the windows of the north tower of the World Trade Center a few minutes prior to the building's collapse.

Before discussing the picture, though, he stops to talk about waking up on September 12, after the longest day of his life.

That Wednesday, Mike Rambousek arose, alone, in his cramped Brooklyn apartment. His wife, Jindra, was at their summer mobile home, in Damascus, Pennsylvania, unable to return to the city because of security roadblocks. Lining the apartment's walls were his and Jindra's collections from their native Czechoslovakia: delicate marionettes, antique clocks, and coffee cups, some dating back 150 years. And there, near the far window, were row after row of vinyl records that their son Luke would spin as a D.J. at a Brooklyn dance club during his off-hours. For a day job, Luke, 27, was a computer-maintenance temp at eSpeed, a Cantor Fitzgerald subsidiary, working on the 103rd floor of 1 World Trade Center. The Rambouseks' apartment was quiet that morning, and Luke's bed was empty.

The day before, says Rambousek, "I saw the picture [on TV] at nine o'clock. People thought, Cessna. I called Luke's office and the phones were ringing. And I thought, He's O.K. I'll go pick him up and bring him lunch." Mike assumed that the office would dismiss Luke after a plane accident, so he packed the usual-pepper steak and diced watermelon-and planned on sharing a meal near the towers, to be followed by a "walkabout," as Mike called it, a ritual stroll around the nearby streets that father and son had enjoyed for years.

Mike and Luke were especially close. Both were enamored of electronics; Mike, now 59 and retired, had been a computer-systems engineer. Both worked in the World Trade Center-Mike during the 1990s, Luke starting in early 2001. Both revered Mike's father, Ota, a virulent anti-Communist, now in his 80s and living in Prague. Ota, who had taken part in the Prague uprising against the Nazis, in 1945, had been jailed after the war on charges of spying for the U.S. He would later take part in the reform movement during the Prague Spring, of 1968. Following the Soviet crackdown that year, he escaped to Italy, then to the States. (Ota would later be decorated by President Ronald Reagan "for his outstanding patriotism.") Having faced down both the Nazis and the Communists, Ota encouraged his son and grandsons, Luke and his older brother, Martin, to take challenges head-on, and to stand up for their principles.

Only one other period in Mike's and Jindra's lives had been as long and as anguished as September 2001 would prove to be: a stretch in the late 1970s when they were stripped of their Czech citizenship, forced onto a plane, and eventually allowed to immigrate to America. "I had a quite decent job as a chemist, but they tried to put me into the slammer," Mike recalls. Neighbors and strangers turned out to be informants, he says; potential promotions were quashed. "Because we were relatives of American spy," he says, "we were on the top of party shitlist." His existence in those days had seemed like a passage torn from Kafka or Solzhenitsyn.

On Tuesday, September 11, Rambousek re-entered that world of the surreal. On his way into Manhattan, at five minutes past ten, he became trapped in his subway car, which had stopped at the Fulton Street Station, a block from the World Trade Center. He was disoriented when he saw that the station platform was completely empty. "It was suddenly pitch-black," he says. "People tried to stay cool, but it was getting hot in the train. Smoke was getting in, too. People began banging on the driver's door." The darkness, he later calculated, coincided with the collapse of the south tower. Over the next half-hour, the passengers in his car managed to exit and make their way toward a turnstile. As they reached the stairway, Rambousek heard a woman yell, "Oh, my God, we're going to die here." The north tower, it turned out, had just caved in. "It was like somebody [took] a bucket of ashes and just pour it on me," he says. "If you remember these figures from Pompeii-I thought, that's how we're going to end up." In the black squall of ash, a powerful sensation overtook him, he says, his eyes welling up at the memory of it. Groping up the stairs on his hands and knees, he recalls, "I suddenly got a feeling that Luke's gone. We didn't know that the tower had gone, but I suddenly knew [about Luke] somehow. There must be particles of him in that stuff we are breathing there."

Rambousek says he reached into his lunch sack and squeezed the watermelon into his shirt in order to breathe through the wet cloth. He then emerged near a church, hoping to set out again to find Luke, though sensing the search would be futile. He did not find Luke. Nor did he find out what really happened to Luke, he contends, until several months later, when he came across an image on the Internet.

In silence, he sits at his screen, four years after the attacks. He clicks his mouse and calls up the picture. It shows some three dozen Trade Center occupants, having smashed through the glass, standing clustered on windowsills on the north side of the north tower. Many seem to be straining for air. Some have collapsed, possibly dragged to the windows. Others appear to be propped up by colleagues. A thin ribbon of smoke, blown sideways by the wind, rings the building like a lasso. The tall wall panels that separate the window banks give the impression that these figures are clamoring at the bars of a prison. The hazy shapes, and the exhaustion and desperation in the faces, evoke Dante.

The photo was a revelation-even to the photographer. "I didn't know I had that picture until I blew it up on my computer," says Jeff Christensen, a freelancer for Reuters, who took the shot with a 300-mm. lens from six blocks away. "It's only about one-tenth of the original [frame]. In the whole image you can see where the plane went into the building." Christensen, whose shot ran in various publications before being largely relegated to the Internet, estimates that it was taken at a horrendous juncture: 15 minutes after the south tower fell and 15 minutes before Luke's building would do the same.

Though Rambousek has no idea how his son met his end that day, he has this remnant. The picture seems blurry, Rambousek having used Photoshop software to enlarge the image to its grainy limit. He holds up a digital print and points to a smudge in one of the precarious perches. It shows a man with Luke's dark-brown hair, stocky frame, bare upper torso. Luke, his father posits, might have removed his shirt in the extreme heat, or used it to help a colleague handle the smoke. He believes the photo reveals Luke cradling a woman who has passed out.

Luke would not have jumped, his father reasons; he was too altruistic a spirit. "He was holding somebody, so he wouldn't [have] quit," says Mike. Jindra agrees. "He had a gold heart," she says. "He was always like that. He was helping everybody, giving $20 when he got paid to [an old woman] down the street." She insists the figure is her son. "He used to lift weights," she says. "He got very big shoulders. Sometimes if I forgot keys, he threw them out on the street without [wearing] a top. So he leaned out the window and he'd throw keys-in [that] same position."

The Rambouseks sound neither irrational nor dogmatic. They just believe what their eyes and hearts tell them. They claim to have tracked down other images and, counting story by story, the figure in Christensen's shot seems to be located on the 103rd floor, where Luke had reported for work on September 11, an hour earlier than usual.

Such digital detective work was not uncommon after the attacks. In the absence of any hard information about their loved ones, some families tried to contact news photographers, hoping to find glimpses of their relatives in unpublished frames or in blowups of pictures they had seen in print or online. Jean Coleman, a real-estate agent from Westport, Connecticut, believed she could see her two sons, Keith and Scott-both of whom worked on the floor above Luke's-in Christensen's picture. "Who knew what [we] were looking for?" she says. "I guess for me it was important to have a sense that they didn't go into oblivion, that the essence of the person you knew was somewhat intact I do a lot of soul-searching: Do you think this picture was Scott or do you want it to be Scott? [The figure that looks like] Keith, sitting back, inside the building . . . his posture, and what you intuit from the picture, spoke to me as Keith."

Mike Rambousek, staring at the same image, says he has never received even a trace of his son's remains. " This is the closest place to him." Despite its gruesome reality, the photo, he says, affords him neither comfort nor closure, but a kind of stark certainty. "Before this picture, he was 'Hi, bye' in the morning, and just vanished. At least we [now] have some idea. For almost an hour and a half they were surviving and hanging out the windows, waiting, waiting."

Photography, in other ways, has helped Mike Rambousek begin to accept Luke's loss. Soon after 9/11, Rambousek was out of a job. He says he struggled to hold on to his rent-stabilized apartment; went on disability; sought treatment for anxiety. In the course of his counseling he started to carry around an Olympus D-490, he says, "to keep my mind off things and to keep me busy and to keep my mind on things." He uploaded pictures to his computer; he created photo albums to share with his counselor. "Nine-eleven," he says, "pushed me to create something-something people like to look at." But always he came back to memories and photos of Luke, and of the tragedy itself. He would listen to Luke's music and, trawling the Internet, would collect pictures of devastation and regeneration.

Four minutes before Flight 11 hit his building, Luke, a fan of throbbing techno and trance music, had sent an e-mail to a friend about the upcoming Junkfest, an annual all-night music-and-junk-food party at his parents' place in Pennsylvania, for which he had served as D.J. for years. Luke practically lived for the Junkfest; he would often practice two hours a day for it in his home studio, using two turntables and a mixing board.

Rambousek slips in a DVD and double-clicks on a desktop icon. Up springs a music video, edited by Mike himself and set to a soundtrack from one of his son's favorite trance songs. Pictures skitter along-the Twin Towers in fleecy clouds, twinkling at night, orange at sunset-playing off the melancholy strains of a techno version of the old standard "Autumn Leaves."

News photos begin to barrel across the monitor. The plane attacks, smoke spills out, bodies plummet. Each frame, plucked from the Web, is pin-sharp, hi-res, technicolor. Tugged taut against an electronic backbeat, one picture pulses up for one to three seconds, then twirls into the next, like a horror-theme thrill ride. The refrain weaves in mournfully, in counterpoint: "But I miss you most of all . . . my darling / When autumn leaves . . . start to fall." And then come the faces in split-second flashes. Osama bin Laden. Mohammed Atta. Lukas Rambousek. Osama, Mohammed, Luke. Luke's track blaring: "But I miss you most of all . . . " Six minutes and eleven seconds of black clouds and orange flames, terrorist headshots and figures crouched in windows. Then the Twin Towers in fleecy clouds. Then silence.

Rambousek spent three months making the video. "Days, nights, months," his wife says, with a note of pity. But what has driven him to burn such visions of violence onto DVD? "I didn't want a shrine," he explains. "I've seen a lot of memorials. Everybody's making shrines, candles, and playing 'touchy' music. So I said, 'Let's make it to Luke's music [from his] all-night rave parties."

At first, one wonders if Mike hasn't dropped down a hole, obsessively re-envisioning the particulars of Luke's death. Perhaps he is "stuck" in the trauma of the subway car. Instead, the more we talk, the more I see these news photos as his sackcloth and ashes, harsh scenes he must revisit in order to accept them and move on. Luke's music is Mike's blues. "It's my personal view of it," he says of the video. "We better remember it was dirty. It was smelly. Probably a reason for this view is my experience in the subway. Bin Laden is [the] guy we're chasing around, unsuccessfully. The video should remind people he was there in the first place. I get a feeling that officials in government are not crazy about showing these pictures. I think they want people to have idealized memories of it. Everything's clean, [everything's] flags. But people should see how it really was."

The blues, said Ralph Ellison, "is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it." Luke's techno blues, and these high-tech pictures, have helped his father conquer his own demons by consuming them. Once he takes it all, digitizes it, paces it, makes it his own, he emerges, empowered, at the other end. This is how Mike's father, Ota, might have stared this devastation down.

Mike inserts a second disc. This one-a slide show of 70 shots-recounts Luke's life in pictures. Baby photos, first haircut, first trip to the Trade Center. This time the music is transporting, enveloping. Appropriately, Mike has chosen Dvorák's New World Symphony. And Luke is beaming in the photos: at his graduation, on vacation, spinning discs at Junkfest. With a crescendo comes Luke's death certificate, his ID picture, a hazy figure trapped in a window cradling a woman's limp frame. The New World plays on. And Mike and his guest watch and listen, together, in tears.
Purchase Watching the World Change on Amazon.

Photograph by Wolfgang Staehle.

Photograph by Wolfgang Staehle.

Not yet realizing a terrorist attack was in progress, architect and amateur pilot Isabel Daser, eight months pregnant, asked a co-worker to take her portrait as a record of the day.

Courtesy of Isabel Daser Bessler.

On a Brooklyn rooftop shortly after the collapse of the Twin Towers, Jenna Piccirillo and three-month-old Vaughan embody innocence and resilience, according to the photographer: "Life continues in the face of disaster . . . despite the horrors we inflict on one another."

© Alex Webb/Magnum Photos.

The photographer considered this 9/11 Brooklyn scene too tranquil at the time. He decided not to publish the image widely until four years after the attacks.

© Thomas Hoepker/Magnum Photos.

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Mike Rambousek never got any physical remains of his son Luke, who died in the north tower on 9/11. But, as the author recounts in an excerpt from his new book, Watching the World Change, Mike did find a single, shocking photograph, which let him reconstruct Luke's death-and memorialize its brutality.

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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2006/09/friend-excerpt200609

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It boasted a popular “New American” style menu and had a first class wine list that included Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1928 for $3000.00. The 107th floor was also occupied by “The Greatest Bar on Earth”, aka GBOE. This 13,000 square foot happy hour bar was popular with tourists and Wall Street types alike.

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It boasted a popular “New American” style menu and had a first class wine list that included Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1928 for $3000.00. The 107th floor was also occupied by “The Greatest Bar on Earth”, aka GBOE. This 13,000 square foot happy hour bar was popular with tourists and Wall Street types alike.

