HAROLD ROTH + SUSAN SPENCER CROWE

Urban Columns I-IV (1983 - 84) are a series of four welded steel sculptures created in the early 1980s that were inspired by both the World Trade Center Twin Towers and the stele/stela of the ancient Mayan civilization in Central America.  Each sculpture is constructed as a marker left behind after a great civilization had ceased to exist.  

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The construction of the Twin Towers began shortly after I arrived in New York in 1967, the North Tower began in 1968 and the South Tower in 1969.  I became acutely aware of their presence as I watched steelworkers top them off from my studio window in the Vinegar Hill/DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn.  At the time, I saw my Urban Column’s as the skeletal remains of all of skyscrapers in downtown New York City after a catastrophic neutron bomb explosion.  Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine I would witness the collapse of both towers on the morning of September 11, 2001 from the rooftop of the building I lived in on the Brooklyn Waterfront.   

 

– Susan Spencer Crowe, January 16, 2002