The “survivors’ stairway” at ground zero may survive a bit longer.
Until last week, it appeared that the badly battered staircase to the plaza around the twin towers — still rising 21 feet over Vesey Street as it did on Sept. 11, 2001, when survivors of the attack on the World Trade Center stumbled down its granite steps to safety — would almost certainly be dismantled, with only its treads and landings saved as commemorative artifacts.
On Friday, however, the Spitzer administration said its days were not necessarily numbered.
“We certainly recognize the emotional significance of the staircase to so many New Yorkers,” said Avi Schick, the downstate chief operating officer and president of the Empire State Development Corporation, a state agency.
The developer Larry A. Silverstein has said the staircase cannot stay in its current location, where he is planning a 78-story office building known as Tower 2.
And the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation has said that moving the entire 64-foot-long, 175-ton staircase to the memorial plaza or the underground memorial museum would confuse visitors and compromise the design.
But Mr. Schick, who was appointed by the new governor, Eliot Spitzer, said: “Those who are distressed by the reluctance of others to incorporate the staircase into the towers or the memorial should take comfort in the fact that we have not made a decision. We continue to invite public comment.”
A subsidiary of his agency is conducting a federally required preservation review.
The staircase must be moved to permit excavation of the Tower 2 site. At issue is whether it will be saved in its entirety and, if so, where it will go.
Preservationists have said the staircase should be kept intact and in place as the last three-dimensional aboveground link to the World Trade Center complex. And there are survivors who cherish the staircase as a tangible emblem of their awful journey on 9/11 and of their endurance.
But some neighbors look at the staircase as an unsightly ruin and an impediment to progress at the site.