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A daring, moving fictional account of the last moments of a father and his two sons atop the World Trade Centre on September 11. --?The only way to know what took place in the restaurant on the 107th Floor of the North Tower, World Trade Center o...

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The last chef to work at the restaurant was Michael Lomonaco.

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Gave views of Manhattan Brooklyn and New Jersey.

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Gave views of Manhattan Brooklyn and New Jersey.

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The windows of the world had the best wine school in the city. It was ran by a man named Kevin Zwaley.

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Windows on the World, New York’s Sky-High Restaurant

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Food news and dining guides for New York City.

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Windows on the World closed after the 1993 bombing, in which employee Wilfredo Mercado was killed while checking in deliveries in the building's underground garage. It underwent a $25 million renovation and reopened in 1996.

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Windows on the World closed after the 1993 bombing, in which employee Wilfredo Mercado was killed while checking in deliveries in the building's underground garage. It underwent a $25 million renovation and reopened in 1996.

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The number of children who lost a parent in the events of 9/11 was 3,051.

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It took 58 seconds to reach the 107th floor where the restaurant was located

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Yet like messages in an electronic bottle from people marooned in some distant sky, their last words narrate a world that was coming undone. A man sends an e-mail message asking, "Any news from the outside?" before perching on a ledge at Windows on the World. A woman reports a colleague is smacking useless sprinkler heads with his shoe. A husband calmly reminds his wife about their insurance policies, then says that the floor is groaning beneath him, and tells her that she and their children meant the world to him.

No single call can describe scenes that were unfolding at terrible velocities in many places. Taken together though, the words from the upper floors offer not only a broad and chilling view of the devastated zones, but the only window onto acts of bravery, decency and grace at a brutal time.

Eight months after the attacks, many survivors and friends and relatives of those lost are pooling their recollections, tapes and phone records, and 157 have shared accounts of their contacts for this article. At least 353 of those lost were able to reach people outside the towers. Spoken or written at the hour of death, these are intimate, lasting words. The steep emotional cost of making them public is worth paying, their families say, for a clearer picture of those final minutes.

Many also hope the history of the day is enlarged beyond memorials to the unquestioned valor of 343 firefighters and 78 other uniformed rescuers. It is time, they say, to account for the experiences of the 2,400 civilians who also died that day. Iliana McGinnis, whose husband, Tom, called her from the 92nd floor of the north tower, said, "If they can uncover even one more piece of information about what happened during those last minutes, I want it."

Some details remain unknowable. Working phones were scarce. The physical evidence was destroyed. Conversations were held under grave stress, and are recalled through grief, time and longing. Even so, as one fragile bit of information elaborates on the next, they illuminate conditions on the top floors.

The evidence strongly suggests that 1,100 or more people in or above the impact zones survived the initial crashes, roughly 300 in the south tower and 800 in the north. Many of those lived until their building collapsed.

Even after the second airplane struck, an open staircase connected the upper reaches of the south tower to the street. The Times has identified 18 men and women who used it to escape from the impact zone or above. At the same time they were evacuating, at least 200 other people were climbing toward the roof in that tower, unaware that a passable stairway down was available, and assuming - incorrectly - that they could open the roof door. "The belief that they had a rooftop option cost them their lives," said Beverly Eckert, whose husband, Sean Rooney, called after his futile trek up.

Hundreds were trapped on floors untouched by the airplanes. Even though the buildings survived the initial impacts, the twisting and bending of the towers caused fatal havoc. Stairwells were plugged by broken wallboard. Doors were jammed in twisted frames. With more time and simple tools like crowbars, rescue workers might have freed people who simply could not get to stairways. In the north tower, at least 28 people were freed on the 86th and 89th floors by a small group of Port Authority office workers who pried open jammed doors. Those self-assigned rescuers died.

In both towers, scores of people lost chances to escape. Some paused to make one more phone call; others, to pick up a forgotten purse; still others, to perform tasks like freeing people from elevators, tending the injured or comforting the distraught.

The crises had identical beginnings and endings in each tower, but ran different courses. At least 37 people, and probably well over 50, can be seen jumping or falling from the north tower, while no one is visible falling from the south tower, in a collection of 20 videotapes shot by amateurs and professionals from nearby streets and buildings. Both towers had similar volumes of smoke and heat, but in the north tower, about three times as many people were trapped in roughly half the space. Scores were driven to the windows of the north tower in search of relief. In the south tower, people had more opportunities to move between floors.

The impact zones formed pitiless boundaries between those who were spared and those who were doomed. Even at the margins, the collisions were devastating: the wingtip of the second plane grazed the 78th floor sky lobby in the south tower, instantly killing dozens of people waiting for elevators. In all, about 600 civilians died in the south tower at or above the plane's impact. In the north tower, every person believed to be above the 91st floor died: 1,344.

The farther from the impact, the more calls people made. In the north tower, pockets of near-silence extended four floors above and one floor below the impact zone. Yet remarkably, in both towers, even on floors squarely hit by the jets, a few people lived long enough to make calls.

To place these fragmentary messages in context, The Times interviewed family members, friends and colleagues of those who died, obtained times of calls from cellphone bills and 911 records, analyzed 20 videotapes and listened to 15 hours of police and fire radio tapes.

The Times also interviewed 25 people who saw firsthand the destruction wreaked by the planes, because they escaped from the impact zone or above it in the south tower, or from just below it in the north.

8:00

North Tower, 107th Floor, Windows on the World, 2 hours 28 minutes to collapse

"Good morning, Ms. Thompson."

Doris Eng's greeting was particularly sunny, like the day, as Liz Thompson arrived for breakfast atop the tallest building in the city, Ms. Thompson remembers thinking. Perhaps Ms. Eng had matched her mood to the glorious weather, the rich blue September sky that filled every window. Or perhaps it was the company.

Familiar faces occupied many of the tables in Wild Blue, the intimate aerie to Windows that Ms. Eng helped manage, according to two people who ate there that morning. As much as any one place, that single room captured the sweep of humanity who worked and played at the trade center.

Ms. Thompson, executive director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, was eating with Geoffrey Wharton, an executive with Silverstein Properties, which had just leased the towers. At the next table sat Michael Nestor, the deputy inspector general of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and one of his investigators, Richard Tierney.

At a third table were six stockbrokers, several of whom came every Tuesday. Ms. Eng had a treat for one of them, Emeric Harvey. The night before, one of the restaurant's managers, Jules Roinnel, gave Ms. Eng two impossibly-hard-to-get tickets to "The Producers." Mr. Roinnel says he asked Ms. Eng to give them to Mr. Harvey.

Sitting by himself at a window table overlooking the Statue of Liberty was a relative newcomer, Neil D. Levin, the executive director of the Port Authority. He had never joined them for breakfast before. But his secretary requested a table days earlier and now he sat waiting for a banker friend, said Mr. Levin's wife, Christy Ferer.

Every other minute or so, a waiter, Jan Maciejewski, swept through the room, refilling coffee cups and taking orders, Mr. Nestor recalls. Mr. Maciejewski was one of several restaurant workers on the 107th floor. Most of the 72 Windows employees were on the 106th floor, where Risk Waters Group was holding a conference on information technology.

Already 87 people had arrived, including top executives from Merrill Lynch and UBS Warburg, according to the conference sponsors. Many were enjoying coffee and sliced smoked salmon in the restaurant's ballroom. Some exhibitors were already tending to their booths, set up in the Horizon Suite just across the hallway.

A picture taken that morning showed two exhibitors, Peter Alderman and William Kelly, salesmen for Bloomberg L.P., chatting with a colleague beside a table filled with a multi-screened computer display. Stuart Lee and Garth Feeney, two vice presidents of Data Synapse, ran displays of their company's software.

Down in the lobby, 107 floors below, an assistant to Mr. Levin waited for his breakfast guest. But when the guest arrived, he and Mr. Levin's aide luckily boarded the wrong elevator, Ms. Ferer would learn, and so they had to return to the lobby to wait for another one.

Upstairs, Mr. Levin read his newspaper, Mr. Nestor recalled. He and Mr. Tierney were a little curious to see whom Mr. Levin, their boss, was meeting for breakfast. But Mr. Nestor had a meeting downstairs, so they headed for the elevators, stopping at Mr. Levin's table to say goodbye. Behind them came Ms. Thompson and Mr. Wharton. Mr. Nestor held the elevator, so they hopped in quickly, Ms. Thompson recalled.

Then the doors closed and the last people ever to leave Windows on the World began their descent. It was 8:44 a.m.

8:46

North Tower, 91st Floor, American Bureau of Shipping, 1 hour 42 minutes to collapse

The impact came at 8:46:26 a.m. American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 measuring 156 feet from wingtip to wingtip and carrying 10,000 gallons of fuel, was moving at 470 miles an hour, federal investigators estimated. At that speed, it covered the final two blocks to the north tower in 1.2 seconds.

The plane ripped a path across floors 94 to 98, directly into the office of Marsh & McLennan Companies, shredding steel columns, wallboard, filing cabinets and computer-laden desks. Its fuel ignited and incinerated everything in its way. The plane's landing gear hurtled through the south side of the building, winding up on Rector Street, five blocks away.

Just three floors below the impact zone, not a thing budged in Steve McIntyre's office. Not the slate paperweight shaped like a sailing ship. Not the family snapshots propped up on a bookcase. Mr. McIntyre found himself in front of a computer that was still on.

Then came the whiplash.

A powerful shock wave quickly radiated up and down from the impact zone. The wave bounced from the top to the bottom of the tower, three or four seconds one way and then back, rocking the building like a huge boat in a storm.

"We got to get the hell out of here," yelled Greg Shark, an American Bureau of Shipping engineer and architect, who was bracing himself in the swaying while he stood outside Mr. McIntyre's office.

Somehow, they were alive. Only later would the two men realize the slender margin of their escape. In their accounts of hunting for a way out, they provide a survey of a border territory, an impregnable zone through which the people imprisoned above would never pass.

Mr. McIntyre, Mr. Shark and nine other employees, all uninjured, hustled out of the A.B.S. reception area in the northwest corner and turned left toward the elevators and stairways in the tower's core.

Mr. McIntyre recalls peering into a dim, shattered stairwell, billowing with smoke. He heard nothing but water cascading down the stairs, as if he had encountered a babbling brook on a mountain hike. The water almost certainly came from severed sprinkler pipes. Seeing and hearing no one else in the stinking gloom, he looked up.

The stairwell was blocked from above - not by fire or structural steel, but by huge pieces of the light gypsum drywall, often called Sheetrock, that had enclosed the stairwell to protect it. In huge hunks, the Sheetrock formed a great plug in the stairwell, sealing the passage from 92, the floor above. Going down the stairs, it made a slightly less formidable obstruction.

"This is no good," Mr. McIntyre would remember saying.

Mr. McIntyre could hardly have known it, but he stood at a critical boundary. Above him, across 19 floors, were 1,344 people, many of them alive, stunned, unhurt, calling for help. Not one would survive.

Below, across 90 floors, thousands of others were also alive, stunned, unhurt, calling for help. Nearly all of them lived.

Bad as this staircase was, the two other emergency exits were worse, Mr. McIntyre later said. So he went back to that first staircase, northwest of the building's center. He stepped inside and immediately slipped down two flights of grimy gypsum. Unhurt, he stood and noticed lights below. He remembers calling: "This way!" His A.B.S. colleagues joined the exodus from 91.

One floor above them, on the 92nd floor, employees of Carr Futures were doing exactly what the A.B.S. people had done: hunting for a way out.

They did not realize they were on the wrong side of the rubble.

On the 92nd floor, Damian Meehan scrambled to a phone at Carr Futures and dialed his brother Eugene, a firefighter in the Bronx. "It's really bad here - the elevators are gone," Mr. Meehan told him.

"Get to the front door, see if there's smoke there," Eugene Meehan recalled urging him. He heard his brother put the phone down, then followed the sounds drifting into his ear. Yelling. Commotion, but not panic.

A few minutes later, Damian Meehan returned and reported that the front entrance was filled with smoke.

"Get to the stairs," Eugene remembered advising him. "See where the smoke is coming from. Go the other way."

Then he heard Damian for the last time.

"He said, `We've got to go.' Or he said, `We're going,' " Eugene Meehan said. "I've been racking my brains to remember.

"I know he said, `We.' "

9:00

North Tower, 106th Floor, Windows on the World, 1 hour 28 minutes to collapse

"What do we do? What do we do?"

Doris Eng, the restaurant manager, called the Fire Command Center in the lobby repeatedly with that question, according to officials and co-workers. Just minutes after the plane hit, the restaurant was filling with smoke and she was struggling to direct the 170 people in her charge.

Many in the crowd made their living providing information or the equipment that carried it, communications experts taking part in the morning's conference in the ballroom. But with thickening smoke, no power and little sense of what was going on, the restaurant was fast becoming an isolation zone, where people scrambled for bits of news.

