Day Seven: September 17

The barriers on Canal Street were erratic again today, and lower Manhattan was a maze of open and closed streets.

St Paul’s Chapel

	“Battery’s and Much More”

44pct was here

I made it past two check points and onto a restricted section of John Street with the help of a friend going to check her apartment for the first time.

Two blocks

From the roof of her apartment, about 16 stories up, we could look down Dey Street to the base of of the ruined south tower. Dozens of figures moved in the foreground, near where I stood exactly two weeks ago.

The broken glass Winter Garden atrium of the World Financial Center was visible as through the smoke, to the right of a huge draped American flag.

Ground Zero		Surveying the damage

Behind everything, we could see the Hudson River and a sliver of New Jersey. Neither was visible from John Street before the collapse.

Like all buildings in the area, the roof was covered with dust and matted papers, some burned, some torn: expense reports, index cards, purple PostIts.

The most piercing thing I saw was a blue slip of Cantor Fitzgerald letterhead. More than 700 employees of that company are missing.

	Rooftops on Fulton Street
	Not open to the public

Cantor Fitzgerald

Farther south, the National Guard maintained a heavy street presence for the first day of resumed trading on the NYSE.

Men in suits, some with masks, navigated barriers and military vehicles on Wall Street.

National Guard on Wall Street

An Irish man with several disposable cameras in his pockets stopped me across from the stock exchange, handed me a camera, and asked me to take a very specific photograph of him:

“Be sure to get the flag on the Exchange, Trinity Church in the background, and the steps of Federal Hall on the right. That’s where George Washington was inaugurated, on those steps. I want to show Money, Church, and Politics all in the same shot.”

	No longer

Money, Church, and Politics

I duplicate that photograph above.