World Trade Center, Part 2

I have to admit, this post is considerably harder to write than yesterday’s was. It’s easy to write about new construction and give facts and details without thinking about the reason those buildings needed to be replaced. That’s a much harder task when discussing the memorial and upcoming museum, because it’s so simple to get caught up in the emotions of what they’re intended to commemorate.  These areas were designed with one purpose: to ensure that everyone, and everything, that perished on 9/11 is remembered in a place of honor. 

The National September 11 Memorial

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting.  I had visited the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, D.C. as a kid, and I remember distinctly the feel of the letters carved on that wall, and the faces of the other visitors as they located the names they were looking for.  I think I was expecting a comparable feeling here, not just because of the similarity in the way these two memorials list out each name, but also because so many people’s emotions about the two events were so similar: loss, anger, incomprehension. I was not expecting the absolute reverence this site commands as you walk up to it.  The city is such a noisy place, compounded by the construction noises coming from the Trade Center buildings as they grow, but as you walk towards the North and South Pools, every bit of external sound drops away.  All you hear is the sound of the water. 

The South Pool is shown at foreground, with the 

Museum and 1 World Trade in the background to the right.

By design, you cannot see the bottom of the second tier when standing on the ground. The pools are identical in footprint to the Twin Towers and yet honestly, they seemed so small in comparison to the surrounding structures that it’s hard to imagine the two massive buildings fitting into these two small squares. (I mentioned this to one of the on-site guides, a young man named Steven, who says he hears that all the time.)  Each person whose life was lost on 9/11 or in the 1993 attack, including those yet to be born (I counted at least 6 women listed as “… and Her Unborn Child” just by casual glance) is listed around the raised bronze borders of the North or South Pool, nearly 3,000 in all. The names are grouped according to where the individuals were when they died – not just what building or plane they were in at the time, but also in proximity to the other people whose remains were located near their own. If family members requested that two names be listed near each other, those requests were honored as well.  

We asked Steven why there were so few American flags close to the memorial. In responding, he pointed out several other missing items that we had failed to notice on our own. Many sites built “in memoriam” will allow donors to sponsor bricks or pavers, which will bear a message relating to those they want remembered. There is no such option here.  There are also no bathrooms, and no trash cans.  These are all intentional omissions, designed to keep the focus where it belongs, giving utmost dignity to the names engraved on the memorial. 

That dignity, and a pride of purpose, seemed to be universal to those employed at the site.  I watched for a while as one worker carefully knelt to pick litter from a bed of mulch – you can see him working in the background of the image below, in gray shirt and black pants. Every employee that we encountered had that same intense aura about them, as if they came to work here specifically to ensure that the site kept its significance. I’m sure I’m not stating that as clearly as I experienced it, but what I’m trying to convey is that these people clearly feel that what they are doing, however minute the detail may be, is of utmost importance to giving this site and those being remembered the sacredness they deserve.

The park employs volunteers, all of whom are either survivors themselves or family members of those who passed, to give “person-to-person history”.  We stopped for a few minutes to listen to one of these speakers, a woman who lost her husband, a first responder.  It took her several months to piece together what exactly happened to him on 9/11. His unit was already en route to the World Trade Center when the second plane hit. They parked the fire truck several blocks away and walked the rest.  His body was located in November 2002, a full 14 months after the attack.  He was wearing his helmet, but his jacket was wrapped around a civilian found nearby. She made a point of saying that in all of her questions about that day, “Why?” has never been one of them.  To her there is no “why”; he was simply doing his job.

9/11 Memorial Museum

The Museum, shown from the South Pool.

In between the two pools is the Museum Pavilion.  Built of steel and glass, the shape of the building itself is intended to mimic the lines of the original Twin Towers, however in this version they are laying on their side and tilted towards the earth, rather than standing straight and skyward.  When completed, the Museum will reach 7 stories below ground, and serve as a dedicated memorial to the individual lives lost.  The exhibitions will include audio recordings of survivors recounting the day’s events, and biographies of the deceased.  The museum will also house many of the remaining structural elements of the original Towers, including the last two original tridents.  (Four remained semi-intact after the buildings fell, but two of those were irreparably damaged in transit to a holding facility.)  The Museum intends to open to the public by the end of 2012.

The steel Tridents once stood as an iconic 

symbol of the Twin Towers.   

These two were salvaged from the North Tower.

The Sphere

We made one side trip to visit a piece of the original complex that’s now located off-site but within walking distance.  In the plaza between the Twin Towers stood a bronze sculpture named “The Sphere”, by artist Fritz Koenig.  After the attacks, the Sphere was uncovered in surprisingly good shape considering that debris from the Towers had quite literally rained down upon it.  Six months after 9/11, the Sphere was placed in Battery Park, and on September 11, 2002 an Eternal Flame was placed alongside of it as a temporary memorial to those killed in the attack.  Online petitions have circulated asking to return the Sphere to the new Trade Center complex, but officials from the 9/11 Memorial have responded that this will likely not happen.

The Sphere in its original location.  Behind, 

you can see the Tridents of the Twin Towers.

The Sphere in its current location in Battery Park

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 All in all, the 8-acre memorial site is breathtaking.  I know that there were many critics of the design, those who didn’t think the “void” of the pools was the correct way to restructure the site, but frankly I can’t imagine any other construct doing such an amazing job of capturing the sense of loss while at the same time bringing such peace to those who see it.  May we never forget.

Special thanks to Ken Lewis, Beverly Thomes, and the others at IIDA who organized this trip.  I feel privileged to have been a part of it.

 ---Monique