"Watch CNN," Stephen Tompsett, a computer scientist at the conference, e-mailed his wife, Dorry, using his BlackBerry communicator. "Need updates."

Videos from two amateur photographers show that the smoke built with terrifying speed at the top of the building, cascading thicker from seams in windows there than from floors closer to the plane. Early on, Rajesh Mirpuri called his company, Data Synapse, coughing, and said he could not see more than 10 feet, his boss, Peter Lee, would remember. Peter Alderman, the Bloomberg salesman, also told his sister about the smoke, using his BlackBerry to send an e-mail message: "I'm scared."

Ms. Eng and the Windows staff, following their emergency training, herded people from the 107th floor down to a corridor on the 106th near the stairs, where they used a special phone to call the Fire Command Center. The building's policy was to immediately evacuate the floor on fire and the one above it. People farther away, like those in Windows on the World, were to leave only when directed by the command center "or when conditions dictate such actions."

Conditions were quickly deteriorating, though. Glenn Vogt, the restaurant's general manager, said that 20 minutes after the plane hit, his assistant, Christine Olender, called him at home. She got his wife instead, Mr. Vogt said, because he was on the street outside the trade center. Ms. Olender told Mrs. Vogt that they had heard nothing on how to leave. "The ceilings are falling," she said. "The floors are buckling."

Within 20 minutes of the crash, a police helicopter reported to its base that it could not land on the roof. Still, many put their hopes on a rescue by someone, some way.

"I can't go anywhere because they told us not to move," Ivhan Carpio, a Windows worker, said in a message he left on his cousin's answering machine. "I have to wait for the firefighters."

The firefighters, however, were struggling to respond. No one in New York had ever seen a fire of this size - four and five floors blazing within seconds. Commanders in the lobby had no way of knowing if any stairwells were passable. With most elevators ruined, firefighters were toting heavy gear up stairwells against a tide of evacuees. An hour after the plane crash, they would still be 50 floors below Windows.

Downstairs, the authorities fielded calls from the upper floors. "There's not much you could do other than tell them to go wet a towel and keep it over your face," said Alan Reiss, the former director of the world trade department of the Port Authority. But the plane had severed the water line to the upper floors. Mr. Maciejewski, the waiter, told his wife in a cellphone call that he could not find enough to wet a rag, she recalled. He said he would check the flower vases.

The room had almost no water and not much air, but there was no shortage of cellphones or BlackBerries. Using them and a few intact phone lines, at least 41 people in the restaurant reached someone outside the building. Peter Mardikian of Imagine Software told his wife, Corine, that he was headed for the roof and that he could not talk long, she recalled. Others were waiting for one of the few working phones.

Garth Feeney called his mother, Judy, in Florida. She began with a breezy hello, she later recalled.

"Mom," Mr. Feeney responded, "I'm not calling to chat. I'm in the World Trade Center and it's been hit by a plane."

The calm manner of the staff could not contain the strain. Laurie Kane, whose husband, Howard, was the restaurant's comptroller, said she could hear someone screaming, "We're trapped," as they finished their final conversation. Gabriela Waisman, a conference attendee, phoned her sister 10 times in 11 minutes, frantic to keep the connection. Veronique Bowers, the restaurant's credit collections manager, kept telling her grandmother, Carrie Tillman, that the building had been hit by an ambulance.

"She was so confused," Mrs. Tillman said.

9:01

North Tower, 104th Floor, Cantor Fitzgerald, 1 hour 27 minutes to collapse

Just two floors below Windows, the disaster marched at an eerily deliberate pace, the sense of emergency muted. The northwest conference room on the 104th floor held just one of many large knots of people in the five floors occupied by Cantor Fitzgerald. There, the smoke did not become overwhelming as quickly as at Windows. And the crash and fires were not as immediately devastating as they had been a few floors below, at Marsh & McLennan.

In fact, Andrew Rosenblum, a Cantor stock trader, thought it would be a good idea to reassure the families. With his wife, Jill, listening on the phone from their home in Rockville Centre, N.Y., he announced to the room: "Give me your home numbers," his wife recounted.

"Tim Betterly," Mr. Rosenblum said into his cellphone, reeling off a phone number. "James Ladley." Another number.

As the list grew, Mr. Rosenblum realized that 40 or 50 colleagues were in the room, having fled the smoke. "Please call their spouses, tell them we're in this conference room and we're fine," he said to his wife. She remembers scribbling the names and numbers on a yellow legal pad in her kitchen, as the burning towers played on a 13-inch television in a cubbyhole near the backdoor.

Mrs. Rosenblum handed pieces of paper with the numbers to friends who had shown up. They went either to the leafy, fenced-in backyard, where the dog wandered among them, or to the front lawn, calling the families on cellphones.

Mr. Rosenblum's group, including Jimmy Smith, John Salamone and John Schwartz, sat on the eastern side of the bond trading area, in one of the open areas, according to John Sanacore, one of the group who was not at work that day. The spot offered expansive views of the Empire State Building.

On the opposite end of the bond area, overlooking the Hudson River, other traders were gathered. John Gaudioso, who normally worked in that section but was on a golf outing that morning, recalled that Ian Schneider sat at the head of a string of desks where he led a global finance group. Michael Wittenstein, John Casazza and Michael DeRienzo were all in that area, and, like Mr. Schneider, were using land lines at their desks to take calls from concerned customers and loved ones, according to six people who spoke with them. "The building rocked like it never has before," said Mr. Schneider, who was there for the 1993 bombing, in a phone call with his wife, Cheryl.

In the equities trading area in the southern part of the 104th floor, looking toward the Statue of Liberty, there was a third group. Here, Stephen Cherry and Marc Zeplin pushed a button at their desk to activate the squawk box, a nationwide intercom to other Cantor offices around the country. "Can anybody hear us?" Mr. Cherry asked. A trader in Chicago who was listening in later said that she managed to reach a firehouse near the trade center. "They know you're there," the trader told them.

Mike Pelletier, a commodities broker in a Cantor office on the 105th floor, reached his wife, Sophie Pelletier, and was then in touch with a friend who told him that the airplane crash had been a terrorist attack. Mr. Pelletier swore and shouted the information to the people around him, Mrs. Pelletier said.

In Rockville Centre, on the front lawn of the Rosenblums' house, Debbie Cohen dialed the numbers on the yellow pieces of paper she had been handed by Jill Rosenblum.

"Hello? You don't know me, but I was given your number by someone who is in the World Trade Center," she said. "About 50 of them are in a corner conference room, and they say they're O.K. right now."

9:02

South Tower, 98th Floor, Aon Corp. , 57 minutes to collapse

Those in the south tower were still spectators, if wary ones. "Hey Beverly, this is Sean, in case you get this message," Sean Rooney said on a voice mail message left for his wife, Beverly Eckert. "There has been an explosion in World Trade One - that's the other building. It looks like a plane struck it. It's on fire at about the 90th floor. And it's, it's - it's horrible. Bye."

Even in Mr. Rooney's tower, people could feel the heat from the fires raging in the other building, and they could see bodies falling from the high floors. Many soon began to leave. The building's staff, however, announced that they should stay - judging that it was safer for the tenants to stay inside an undamaged building than to walk onto a street where fiery debris was falling.

That instruction would change at the very moment that Mr. Rooney, who worked for the insurance company Aon, was leaving a second message for his wife, at 9:02 a.m.

"Honey, this is Sean again," he said. "Looks like we'll be in this tower for a while." He paused, as a public announcement in the background could be heard.

"It's secure here," Mr. Rooney continued. "But --" He stopped again to listen: "if the conditions warrant on your floor you may wish to start an orderly evacuation."

"I'll talk to you later," Mr. Rooney said. "Bye."

As Mr. Rooney spoke, United Flight 175 was screaming across New York Harbor.

9:02

South Tower, 81st Floor, Fuji Bank, 57 minutes to collapse

Yes, Stanley Praimnath told the caller from Chicago, he was fine. He had actually evacuated to the lobby of the south tower, but a security guard told him to go back. Now, he was again at his desk at Fuji Bank. "I'm fine," he repeated.

As he would later tell his story, those were his final words before he spotted it.

A gray shape on the horizon. An airplane, flying past the Statue of Liberty. The body of the United Airlines jet grew larger until he could see a red stripe on the fuselage. Then it banked and headed directly toward him.

Another one.

"Lord, you take over!" he remembers yelling, dropping under his metal desk.

At 9:02:54, the nose of the jetliner smashed directly into Mr. Praimnath's floor, about 130 feet from his desk. A fireball ignited. Steel furnishings and aluminum plane parts were torn into white-hot shrapnel. A blast wave hurled computers and desks through windows, and ripped out bundles of arcing electrical cables. Then the south tower seemed to stoop, swinging gradually toward the Hudson River, ferociously testing the steel skeleton before snapping back.

Through most of both towers, the staircases were tightly clustered, and in the north tower, they were all immediately severed or blocked by the blast. Along the impact zone of the south tower, floors 78 to 84, however, the stairs had to divert around heavy elevator machinery. So instead of running close to the building core, two of the stairways serving those floors were built closer to the perimeter. One of them, on the northwest side, survived. A report in USA Today this month also suggested that the surviving stairway might have been shielded by the machinery.

However the stairway survived, it made all the difference to Stanley Praimnath, who, huddled under his desk, could see a shiny aluminum piece of the plane, lodged in the remains of his door.

The plane, entering at a tilt, raked across six floors. Three flights up was the office of Euro Brokers, on the 84th floor. Most of the company's trading floor there was annihilated. Yet even there - at the bull's-eye of the airplane's impact - other people were alive: Robert Coll, Dave Vera, Ronald DiFrancesco and Kevin York, among others. Within minutes, they headed to the closest stairwell, led by Brian Clark, a fire warden on the 84th floor, who had his flashlight and whistle.

A fine powder mixed with light smoke floated through the stairwell. As they approached the 81st floor, Mr. Clark would recall, they met a slim man and a heavyset woman. "You can't go down," the woman screamed. "You got to go up. There is too much smoke and flame below."

This assessment changed everything. Hundreds of people came to a similar conclusion, but the smoke and the debris in the stairwell proved less of an obstacle than the fear of it. This very stairwell was the sole route out of the building, running from the top to the bottom of the south tower. Anyone who found this stairwell early enough could have walked to freedom.

This plain opportunity hardly read that way to the band of survivors who stood on the 81st floor landing, moments after the plane crash. They argued the alternatives, with Mr. Clark shining his flashlight into his colleagues' faces, asking each, "Up or down?" The debate was interrupted by shouts on the 81st floor.

"Help me! Help me!" Mr. Praimnath yelled. "I'm trapped. Don't leave me here!"

With no further discussion, the group in the stairs turned in different directions. As Mr. Clark recalls it, Mr. Coll, Mr. York and Mr. Vera headed up the stairs, along with the heavyset woman, the slim man and two others he knew from Euro Brokers but could not identify. Mr. York and Mr. Coll hooked arms to support the woman, Mr. Clark recalled. One of them said: "Come on, you can do it. We're in this together."

Mr. Clark and Mr. DiFrancesco headed toward the man yelling for help. Mr. Praimnath saw the flashlight beam and crawled toward it, over toppled desks and across fallen ceiling tiles. Minutes earlier, this had been Fuji Bank's loan department, employee lounge and computer room. Finally, he reached a damaged wall that separated him from the man with the flashlight.

From both sides, they ripped at the wall. A nail penetrated Mr. Praimnath's hand. He knocked it out against a hard surface in the darkness. Finally, the two men could see each other, but were still separated.

"You must jump," Mr. Clark told Mr. Praimnath, whose hand and left leg were now bleeding. "There is no other choice."

As Mr. Praimnath hopped up, Mr. Clark helped boost him over the obstacle. They ran to the stairwell and headed down. The steps were strewn with shattered wallboard. Flames licked in through cracks in the stairwell walls. Water from severed pipes poured down, forming a treacherous slurry.

They moved past the spot with the heavy smoke that the woman had warned Mr. Clark against. Perhaps the draft had shifted; maybe the smoke had not been all that bad to begin with. In any case, the stairs were clear and would be clear as late as 30 minutes after the south tower was hit.

Meanwhile, Mr. DiFrancesco took a detour in search of air, climbing about 10 floors, where he found the first group to go upstairs. They could not leave the stairwell; the doors would not open. Exhausted, in heavy smoke, people were lying down, Mr. DiFrancesco included. "Everyone else was starting to go to sleep," he said. Then, he recalled, he sat up, thinking, "I've got to see my wife and kids again." He ran down.

9:05

South Tower, 78th Floor, Elevator Sky Lobby, 54 minutes to collapse

Mary Jos cannot say for sure how long she was lying there, unconscious, on the floor of the sky lobby, outside the express elevator. Her first recollection of stirring is when she felt searing heat on her back and face. Maybe, she remembers thinking, she was on fire. Instinctively, she rolled over to smother the flames. She saw a blaze in the center of the room, and in the elevator shafts.

