Skyrise. (Kit Dillon)

Round and round she goes. (Kit Dillon)

Crane-lifts up the side of any building are a delicate affair, let alone up the side of 104-story glassy tower with sloping sides at the center of the most-watched construction site in the world. That is why it seemed like the Port Authority was taking its time this morning as its construction workers carefully hoisted up the first crowning piece of 1 World Trade Center's spire. After all, the media, as always, were watching.

A small cohort of workers in high-vis jackets went about the work of checking the heavy lift sling and talking back and forth through the crackle of radio static. There was a quick speech for the cameras, and then without much more ceremony than that, honeycombed steel circle edged up into the air. Nothing more complicated than any of the tens of thousands of lifts the north crane has made in the construction of this building, if only important now in its symbolism: the final pieces.

Watching from the street, The Observer didn’t see anything particularly cutting-edge about this specific piece of steel. If anything, it almost looked like something carved by nature in its rigid perfection. But it wasn't the technical aspects of the installation that were stopping people in the street. The crowning of this building, despite controversy and for all the obvious reasons, is a moment for New Yorkers to celebrate.

Don't rock the boat or the skyline. (WTCProgress/Twitter)

In a subtle reminder of the connection between New Jersey and New York that undergird the Port Authority, the spire that will top the agency's 1 World Trade Center departed its berth in the Port of Newark for Lower Manhattan this morning. Once the barge carrying eight pieces of the 400-foot tower topper arrives in New York, it will be unloaded in preparation for installation atop the city's tallest building.

The remaining 10 pieces were trucked down from their foundry in Quebec, but these pieces had to be shipped from Canada last month because they were too heavy to travel on the highway.

It is interesting to have finally gotten a close up of the spire, considering there is a big debate about whether or not it is a spire at all, because an artistic covering for the skyline spear was removed at the recommendation of the Durst Organization, the tower's co-developer. If the Council on Tall Buildings, which decides who is the biggest, should find the spire lacking in integral architectural intent, the rooftop protrusion could be deemed a simple antenna, rather than an integral part of the design, knocking the building down from its symbolic height of 1776 feet (or is it 1784?) to a mere 1,386 feet, the height of the tower itself.

The space, by the way, is still available for lease, for those so enticed.

Speaking of the top of the World Trade Center: last week, while the rest of us were busy hustling out of town for Thanksgiving, some pieces of the spire that will crown the city's tallest tower (for now) set sail on a barge from Valleyfield, Quebec, where they were fabricated. It's the first real look at the spire in real life, and those steel beams sort of force the question: is that really anything more than a glorified antenna?

Update: The 102nd floor is not for lease, as it is one of the upper floors that will be used for an observation deck/restaurant/vertigo-inducing tourist trap. Which is kind of good news because it means we will all be able to enjoy the space—for a price, just like at the Empire State Building or Top of the Rock. The top-most office floor is floor 93 (there are a number of mechanical floors between that and the observation extravaganza on three floors, though there are also some floors missing).

Weathering the storm. (Reeve Jolliffe/Flickr)

After the Hudson flooded into the World Trade Center during Hurricane Sandy, it was remarkable that the site had been pumped out and work had resumed within days rather than weeks. Now, construction has recommenced in earnest, as some 750 construction workers returned to the site to finish the work of building 1 World Trade Center, the Vehicle Screening Center, the PATH station and other pieces of the 16-acre site.

Governor Cuomo announced the return of workers earlier today, as well as the fact that 95 percent of the World Trade Center site was now dry. Damage to the site, and the storms impact to the construction time table, is still being assessed. The resumption of work means cranes are in operation yet again on the site.

The hardest hit part of the site was the subterranean 9/11 Museum, located beneath the Memorial plaza. Some 16 million gallons had filled the structure, rising some 7 feet across the site. It took a team from the Port Authority, private contractors and the Army Corps of Engineers pumping non-stop for almost a week to get all the water out.

