Jason Nicholas tours the World Trade Center complex, highlighting One World Trade Center's 1,776-foot height, Santiago Calatrava's St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, and the Oculus transportation hub. He walks through the 9/11 Memorial, explaining how the reflecting pools sit on the original Twin Tower footprints.
Jason from The Inspired Life. I am livestreaming really quickly. I want to show you where I'm at. I'm in New York City at a really iconic location down at the World Trade Center, and I just want to show you a couple of quick highlights while I'm here. Hope you're having an awesome day. All right, turn the camera around. So highlight number 1, that is One World Trade Center. 1,976 feet tall. I'm lying, 1,776. 1,776 feet tall. Um, 1,776 should be an important significant number that you might recognize because they intentionally built it to that height. Incredible, incredible building. Uh, I'm actually up here on a plaza where this beautiful Greek Saint— what is it, a, um, it's a Greek Orthodox Church, opened in 2022 by Santiago Calatrava, um, very famous Italian architect/engineer. And he did another building really close to here called the Oculus, which maybe I'll show as well. Um, this is an incredible structure, it's beautiful. And here's a quick kind of glimpse at it. Again, this was opened in 2022. Uh, we are standing, you know, on the site of um, the September 11th attacks. This is kind of where it all happened, where it all went down. Um, very kind of solemn site. I'm going to walk over towards an overview where you can actually see the 9/11 Memorial Park. Um, so I'm headed that way now, but here's a straight-on view of the church. Pretty amazing structure. But I'm walking across this plaza where I want to show you kind of an overview of the 9/11 memorial. Um, that sculpture we just saw is, um, a surviving sculpture from the 9/11 attacks that has been incorporated here in this kind of park area. But now we're, we're looking down at the 9/11 Memorial. Um, straight ahead, that building that's slanted is the 9/11 Museum. In front of that is one of the two reflecting pools, and those reflecting pools— and there, there are actually waterfalls inside— um, they are— each one of them is on the exact footprint of where one of the former Twin Towers stood.
Here it is over there.
And if you look beyond here, you might see those spikes kind of popping up. Those spikes are part of the Oculus building, which leads down into a huge mall and, uh, transportation, uh, train hub. There's St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church. Feel free to leave comments, say hello. I will check comments later. I'm not— I can't see the comments now, but give it a thumbs up, please share this out. Yeah, if you want to stick with me, I'm going to take a walk down towards the, um, the Oculus building. It's good to see you guys. Can I see chat? Let's see. How you guys doing today? So here I am in New York City, down by the 9/11 memorial site, which is down there. That's the main plaza, the main park area. Here's One World Trade Center. Awesome, great to see you guys. And if you're on here spamming me, well to go do something that's more productive because I'm not here for people to spam. That's ridiculous. I'm here to, uh, do a little show and tell here at a kind of a solemn memorial site. So appreciate positivity only in the comments. Thank you so much.
Alright, cool.
Alright, let's take a walk down towards the Oculus building. I don't have a gimbal with me, so the camera might be shaky. I'm just holding it in my hands right now. Um, the city is amazing, guys. This is just one small example of, of a huge city, an example of the vibe, the architecture. It's just really incredible. I love coming to New York City. City sketching and walking around. All right, so we're walking through the park. I'm not going to linger here, but you can kind of see what's going on. Um, we're headed towards the Oculus, which is that building on the right-hand side. Feel free to leave questions, comments for me related to either sketching, architecture, um, New York City. Definitely, I'll go back and look at the comments later when I get a chance to. So this is the, um one of the kind of reflecting the pool areas here at the World Trade Center Memorial. I just want to give you a vibe of, of this area here. Um, I was here early this morning. It was pretty empty and it had a really solemn kind of vibe, feel. You know, walking around the memorial, people reflecting, putting flowers on the names that are engraved. But here's the Oculus Building. This building was designed by Santiago Calatrava, the same architect who did the Greek Orthodox Church, Saint Nicholas, that we just saw. This building serves as kind of— it's a shopping mall and transportation hub, a train hub here. I love this building. I'm going to walk further so you can get a different perspective of it. A lot of people say it looks like different things. Some say dinosaur bones, whale bones, um, but I think— I'm pretty sure it was inspired by a bird, a dove, and you'll see that from a different perspective over here. I'm going to come around the corner so you can see it different. Yeah, I would like to—
I don't know, but we're going to walk by.
So definitely getting busier. It was emptier this morning here for sure. All right, let me get down here. I'm going to turn around so you can see this. Here we go. Here's the reveal. So This is it. All right, so this is the Oculus. Um, you can see the entry doors here. There's some on the other side as well. But yeah, it looks kind of like a dove taking off in flight, and it's pretty symbolic thinking about having a dove located here in the heart of where the 9/11, uh, attacks were. Um, What do doves represent? Love, peace, right? So really iconic, very intentional architectural decision, and a very sculptural and beautiful, beautiful building. Here's a performing arts building here. I'm going to give you another view of the Oculus. I can— think you can see more of it from here. There you go. So now you can kind of see it. This is a challenging building to sketch, so I've taken a bunch of pictures. I did a sketch inside earlier today. I'm gonna— I'll probably do another sketch at home maybe tonight based on the pictures I took. It's pretty cold out right now, but yeah, so I just want to give you a quick kind of peek at where I'm standing. Show you some things around here, pan around one last time. Again, feel free to give a thumbs up. I'd like to share this video out. Alright, thank you so much again. This is Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life. I love sketching, love architecture, and love New York City. Thanks for watching. I'll see you soon.