That was terrifying enough. Then, below the thick black smoke and through clouds of pulverized plaster, she gradually noticed something worse. The 78th floor sky lobby, which minutes before had been bustling with office workers unsure whether to leave the building or go back to work, was now filled with motionless bodies.

The ceilings, the walls, the windows, the sky lobby information kiosk, even the marble that graced the elevator banks - everything was smashed as the second hijacked plane dipped its left wingtip into the 78th floor.

In an instant, the witnesses say, they encountered a brilliant light, a blast of hot air and a shock wave that knocked over everything. Lying amid the deathly silence, burned and bleeding, Mary Jos had a single thought: her husband. "I am not going to die," she said, remembering her words.

In the 16 minutes between attacks, those in the south tower scarcely had time to absorb the horrors they could see across the plaza and decide what to do. To map their choices about movements is to see the geography of life and death.

Before the second plane hit, survivors said, the mood in the sky lobby was awkward: relief at the announcements that their building was safer than walking on the street, and fear that it really wasn't. In these critical moments, people milled about, trying to decide. Be at trading desks for the opening of the market, or grab a cup of coffee downstairs? At Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, nearly the entire investment banking department left and survived. Nearly all the equities traders stayed and died.

One of them, Stephen Mulderry, spoke to his brother Peter, and described the blaze in the north tower he could see from a window. Still, the word had come from the building management that his tower was "secure" - and his soundless phone was blinking for his attention. "He said, 'I got to go - the lights are ringing and the market is going to open,"' Peter Mulderry recalled.

In the moments before the second impact, everyone in the 78th floor sky lobby was poised between going up or down. Kelly Reyher, who worked on the 100th floor at Aon Corporation, stepped into a local elevator headed up. He wanted to get his Palm Pilot, figuring it might be a while before he could return to his office. Judy Wein and Gigi Singer, also both of Aon, debated whether to go back and get their pocketbooks from their 103rd floor office. But Howard L. Kestenbaum, their colleague, told them to forget about it. He would give them carfare home.

As some office workers spoke nervously of the loved ones they were rushing to rejoin, there was even a bit of humor.

"I have a horse and two cats," Karen E. Hagerty, 34, joked, as she was squeezed out of an elevator spot.

At the instant of impact, a busy lobby of people - witness estimates range from 50 to 200 - was struck silent, dark, all but lifeless. For a few, survival came from having leaned into an alcove. Death could come from having stepped back from a crowded elevator door.

As Ms. Wein came to, she had her own battered body to deal with: her right arm was broken, three ribs were cracked and her right lung had been punctured. In other words, she was lucky. All around her were people with horrific injuries, dead or close to it. Ms. Wein yelled out for her boss, Mr. Kestenbaum. When she found him, she said, he was expressionless, motionless, silent. Ms. Hagerty, who had joked about the cats at home, showed no signs of life when a colleague, Ed Nicholls, saw her. And Richard Gabrielle, another Aon colleague, was pinned to the ground, his legs apparently broken by marble that had fallen on them.

Ms. Wein tried to move the stone. Mr. Gabrielle cried out from pain, she said, and told her to stop.

Gradually, those who could move, did. Ms. Wein found Vijayashanker Paramsothy and Ms. Singer, neither of whom had life-threatening injuries. Kelly Reyher, who had been on his way to get his Palm Pilot, managed to pry open the elevator doors with his arms and his briefcase. He crawled out of the burning car and found Donna Spira 50 feet away. Her arm fractured, her hair burned, Mrs. Spira could still walk.

A mysterious man appeared at one point, his mouth and nose covered with a red handkerchief. He was looking for a fire extinguisher. As Judy Wein recalls, he pointed to the stairs and made an announcement that saved lives: Anyone who can walk, get up and walk now. Anyone who can perhaps help others, find someone who needs help and then head down.

In groups of two and three, the survivors struggled to the stairs. A few flights down, they propped up debris blocking their way, leaving a small passageway to slip through.

A few minutes behind this group was Ling Young, who also survived the impact in the sky lobby. She, too, said she had been steered by the man in the red bandanna, hearing him call out: "This way to the stairs." He trailed her down the stairs. Ms. Young said she soon noticed that he was carrying a woman on his back. Once they reached clearer air, he put her down and went back up.

Others never left.

The people who escaped said Mr. Paramsothy, who had only been scraped, remained behind. Ms. Young said that Sankara Velamuri and Diane Urban, colleagues of Mrs. Jos from the State Department of Taxation and Finance, tried to help two more seriously injured friends, Dianne Gladstone and Yeshavant Tembe, both also state employees.

All five of these people would die.

Of the dozens of people waiting in the sky lobby when the second plane struck, 12 are known to have made it out alive.

9:35

North Tower, 104th Floor, Cantor Fitzgerald; 106th Floor, Windows on the World; 53 minutes to collapse

So urgent was the need for air that people piled four and five high in window after window, their upper bodies hanging out, 1,300 feet above the ground.

They were in an unforgiving place.

Elsewhere, two men, one of them shirtless, stood on the windowsills, leaning their bodies so far outside that they could peer around a big intervening column and see each other, an analysis of photographs and videos reveals.

On the 103rd floor, a man stared straight out a broken window toward the northwest, bracing himself against a window frame with one hand. He wrapped his other arm around a woman, seemingly to keep her from tumbling to the ground.

Behind the unbroken windows, the desperate had assembled. "About five floors from the top you have about 50 people with their faces pressed against the window trying to breathe," a police officer in a helicopter reported.

Now it was unmistakable. The office of Cantor Fitzgerald, and just above it, Windows on the World, would become the landmark for this doomed moment. Nearly 900 would die on floors 101 through 107.

In the restaurant, at least 70 people crowded near office windows at the northwest corner of the 106th floor, according to accounts they gave relatives and co-workers. "Everywhere else is smoked out," Stuart Lee, a Data Synapse vice president, e-mailed his office in Greenwich Village. "Currently an argument going on as whether we should break a window," Mr. Lee continued a few moments later. "Consensus is no for the time being."

Soon, though, a dozen people appeared through broken windows along the west face of the restaurant. Mr. Vogt, the general manager of Windows, said he could see them from the ground, silhouetted against the gray smoke that billowed out from his own office and others.

By now, the videotapes show, fires were rampaging through the impact floors, darting across the north face of the tower. Coils of smoke lashed the people braced around the broken windows.

In the northwest conference room on the 104th floor, Andrew Rosenblum and 50 other people temporarily managed to ward off the smoke and heat by plugging vents with jackets. "We smashed the computers into the windows to get some air," Mr. Rosenblum reported by cellphone to his golf partner, Barry Kornblum.

But there was no hiding.

As people began falling from above the conference room, Mr. Rosenblum broke his preternatural calm, his wife, Jill, recalled. In the midst of speaking to her, he suddenly interjected, without elaboration, "Oh my God."

9:38

South Tower, 97th Floor, Fiduciary Trust; 93rd Floor, Aon Corp.; 21 minutes to collapse

"Ed, be careful!" shouted Alayne Gentul, the director of human resources at Fiduciary Trust, as Edgar Emery slipped off the desk he had been standing on within the increasingly hot and smoky 97th floor of the south tower.

Mr. Emery, one of her office colleagues, had been trying to use his blazer to seal a ventilation duct that was belching smoke. To evacuate Fiduciary employees who worked on this floor, Mr. Emery and Mrs. Gentul had climbed seven floors from their own offices.

Now the two of them, and the six or so they were trying to save, were all in serious trouble.

As Mrs. Gentul spoke to her husband on the phone - he could overhear what was happening - Mr. Emery got up and spread the coat over the vent. Next, he swung a shoe at a sprinkler head, hoping to start the flow of water.

"The sprinklers aren't going on," Mrs. Gentul said to her husband, Jack Gentul, who listened in his office at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, where he is a dean. No one knew the plane had cut the water pipes.

"We don't know whether to stay or go," Mrs. Gentul told her husband. "I don't want to go down into a fire," she said.

Among the doomed, the phone calls, messages and witnesses make clear, were many people who had put themselves in harm's way by stopping to offer a hand to colleagues or strangers. Others acted with great tenderness when all else was lost.

Mrs. Gentul and Mr. Emery of Fiduciary, whose offices stretched from the 90th to the 97th floors, had made their own fateful decisions to help others.

When the first plane hit across the plaza, the fireball billowed across the western facade of the 90th floor, where Mr. Emery was in his office. "I felt the heat on my face," said Anne Foodim, a member of human resources who worked nearby.

Mr. Emery, known for steadiness, emerged, the lapels on his blue blazer flapping as he waved people out. "Come on, let's go," he said, escorting five employees into a stairwell, including Ms. Foodim, who recounted the events. They walked down 12 floors, reaching the 78th floor and the express elevator, with Mr. Emery giving encouragement.

"If you can finish chemo, then you can get down those steps," Mr. Emery told an exhausted Ms. Foodim, who had just completed a round of chemotherapy. When they finally reached a packed elevator on the 78th floor, Mr. Emery made sure everyone got aboard. He squeezed Ms. Foodim's shoulder and let the door close in front of him. Then he headed back up, joining Alayne Gentul.

Like Mr. Emery, Mrs. Gentul herded a group out before the second plane hit. A receptionist, Mona Dunn, saw her on the 90th floor where workers were debating when or if to leave. Mrs. Gentul instantly settled the question. "Go down and go down orderly," she said, indicating a stairway.

"It was like the teacher saying, 'It's O.K., go,'" Mrs. Dunn recalled.

Together, Mrs. Gentul and Mr. Emery went to evacuate six people on the 97th floor who had been working on a computer backup operation, Mrs. Gentul told her husband.

Mr. Emery was hunting for a stairwell on the 97th floor when he reached his wife, Elizabeth, by cellphone. The last thing Mrs. Emery heard before she lost the connection was Alayne Gentul screaming from somewhere very near Ed Emery, "Where's the stairs? Where's the stairs?"

Another phone call was under way nearby. Edmund McNally, director of technology for Fiduciary, called his wife, Liz, as the floor began buckling. Mr. McNally hastily recited his life insurance policies and employee bonus programs. "He said that I meant the world to him and he loved me," Mrs. McNally said, and they exchanged what they thought were their last goodbyes.

Then Mrs. McNally's phone rang again. Her husband sheepishly reported that he had booked them on a trip to Rome for her 40th birthday. "He said, 'Liz, you have to cancel that,'" Mrs. McNally said.

On the 93rd floor, Gregory Milanowycz, 25, an insurance broker for Aon, urged others to leave - some of them survived - but went back himself, after hearing the announcement. "Why did I listen to them - I shouldn't have," he moaned after his father, Joseph Milanowycz, called him. Now he was trapped. He asked his father to ask the Fire Department what he and 30 other people should do. His father said he passed word from a dispatcher to his son that they should stay low, and that firefighters were working their way up. Then, he says, he heard his son calling out to the others: "They are coming! My Dad's on the phone with them. They are coming. Everyone's got to get to the ground."

Even when the situation was most hopeless, the trapped people were still watching out for one another. On the 87th floor, a group of about 20 people from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods took refuge in a conference room belonging to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. During the final minutes, Eric Thorpe managed to get a call to his wife, Linda Perry Thorpe, who was waiting to hear from him at a neighbor's apartment. No one spoke from the tower. Instead, Ms. Thorpe and the neighbor listened to the ambient noise.

"I hear everything in the background," Mrs. Thorpe recalled, including, she said, gasping. "Someone asks, 'Where is the fire extinguisher?' Someone else says, 'It already got thrown out the window.' I heard a voice asking, 'Is anybody unconscious?' Some of them sounded calm.

"One man went berserk, screaming. I couldn't understand that he was saying anything. He just lost it.

"I heard another person soothing him, saying, 'It's O.K., it'll be O.K.'"

9:45

South Tower, 105th Floor, 14 minutes to collapse

Minutes after the second plane struck the south tower, Roko Camaj called home to report that a throng had gathered near the roof, according to his son, Vinny Camaj. "I'm on the 105th floor," Roko Camaj told his wife. "There's at least 200 people here."

The promise of sanctuary on the roof had seemed so logical, so irresistible, that scores of people chased their fates up the stairs. They were blind alleys.

Mr. Camaj, a window washer who had been featured in a children's book, carried the key to the roof, his son said. That key alone would not open its door: a buzzer also had to be pressed by the security staff in a command post on the 22nd floor. And the post had been damaged and evacuated.

The roof seemed like an obvious choice - and the only one - to people on the upper floors. A police helicopter had evacuated people from the roof of the north tower in February 1993, after a terrorist bomb exploded in the basement. For a variety of reasons, though, the Port Authority, with the agreement of the Fire Department, discouraged helicopters as part of its evacuation plan. Police commanders ruled out a rooftop rescue that morning.

