There isn’t a neighborhood that embodies the revitalized spirit of this post-9/11 New York with more exuberance than Battery Park City. It offers a mixture of elegance and extravagance, without the elitist attitude of Yorkville, the clutter of Chelsea and SoHo, or the opaque atmosphere of the Upper West Side.

Battery Park City is technically Tribeca, but not really, at all. The awkward mixture of seedy shopping areas, bundled office spaces, squalid eateries, and the supercilious air of City Hall vanish when crossing the West Side Highway toward the Hudson River. The buildings, primarily residential, update the view of the New York skyline from New Jersey, effectively disguising the cracks in Old New York’s façade with modern grandeur.

That’s an adequately appropriate description for a strip of land that was constructed with excavated terrain while building the World Trade Center and Twin Towers. Because in Old New York, the manicured lawns where we picnic and the yacht harbor where we learn to sail the Hudson and the restaurants that offer views of Lady Liberty silhouetted against the sunset couldn’t exist. In Old New York, just four decades ago, Battery Park City was dilapidated piers and murky waters.

There was a vision for New York when Battery Park City was built with land where the Twin Towers once stood, and it’s that vision that drives this entire city forward as One World Trade Center ascends into the skyline.