On Saturday, standing at the m0uth of the still-flooded Hugh Carey Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Governor Cuomo spoke dramatically of watching the rivers meet and flood into the World Trade Center site.

"The World Trade Center site was frightening," Cuomo said. "At the cresting of the tide on Monday night, the Hudson River was basically pouring into the World Trade Center site."

"The World Trade Center site had 28 feet of water in the bottom," Cuomo said.

Now there is almost none, yet the latest sign that life is getting back to normal after the craziest week in at least a decade.

Somehow no matter what happens in this town, the World Trade Center always has a way of being at the center of it.

Although some 400 Ground Zero workers have died of cancer, the disease was not covered in federal legislation that set up the fund. Now, however, scientific findings have led authorities to conclude that up to 50 types of cancer are related to exposure to toxic dust at the site.

That is welcome news for thousands of workers and their loved ones. There is little doubt that those who worked the pile were exposed to carcinogens—and it may take many more years before some workers exhibit symptoms. Now, at least, they know that they will be taken care of if they become ill.

That’s the least we can do.

The museum (at right) is coming back to life. (Getty)

It is one of those September 11 bright clear mornings today. Perhaps the sun is shining a little bit brighter because after nearly a year of delays, construction is set to resume at the 9/11 Museum at ground zero.

The museum was supposed to have opened today, a year after the memorial plaza on which it sits finally opened to the public, but a dispute over who owed whom millions of dollars in unpaid construction costs halted construction last fall, and the site has sat dormant ever since. For a time it looked like nothing would happen as pressure mounted going into the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, but an agreement was reached this weekend between Governor Andrew Cuomo, who shares control of the Port Authority, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who oversees the 9/11 Memorial Foundation.

The foundation has agreed to stop seeking $17 million in funds it believes the Port owes it for construction work it did on the complex 16-acre site—since everything is interconnected, the boundaries and work orders can easily blur. In exchange, the Port will begin overseeing work on the museum by the end of the month and will continue to do so until the project is completed. A new opening date has not been set.

Governor Cuomo, along with Governor Chris Christie, have been critical of the project for costing tax payers additional public funds, billions of dollars of which have been sunk into rebuilding the World Trade Center, including suggestions that toll hikes last year on Port Authority Hudson River crossings resulted from the rebuilding. To ensure no extra funds go to the project, a special eight-member advisory panel will be established to keep an eye on the continuing construction, including monthly updates to the Port from the foundation.

"Over the last few years, we have made extraordinary progress at Ground Zero and today's agreement is yet another milestone in our work to finally complete the site as a place where people from around the world can come to work, visit and remember," Governor Cuomo said in a statement released last night. "By ensuring that no additional public funds are spent to complete the memorial and museum, today's agreement puts in place a critical and long overdue safeguard to finally protect toll payers and taxpayers from bearing further costs, and, at the same time, put the project on a path for completion."

The museum still faces challenges, such as who will run it (the governors have been lobbying for the National Parks Service to step in, which would help provide federal funds). After all, the AP revealed yesterday it will cost upwards of $60 million to operate the memorial and museum. The wire points out that Gettysburg gets $8.4 million per year, the U.S.S. Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor costs $3.6 million while Arlington Cemetary gets $45 million and saw almost as many visitors, 4 million compared to 4.5 million at ground zero.

Then again, all those downtown visitors had to file through a tight security line that can take up to an hour to get through. Imagine when the project is finished and flooded with visitors in the nation's biggest city. Nevermind that this is a complex, urban setting, rather than a bucolic park. We shall see.

Mayor Bloomberg certainly thinks it is worth it, as his statement yesterday made clear: "The museum is important to the families of those who died on 9/11 - they've contributed photos and memories of their lost loved ones, who deserve a thoughtful tribute. The museum is important to the historical record and will preserve materials and artifacts of great significance that tell the story of what happened on that terrible day. The museum is important to the country and the world because it helps us remember that freedom is precious."

Now if only they could figure out what to do with The Sphere.