Whatever the wisdom of the policy, it came as a shock to many people trapped in the towers, according to their families and summaries of 911 calls. Only a few realized that Stairway A could take them down to safety, and that information never circled back upstairs from those escaping or from the authorities. Frank Doyle, a trader at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, called his wife, Kimmy Chedell, to remind her of his love for her and the children. She recalls he also said: "I've gone up to the roof and the rooftop doors are locked. You need to call 911 and tell them we're trapped."

The 105th floor was the last stop for many of those who had climbed toward the roof, a crowd dominated by Aon employees. At 9:27, a man called 911 and said a group was in the north conference room on the 105th floor. At 9:32, a man on the 105th floor called 911 and asked that the roof be opened. At 9:38, Kevin Cosgrove, a fire warden for Aon, called 911, then rang his brother.

Sean Rooney called Beverly Eckert. They had met at a high school dance in Buffalo, when they were both 16. They had just turned 50 together.

He had tried to go down but was stymied, then had climbed 30 floors or so to the locked roof. Now he wanted to plot a way out, so he had his wife describe the fire's location from the TV pictures. He could not fathom why the roof was locked, she said. She urged him to try again while she dialed 911 on another line. He put the phone down, then returned minutes later, saying the roof door would not budge. He had pounded on it.

"He was worried about the flames," Ms. Eckert recalled. "I kept telling him they weren't anywhere near him. He said, but the windows were hot. His breathing was becoming more labored."

Ceilings were caving in. Floors were buckling. Phone calls were being cut off. He was alone in a room filling with smoke. They said goodbye.

"He was telling me he loved me."

"Then you could hear the loud explosion."

10:00

North Tower, 92nd Floor, Carr Futures, 28 minutes to collapse

"Mom," asked Jeffrey Nussbaum. "What was that explosion?"

Twenty miles away in Oceanside, N.Y., Arline Nussbaum could see on television what her son could not from 50 yards away. She recalls their last words:

"The other tower just went down," Mrs. Nussbaum said.

"Oh my God," her son said. "I love you."

Then the phone went dead.

The north tower, which had been hit 16 minutes before the south, was still standing. It was dying, more slowly, but just as surely. The calls were dwindling. The number of people falling from windows accelerated.

That morning, the office of Carr Futures on the 92nd floor was unusually busy. A total of 68 men and women were on the floor that morning, 67 of them associated with Carr.

About two dozen brokers for Carr's parent company had been called to a special 8 a.m. meeting. When the building sprang back and forth like a car antenna, door frames twisted and jammed shut, trapping a number of them in a conference room.

The remaining Carr employees, about 40, migrated to a large, unfinished space along the west side. Jeffrey Nussbaum called his mother, and shared his cellphone with Andy Friedman. In all, the Carr families have counted 31 calls from the people they lost, according to Joan Dincuff, whose son, Christopher, died that morning.

Carr was two floors below the impact, and everyone there had survived it; yet they could not get out. Between 10:05 and 10:25, videos show, fire spread westward across the 92nd floor's north face, bearing down on their western refuge.

At 10:18, Tom McGinnis, one of the traders summoned to the special meeting, reached his wife, Iliana McGinnis. The words are stitched into her memory.

"This looks really, really bad," he said.

"I know," said Mrs. McGinnis, who had been hoping that his meeting had broken up before the airplane hit. "This is bad for the country; it looks like World War III."

Something in the tone of her husband's answer alarmed Mrs. McGinnis.

"Are you O.K., yes or no?" she demanded.

"We're on the 92nd floor in a room we can't get out of," Mr. McGinnis said.

"Who's with you?" she asked. Mr. McGinnis mentioned three old friends - Joey Holland, Brendan Dolan and Elkin Yuen.

"I love you," Mr. McGinnis said. "Take care of Caitlin." Mrs. McGinnis was not ready to hear a farewell.

"Don't lose your cool," she urged. "You guys are so tough, you're resourceful. You guys are going to get out of there."

"You don't understand," Mr. McGinnis said. "There are people jumping from the floors above us."

It was 10:25. The fire raged along the west side of the 92nd floor. People fell from windows. Mr. McGinnis again told her he loved her and their daughter, Caitlin.

"Don't hang up," Mrs. McGinnis pleaded.

"I got to get down on the floor," Mr. McGinnis said.

With that, the phone connection faded out.

It was 10:26, two minutes before the tower crumbled. The World Trade Center had fallen silent.

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port authority of new york and new jersey

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Yet like messages in an electronic bottle from people marooned in some distant sky, their last words narrate a world that was coming undone. A man sends an e-mail message asking, "Any news from the outside?" before perching on a ledge at Windows on the World.

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"Gotta be small," he says.

A few seconds later the second plane hits and the conversation takes a dramatic twist.

"Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa," he says. "That didn't feel good."

With hindsight we know it as a turning point in international affairs, a moment that will be endlessly replayed in words and pictures and both invoked and evoked by politicians in the name of war and peace.

But what the transcripts of phone calls released by the New York port authority late on Thursday reveal is the gradual awareness of those in the towers and those rescuing them that this was no straightforward emergency.

Families of the victims were divided over the transcripts' release, ordered by a New York court at the request of the New York Times. The horror, heroism, tragedy and shock of those involved are played out in real time - showing some of the mistakes that were made but also a great deal of bravery.

They show that while some played it down, others overreacted. A man identified as Tommy called his mother and warned her. "Just stay in. Don't do nothing. This is bad. They got planes all over the radar coming into New York area. They think everything is going to start hitting."

As they realised this was an irregular situation, regular people were forced to make extraordinary decisions.

These are some of their stories, which have emerged from the transcripts.

Christine Olender, the assistant manager of the Windows on the World restaurant, had gathered together all the breakfast guests and employees on the 106th floor of the north tower when she called the Port Authority 15 minutes after it had been hit. The three emergency stairwells were full of smoke.

"We are getting no direction up here," she said. "We need direction as to where we need to direct our guests and our employees as soon as possible."

The police officer gave what solace he could.

"We're doing our best. We've got the fire department, everybody, we're trying to get up to you dear," he said, asking her to call back in two minutes.

"Call back in two minutes. Great," says Olender before hanging up.

But she was nothing if not persistent, calling back four times in all to receive police instructions.

"Hi, this is Christine, up at Windows. We need to find a safe haven on 106, where the smoke condition isn't bad. Can you direct us to a certain quadrant?"

She was told the emergency services were on their way.

"What's your ETA?" she asked.

"As soon as possible. As soon as it's humanly possible."

With no help in sight those assembled on floor 106 were being smoked out. Olender called for the last time. "The fresh air is going down fast! I'm not exaggerating."

"Ma'am, I know you're not exaggerating," said the officer. "I have you, Christine, four calls, 75 to 100 people, Windows on the World, 106th floor."

"Can we break a window?" asked Ms Olender.

"You can do whatever you have to to get to the air," said the officer.

"All right."

At a Port Authority office on the 64th floor of the north tower, civil engineer Patrick Hoey called police dispatch in Jersey City for advice.

"What do you suggest?" he asked 25 minutes after the first plane hit.

"Stand tight," said the sergeant. "Stay near the stairwells and wait for the police to come up."

"They will come up, huh?" Hoey asked. "They will check each floor? If you would just report we're up here."

About an hour later Hoey and his colleagues were still there, with the air short and smoke rising. "The smoke is getting kind of bad," he told the police desk. "We are contemplating going down the stairwell. Does that make sense?"

The voice on the other end of the line was now less confident that help would be at hand. "Yes. Try to get out," says the officer.

"All right. Bye," says Hoey.

Christie Ferrer was searching for her husband, the executive director of the port authority, Neil Levin.

"Hi, I know you're crazed," she says. "I don't want to bother you but the governor is looking for Neil and so am I and no one can find him. Did you guys locate him?"

"I haven't got that information. But the last I heard he was not in his office. Hold on a second."

Ms Ferrer is put through to World Trade Centre director Alan Reiss.

"I really don't know where he is," says Reiss.

"Do you know for a fact that he wasn't in the office?" she asks.

"I don't know that for a fact," says Reiss.

Levin's body was found months later.
Topics

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"Gotta be small," he says. A few seconds later the second plane hits and the conversation takes a dramatic twist. "Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa," he says. "That didn't feel good." With hindsight we know it as a turning point in international affairs, a moment that will be endlessly replayed in words and pictures and both invoked and evoked by politicians in the name of war and peace.

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360 employees lost their jobs for a long period of time due to the explosion 

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360 employees lost their jobs for a long period of time due to the explosion 

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Founded in 1976

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Windows on the World restaurant, which opened on the 107th floor of the north tower in April 1976

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"More than 70 employees of Windows on the World lost their lives on 9/11, as did the nearly 100 people that made the trip to the 106th floor for breakfast that day."

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Windows of the world spent over $5 million on food and beverages

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Windows on the World restaurant objects - September 11: Bearing Witness to History

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A story about learning to love wine at the top of the World Trade Center. Then watching it all come down.

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Windows on the world

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I liked the skillet-roasted bluepoint oysters, too, in their rich, caviar-embellished cream. Lobster salad is also delicious, big chunks of tender seafood in a smoked chili dressing.

Other appetizers just miss. An open ravioli of mushrooms is an exercise in vegetarian excess, an extravaganza of mushrooms, pumpkin and pumpkin seeds in so much cream that it is almost cloying.

Foie gras paired with draft cider and squash hash is an idea that would be more interesting if the tones were more distinct. Foie gras requires something sweet or acid as a contrast, but this is all so similar that it seems like mush.

Oak-smoked salmon would make a fine beginning to a meal if it came with more than one measly little corncake on the side.

When Mr. Lomonaco was inventing the menu, he clearly considered the restaurant's volume. The room seats 240, and on a busy night the kitchen feeds 600 people. In such circumstances it is wise to keep things simple.

I liked grilled venison chops, with their rich whisky-and-pecan-laced yams. Roasted chicken with chanterelle gravy and a little wild rice and cranberry cake on the side is excellent. Rack of lamb in a rosemary-mustard crust is fine, too, and so is roasted quail served with mushroom stew and black-truffle risotto.

But seafood is less reliable. The first time I tried the lobster, served out of the shell in a richly truffled sauce with buttermilk biscuits on the side, it was dreamy. Another night, the lobster was so overcooked and the biscuits were so tough that the entire dish turned into a disaster. The same thing happened with monkfish; once the combination of the fish with chorizo, olives and tomatoes seemed a wonderful idea, but the next time I tried it the fish was overcooked. If you select seafood, be sure to specify that it is not overdone.

You will want to choose dessert carefully, as well. This means avoiding everything listed under the ''something special'' category of the menu in favor of simpler creations like ''warm berry bongo,'' a sort of individual deep-dish pie. I liked the sorbets and ice creams, but the most exciting finale is surely chocolate dome with brandied cherries, an elegant creation that would make any pastry chef proud.

There are other sources of pride here. They include one of New York's most wonderful wine lists. Anyone willing to take the time to read the entire tome, instead of simply sticking to the one-page short list will find many hard-to-find and surprisingly affordable treasures. The service is another pleasure, at least once you get past the irritating bottleneck at the door.

And then, of course, there is the view. It is a marvel, a magic carpet of lights at your feet. Take one last look before you leave and hold it in your mind as you walk to the elevator. It is a far better image than that silly stuffed deer.

Windows on the World

** [rating: two stars]

1 World Trade Center, (212) 524-7000.

ATMOSPHERE: Despite recent renovations, New York's highest restaurant still looks like an airport lounge; if not for the fabulous view, you could be in a bland hotel in the Midwest.

SERVICE: Enthusiastic and professional.

NOISE LEVEL: Very pleasant.

RECOMMENDED DISHES: Beer-braised short ribs on toast, roasted oysters with caviar cream, seared sea scallops with truffle vinaigrette, smoked salmon, lobster salad with smoked chili dressing, grilled venison chops, roast chicken, roasted quail with truffle risotto, rack of lamb, warm berry bongo, chocolate dome with brandied cherries.

WINE LIST: Affordably excellent.

HOURS: Dinner, Mondays to Thursdays, 5 to 10:30 P.M.; Fridays and Saturdays, until 11:30 P.M., Sundays, until 10 P.M. Sunday buffet lunch, 11 A.M. to 1:30 P.M.

PRICE RANGE: Appetizers, $9 to $18; main courses, $25 to $35; desserts, $8 to $9. Prix fixe sunset menu (before 6 P.M.), $35.

CREDIT CARDS: All major cards.

WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBILITY: Elevators to dining room.

What the stars mean:

(None) Poor to Satisfactory

* Good

** Very Good

*** Excellent

**** Extraordinary

Ratings reflect the reviewer's reaction primarily to food, with ambiance and service taken into consideration. Menu listings and prices are subject to change. --------------------

Past reviews. Hundreds of Times restaurant reviews are available on line from @times, an arts and entertainment guide on America Online. Software and information: 1-800-548-5201.

