When morning broke cloudlessly over the village, Dake stood on the seat of the wagon and surveyed the land around him.

On a cloudlessly blue Tuesday morning in September, the rhetorical foundations were laid for the first permanent public building at the World Trade Center site: a $2.21 billion PATH terminal and transportation hub with birdlike wings above ground and a spider's web of passageways below that will help link the riverfront to the financial district.