The new downtown: Lower Manhattan reborn 15 years after 9/11

The revitalization of the city's downtown, powered by $30 billion in government and private investment, includes not just the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site, but also two new malls filled with upscale retailers, thousands of new hotel rooms and dozens of eateries ranging from a new Eataly to a French food hall, Le District.

[...] as government funding for disaster recovery began to pour in, private investment followed, spurring a massive rebuilding that continues to this day.

For blocks surrounding One World Trade, half-built towers and cranes still clutter the sky, barricades and scaffolding line the streets, and the whine and clatter of jackhammers fill the air.

The recession hampered efforts to bring businesses back, but Lappin says private sector employment — 266,000 workers — is finally nearing pre-9/11 numbers.

A second shopping center, Westfield, opened in August inside the Oculus, a striking white structure designed by famed architect Santiago Calatrava.

Elsewhere in Lower Manhattan, a Tom Colicchio restaurant is planned for the just-opened Beekman Hotel; the soon-to-open Four Seasons hotel will host a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, and the storied Nobu restaurant will move downtown from Tribeca.

Other downtown attractions include Alexander Hamilton's tomb in the graveyard of Trinity Church, the National Museum of the American Indian and the SeaGlass Carousel, which opened last year near where boats leave for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

[...] near the top of many visitors' New York itineraries these days is a pilgrimage to the place where planes turned the twin towers into smoking piles of twisted steel and rubble.