THE BOSTON SCENE

A city, eerily, finds itself
bereft of its draws, and its people

A SAD PAUSE: A man sits in Copley Place yesterday after word of the attack on the United States impacted Americans nation wide.

By Sean P. Murphy and Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff, 9/12/2001

Within minutes of learning that a Boston-to-Los Angeles jet had smashed into the World Trade Center, Logan International Airport was closed - the first of a widening circle of massive security measures.

By afternoon, the city was eerily empty, smothered in a blanket of precautions.

Many people had retreated indoors to grapple with the enormity of the catastrophe in private, leaving the city's landmarks and government buildings under the watch of an increasingly visible corps of uniformed police officers.

In the tense moments after the attacks in New York and Washington, tens of thousands of people were evacuated from the John Hancock building, the Prudential building, and the high-rise office and residential buildings along the waterfront and the Financial District.

Evacuations were at first voluntary, and then were ordered by state safety officials concerned that Boston buildings might become targets of an attack akin to the disaster in New York.

One exception to the widespead closures of businesses and other public places were churches, some of which opened their doors to provide spiritual comfort.

At Emmanuel Church on Newbury Street in Boston, an administrator, Kelly Reed, said, ''We just thought people needed time to grieve or just a place for silence.''

Vigils and prayer services were held last night across the region. Today, Cardinal Bernard F. Law will say a special Mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

Among the first buildings to be evacuated was the J. Joseph Moakley Federal Courthouse, on the edge of the waterfront, a short distance from the airport, and filled with federal employees who might be targets of terrorism.

Outside the courthouse, US marshals in military gear, and carrying machine guns, patrolled the perimeter.

On the city's sidewalks, many pedestrians cried, while others had their ears pressed to cell phones. In the afternoon, an F-15 Air Force jet fighter circling Boston prompted many to point to the sky, some in worry.

Responding to the emergency dismissal of 55,000 non-essential state workers, the MBTA expanded midmorning service to help ensure an orderly exit of workers from the city. Tolls on the Massachusetts Turnpike were suspended to help ease the flow of traffic out of the city.

As the dimensions of the attack became more apparent, other transportation hubs were closed down, including the Amtrak train depot at South Station.

In quick succession, the State House and all state courts were closed, as were all federal buildings in the state. An emergency bunker operated by the state Emergency Management Agency in Framingham was activated under the direction of Acting Governor Jane Swift, who arrived there from her home in Western Massachusetts. All military units and bases in Massachusetts, including the Coast Guard, stepped up their threat controls.

''We are aware of the potential targets and have taken the necessary steps,'' Swift said at an afternoon press conference.

Swift said no direct threats had been made against any state institution or location. About 11,500 members of the Massachusetts National Guard, at 63 installations and armories around the state, were on a heightened state of alert but had not been called into action.

Among corporations, Gillette Co. sent home 1,000 employees working at the Prudential Center and Copley Place. State Street Corp. sent its employees home from 225 Franklin St., and State Street's Quincy facility was evacuated around 1 p.m. About 1,500 Putnam Investment workers in and near One Post Office Square also were sent home.

Many of Boston's mutual funds closed money market operations as they are in downtown office buildings that were evacuated.

Big banks kept most of their branches open. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston moved people out of the tower in their downtown office building, but continued operations.

Fidelity Investments said it ''remains operational throughout the United States,'' but closed customer centers in New York City, Boston, Washington, and Northern Virginia.

David Polk, a spokesman for Raytheon Corp., said the Lexington-based weapons-development company had evacuated its facility in Roslyn, Va., after the attack on the Pentagon. ''We're reviewing security at our facilities across the country,'' he said.

Nationwide, all airports were closed. On the ground, Greyhound shut down its service, as did Amtrak.

Many colleges canceled classes, including Harvard's law, business and government schools. (Undergraduates don't begin the school year until tomorrow.) The University of Massachusetts at Amherst canceled classes and had a campus vigil early in the evening.

Brandeis and Boston universities, among others, went on with classes, under heightened security. MIT also remained open. ''The important business of teaching and learning should not be held hostage to terrorism,'' said the BU president, Jon Westling.

Classes were not canceled at public schools in Boston, Worcester, or Newton, but officials reported many parents arriving to pull their children out of classes.

At the Jeremiah Burke High School in Dorchester, administrators kept students informed of news developments in regular broadcast announcements.

Most of Boston's arts and entertainment venues shut down. An awards ceremony at the Boston Film Festival was postponed when the evening's out-of-town luminaries, Sissy Spacek and Kevin Kline, were grounded, with millions of other Americans.

Country singer Lee Ann Womack's show at the FleetBoston Pavilion was postponed, and Boston's Theater District was darkened, as producers canceled performances of ''Mama Mia'' at the Colonial Theatre, ''I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change''at the Stuart Street Playhouse, ''Cookin''' at the Shubert Theatre, and ''Shear Madness'' and Blue Man Group at the Charles Playhouse.

The Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum shuttered their doors, and the Institute of Contemporary Art canceled a reception for new members on Boylston Street.

Many restaurants and most retailers closed, some with signs posted in door windows referring to the ''national emergency.'' Security at downtown hotels was stepped up, and building superintendents at most buildings refused to accept deliveries yesterday.

Major league baseball postponed its schedule of 15 games last night. It was the first time since President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945 that baseball had wiped out a whole day of regular-season play because of a national tragedy.

In Boston, Logan was all but locked down. It had been closed and evacuated, except for investigators and top airport officials.

About 25 minutes after American Airlines Flight 11 from Logan smashed into one of the World Trade Center towers, MassPort officials closed Logan to incoming flights.

Minutes later, flights scheduled to leave Logan were canceled, only to be followed by word from New York that a second airliner from Logan, United Airlines Flight 175, had smashed into the World Trade's second tower.

Working under the assumption that both planes had been hijacked by terrorists who boarded at Logan Airport, a phalanx of security personnel and investigators flooded into terminals B and C, conducting searches, interviewing people, and leading at least one bomb sniffing dog through the concourses.

Federal agents from the FBI, US Marshal Service, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and State Police fanned out throughout the airport.

Logan was officially shut down at 10:18 a.m., and at 2:30 p.m., State Police went through terminals telling everyone to leave.

In deciding against canceling today's primary vote for the Ninth Congressional district, Swift urged voters to make a demonstration of traditional American democracy. ''The most important thing that the citizens of Massachusetts can do today is show up in large numbers to vote,'' she said.

Downtown yesterday, many sat stunned in Copley Squre, or turned to bars where they could watch the television news. Traffic was snarled, and some minor accidents occurred amid the chaos.

Some of the most crowded places were banks of pay phones, where lines backed up three and four deep, since many cell phone lines had been jammed. Signs popped up around town asking for blood donations at Massachusetts General Hospital. ''Don't be passive!'' they exclaimed.

US flags were flying at half-staff across the city.

David Arnold, Stephen Kurkjian, Shelley Murphy, Sandy Coleman, Michael Rosenwald, Steve Syre and Beth Healy of the Globe Staff, and Chris Rowland, a Globe correspondent, contributed to this report.

This story ran on page A21 of the Boston Globe on 9/12/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.