World Trade Center is a terminal station in Lower Manhattan for PATH rail service. It was originally opened on July 19, 1909, as Hudson Terminal, but was torn down, rebuilt as World Trade Center, and re-opened July 6, 1971. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, a temporary station opened in 2003. This station serves as the terminus for the Newark – World Trade Center and Hoboken – World Trade Center routes. The main station house, the Oculus, opened on March 4, 2016, and the terminal was renamed the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, or World Trade Center for short.
The World Trade Center Transportation Hub is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey‘s formal name for the new PATH station and the associated transit and retail complex that opened on March 3, 2016. The station’s renaming took place when the station reopened. It was designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and composed of a train station with a large and open mezzanine under the National September 11 Memorial plaza. This mezzanine is connected to an aboveground head house structure called the Oculus—located between 2 World Trade Center and 3 World Trade Center—as well as to public concourses under the various towers in the World Trade Center complex.
In addition, the station was designed to connect the PATH to the New York City Subway system, and to facilitate a below ground east-west passageway that connects to the various modes of transportation in Lower Manhattan, from the Fulton Center to the Battery Park City Ferry Terminal. Furthermore, to replace the lost retail space from the original The Mall at the World Trade Center, significant portions of the Hub are devoted to the new 365,000 square foot Westfield World Trade Center mall, which once again make it the largest shopping mall in Manhattan.
Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, designer of the station, said the Oculus resembles a bird being released from a child’s hand. The roof was originally designed to mechanically open to increase light and ventilation to the enclosed space. Herbert Muschamp, architecture critic of the New York Times, compared the design to the Bethesda Terrace and Fountain in Central Park, and wrote in 2004:
Santiago Calatrava’s design for the World Trade Center PATH station should satisfy those who believe that buildings planned for ground zero must aspire to a spiritual dimension. Over the years, many people have discerned a metaphysical element in Mr. Calatrava’s work. I hope New Yorkers will detect its presence, too. With deep appreciation, I congratulate the Port Authority for commissioning Mr. Calatrava, the great Spanish architect and engineer, to design a building with the power to shape the future of New York. It is a pleasure to report, for once, that public officials are not overstating the case when they describe a design as breathtaking.
Another New York Times‘ critic Michael Kimmelman wrote later in 2004:
The World Trade Center PATH Terminal by Santiago Calatrava, the renowned Spanish architect and engineer, is what we should have at ground zero. Not modified suburban malls with water fountains, but a major cultural contribution to our city.
However, Calatrava’s original soaring spike design was scaled back because of security issues. The New York Times observed in 2005:
In the name of security, Santiago Calatrava’s bird has grown a beak. Its ribs have doubled in number and its wings have lost their interstices of glass…. [T]he main transit hall, between Church and Greenwich Streets, will almost certainly lose some of its delicate quality, while gaining structural expressiveness. It may now evoke a slender stegosaurus more than it does a bird.
The design was further modified in 2008 to eliminate the opening and closing roof mechanism because of budget and space constraints.
