25 Years After the Sept. 11 Attacks, Lower Manhattan Is Thriving

Its population has tripled while media and tech firms have moved in, making the Financial District the envy of other U.S. downtowns.

In 2001, lower Manhattan was shattered. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks killed close to 3,000 people and reduced the World Trade Center to rubble. The Twin Towers’ shocking collapse inflicted such trauma that many wondered if the Financial District could ever recover.

Now, as the 25th anniversary of the event approaches, lower Manhattan is roaring back. Its population has roughly tripled over the past 2½ decades, and more than 230,000 people work there—nearly as many as before the attacks.

Few urban projects can compare with the new World Trade Center in scale or ambition. More than $20 billion in public and private money was spent creating about 10 million square feet of office space, nearly half a million square feet of retail, a transportation hub, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum and a performing arts center.

When American Express broke ground in July on a new 55-story headquarters, it started the last major development at the 16-acre site, a milestone after years of disputes and delays over the rebuilding effort.

Yet new office buildings and infrastructure alone don’t explain downtown’s resurgence. Developers converted dozens of obsolete office buildings into apartments, helping create a neighborhood where tens of thousands of people live within walking distance of their jobs.

Even though the city stepped up scrutiny of conversions this summer after a near partial collapse at a Midtown building, lower Manhattan has 23 such projects either planned or under construction, according to the Alliance for Downtown New York.

The neighborhood once emptied when office workers caught the commute home. Today, it boasts a vibrant mix of restaurants, rooftop bars and concert venues on the nearby waterfront. Stone Street, a narrow cobblestone lane dating back hundreds of years to when Manhattan was under Dutch control, bustled on a recent Friday evening. Young people ate and drank at crowded communal tables.

“It’s the Financial District, but it’s fun down here,” said Brittany Belfiore, a bartender at Harry’s Side Bar on Stone Street.

Cities across the country have struggled to replicate such success. Dallas, Denver, Portland, Ore., Providence, R.I., Chicago and Washington, D.C., have all pursued office conversions as a means for revitalizing downtrodden business districts. But the efforts have done little to give their respective downtowns the round-the-clock feel found in lower Manhattan.

The neighborhood has had some unusual advantages, from New York City’s strong housing demand to an abundance of prewar buildings with smaller floors well suited to conversions. After 9/11, the federal government offered developers new incentives to turn downtown offices into housing.

But the area long defined by Wall Street is now far more diversified. Financial-services and real-estate firms, which accounted for about two-thirds of downtown employment a quarter-century ago, now account for roughly a third, according to the Alliance for Downtown New York.

“It’s a new world down there,” said Lisa Silverstein, chief executive of World Trade Center developer Silverstein Properties, and daughter of its founder Larry Silverstein.

Few could have imagined such a turnaround after the wreckage of Sept. 11. The attacks destroyed or damaged some 30 million square feet of commercial space, including the entire seven-building World Trade Center complex and nearby office towers.

The PATH commuter rail terminal beneath the Trade Center was gone, subway service was disrupted and power and communications networks were crippled. Tens of thousands of workers were displaced, leaving businesses scattered across the city and beyond.

Even as New Yorkers struggled to comprehend the sheer scale of the attack, a consensus quickly emerged that rebuilding the World Trade Center was essential to the city and country’s recovery.

That was about all that was agreed upon. Battles erupted over nearly every aspect of the rebuilding, including how much of the site should become a memorial and whether housing should be included.

Yet the enormity of what had happened gave the rebuilding a sense of purpose that transcended the usual politics. Public officials, business leaders and civic groups understood they were doing something “so much larger than just deciding what to put on 16 acres,” said Tom Wright, chief executive of the Regional Plan Association.

The rebuilding also benefited from something few other struggling downtowns could count on. Billions of dollars flowed into lower Manhattan from federal aid, insurance proceeds and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Businesses slowly began returning. In 2006, Silverstein Properties completed 7 World Trade Center, the first office tower rebuilt after the attacks. The government gave relocating businesses tax benefits and other incentives, but filling the building also meant overcoming a fear that lingered long after the attacks.

