Peter Kern watched the collapse of the Twin Towers from his office window in New York’s Tribeca neighbourhood. “I saw the fallout from the first building, watched the plane hit the second building, and then watched again as they both fell. It’s an image you never forget,” he says.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, friends and colleagues of Kern, who then worked at consultancy Alpine Capital, moved out of New York and warned that they would never travel again.
“Everyone was, like, ‘Oh my God, it’s the end of the world, no one will ever get on a plane again or ever come back to New York again.’ And then two years later [there was] the biggest boom time in New York for real estate [that lasted] for the next 20 years, plus everyone got back on planes and had the biggest numbers that they’ve ever had.”