Residents of the sliver of Manhattan known as Battery Park City remember the soaring glass atrium of the river-side Winter Gardens as a gateway to the World Trade Centre, but the semi-circular staircase sweeping up to the pedestrian bridge that led to the twin towers now just ends in a window overlooking a vast empty pit.
The glass roof was shattered, the girders twisted and the marble staircase smashed when the towers fell.
Last Christmas it was encased in scaffolding and off limits.
Now it has been fully restored and turned into a marble-floored winter wonderland, with 100,000 tiny lights hanging from the ceiling and draping the palm trees. It has become a place for free concerts and exhibitions.
On Tuesday evening it was packed for a rendition of Handel's Messiah, integrating folk, jazz rock, gospel, blues and bluegrass - nothing like the version first performed in Dublin's Fishamble Street theatre in 1742.
On that occasion, it reputedly moved its audience to tears.
This time people were swaying back and forth in raptures. Joy has returned to lower Manhattan.
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THE Winter Gardens were again crowded next day, with rock music as a background, this time for an exhibition of models for buildings to replace the World Trade Centre.
There were seven designs created by teams of architects from around the world and chosen from 407 entries by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Four of them envisage buildings taller than the 110-storey twin towers.
The public is being asked to comment on the designs. They will be on display for six weeks, with videos of architects explaining what their buildings would entail.
Just after the attacks on the World Trade Centre it was pretty well accepted that tall buildings were not the way of the future, as they made too vulnerable a target for terrorists.
However "Think", a collaboration of architects, proposes two matrices that would be the tallest buildings in the world, higher than the Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur.
Another design, by Richard Meier & Partners, will be hotly debated. It consists of five towers joined by bridges and arranged at a 90 degree angle, like a giant piece of Leggo dropped on lower Manhattan.
Sir Norman Foster's creation, a twinned crystalline tower, is also awkwardly out of kilter with downtown Manhattan, as it is based on triangles rather than rectangles. It has the advantage that it would be a "green" skyscraper, with tree-filled spaces in mid air that would purify the air and make air conditioning unnecessary most of the year.
United Architects have suggested a breath-taking vertical city of five glass buildings with sloping sides which touch one another to enclose a memorial.
The plan by Peterson/Littenberg has many local fans, judging from comments at the exhibit yesterday, though the New York Times critic dismissed it as a creation for a city of low self-esteem.
It gets my vote. It envisages two modest tapering towers that would be in sync with adjacent architectural jewels such as the Woolworth building. It restores the city street grid that was blocked by the World Trade Centre complex, and creates a public garden around its 'footprints', one of which would contain a pool of water, the other an amphitheatre.
All the designs are inspiring, some of them wondrous, but this has more to do with reality.
The winner will be chosen in February.
Whatever goes up will be controversial. New Yorkers hated the original twin towers when they were erected in the 1970s. Only after they were brought down did people say they loved them so much.
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THE architects of new World Trade Centre designs may not have fully taken into account how history is changing lower Manhattan. It is fast becoming more of a residential than a business and financial district. Vast acres of downtown office space will be hard to lease in any new skyscraper.
It took the World Trade Centre two decades to fill up, and many former tenants have relocated permanently. The fear of a new terrorist attack on a symbol of America could still be a disincentive. On the other hand, new apartment buildings are going up around the site. Just two blocks away, a 27-storey residential building with 293 flats is nearing completion. The building developers claim it is the world's most environmentally-correct high-rise structure. A topping-off ceremony was performed by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader who has taken an interest in ecological matters. It has high performance thermal windows, built-in solar panels, rainwater tank for site irrigation, landscaped roof garden and underground garage with pollution monitors. It will have no shortage of tenants. A survey by the Downtown Alliance has found that the awful calamity of 9/11 has not driven residents away. In fact more are coming to enjoy the quality of life in what is almost a crime-free zone. Their commitment will be tested when construction starts on whatever project is selected to replace the twin towers. It could take up to 10 years.
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THE attack on the twin towers still reverberates throughout the city. There were less tourists this year, which was bad news for the horse-drawn carriage trade in Central Park. Which brings me to my Christmas tale.
Thirty of the top-hatted, mostly Irish-born drivers who take visitors around in their white carriages with velvet seats - especially popular at Christmas time - will have nowhere to stable their horses after December 31st, because of a double-cross by the city.
The mounts are housed in Shamrock Stables on 45th Street, an old police patrol-horse building which has been sold from under their hooves to a film company.
They have just learned they must be out by January 1st but the owner, John Campbell from Navan, told me they have nowhere to go.
"It's a scary time for us," said driver Ian McGreever, standing beside his eight-year-old horse Roger. The city says it is trying to find new premises, but for now there is no room at the inn.