A stunning photo of Manhattan’s Twin Towers with a beach in the foreground recently caught my eye. It’s hard to imagine, but there once was a beach by Battery Park, where people sunbathed beneath the towers.
This makeshift beach, created during the World Trade Center’s construction delays in the 1970s, became a peaceful retreat for locals. Known as Battery Park Beach, it wasn’t meant for public use but became a haven for sunbathers, volleyball games, and social movements, including a large anti-nuclear protest in 1979.
Over the years, the area transformed, with modern developments replacing the beach. By 2000, the old landfill had been developed into a suburban office park. Today, those images of peaceful days by the sea are tinged with sadness, as they remind us of the tragic loss of the Twin Towers in 2001. Time changes everything, often in unexpected ways.
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