On Friday, the developer opened the construction gates to cameramen and reporters, photographers and radio producers from across Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. They got likely their first look inside the recently topped-out tower, which is about a year from completion (last year, the anniversary events were held inside 7 World Trade Center, with the mayor in attendance). While being led around by Silverstein Senior Vice-President Dara McQuillan, The Observer got a glimpse of something we had yet to see: the swanky new elevators and minimalist bathrooms.

They are part of the lower floors set to be turned over to the Port Authority, part of a 2006 deal to finance and begin construction on the site. Silverstein Properties hopes to hand them off by the end of the month, Mr. McQuillan said, when the Port will bring in its own designers and engineers to fit out the space for thousands of office workers on more than 30 trapezoidal floors.

"It all fits with Maki's super minimal style," Mr. McQuillan said, taking us inside one of the elevators. He explained that the marble on the floor was selected and cut especially because of its similarity to wood grain. In the bathroom, the corner guards wear designed to lay flush with the tiles, instead of on top of them. The paper towel dispensers are hidden under the mirrors. Everything is clean, unobtrusive, almost perfect.

How do you make an office building, one of the biggest and newest in the city, disappear? It's the little things that count.

Who built that? (Pool photo/NBC NY)

Obviously all we think about, all we care about, here at the real estate desk is, well, real estate. Which is why one line in particular jumped out during the president's speech at the Democratic National Convention last night.

"I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11," President Barack Obama declared. "And we have. We’ve blunted the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead."

A new tower rises above the New York skyline.

Well, technically two are rising, and really, they've basically stopped rising. Unless the president was referring to the other two, which are trying desperately to rise. But we digress.

Not to take a political cheap shot, but didn't it seem like President Obama was taking some credit for helping 1 World Trade Center get to where it is? Granted the thing was practically invisible until shortly before he took office, so maybe such a claim is not outrageous. Just as we got Osama bin Laden on his watch, we have watched the World Trade Center retake its place on the skyline for the duration of his administration.

It is not as though President George W. Bush really did much for the rebuilding of Ground Zero, either. Almost entirely it was political brinkmanship (and infighting) in New York, Albany and Trenton that (slowed down and) helped launch the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. If anyone deserves credit in Washington, it is Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Jerry Nadler (not to mention former and current Senators Clinton and Gillibrand) who lobbied tirelessly for billions of dollars in federal funds to help Lower Manhattan rebuild.

Did the president take credit for rebuilding the World Trade Center last night? Of course not. This is a practice in exactly the kind of out-of-context-taking the media loves, the kind that ensnared the president when he uttered those four fateful words, when Mitt Romney declared "I like being able to fire people."

Still, the phrase jumped out at us. It was striking. Maybe more than anything else, it was all we could think about (again, we love real estate). After all, the sentiment does fit into the Obama narrative, the idea, the very thing the president meant when he said "You didn't build that," which is that you didn't build that on your own.

The same goes for the World Trade Center. Perhaps no single project since the Tower of Babel has been such a work in design by committee. We are better off for it, and worse off as well. As with all things in government, all things in society, all things in humanity. The same thing goes for the Empire State Building, the Washington Monument, the space program, Medicare, public housing, public schools, food stamps, social security, the Interstate Highway system.

You didn't build that. We all did. And sometimes, when the strife bubbles up to the surface at Ground Zero, it is good to be reminded of this fact.

Not cool, but don't let it ruin the rest of the memorial park. (NY Post)

People are enjoying themselves at the 9/11 Memorial and the Post (as always) is mortified.

They’re treating it like a national playground.

At the National September 11th Memorial, tourists balance coffee cups and soda bottles on the parapets bearing the names of the dead.

Parents hoist their children to sit on the bronze plaques, while other visitors splash water from the two waterfalls onto their faces to cool themselves on a hot summer day.

On the plaza, tourists break out lunch foods and lie on their backs.

