It looks like nothing more than a 22-foot-long, 4-foot-wide hole in the ground. But (Thursday), when a 180-foot-tall crane lowers a gigantic steel cage down into the trench, construction will begin on the first section of a $174 million wall more than 1,200 feet long.
Resting on bedrock more than 70 feet deep, the concrete wall will keep groundwater from inundating four ground zero office towers, a new transit hub and half a million square feet of retail space.
The wall' s unglamorous official name is the East Bathtub, and it will encompass the margins of Liberty, Church and Vesey Streets, connecting to the concrete bulwark surrounding the World Trade Center.
Filling the trench, at Greenwich and Liberty Streets, "is a significant first step in beginning the commercial and retail components of the site," said Anthony R. Coscia, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
I like the name East Bathtub...I don't know why. I think it tugs a my curiosity and makes me pause in my normally rushed day to think, "Why East Bathtub....where in the world did that come from." I find it a little bit off-putting but at the same time relaxing...like finding a small park in the most unlikely place.
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yeah, who says "East Bathtub" is unglamorous?
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