Vote To Rebuild — Historical archive · September 11, 2001–2026

Created by Frank A. Tropea in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Vote To Rebuild offered a place to advocate for rebuilding the World Trade Center Twin Towers and to discuss what should take their place. Twenty-five years later, its creator has brought the site back to preserve a record of that moment.

The original wording and period layout are retained. Visitor comments reflect views and information expressed at the time; they have not been updated. This is a historical record; the original poll and discussion board are inactive. Contact the creator today at franktropea@gmail.com.

Recovered pages span several archive dates. The homepage’s original animated header, accompanying images and all seven Photo Captions photographs were recovered from the Library of Congress web archive. Some photographs and early graphics remain unavailable in this edition; marked spaces retain their positions and surviving captions. No invented poll results have been added.

Viewing: Recovery record. Internet Archive source · Recovery record and other versions

Recovery record

Restored September 11, 2026, at the request of the site's creator and owner, Frank A. Tropea. This edition preserves surviving material, with the limits of the record made visible.

Recovered pages and versions

PageCapture date (UTC)
Homepage · February 21, 20032003-02-21
Visitor comments · February 13, 20022002-02-13
Photo captions · February 8, 20022002-02-08
Homepage · October 4, 20012001-10-04
Homepage · December 22, 20012001-12-22
Visitor comments · October 4, 20012001-10-04
Additional archived page · December 7, 20012001-12-07

The homepage uses the last distinct substantive homepage found, captured February 21, 2003. Earlier versions are linked above. The comments page uses its later surviving version, captured February 13, 2002. The additional December 2001 page concerns the Segway unveiling and is included because it was hosted in the same directory.

Original homepage images recovered

The Library of Congress preserved the original homepage graphics on September 13, 2002. These include the three-part header, whose center GIF shows the Twin Towers disappearing and reappearing over eight frames, the two accompanying photographs, the Red Cross icon and the original design thumbnail. The recovered files are published unchanged.

Sean Platter's full-size proposed tower design was recovered from a July 14, 2004 Internet Archive capture. Its original thumbnail is now restored from the Library of Congress capture.

Original Photo Captions photographs recovered

All seven of Frank Tropea’s photographs from September 11 and September 21, 2001 survive in the Library of Congress capture of September 13, 2002. Their original files are restored alongside the original captions, in the original sequence. The photograph bytes and original 400 × 300 display dimensions are preserved.

Photographs recovered from another site

Eight photographs from the December 3, 2001 Segway unveiling survive as later copies in Frank Tropea’s SegwayChat administrator album. Their filenames, scenes, photo credits and event date match the original page and captions. These copies include a 2002 copyright strip; they are not claimed to be byte-identical to the original AOL files. The file reveal-5copy.jpg corresponds to reveal-5.jpg. Their archived bytes are retained unchanged.

What is missing

The earliest header graphics and four Segway photographs below remain unrecovered. The corresponding captions and image positions survive. No visual reconstruction is represented as an original image.

The externally hosted Sparklit poll results, WorldCrossing discussion board and visitor counters were not recovered. Voting controls are disabled and discussion invitations lead to the historical note. Owner contact links use franktropea@gmail.com; other historical email links remain inactive. Old external article links lead to the Internet Archive.

Preservation method

Internet Archive CDX indexes were checked for votetorebuild.com and its original AOL directory, with additional checks of alternate AOL paths. The earliest recovered homepage is October 4, 2001. Domain snapshots show a frame pointing to the AOL directory; 2003–2004 domain snapshots also include GoDaddy parking pages. By 2005, recovered AOL directory pages show empty listings. These later wrappers and listings are retained locally as evidence and are not presented as the original campaign.

An independent Library of Congress archive contains a September 13, 2002 capture and an index of 19 URLs under the original AOL directory. Its original image responses supplied the restored homepage graphics and all seven Photo Captions photographs. Saved HTML replay pages contain archive-added markup and are recorded separately from original image bytes.

Unmodified downloaded payloads, archive indexes, source URLs, SHA-256 hashes, CDX SHA-1 comparisons and recovery scripts are kept in the owner's local preservation package. A request that fails, returns an archive error or returns a different payload is not evidence of a recovered original.

Changes in this edition

Added historical notice and navigation; converted page encoding to UTF-8; rewrote internal links to local pages; disabled forms, scripts, tracking and third-party email actions; updated owner contact links to franktropea@gmail.com; restored original homepage image files and all seven Photo Captions photographs; marked images awaiting recovery. Original body wording and period table layouts remain. This is a recoverable historical edition, not a claim that every original file or server-side record survives.