What Once Was

A few weeks shy of our nation’s twentieth-anniversary commemoration of the tragic events of September 11, 2001, I visited the abandoned Lukens steel rolling mill in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. For once, this urban explorer and her exploring group had permission to investigate this facility, but only with the presentation of a purchased on-demand insurance liability certificate. I love to photograph heavy industrial abandonments, perhaps because such facilities evoke nostalgia since I grew up in an Eastern Pennsylvania steel town. I looked forward to experiencing this steel mill’s look, smells, and color, or lack of color. Little did I realize how affected I was by the mill artifacts and their connection to New York City’s fallen World Trade Center.

Within minutes of arriving at the facility, the skies opened up and drenched all with sheets of seemingly incessant rain. Much confusion about the mill entry procedure prevailed because of this downpour. Still, the Lukens representatives corralled my group of explorers into the mill as I attended to the administrative paperwork inside the Lukens office. Even though the torrential rain created limited visibility outside, I could still grasp the Lukens landmark steel trident proudly displayed in front of the derelict rolling mill. I knew this trident, a/k/a steel tree, was a 35 ton, 70-foot structural support from the first nine floors and lobby of a World Trade Center tower. I also was aware that this colossal piece of steel stood in the rubble of the towers’ collapse. Nevertheless, I was taken aback to see nine additional massive steel trees resting inside the mill – each weighing up to 70 tons and up to 100 feet in length.

On April 14, 2010, nine years after the fateful day of 9/11, a tractor-trailer convoy of twenty-eight left New York City with ten World Trade Center steel structural supports. The steel trees were manufactured at the Lukens mill and were never expected to return home when they departed for New York City for the construction of the World Trade Center towers in the 1960s. Thirteen hours after departure, the steel trees arrived at their Lukens birthplace. Five hundred tons of World Trade Center steel returned home and were no longer required to be the foundational sentries for the towering symbol of American commerce and trade. Seeing the mammoth steel remains on the mill’s dirt floors and some stacked on each other is humbling and forces reminiscence about many aspects of that eventful day. Curiously, politics and even the essence of my urban exploration activities mingled in this thoughtful stew, too.

The day of terror inflicted upon New York City, The Pentagon, and a small rural community in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, brought forth many adjustments to the American way of life. It is difficult to find many aspects of life removed from such changes. From the heightened security at airports to the Patriot Act to the seemingly endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose freedoms and psyche have not been touched by the actions from one single day in 2001? Indeed, our way of governing and administration altered, and thus, thrust our way of life onto a different path that included fear in our day-to-day living equation. A little more than a decade after 9/11, I discovered urban exploration. Similar to the shifts in procedure and perception of life resulting from 9/11, urbexing also transformed my soul and the way I live my life.

Yes, urban exploration is political, too, because it has the command to restructure how we comprehend our environment. Just as our society adapted to security modifications post-9/11 and fostered a new way of looking at our environment, similarly, there is a shift in spatial and social cognizance in almost every abandonment I explore. An urban explorer is often alone in a silent, forgotten world couched in constant darkness that forces a mental rewiring of scale and awareness. This scene is often a quiet and contemplative realm. Yet, seeing the layers of World Trade Tower steel in a silent shadowy cavern had me reliving that loud day in September 2001. The dichotomy of the facility’s actual silence and my mental 9/11 noise were at odds and forced a battle for dominance of my emotions.

Analogous to the remains of 9/11, urban exploration compels one to investigate and, importantly, be meditative and appreciative of a site’s historical foundations. Urbexers have specific motivations for doing what they do. Documenting the forlorn or destroyed places before they disappear from a footprint is our prime directive. Additionally, a reverence for what once was is a priority. Genuine urban explorers never vandalize, remove or damage anything – they do not even litter. Urbexers value the chronicle and the spirit of the past. We love the places we explore and want them to be remembered. I often think the sub-cultural perspectives of urban exploration could foster salvaging and appreciation of our world. In a perfect world, such examination would endorse mindfulness and communion with our environment, which brings me back to my long gazes upon those giant towers of steel in the Lukens mill. Before I photographed these monuments to sorrow, I needed to study and run my hand across their surfaces and feel the rust, the scratches, the dents, the dirt. These columns were once buttresses of strength and pride but now clutch the scars of 9/11, just as do all of us as we evoke that life-changing September day.

Like so many that visit sites of reverence and commemoration, and similar to the numerous abandoned sites I frequented over the past decade, I respectfully observed and documented the scene. Viewing the steel trees also prompted a craving for solidarity for our nation, such as it was in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy. Where is our American interconnectedness, though? I seek it, but it is not present. Our divided country needs this attribute and a return to our nation’s first principles. Our Constitution opens with “We the people…” and the “We” needs an American homecoming.

At least today, on this twentieth anniversary of 9/11, perhaps “We” can come together for a few hours and hold a mutual understanding that all of us lost so much on that heartbreaking day. After the attacks on our country on September 11, 2001, “We” united and kicked our divisive views and habits to the curb. “We” were Americans – period. “We” must return to our United States and embrace our shared diversity and ideals. “We” need to reopen our collective history book and refresh our memories of how we joined to fight tyranny in 1776 and battle the Axis powers during WWII. Just as the Lukens Steel trees from the collapsed World Trade Center towers returned to their birth and final resting place to serve as signals of the importance of history, “We” must embrace this concept, too, and never forget – our story and our joint will to be Americans. “We” must elevate our behavior toward the greater good – and be worthy of those that sacrificed everything in the service of our America. “We” must remember what once was.