While The Observer agrees spilling drinks, scratching and sitting on the great bronze fountains is indeed disrespectful, even deplorable behavior, bemoaning the picnics is going too far. When the World Trade Center site is eventually finished (assuming it ever will be), there will be a brand new eight-acre park in the heart of downtown—a place, like so much of Manhattan, that is starved for open space. It is a destination to rival Bryant Park or Union Square.

The centerpiece of this space will be the memorial. It deserves all due deference, but it should not be treated as a cemetery. Thousands of bodies may be interred on these 16 acres, but just as children frolic on the National Mall, the Vietnam and Korean war memorials are no worse off for it. The same goes for the 9/11 Memorial.

The Post bemoans the lines, praises new security guards cracking down on untoward behavior, even throws around the dreaded d-word: "Disney." But heaven forbid the site should feel any more like a prison than is already anticipated. When the construction barriers finally come down, the lines will be gone, people will come and go as they please. They will pray and they will play, and that is how it should be.

No one is complaining about the return of commerce to the site, at least no longer. Instead, the concern is getting those towers off the ground and occupied. The same should go for the memorial. It is a place for reverence and remembrance, but also to enjoy the weather and the company of our fellow Americans. To entomb the site would be to doom it. As so many scaremongers like to declare, if we let that happen, then the terrorists will have won.

That building in the background? Pay it no mind. (Getty)

These days, a certain jolt of excitement takes hold gazing at Lower Manhattan from a far. Maybe you’re crossing Greenwich Street in the Village and look south, or corkscrewing out of the Lincolln Tunnel helix in Jersey. Even stepping off the plane at LaGuardia or JFK, 1 World Trade Center is plainly visible. It may not be the most beautiful building in the city.

Yet like its twin siblings, the tower has become an undeniable landmark, the sort of symbol of rebirth—or at the very least progress—politicians and planners had long hoped for with the rebuilding of the World Trade Center.

But get too close, and the landscape quickly turns from inspiration to depredation. Still.

Larry Silverstein has no one to fill his second tower on the site, and without one by next year, it will likely remain frozen just like its neighbor, the second tallest building downtown, which is not due for decades barring a miracle. Even something as simple as finding a home for Fritz Koenig’s Sphere has proven impossible. And don't even mention the Santiago Calatrava-designed PATH station, which seems to grow a million dollars in cost every minute.

So it should come as no surprise that as the 11th anniversary of the attacks approaches, the 9/11 Museum is nowhere near being finished, and may not even be ready by next year’s anniversary either, according to Crain’s. Infighting persists among the foundation that runs the museum and the Port Authority over which party is responsible for more than $156 million in construction costs at the site. Construction has been halted for nearly a year.

There are some tiny glimmers of hope, Crain’s reports, especially as the anniversary approaches, but not enough progress to get things underway again.

Sources say Mr. Cuomo has become more involved in the negotiations with the foundation over the past month. At the same time, the Port Authority has stepped back from some ideas that the foundation found particularly objectionable.

It is heartening to hear of the governor’s interest, but it also brings to mind an anecdote that anchored Scott Raab’s latest ground zero dispatch for Esquire. Mr. Raab recounts the in-fighting and backbiting that have plagued the site for more than a decade now, none of it especially surprising to World Trade Center watchers. Not to suggest his is not a griping story, which it is, just oy gevalt, enough you guys already. To that end, there are also some surprising tidbits, like this exchange at last year's anniversary that holds echoes over the current fight.

The dignitaries are assembled by the stage, waiting for Obama and Bush, when one of them overhears [former governor George] Pataki say to Cuomo, "Isn't this a great day? Just beautiful — and look how this has all turned out."

And Andrew Cuomo says to Pataki, "This is the biggest waste of money anybody's ever seen. Who would have ever spent this money? If we'd known what this was going to be like, nobody would have ever done this."

Capital's Dana Rubenstein did a thoughtful investigation of the incident, wherein both gubernatorial camps deny the exchange. Still, apocryphal or not, it illustrates the follies, both political and financial, that have hamstrung the site all along, and will probably continue to do so until the whole enterprise is finally finished.

That is assuming that day ever comes.