Meet the Brooklyn artist who painted the twin towers under construction in 1971

NEW YORK — There’s a clear autumn day, more than half a century ago, etched in artist Ken Rush’s memory.

“It was a flawlessly clear blue sky, brilliant, brilliant light,” he said recently. “I suddenly had this view of the Brooklyn Bridge, on the one hand coming over from Manhattan, and then the two spires of the [World] Trade Center, and they were under construction.”

In 1971, Rush, a young, recent art school graduate, painted the unique composition which prominently features a sky that stretches on for what seems like miles, dominating the canvas.

“I had no way, of course, of seeing the future, but it was precisely the kind of morning that we remember from from the tragedy of 9/11,” he said.

The exact spot that inspired the painting is in Dumbo, along the waterfront of what is now Brooklyn Bridge Park. Obviously, the skyline looks very different, but Rush said the intention was always to depict Brooklyn as an invisible, but very present subject in the artwork.

“Your feet are in Brooklyn. There’s no way you can get the view if you’re not in Brooklyn. So it’s implied,” he said.

Rush went on to have a decades-long career as a high school art teacher, often featuring the World Trade Center and iconic Brooklyn views in his work. Thirty years after he painted it, in 2001, he had reason to remember his early piece.

“I watched the buildings fall from the window,” he recalls seeing the aftermath of the attack from his Brooklyn school building. “It was inconceivable.”

The painting was donated to the Sept. 11 museum

By then, Rush had lost track of the painting, having lent it to a friend decades earlier. Once back in his possession, he displayed it in the window of his Carroll Gardens studio.

“That painting was serendipity in terms of how it came into our collection. One of my colleagues, who lives in Brooklyn, was walking down the street in Carroll Gardens, spotted a print of it in the window,” explained Jan Ramirez, chief curator and vice president of collections at the National September 11th Memorial Museum. “The artist saw him looking, came out, they had a conversation.”

Rush donated it to the museum’s collection. Ramirez describeed what struck her about the piece.

“They’ve reached their full height of 110 stories, but they’re not quite finished yet,” she said. “And, unfortunately, our museum finishes their story.”

“I feel a certain sadness now when I look at it,” Rush said. “Those buildings spoke of our aspirations. They were literally a cathedral to commerce.”

The 9/11 Memorial Museum is launching a social media campaign to encourage people to “remember the sky” on that tragic day, 23 years ago.

CBS News New York will be airing a special report commemorating September 11th on Wednesday.

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Hannah Kliger

Hannah Kliger joined the CBS News New York team as a reporter in May 2022, focusing her coverage in Brooklyn. A native New Yorker, Hannah has received several awards for her investigative journalism about problems plaguing Brooklynites, from hate crimes to housing rental scams.