For years, “we couldn’t get anybody to come downtown to look at anything,” said Mary Ann Tighe, the CBRE broker who represents Silverstein. “People were literally afraid.”

Early in the rebuilding effort, a federally funded program offered grants of as much as $14,500 to households that stayed in or moved to lower Manhattan. By early 2026, downtown had more than 37,000 apartments, nearly triple the 13,000 that existed in 2000.

Developers Richard Born and Peter Levenson led a group that converted 90 West Street into apartments with help from government financing and tax incentives, a project that would have seemed almost unimaginable before Sept. 11. The landmark office building across from the site of the terrorist attacks was in shambles after steel from the collapsing South Tower tore into it. Fires gutted much of the interior.

The developers restored the building and turned it into about 410 apartments, though they worried that years of construction at the World Trade Center would scare away renters. Instead, some of the apartments most in demand were those facing the construction site.

“People liked to look out their window and watch,” Born said.

The new World Trade Center increasingly attracted technology, media and advertising companies rather than the financial firms that had long dominated downtown.

Price was one of the attractions. Government incentives helped reduce occupancy costs, and at times during the rebuilding companies could lease downtown office space for about 30% less than comparable space in Midtown. Billions of dollars of investment vastly improved lower Manhattan’s transportation network.

Spotify, the music-streaming company, chose Four World Trade Center as it was preparing to become a publicly traded company, signing its lease in 2017. 

“We’ve decided to go public in New York on the New York Stock Exchange,” said Dustee Jenkins, Spotify’s chief public affairs officer. “And then we took offices just around the corner.”

It also forged ties with the Perelman Performing Arts Center that is part of the complex, using it for podcast recordings, talks and a new music series showcasing emerging artists and podcasters.

A downtown worker is now more likely to draw a paycheck from a media, technology or advertising company—such as Condé Nast, Spotify, Uber or WPP Media—than from a big bank. 

Downtown has a budding live-music scene that barely existed a generation ago. In 2018, Pier 17 opened a 3,400-capacity rooftop venue that brings top acts to the waterfront.

On a recent evening, more than 2,000 fans packed around the stage as heavy-metal band Acid Bath played through clouds of fog. At the merchandise table, Ross Banan, a 40-year-old New York resident, said the evening had changed his impression of downtown. He especially liked the rooftop setting, with the skyscrapers of the Financial District towering over the crowd.

“I definitely will be coming back,” he said.

Tourism has become another pillar of downtown’s economy. Lower Manhattan had just six hotels on Sept. 11; today it has 42, as the World Trade Center, memorial and other attractions have turned the neighborhood into a destination for visitors.

American Express, whose roots in lower Manhattan stretch back nearly two centuries, chose the World Trade Center for its new global headquarters.

“When many questioned what the future would hold, American Express chose to stay,” said Denise Pickett, who oversees the company’s global real estate operations, at the groundbreaking ceremony.

Lower Manhattan’s recovery remains incomplete. Downtown’s office-vacancy rate was at 22% in July, compared with about 18% in Midtown, according to Cushman & Wakefield. The former Deutsche Bank site across from the World Trade Center remains undeveloped despite plans to build about 1,200 apartments there.

But many of the emotional scars have healed. And there is a generation now with little or no memory of Sept. 11. Eric Diaz, 24, a designer at SHoP Architects, moved to the Financial District in part so he could walk to the firm’s offices in the Woolworth Building, and says he enjoys having restaurants, bars and other services close to home.

The rebuilt World Trade Center has become part of that neighborhood in a way the old complex never was. Streets that had been eliminated to create the original superblock were restored, allowing people to walk through the site, with the 9/11 Memorial woven into the surrounding neighborhood.

Diaz says his mother was pregnant with him on Sept. 11 and watched the attack from the Midtown office where she worked. He said he found the memorial moving the first time he visited it.

But the World Trade Center today is now a part of his daily life. He sometimes walks through the site on his way to work. “It’s probably the quickest route,” he said. “It’s just a nice area to be.”