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July 8, 2004

A 9/11 Cornerstone, Chiseled With a New York Accent

T could have been imperial Trajan. Or elegant Bodoni. Or generic Helvetica. But the search for the ideal typeface to be inscribed on the Freedom Tower cornerstone at the World Trade Center site ended simply, in Gotham.

Gov. George E. Pataki said in his Fourth of July cornerstone speech that the 20-ton block came from the Adirondacks, "the bedrock of our state." He did not note that its 26 words were set in a typeface steeped in local origin, developed four years ago at the Hoefler Type Foundry in the Cable Building, at Broadway and Houston Street, by Tobias Frere-Jones, a native New Yorker.

The typeface, Gotham, deliberately evokes the blocky, no-nonsense, unselfconscious architectural lettering that dominated the streetscape from the 1930's through the 1960's in building names, neon signs, hand-lettered advertisements and lithographed posters.

Its chief inspiration, in fact, were the letters spelling out PORT AUTHORITY BUS TERMINAL over the terminal's Eighth Avenue doors. So the circle comes to a close, since the trade center site is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The choice of Gotham is more than a matter of typographical arcana (though as typographical arcana go, it's not bad). As the first tangible element of the Freedom Tower - and, by extension, the trade center redevelopment - and as an image seen nationwide on Independence Day, the cornerstone sent an aesthetic signal of intent.

And the signal seemed to reflect the inherent ambiguity of the project: a solemn memorial to 2,749 lives lost in the worst single catastrophe in New York history that is simultaneously supposed to be a defiant restatement of the city's commercial gigantism.

Seen one way, the cornerstone's darkness and plainness are memorial, even funereal. Seen another, the radiant silver-leaf letterforms conjure the exuberant, modernist, midcentury optimism of New York even as they augur the glass and stainless-steel tower to come.

It is as if the cornerstone was meant to be as close to tabula rasa as an inscribed block can be; neutral enough so that viewers could impose their own meanings. Yet it is still anchored to the past through that typeface.

Michael Gericke, a partner in the Pentagram studio, which designed the cornerstone with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architects of the Freedom Tower, said Gotham "didn't look like something that was created yesterday and would be gone tomorrow."

"It seems like it's part of the larger urban environment," he said. "It seems, in a way, that it's always been there."

Another Pentagram partner, Michael Bierut, likened Gotham to the Manhattan street grid. "It doesn't show individual authorship," he said, "but it shows a character you wouldn't find anywhere else."

The letters that are Gotham's progenitors - BAR, PIER 40, DINER, PRIMARY SCHOOL 142 - appear almost as if they had not been designed at all. The strokes have a uniform width. The forms, like the circular O's, seem to have been dictated by pure geometry. There are no embellishments like serifs and spurs, barbs and beaks.

Mr. Frere-Jones, 33, who grew up in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and Brooklyn Heights, found himself drawn to these forms. And he had the chance to explore them in 2000, when Hoefler was commissioned by GQ magazine to design a new font. In 2002, after a period in which GQ had the exclusive right to use Gotham, it was made more widely available. It now comes in 16 varieties.

Jonathan Hoefler, 33, founded the firm in 1989. It has produced several faces based on the aesthetic characteristics of landmarks like Lever House, the Radio City Music Hall, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Mr. Frere-Jones joined in 1999, and the firm is now known as Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

Neither partner was aware that Gotham had been chosen for the Freedom Tower until after the unveiling. Mr. Hoefler learned about it in an e-mail message from a client in Hamburg. Mr. Frere-Jones found out in an article on the Web site of The New York Times after seeing news photos of the cornerstone and thinking the typeface looked awfully familiar.

Of course, they were pleased. "It's one of those typefaces that's open to interpretation," Mr. Hoefler said. "That makes it a good match for this monument."

But the simplicity of the typeface would not have mattered much if the inscription itself had been longwinded. The World Trade Center 1973 dedication stone, for instance, begins with a 50-word legend under which are the names of 25 officials and architects.

AS the text of the Freedom Tower cornerstone was being discussed by officials of the Port Authority, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and aides to the governor, it was decided that it need not incorporate excerpts from Mr. Pataki's speech in early May announcing the Fourth of July groundbreaking. A copy of the pared-down text was read to the governor.

"He wholeheartedly agreed with the less-is-more approach," said Lisa Dewald Stoll, Mr. Pataki's communications director. He asked that the text be circulated to ensure that everyone was comfortable with it. "The governor's only specific request was that we remove the names," Ms. Stoll said. There went the Honorable George E. Pataki, the Honorable James E. McGreevey and the Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg.

Larry A. Silverstein, the developer of the tower, was enthralled with the final version of the text, said Howard Rubenstein, a spokesman for Mr. Silverstein. At the Innovative Stone yard and factory in Hauppauge, on Long Island, the granite block was polished by Josveek Huligar and engraved by John Garafolo.

"To honor and remember those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001 and as a tribute to the enduring spirit of freedom," the cornerstone says. "July Fourth 2004."

Lines of all-capital lettering, intended to enhance the cornerstone's formality, may have diminished somewhat the idea that it commemorates people and spirit. "Use of upper- and lowercase would have democratized the message, removed its institutional pretensions," said John Kane, the author of "A Type Primer" (Prentice Hall, 2003). "Lowercase would have given the words a human voice."

Ann Harakawa, a principal in the Two Twelve Associates design firm, whose office at 90 West Street was destroyed on 9/11, said the typeface was simple, legible and, given its New York provenance, very apt. "The idea of it being slightly ambiguous is interesting," she said, "because no one has any idea of what's going to come."