Not everybody likes the Oculus, which is the unofficial name of World Trade Center Transportation Hub in Lower Manhattan, opened in 2016 to replace the facilities destroyed in the 2001 attack. The last time I was in town, it was still under construction, but now it’s done.

A good deal of the criticism is about how much it cost, and it certainly was expensive ($4.4 billion, I’ve read). As a non-New Yorker, I can easily be sanguine about that. Besides, with a GDP of $1.3 trillion or so annually, which is in the same league as Spain or South Korea, I suspect metro New York can afford a few grand public works. But it’s also short-term thinking. If the structure lasts even 100 years, who’s going to care about cost overruns?

Then there are the visceral reactions to Santiago Calatrava’s design. Some of these can be found at TripAdvisor, in the one- or two-star comments. A selection follows, all sic.

“White sterile, soulless, limited shopping, resembling a rotting beached whale. This place does not look as if it belongs in NY. More suited to a Middle Eastern theme park.”

“Cavernous: much better to look at from the outside; although, it really just looks like some animal’s ribcage.”

“Although many reviews praise the style of architecture as ‘impressive’, the underlining truth about this architecture is that it was designed in a style similar to that of Soviet Constructivism in order to purposefully induce feelings of tension, intimidation, a global or “one-world” identity rather than a traditional or local one.”

That last one’s an odd notion. Soviet was about the last thing I thought of when inside the Oculus.

That’s the view from one of the balconies on one side of the main hall. I got the sense of a large, vaulting open space — like a major train terminal of old, but looking nothing like one. I have a few quibbles, though. The space could use more places to sit, for instance.

Turning the camera to the vertical from the same perch.

I’d walked to the Oculus from the Downtown restaurant where Geof and his wife Karen and I had had dinner. They wanted to show me the Oculus.

This is Geof Huth. Known him for over 35 years now.

A look at the ceiling from down on the main floor.

I’m not going to spend time intellectualizing my experience at the Oculus. Enough to say that I liked it. I was impressed. It’s a wow. It isn’t like anything else I’ve seen. It may or may not be worth the money, but it is worth spending a few minutes standing in the space and looking up and all around.