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Restaurants; Food That's Nearly Worthy of the View

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I liked the skillet-roasted bluepoint oysters, too, in their rich, caviar-embellished cream. Lobster salad is also delicious, big chunks of tender seafood in a smoked chili dressing. Other appetizers just miss. An open ravioli of mushrooms is an exercise in vegetarian excess, an extravaganza of mushrooms, pumpkin and pumpkin seeds in so much cream that it is almost cloying.

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Windows employees came from over 60 nations. "Windows on the World opened on April 19, 1976, as a private club with 1,500 members who paid dues based on their relationship with and proximity to the World Trade Center."

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Windows employees came from over 60 nations. "Windows on the World opened on April 19, 1976, as a private club with 1,500 members who paid dues based on their relationship with and proximity to the World Trade Center."

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Michael Nestor, Liz Thompson and Richard Tierney were three of the four passengers on the last elevator down from Windows on the World. Everybody who was at Windows on the World at the time of impact on Sept. 11 - approximately 170 men and women - perished.

MICHAEL NESTOR: I'm Michael Nestor. I'm the deputy inspector general for the Port Authority of New York New Jersey.

LIZ THOMPSON: I'm Liz Thompson. I'm the executive director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

RICHARD TIERNEY: I'm Richard Tierney. I'm with the Office of the Inspector General for the Port Authority, and I worked in Tower One on the 77th floor.

AUDIE CORNISH, Host:

Ten years ago today, Nestor, Thompson and Tierney were eating breakfast at Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

(SOUNDBITE OF ELEVATOR)

CORNISH: Together, they rode in the last elevator down in the moments before American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building at 8:46 that morning.

NESTOR: We usually got there around 7:30 - because we were there every day. We had breakfast there every day, so we got there pretty much our regular time and saw the same people that we always see - the hostess, Doris.

THOMPSON: Doris and...

NESTOR: Yan(ph), the waiter. We were sitting right - almost in the center, when you walk in.

THOMPSON: Right. They always sat in the center.

NESTOR: In the center, at the window.

THOMPSON: I just went in, and Doris Zeng(ph) was her usual divine self. She greeted me with a smile, and I was sitting facing the Statue of Liberty. And it was a gorgeous, gorgeous morning. We just commented about what a perfect day it was.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

NESTOR: We said goodbye.

TIERNEY: We said goodbye to Doris, to Yan.

NESTOR: Yeah. Dick and I got to the elevator first, and then we heard Miss Liz screaming down the hall. And we held it for her. We rode down, and I guess we were joking around or talking.

TIERNEY: We said something to each other, just - you know, light conversation, whatever.

NESTOR: And it didn't take long. You know, those elevators were fast. It didn't take long. And then we got off, and the plane hit.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

NESTOR: I guess when we figured out who didn't get out, and we were the only ones that were up there that did get out, you know, it kind of sunk in as time went on that, my God, we were the last people to leave that place alive.

THOMPSON: I mean, I often thought if I'd had an extra cup of coffee and gone to the ladies' room, then that would have been that.

NESTOR: Things just kind of - for us three - fell in place. For a lot of other people, it didn't, you know. And you just kind of wandered into luck or un-luck, or misfortune or good fortune.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

TIERNEY: I think about how close I came, but not deliberately. It just comes upon me, this sense of - kind of a disconcerting sense of how close, you know, how close I came to not being here today.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

NESTOR: There is nothing you can do to change what happened. There was no right, wrong, smart, stupid. It was just a matter of - I don't know if it was luck, fate or what it was. But we made a left turn; we're here, having this conversation.

THOMPSON: Right.

NESTOR: If we made a right turn - and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

THOMPSON: Right.

NESTOR: We wouldn't be here. And it was just chance.

CORNISH: Michael Nestor, Liz Thompson and Richard Tierney were three of the four passengers on the last elevator down from Windows on the World. Everybody who was at Windows on the World at the time of impact, approximately 170 men and women, perished.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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Michael Nestor, Liz Thompson and Richard Tierney were three of the four passengers on the last elevator down from Windows on the World. Everybody who was at Windows on the World at the time of impact on Sept. 11 - approximately 170 men and women - perished.

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Here is some insight about the restaurant 

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Here is some insight about the restaurant 

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Windows On The World saw how life and death can sometimes be decided on a razor thin wire of chance. In rare cases, one small change to a persons circumstances can significantly change the course or outcome of an event. The details of this decision-incident can often remain completely transparent to the individuals involved until the event is completely over. Only then does the picture begin to unfold.

WTC North Tower - September 11th - Slim Chance Between Life and Death.

In this terrible tragedy, the North Tower, also know as 1 World Trade Center had it the worst. It was the first to be hit and the last to fall. On September 11th 2001 at 8:46:26 a.m. American Airlines Flight 11 Boeing 767 impacted the north side of the North Tower of 1 World Trade Center. The plane entered the North Tower between the 94th and 98th floors. Flight 11 was flying at a speed of 490 miles per hour at the time of impact. North Tower occupants had no clue what was about to happen and they had no chance of survival from above the impact site, because, unlike the South Tower that was hit a few minutes later, all the fire escapes were destroyed by the impact of the plane. Documented accounts of human losses that morning at the North Tower at The World Trade Center included employees from such companies as Aon Corp, Cantor Fitzgerald and Marsh & McLennan. One particular company, Risk Waters Group Ltd, A British company, was at The Windows On The World conference facility that morning, they would not normally have been there.

Windows On The World - Background On This Most Famous Restaurant

Windows On The World was a world famous 40,000 square foot restaurant near the top of the North tower on the 107th Floor at 1 World Trade Center. It boasted a popular "New American" style menu and had a first class wine list that included Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1928 for $3000.00. The 107th floor was also occupied by "The Greatest Bar on Earth", aka GBOE. This 13,000 square foot happy hour bar was popular with tourists and Wall Street types alike. It was a traditional for New Yorkers to often complain about its "poor quality" and "expensive" drinks, but its location spoke volumes with amazing panoramic views of Manhattan and the tri-state area that was pretty hard to beat. The 107th floor was also occupied by Wild Blue, a romantic and quieter restaurant and bar in the space formerly occupied by Cellar in the Sky. A popular misconception is that Windows on the World was at the very top of the North tower, when in fact the top enclosed floor was the 110th floor, where CNN and some other television companies sited equipment and staff.

The South tower, across the square, was home to the public glass-enclosed observatory located on the 107th floor and the world's highest open-air deck on the 110th floor, that the tourists could visit. On the fateful day of 9/11 2001 the Windows on The World Conference Facility on the 106th floor was playing host to the Risk Waters Financial seminar. One floor above, on the 107th floor, the main restaurant and the bar were closed. Wild Blue, however was the only thing open on that floor and was serving breakfast to a number of WTC tenants and occupants.

The Risk Waters Financial Conference

The Risk Waters Group would not have normally been at the World Trade Center that day. They had organized a financial technology conference that was due to run both days of Tuesday 11th and Wednesday 12th of September 2001. They had invited a number of delegates from various financial companies and vendors in New York and the United States. What distinguishes those delegates from the other victims in the WTC is that they wouldn't normally be there and chance had a way of putting them there that morning. This, of course, is of no solace to the families left behind, but nevertheless remains a gruesome fact. The delegate's presence at the WTC is somewhat akin to the people who died at the (alleged) job interviews at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 95th floor. People who wouldn't have normally been there, but happenstance put them there.

The Risk Waters conference was due to start at 8:00 AM with Breakfast, with the first speaker due to begin at 9:00 AM.At the precise time of the impact were 16 staff from Risk Waters and 53 delegates from various invited companies and vendors in attendance. An additional 137 delegates had been invited but had not arrived at the time of the impact or did not plan in coming after all. Following the plane impact there were reports that delegates from this conference were being moved to the 107th floor. Conflicting reports indicate that smoke was heavy at the 107th floor and all the "Windows" staff was moved to the 106th floor to join the delegates.

No Survivors From Above The 92nd Floor

Christine Olender, the restaurant's assistant general manager, said via her mobile phone to 911 services "We're getting no direction up here. We're having a smoke condition. We have most people on the 106th floor; the 107th floor is way too smoky,"

Other people above the impact site in the North Tower included staff from Windows on the World located on the 106th and 107th floors and from other companies on various floors above and below. It is understood that the roof deck was not accessible by the staff and delegates, but this is perhaps irrelevant as they may have sought adequate refuge on the 106th floor and rooftop rescue by helicopter was not a viable option, due to the updraft caused by the burning aviation fuel

It is estimated over 200 people jumped to their death, with the majority of that number being made up from the North tower, where the fire and smoke were limited to fewer floors - which made it more intense. The estimate was because "Jumper" injuries were very similar to injuries sustained by enclosed occupants and could not be clearly established following the event. The figure was arrived at by analyzing photographs of descending bodies that were taken at the scene.

In the North Tower there were 1360 fatalities above the 92nd floor, which was 100% of its occupants at the time.In contrast, the South tower had one fire escape that was passable after their impact, so in fact 350 people escaped even though they were above the point of impact.Being above the 92nd floor in the North tower on that fateful day meant certain death for its occupants. No one survived.

While many WTC corporations knew the risk of an attack following the 1993 bomb was high, they had accepted the risk of this occurrence and went on with their daily lives. In retrospect all the regular daily inhabitants of the WTC were a walking probability. The Risk Waters group and delegates exemplify the randomness of the event. It seems sadly ironic that the Risk Waters Group range of products and services are dedicated to risk management.

Liz Thompson, executive director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

Liz Thompson 61 is executive director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC). Thompson was on what was to be the last elevator down from the 91st floor in the north tower of the World Trade Center. She was in a meeting concerning a public art commission; Liz is reported to have exited the lobby at 8:43 AM. LMCC artist in residence Michael Richards, was not so lucky, he remained on the 91st floor and perished.

George Sleigh, naval architect

62-year old naval architect, George Sleigh, was in a north-facing office on the telephone to a colleague on the 91st floor. Incredibly, George witnessed the aircraft heading towards his building when it was just two to three plane lengths away. "It was quite a shock to see a large passenger plane that close to the building. Almost immediately upon me seeing it, the plane hit the building," he says. George works for the American Bureau of Shipping; its suite of offices was on the 91st floor, immediately to the left of the impact zone. It took George 50 minutes to descend the 91 flights to safety within a northern stairwell. He remains the highest survivor from the North Tower, no others from his floor (or above) survived

Peter Field, the chairman and chief executive of Risk Waters Group

Peter Field, the chairman and chief executive of Risk Waters Group, was scheduled to be at the Risk Waters conference that morning. He recalls, "I was up at about 6:30am to check my e-mail and phone the London office, intending to leave for the inaugural Waters Financial Technology Congress at the World Trade Center no later than 8:00 am. But I had trouble retrieving my e-mail and I decided to call our IT manager in London to get the problem sorted out. It was this simple act that probably saved my life. By the time I'd accessed my e-mail, I was running late, eventually leaving my hotel on the Upper West Side at about 8:10am. I ran across the road from my hotel to the 66th St. subway entrance only to find there was a long delay in the service on the 1 and 9 lines to the Cortlandt St./World Trade Center station. Eventually, I crammed myself on to a train at around 8:25am. I thought: "I might still catch David's opening remarks because the conference is bound to start a little late." Delegates always register at the last minute on the first day of conferences. David Rivers, our company's editorial director in New York, knew more about financial technology than many in the industry and was therefore ideal to open the first Waters Congress at Windows on the World, on the 106th floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center"When Peter arrived at street level at Cortlandt St at 8:50am he found the tragedy beginning to unfold "There was a sickening smell of what I thought was gas but which I later discovered was jet fuel". " On the shopping concourse above the station, I remember a brief glimpse of broken glass and a cacophony of alarms before I became aware of security guards screaming at us, "Run, run for your life"".

Greg Manning, Trader at Euro Brokers

Greg Manning who stood, horrified, on the morning of Sept. 11 as he watched the towers burn - smoke belching, he was certain, from the 105th floor of Tower One, where his wife Lauren worked, and the 84th floor of Tower Two, where his employer, Euro Brokers, was located. Friends and family called immediately. "I could not say whether Lauren was alive," Greg Manning wrote in his book. "I was almost certain she was dead." Behind schedule that day, Greg, a Euro Brokers vice president, was to have attended the Risk Waters conference at the Windows on the World on the 106th floor of Tower One.

Tony Mann, President of E-J Electric

Tony Mann, president of E-J Electric, Long Island City, which had an office in Tower 2, built and maintained the World Trade Center's entire security system. On the morning of Sept. 11, the electricians were doing routine maintenance work when the first hijacked commercial airliner slammed into Tower 1."Five minutes before it happened, one of our foremen was on the 107th floor," Mann said. "His radio wasn't working, so he came down and was walking across the lobby when the first plane hit. He then ran down to the basement to make sure all our people got out."

Rick Weisfeld, president of Bronx Builders

For Rick Weisfeld, president of Bronx Builders, a woodworking firm, the morning was especially hard. Three of his employees were in the World Trade Center, attending an early morning meeting at Windows on the World on the 107th floor "We were renovating one of the bars there," Weisfeld recalled. Later, he would learn that all three, including one a key foreman and a close friend, were among the nearly 3,000 people who were killed in the World Trade Center attacks. Architect Obdulio Ruiz-Diaz, a draftsman with Bronx Builders, was one of those men with co-workers Joshua Poptean and Manuel DaMota.

