This 25-Year Timelapse Shows the World Trade Center Being Rebuilt After 9/11

EarthCam, a global webcam company that provides high-resolution live-stream feeds, has published a 25-year timelapse showing the World Trade Center in New York being rebuilt after the 9/11 attacks.

EarthCam installed a livestreaming camera mere days after the attacks. Initially, they were there to aid rescue efforts by emergency services.

But in the intervening 25 years, the cameras stayed at Ground Zero and documented the rebuild, including the construction of One World Trade Center, The Oculus, 3 World Trade Center, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine, and the Perelman Performing Arts Center. The record continues today as construction moves forward on 2 World Trade Center.

“EarthCam was started as a way to really bring people together using live camera technology,” Brian Cury, EarthCam’s founder and CEO, tells Spectrum News.

“First, we were doing entertainment events. And when the terror attacks occurred on Sept. 11, we were compelled to use this technology that we had, this webcasting technology, to be able to share that witness to the world.

EarthCam says that the timelapse is “dedicated to the memory of those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, and honors the first responders, recovery workers, construction professionals, and everyone who contributed to the recovery and rebuilding of the World Trade Center site.”

“We first started documenting the rescue and recovery efforts, and that led to the construction and rebuilding efforts.,” Cury tells Spectrum News.

“We started out with maybe a twelfth of a megapixel, and now we’re doing 80,000-megapixel imagery.”

After starting with just one low-res camera, the timelapse pulls footage from a quarter century of change from multiple vantage points in a “powerful visual account of resilience and transformation.”

On Friday, which was the 25th anniversary of 9/11, PetaPixel rounded up thoughts from some of the many photographers who covered the terrorist attack that claimed the lives of almost 3,000 people.

Associated Press photographer Richard Drew took one of the most haunting and disturbing photos from the 9/11 attacks: his infamous photo of a still-unidentified man falling to his death from the World Trade Center.

“We’re seeing him in the last moments of his life,” Drew says. The photo hit the wire later that day and ignited a debate about photography that persists today.