Fading Ad Blog Rotating Header Image

World Trade Center

The Twin Towers Once Stood Outside Our Window – Felicia Cuebas – September 15, 2001

Student art scanned & inverted - Cypress Hills Brooklyn - Felicia Cuebas

On September 11, 2001,  I was teaching my first eighth grade class in Cypress Hills on the Brooklyn & Queens border. Our classroom was on the fourth floor with a view of the Towers peeking over Forest Park. At about 9AM, as I was introducing a thematic unit about the Harlem Renaissance, when I glanced toward the City and saw what I thought was a fire in Brooklyn that was burning in front of the Towers. My students asked what was wrong and I gave them my theory and they said that it looked like the Towers were burning. I told them to get out their notebooks and turn to a fresh page. I told them I was turning on 1010WINS news radio and they were to record all the times as they announced them in the margins and then record what was being reported. I also said they may want to save these notebooks to look at them one day to remember.

After a while, they asked me what was going on and I wrote down on the board the names Osama bin-Laden and the Taliban. I had recently watched a Frontline about Afghanistan and took an educated guess. The next day we were off but on the following day they came back to school stunned. By Friday, I had them draw what they were feeling and they wrote poems, which I typed on their images. A fire-fighter who was a first responder and a former student came to the school directly from working several days without sleep. He found his way to our classroom and sobbed in my arms outside the classroom. He came in and told us of his accounts of what he had seen and what he had been doing for the past 96 hours.

When I finally got home on September 11, there were documents with singed edges that had blown into my backyard in Flatbush. Other  documents from Morgan Stanley and Post-it notes were also scattered about the Brooklyn College campus. I saved them all in a Ziplock bag. The fire-fighter had come the following week to our classroom again with pictures and artifacts he had collected. I still have a glass vial of dust and ashes he had given me.

The Disintegration Loops – William Basinski

Frank H. Jump – West Side Highway, NYC – 1977

© Frank H. Jump

Philip Morris – America’s Finest Cigarette – Flatiron, NYC

from the forthcoming book - The Fading Ads of NYC - The History Press © Frank H. Jump

Sunday's Feature Fade: The Despair of Port Arthur, Texas – Robert Baptista

Port Arthur, Texas is a gritty, oil refinery town best known as the place where Janis Joplin grew up. The Procter Street downtown business area has sadly faded away along with Janis’ powerful voice. I hadn’t visited downtown in years, so I went there on February 11th with my Nikon N-90 film camera and three rolls of film.

These scenes convey the despair of downtown Port Arthur – which once thrived with department stores, office buildings, hotels, restaurants and night clubs. The area comes to life once a year for Mardi Gras weekend and then returns to its vacant ambiance. In the early 1990s, elaborate murals of historic scenes were painted on building walls, but these too are disappearing due to the relentless sun and rains of southeast Texas.

But some hope of economic redevelopment is stirring. The World Trade Building on Austin Avenue, an impressive structure built in 1928 with fine architectural details, is slated for conversion to a 170 unit apartment complex. And the Hotel Batiste is being considered for an adaptive reuse such as a school. The refineries in town have announced several billion dollars of expansions which will create jobs and give the local economy a boost. The gasoline you use in New York is most likely refined here.

– Robert Baptista (www.colorantshistory.org)

Civil War Mural
Civil War Wall Mural – Racial Harmony – Pt. Arthur, TX

Civil War Mural
Civil War Mural – Robert E. Lee – Pt. Arthur TX

City Limits - Proctor Street
Port Arthur City Limits – Kress Building – Proctor Street

Coca-Cola - Proctor Street
Coca-Cola, Proctor Street

Derelict Hotel Batiste
Derelict Hotel Batiste

Golden Light Social Club
Golden Light Social Club – Houston Avenue

Derelict Golden Steer Restaurant
Derelict Golden Steer Restaurant – Houston Avenue

Derelict Hotel Sabine
Derelict Hotel Sabine – Proctor Street

Jet Taxi - Houston Avenue
Jet Taxi – Houston Avenue

Loans - Proctor Street
Loans – Proctor Street

Meat & Bait
Meat & Bait – Ripped Apart by Hurricane Rita

Reckless Driving
Reckless Driving Billboard – Proctor Street

Texaco Station - Proctor Street
Texaco Station – Proctor Street

Verna's Club - Proctor Street
Verna’s Club – Proctor Street

World Trade Bldg - 1928 - Austin Ave
World Trade Building c. 1928 – Austin Avenue

© Robert Baptista