Grade V Explores Lower Manhattan
A Middle School rite of passage is Mr. Demeny’s downtown trip. St. Bernard’s fifth graders were excited to experience this for themselves on May 30, 2018. Mr. Demeny introduced the downtown trip to the boys with a quote from Heraclitus, “The only thing that is constant is change.”
He promised the boys that they would see many examples of change throughout their explorations. With that, they were off! They hopped on the subway and began their adventure.
Their first stop was inside Santiago Calatrava’s World Trade Center Oculus. They then moved on to see the National September 11 Memorial. Everyone was somber as they reflected on the events from that day. They learned that the memorial fountains were constructed to match the footprints of the original buildings and spent time walking around each perimeter. They paused in front of a pear tree called the “Survivor Tree,” the one tree that lived through the terror attacks at the World Trade Center. Mr. Demeny asked the boys to gather near a corner of one of the memorials so he could tell them the story of Philippe Petit, who in 1974 snuck into one of the Twin Towers, installed a wire connecting two corners of the towers, and then proceeded to walk across the tightrope wire.
Their first stop was inside Santiago Calatrava’s World Trade Center Oculus. They then moved on to see the National September 11 Memorial. Everyone was somber as they reflected on the events from that day. They learned that the memorial fountains were constructed to match the footprints of the original buildings and spent time walking around each perimeter. They paused in front of a pear tree called the “Survivor Tree,” the one tree that lived through the terror attacks at the World Trade Center. Mr. Demeny asked the boys to gather near a corner of one of the memorials so he could tell them the story of Philippe Petit, who in 1974 snuck into one of the Twin Towers, installed a wire connecting two corners of the towers, and then proceeded to walk across the tightrope wire.
Change was certainly a theme discussed at the next stop on the tour, Trinity Church. The boys learned that the first Trinity Church was built in 1698 but was destroyed in the Great New York City Fire of 1776. The second Trinity Church was completed in 1790 and was eventually torn down. The third Trinity Church, the building they were looking at, was completed in 1846. It was the tallest building in New York from the moment it was built until 1883, when the stone tower of the Brooklyn Bridge surpassed it as the tallest structure in New York City.
The tour continued with a stroll by the oldest fence in New York to Battery Park, where the boys stopped to look at the Statue of Liberty. They discussed the construction and history of the Statue of Liberty and then recited The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, much to the delight of the tourists waiting in line for the ferry. (Click here to see a video excerpt.)
The boys then took a different ferry, the Staten Island ferry, and enjoyed views of lower Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Bridge. When they returned to Manhattan, their explorations continued to Fraunces Tavern, a stop to examine some remnants of the foundations of colonial-era buildings, a walk down the cobblestoned Stone Street, and Federal Hall, where George Washington was sworn in as the first president. On the subway ride back to school, the boys were able to catch some glimpses of the original City Hall subway station, which had opened in 1904 but was closed to passengers in 1945.