Chris Morrison (34) of Zurich Scudder Investments

Chris Morrison (34) of Zurich Scudder Investments, grew up on High Plain Road, Andover, New York - where his parents - Joe and Maureen - still live. Chris was a popular and successful graduate of Central Catholic High School and St. Lawrence University. He was another delegate attending the Risk Waters seminar on the 106th floor.

Heather Ho, executive pastry chef at New York's Windows on the World restaurant

Heather Ho, age 32 was an executive pastry chef at New York's Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center. Heather was always early for her job and worked hard. She was greatly admired for creative new ideas in the approach to traditional recipes. Her dream was to open her own pastry shop. A roommate described her as a unique and amazing person. She said she knew how to have a good time and also worked and played hard.

Neil D. Levin, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

Neil D. Levin, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, wanted the agency's airports to be showcases for the region, and pushed workers to develop high-tech improvements for airline passengers and time-deprived commuters. He was on the 106th floor talking with his secretary on the 67th floor of the North Tower. It is unclear why he was at
the Risk Waters meeting, as it was primarily for the financial community and no other meetings were taking place on that floor that morning. His wife, Christy Ferer, an author and former television reporter said "The last time someone talked to him, he was on the 106th floor. His secretary [from his office on the 67th floor] was talking to him by phone, and as he was talking the plane hit, and they both said `Holy cow!' at the same time. The line went dead. Then [a co-worker] said she ran into someone who said he was on the 63rd floor, and that's what gave me false hope." "He never returned home"

The final messages to the loved ones came in a variety of ways from Windows on the World. Some came via email, others by Blackberry, some managed to use land lines or mobile phones. Some accounts have faxes and others have cherished voicemail's. By all reports the mobile phone network survived right up until the last minute because the primary transmitter was on the roof, albeit severely impaired by the volume of calls being placed throughout downtown Manhattan. When the final messages were being delivered through the various means, those who were trapped had no chance of survival, they just didn't know it, neither did anyone else. It was assumed that they had a fighting chance, a slim opportunity to survive, surely someone would survive the dreadful tragedy.

Brian Clark, a World Trade Center survivor in the 1993 and 2001 incidents said in his book "Why couldn't there have been just one survivor from the North Tower above the impact site? - With a parachute or something, I know it sounds absurd, just so we can say one person survived" He added "Perhaps that individual would have been vilified by grieving families, or maybe it would have brought hope of man's ability to endure however hopeless the odds", "To see him jumping out of the building and gliding down in bright colors framed with the beautiful blue sky amid the terrible turmoil of the scene would have raised the hearts of both the trapped and the grieving families alike", "It's not their son, but he would have carried the spirit of all of them" "If that had been me, I can't imagine how I would have been able to turn my back on those left behind though"

With hindsight, many opportunities to avoid being caught up in this terrible tragedy existed, but who was to know such a terrible thing could happen on such a beautiful day. It seems that the odds of the event occurring remained constant and that time was the only unknown factor. This adds weight to the probability argument that, given time, everything can happen to everyone, everywhere. This single event has forever changed the way Americans live their lives, unlike any other single event in modern US history, save for Pearl Harbor and D-Day.

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Windows On The World; The Slim Chance Between Life and Death

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Windows On The World saw how life and death can sometimes be decided on a razor thin wire of chance. In rare cases, one small change to a persons circumstances can significantly change the course or outcome of an event. The details of this decision-incident can often remain completely transparent to the individuals involved until the event is completely over.

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Ten years - it's not long enough to heal the scars of that day. But it may be long enough to see how spirits so wounded on September 11 have begun to lift again. Martha Teichner reports:
"It's much homier being down, you know, at this level, and really being able to see something as naturally beautiful as Central Park," said Michael Lomonaco.

The difference between the view out these windows and Windows on the World is telling.

"At Windows, the view from the 107th floor was otherworldly, it was beyond description," he said.

Lomonaco was executive chef at Windows on the World, the restaurant that occupied the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center - so high up that when it opened in 1976, a critic wrote,."everything to hate and fear is invisible."

We know now, that wasn't true.

Ten years after 9/11, are we all closer to the ground somehow, still seeking comfort? It took Lomonaco five years to find a reassuring space for his new restaurant, Porterhouse N.Y.

"I wake up every day and I'm really grateful to be here," he said, "And at the same time, I dedicate my restaurant work to my lost colleagues, because it was what they were doing on that day that I do today."

Lomonaco is alive because he decided not to go straight up to his office that morning. When the first plane hit, he was able to get out.

In 2001, he told Teichner, "I saw a fireball. I'm completely sorry that I witnessed any of this. I mean to say that it was just a terrible thing to see. I immediately began to make a mental note of who I thought would be there - Who's there? Who's up there?"
You can watch Martha Teichner's 2001 report by clicking on the video player below.
It was a question that ricocheted around the city in the days after the attack - a question repeated until there were no words left, only names on lists ... faces on walls smiling snapshot smiles.

In 2001 we followed Elizabeth Ortiz, human resources director for Windows on the World, and her assistant as they searched.

Until a few weeks ago, she'd never been back to the places she'd looked, those streets of sorrow.

"I don't know that you can put into words how difficult it was,' Ortiz said today. "I mean, there's hundreds, or, I mean, there's thousands of families that had to deal with it differently. But I think for us, there was a sense of responsibility of working with the families ... you had to be strong for the families. But, you know, I couldn't be alone at night, because it was just too ... scary, too sad."

Just struggling to comprehend that "missing" meant dead. Out of 450 Windows employees, 72 died.

Two days after the attack, Eulogia Hernandez couldn't speak. Her husband Norberto was a pastry chef at Windows on the World.

Family members talk about Norberto: "He called his sister at 9:00, 9:03, he said there was an explosion in the building in front of them."

Norberto Hernandez was from Puerto Rico. Banquet waiter Muhamed Saladeen Chowdhury was from Bangladesh. Windows employees came from more than 60 nations.

The end of this terrible story would bring the beginning of another, better one: Almost exactly 48 hours after Chowdhury died, his wife Baraheen Ashrafi gave birth to the son he would never see, Farqad - the first of the post-9/11 babies.

Michael Lomonaco couldn't get Farqad out of his mind, as he helped set up the Windows of Hope family relief fund. It raised $22 million to provide emergency assistance to the families of food service workers who died in the attack, and to educate their children through college.

The fund pays Farqad Chowdhury's tuition at a private school in Oklahoma City. Baraheen Ashrafi moved nearby to be close to her sister. In 2004, she became a U.S. citizen.

"It's my country now," she told Teichner. "My kids born here, my husband, you know, his soul and his body's in here. So I started feeling love for staying in here."

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Ten years - it's not long enough to heal the scars of that day. But it may be long enough to see how spirits so wounded on September 11 have begun to lift again. Martha Teichner reports: "It's much homier being down, you know, at this level, and really being able to see something as naturally beautiful as Central Park," said Michael Lomonaco.

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I can still see my teacher's face when the guidance counselor came to the door and asked for me third period. I can still feel everyone's eyes on me as she called my name. I can still feel my best friend Danielle's hand squeeze mine telling me to go. And it didn't take long for me to run down the hallway away from the news she was about to tell me. This is my account as to what happened during the terrifying minutes that I had thought I lost my best friend on September 11, 2001.

On September 10, 2001, the New York Giants played the Denver Broncos. Dad and I usually watched the Giants together but that night, he was going out to a local bar, "Sunset Grill" with friends, fathers from the soccer team I played on.

I refused to talk to him when he told me he was going out. I was mad at him for leaving me home with nobody to watch the game with. It was our ritual; my sister was too young to care and Mom hated football. I'm sure I would too if I didn't see it as an opportunity to get all of Dad's attention. Mom was just as mad because he was going out on a weeknight. The only one talking to him was my then eight-year-old sister, Taylor.

He came home early from work that night, but still too late to have dinner with us. Taylor lingered around the kitchen table, picking out all of the olives in his salad bowl. She nonchalantly asked a random question, "Dad, when was the last time your buildings got bombed?" He looked at her strangely but she just kept picking the olives and waited for the answer. That question to this day still boggles our minds. She doesn't remember asking it, and she never answered him when he asked why that night.
He answered her and she hopped down and went off to bed.

He came to kiss me good night before he left and I was still furious. I went to sleep angry with my favorite person in the entire world, thinking tomorrow, he'd bring me home something to make up for it. Our beloved Giants played horrifically that first half and Dad was ready to leave the bar. His friend Rich convinced him to stay a little longer and see if the Giants could come back. He stayed, and it saved his life.

Dad got up on time Tuesday morning, went downstairs, showered and got dressed. We assumed he was on his 7 a.m. train into work as the Director of Catering at Windows on the World, located on the 110th floor of the World Trade Center. The train would have him in his office by 8 a.m. and out of my life for the time being. What happened next was in thanks to the boys the night before; he fell asleep on the couch downstairs and missed his train by minutes.

I left the house unaware of him downstairs, and waited for my school bus. Taylor was dropped off at school and Mom got ready for her own daily routine, all the while we all thought he was long gone. Dad got on the next train instead of racing his to the next station, and was unknowingly on his way into a hellish nightmare.

Right before third period an older student walking past my English teacher called out, "It was two planes right? They hit the Twin Towers right?" She shushed him as our eyes locked. Thinking Dad was on his usual train I went numb. I don't remember the next few minutes I just know that somehow I got into my Language Arts class and sat in silence.

Minutes after the bell my guidance counselor was at the door and the class fell silent. My teacher's face was sympathetic as she pointed in my direction. I knew what she was about to say. I rose gingerly out of my seat towards this young, blonde, pregnant woman I had met only once before. Her smile didn't fool me as her eyes leaked agonizing pain. I knew I wasn't the only one she'd be visiting today. She opened her mouth to speak and I stared intently into her face as a warning not to say it. She went on, "Alex, there has been an accident at the World Trade Center," and before she could finish I was gone.

I don't know where I was running, I don't know what I was looking for, I just had to get away from her and her awful news. Eventually I collapsed and she along with all of her dreadful news caught up to me. She helped me up as I shook uncontrollably, unable to grasp an emotion to hold onto. She walked me to the office where Mom and Grandma were waiting. They were both crying and I repeated to myself over and over, "he's dead. Dad's gone." Mom spoke first, "He's okay," she whispered.

Somehow he had survived.

The numbers didn't match up I didn't understand, there was no way he could have run down those stairs and he couldn't survive that jump, I didn't get it. "He missed his train, he got there late," Mom said.

I had just been up there; I spent many of my Saturdays up there. My last memory I have is making posters for the New York Mets ' game with his coworkers instead of doing my homework. "Piazza Delivery Please." My mind was spinning, if Dad was okay what about the rest of them? What happened to Dad's second family?

"What about Jackie? What about Jay?," Dad's two closest friends up there, and admittedly, my favorites. At the time Mom did what every parent wanting to protect their child from harm or anymore pain would do, "We've heard from them, they're okay." I later learned that wasn't the "okay" I was looking for. That "okay" was in a voicemail left from Dad's office phone to their boss' cell phone. Their words formed something along the lines of, "There is a lot of smoke, we're doing our best, it doesn't look great but we'll try our hardest to get out we love you all and we are 'okay.'" To this day, that word doesn't sit well with me.

As I'm trying to process this, Dad was frantically searching for a phone line to call out on; we didn't have cell phones or pagers back then. He couldn't get in touch with us and he needed to check back in with Mom to say he was 'okay.' When the second plane hit, he was crouched below a bus stop dodging debris, people and suitcases. His initial reaction was to run in and save his friends, but security shoved him out of the way and he took cover. He looked up and watched his world crumble. He could see his own chefs waving tablecloths out of the windows.

As a family, we are adamant believers of trying to keep things as normal as possible, leading to the decision to keep me in school for the remainder of the day. It felt like that day would never end. People were coming up to me asking if he was dead or alive. Such a cold, callous question. Taylor wasn't told until she was picked up from school but by then word had gotten out. Everyone knew where Dad worked, as kids we weren't shy about it. Teachers begged Mom, "Say it isn't so." Taylor came to the car in hysterics because the eight-year-old was being told by other kids, "There's no way your dad is alive. He has to be dead."

Dad eventually found friends from the catering world that he was able to borrow a phone from. He called Mom and began to piece together his journey home.

My universe, the man who taught me everything I know about life, stumbled through the door too many hours later, his suit and shoes dirty, his hair disheveled, and his voice quivering, "Alex, I made it home for you buddy, I came home for you." I have never had a better hug, never felt better, and never wanted anything more than to have my dad home at that moment. I held him, my rock and my life and never wanted to let go.

