Running around town doing errands I snapped a picture of the ubiquitous hawkers of images and icons of New York. In this case, the Statue of Liberty against an American flag, Bow Bridge in Central Park with its backdrop of apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge with the Twin Towers forever etched in the sky, and the Imagine mosaic in Central Park dedicated to the memory of John Lennon. The latter two depict relatively recent tragic events that have transformed the collective iconography of the city.

Sixth Avenue, Rockefeller Center

Architect Santiago Calatrava who has designed the PATH station soon to be built on a part of ground zero said this:

New York, in my eyes, was a young, very vital city. But suddenly with Sept. 11, after an enormous tragedy happens, things change. Suddenly New York is no longer a young city. It plays in another league now, like Athens, Rome, Jerusalem. A city that has been burned down and rebuilt. New York now has this depth. It is not the same thing to build here as it was before. It is like building in Jerusalem.

Fortune, 8 November 2006
Interview with Julie Schlosser