From Business Insider · Talia Lakritz · · 1m 20s
The Brooks Brothers store that became a morgue
A 208-year-old menswear shop next to the Twin Towers spent 9/11 holding the dead, and its creative director still can't face the photos.
In brief
A 208-year-old menswear shop next to the Twin Towers spent 9/11 holding the dead, and its creative director still can't face the photos. The recovery after 9/11 ran through ordinary rooms, including a shirt department that held the remains of the people pulled from the rubble. Originally reported by Business Insider.
Stuck in the air
Michael Bastian was flying home from a Paris trade show when the attacks happened. His plane was diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia.
“9/11 is personal for me. I was in the air on 9/11.”
The sky shut down
After the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the FAA grounded every flight and closed US airspace for the first time ever.
Four days to get home
Bastian needed four days to reach New York, and the city he landed in was not the one he had left.
“It really changed everyone's life.”
A shirt department turned morgue
The Brooks Brothers at One Liberty Plaza sat next to the towers. In the aftermath, its men's shirt department became a holding area for bodies and body parts.
Held until they could be named
Remains stayed in the store until they could be moved to the city's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for identification.
Twenty-five years on
The damaged store reopened exactly one year after the attacks, then closed in 2018 and moved a few blocks away. Bastian still avoids the photographs.
“If you were here, it really affected you, as a New Yorker, as an American.”
The one thing
The recovery after 9/11 ran through ordinary rooms, including a shirt department that held the remains of the people pulled from the rubble.