Our phone didn't stop ringing for days; our front door was a revolving one, the cards, flowers, and food and well wishes didn't stop coming for weeks. People would see him and think they were seeing a ghost, not believing that he was alive. There we were the four of us, changed forever, given a new bond. "Taylor, why did you ask me that question?" "Dad, I don't know."

I'm the first to say we're fortunate. I know firsthand that there are thousands of others who were not as lucky us. I don't know why things worked out this way where I got to keep my dad, and so many others lost theirs. I don't know why my mom gets to kiss her husband, and others will never kiss their spouses again. I say my prayers and thank my stars for still having my hero at my side. Mom always says, "If I lost Greg, I'd have lost Alex as well."

In total he lost 83 employees that day, some of who were there early for a meeting he himself had called. His therapy came through the eulogies he delivered, and I don't know if he will ever look at a black suit the same. He went on to work at the Waldorf Astoria, but it wasn't the same for me. He lost that signature twinkle in his eye, and I lost the passion to share his work with him, ultimately changing my career dreams.

Even though Dad was alive, I suffered a tremendous loss. At twelve I felt like nothing around me was safe. I grew reluctant to share anything with anyone, even turning against my own hero for a while. I didn't open up about what I was feeling; I didn't want to talk to him about what was going through my mind. As if being a teenager wasn't hard enough, I was grieving over something I couldn't begin to understand. It was a difficult few years to follow.

Now he works at a waste transfer station. His brother bought it and the two of them, best of friends who knew nothing about garbage go to work together in jeans and work boots. It's a far cry from the tuxedos he wore and the lavish parties he threw, entertaining celebrities and even the president.

It's a major shift in the way our family lives now; set the table for four instead of three, expect him to be at family events and be angered when he's not. He still shakes the hands of politicians but not ones I know; mostly the ones who will help him get permits in his sanitation work.

Now he leaves work when he wants, was able to watch my field hockey games at Fairfield University, travel with Taylor and her softball team, vacation with Mom, and yeah, he plays a ton of golf. All things he couldn't dream of doing in the restaurant world.
You would think that after an experience like this, as a family we would never miss an opportunity to say I love you, but we are still in essence just like every other family. Mom still gets aggravated when he goes out with friends, and she still hates football. I still resent not being invited to Sunday games, and Taylor is a typical teen not wanting much to do with embarrassing old Dad.

We have our occasional fights, but when we do catch a moment and say I love you, it means that much more.

I think about the time Dad was almost taken from me daily. And sometimes I think about the other things, not nearly as important, that were taken too. Access to celebrities, politicians, athletes, and award ceremonies, petty things that in the grand scheme of life certainly don't matter or amount to anything, but still it's a world now cut off to us. On a daily basis I saw Dad glamorous as ever in a tux, handsome in a suit, and literally on top of his own world, for a while it was like he was unstoppable.

Dad's office at Windows was lined with countless pictures and memorabilia. The giant size bottles of champagne that are seen only on display or at extravagant parties were given as gifts for his hard work. From his collection, only one remains in our house, buried in a corner collecting dust, a metaphor of the life we once knew.

These days the sports memorabilia crowding the walls of our den are no longer given to him in appreciation, they are bought at auctions benefiting one charity or cause after another. They have a different meaning as they continue to irritate Mom, but for us the meaning behind them is just as great. He's a changed man, and we love this one just as much as we did the other one, if not more.

There are things about him 9/11 mercilessly ripped away, some of his most meaningful friendships and for a while, his livelihood. But there are things it'll never touch, his true core, his heart, his soul and it's all reflected in our family. It's obvious he misses that atmosphere, all of the action and certainly his friends; I'm not sure if anything will replace it for him, but I am positive he'll go back into it on his own terms, maybe I'll be fortunate enough to join him.

As I learned ten years ago, nobody knows for certain what will happen tomorrow. What we do know for certain, and what we will be thankful for the most on this anniversary as we mourn the many losses is that as a family, we survived.
Alexandria Hein is a FoxNews.com news editor. Click over for full coverage of 9/11 >>

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I can still see my teacher's face when the guidance counselor came to the door and asked for me third period. I can still feel everyone's eyes on me as she called my name. I can still feel my best friend Danielle's hand squeeze mine telling me to go.

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Highest grossing restaurant in the US in 2000

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Highest grossing restaurant in the US in 2000

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The restaurant's renowned wine cellar -- more than 40,000 bottles -- is sooty but otherwise intact. "The coolers went off in the cellar, but electricity was back within 24 hours, so there was no problem," said Kevin Zraly, director of its wine department and its wine school. Mr. Zraly, who was not at work when the bomb detonated, is no stranger to catastrophes at cloud level, having been at the restaurant during the 1977 blackout.

"If I were here for the bombing I would have gone straight to the wine cellar, not the stairs," Mr. Zraly said. "In fact, after the blackout I put some special wines aside for occasions like that. Why not?"

Restaurant employees are being paid through yesterday, said Tony Rutligiano, a spokesman for Hilton International, which owns the restaurant through its subsidiary, Inhilco. "They will all be rehired," he said. 360 Advised on Unemployment

The 360 employees, from cooks and waiters to reservation takers and loading dock workers, have been advised to apply for unemployment benefits, he said.

Within hours of the explosion the restaurant was offered temporary office space by the nearby Hudson River Club restaurant, the Hotel Millenium, the Marriott Financial Center Hotel and American Express.

Golie Sina and her fiancee, Sohrab Shafian, both of Great Neck, L.I., had begun last December to plan their marriage at Windows on the World, scheduled for March 14. With 380 guests, a Persian band coming from California, a special glatt kosher caterer and dozens of other details, it required many visits to the tower. "You can't imagine the work involved," Miss Sina said.

With the help of one of the emergency offices set up by Windows on the World, the couple moved their wedding to April 14 at the New York Hilton uptown.

"You know, I was really afraid that our plane would be hijacked or we'd have a big snowstorm," she said. "But a bomb?" Tons of Food Donated

On the Saturday after the blast, a group of employees from Windows on the World surveyed damage in the restaurant, which was mostly limited to soot and stains from the smoke. They removed 10,000 pounds of salvageable fruit, other produce and dairy products and donated them to City Harvest, an organization that feeds the needy.

Near one of the bars Mr. Romeo discovered dozens of open beer bottles and assorted open Cognacs, brandies and other liqueurs. "The best of the best," he said.

On a nearby table, he found a note scrawled on a piece of cardboard: "Thanks for the hospitality. NYFD."

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THE TWIN TOWERS: The Restaurant; Windows on the World: Where Hundreds Would Dine, Silence

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The restaurant's renowned wine cellar -- more than 40,000 bottles -- is sooty but otherwise intact. "The coolers went off in the cellar, but electricity was back within 24 hours, so there was no problem," said Kevin Zraly, director of its wine department and its wine school.

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1. This was a restaurant located on top of the north tower of the world trade center.
2. It was known for its complex venue and views being located on the 106th and 107th floor of one of the most well known buildings in the world.
3. The head chefs name was Micheal Lomonco.
4. Founded in April of 1974.
5. More than 70 employees.
6.  https://patch.com/missouri/ofallon/bp--remembering-911-windows-on-the-world-at-the-worldce5b44ad4c

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Located on top of the North Tower

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Windows on the World was a complex of venues on the top floors (106th and 107th) of the North Tower (Building One) of the original World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan

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Windows on the World was a complex of venues on the top floors (106th and 107th) of the North Tower (Building One) of the original World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan

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Last voices from the twin towers | World news | The Guardian

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One of the five largest grossing resturaunts in the country

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Remembering Those Who were in Windows on the World.

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Remembering Those Who were in Windows on the World.

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The restaurant, Windows on the World, was located on the 106th floor in the Twin Towers. On the morning of September 11, 2001, more than 100 guests did not live to see past breakfast. There were more than 70 employees who were killed from the attack.

https://ny.eater.com/2011/9/11/6654739/remembering-windows-on-the-world-words-photos-videos

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If you booked dinner at Windows on the World between 1981 and 1993, you probably spoke to Deborah Rodi on the telephone. Known to all as Deb, she managed reservations at the restaurant, which was perched on the hundred-and-seventh floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Windows on the World was part of a little gang of night spots high in the North Tower. There was the Greatest Bar on Earth and another restaurant called Wild Blue. At Windows on the World, the tables bore white tablecloths and little vases, each with a single flower. Men had to wear jackets or they could not take their tables. Finance was transforming the country and taking over the city-Deb watched nineteen-eighties New York decide on its identity. She remembers Grace Kelly and Andy Warhol coming in. She remembers the day, in 1983, when she didn't ask the maître d' whether his purple swelling was Kaposi's sarcoma, because she didn't want to offend him and she had only learned about the AIDS virus that morning. She was twenty-three years old when she started the job, and commuted to work from Jersey City.

There were unsettling aspects to working so high up. The hanging plants in Deb's office, one floor down, swung around as wind buffeted the skyscraper. Deb remembers a co-worker named Gerald, who would eavesdrop, she says, on other building workers, and once heard them talking about small, unchecked fires in the Trade Center's two buildings. "Something is going to happen here one day," he told her. During the twelve years when she worked at the restaurant, she took home a variety of objects, in an absent-minded, memento officii sort of way.

Now some of those objects are on display: the young artist Rose Salane has curated a selection of Deb's past for a show at Company Gallery on Eldridge Street. Salane met Deb after bidding on a postcard from Windows on the World that Deb was selling online. (The show is titled "Indigo237," after Deb's eBay account.) Deb, curious whether Salane had some connection to the restaurant, wrote her an inquisitive message, and they began a correspondence. In addition to the objects Deb collected, the show includes fictional newspaper articles that report scenes from Deb's memories. In an article titled "How to Cut a Cigar 1991," we read about Deb idly playing with a cigar guillotine during a safety meeting, as employees are taught how to recognize a bomb disguised as a pack of Marlboros. They don't even sell American cigarettes here, Deb thinks, as the meeting drags on. Then a man named Bill asks Deb to show her colleagues how to cut cigars for their customers.

The cigar clipper is in the show, along with a salt cellar, a dish, and Deb's business card. There's a promotional postcard that is illustrated with one of the elegant tables that filled the restaurant, a little, spotlit corner of intimacy against the vast darkness outside the high window. Salane has also sculpted objects based on restaurant equipment, and included several pictures taken by Deb, who is a keen photographer, and carried a camera to work with her often. (She wanted to go to art school but never did.) In one picture, we see employees temporarily working as security personnel, in 1993, after a man named Eyad Ismoil detonated a massive truck bomb in the parking garage below the North Tower. Six people died, and hundreds were injured. Employees had the option to work security, as temps, until the restaurant was back up and running, or to take unemployment. Another photograph is a simple shot out of the window.

After the 1993 bombing, Deb quit her job, afraid to keep working in a place that was a target. Salane was just a toddler at the time; she was born in Queens in the early nineties. The towers loomed over her childhood, like twin totems of the big city. She told me, when we met at her studio, near the Sumner Houses in Brooklyn, that she was "not actually so interested in 9/11." Instead, she's interested in the years that 9/11 has occluded, with the backward shadow that it casts on history. (The plane that hit the North Tower struck well below Windows on the World; the seventy-three employees and eighty-seven conference attendees who were in the restaurant at the time were all killed in the attack.) For Salane, the World Trade Center is a symbol of the whirlwind of capital that began buffeting New Yorkers in the nineteen-eighties. As the Reagan White House deregulated U.S. markets, and the Koch administration cut New York City taxes, the Financial District thrived. Meanwhile, the AIDS crisis went unaddressed, and Nancy Reagan's war on drugs incarcerated thousands of New Yorkers.

And there in the middle of it all was Deb, one young woman in her watchtower. Looking at the little objects that she brought home from work, against the backdrop of those giant buildings, the scale of this history becomes overwhelming. The history of the Twin Towers is about a decisive change in the political course of the world; it's also about a salt cellar with a soft burnish to its exterior. It's about a cigar clipper held in the hand of a rich man. It's about New Yorkers who died of AIDS, and New Yorkers who were killed by terrorists. It's a young woman looking out the window of a tall building. It's a plant that cannot stay still, because the whole place is swaying.

Everything in Salane and Rodi's show, whether it's a postcard or a memory, is the opposite of a skyscraper. These objects, in their smallness and particularity, resist the enormous scale of September 11th and insist on the everyday lives and labors of individual people. As Salane writes in her show notes, the exhibition "seeks to enter history through the pedestrian entrance." She and Rodi have created a venue and a frame for old narratives to come forward, and to look us in our contemporary eyes.

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Watching New York City Take Shape at Windows on the World

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If you booked dinner at Windows on the World between 1981 and 1993, you probably spoke to Deborah Rodi on the telephone. Known to all as Deb, she managed reservations at the restaurant, which was perched on the hundred-and-seventh floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

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The Windows on the World Wine School, the best in the city, was down the corridor from the famous restaurant by that name, at the top of the World Trade Center. The elevator took fifty-eight seconds to reach the 107th floor (Fussman,2016).