Sonic Memorial Remembers WTC and ‘Radio Row’

A series about the history of the World Trade Center on NPR will begin in June with a 12-minute story about New York City’s Radio Row.
The Sonic Memorial Project is a seven-part series of audio “portraits” about the trade center, airing on certain Mondays this summer on “All Things Considered.”
On June 3, “Radio Row” will report on the people and stories of the neighborhood that was demolished to make room for the trade center in 1966.
“Radio was a novelty known to only a few hobbyists when City Radio opened on Cortlandt Street in 1921,” NPR said in a statement, “but within a few years, hundreds of stores popped up — Ban the Radio Man, Scheck’s, Ed Lies — and the six square blocks in lower Manhattan became a bazaar of tubes, knobs, hi-fi equipment and antenna kits. In 1965 the city evicted the storeowners.”
The neighborhood was bulldozed to make way for the WTC.
Other parts in the series will look at Mohawk ironworkers; students and the PR man who helped market the center; and the sounds and voices of life in the towers.
The Sonic Memorial Project is an interactive collaboration featuring material submitted by people who contributed personal recordings, stories and remembrances.