A Life, Lived: Visiting the 9/11 Memorial

July 17, 2016

Visiting the 9/11 Memorial

Visiting the National September 11 Memorial was going to be difficult, but we knew we had to go there while we were in New York City.

Many of us can remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when the first plane struck the north tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. When we were last in NY we purposefully did NOT visit the site - it was still too raw . . . the emotions too close to the surface.

This act of terror unfolded live - probably one of the first in history viewed by so many people. Designing a memorial to the victims was bound to be a challenging proposition.

In 2003, a contest was launched for a memorial design at Ground Zero. More than 5,000 people from all over the world sent submissions. The winning design, by Michael Arad and Peter Walker, turned the outlines of the Twin Towers into fountains, the water falling into a void. Names of the victims are embossed on the edges, grouped by where they were on that day.

My first thought? They did a wonderful job. It couldn’t have been easy to memorialize something so raw, but this memorial hits all the right notes: it’s simple yet powerful, somber, and the size of the fountains underscores the seriousness of the tragedy. It’s a beautiful memorial — one of the best I’ve ever seen.

Near the name of one victim people had left notes (I think) on pieces of paper stuck into the crevasses of the metal.

Each day, an employee of the memorial goes outside and places a white rose on the nameplate of every victim celebrating a birthday.

Of course, a visit to the Memorial is not complete without a reflection upon the building which replaced the twin towers. One World Trade Center, or the "Freedom Tower," as it was formerly known, soars above New York City, finally filling a void left by the 9/11 terror attacks. The brilliant blue-silver facade glints no matter where you are in the city—nothing less than a "beacon of hope, just like the Statue of Liberty," says the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the site in a joint venture with real estate giant the Durst Organization.

The tower is now the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, standing at 1,776 feet, and at $3.9 billion, the most expensive in the world. The lead architect, David Childs, delivered a 140-story structure with a 20-story, bomb-resistant base. Suggesting the form of a classical obelisk, the aim was to establish “a new civic icon for the country,” according to Skidmore, Ownings & Merrill LLP, Childs’ firm.

Met with criticism (as the original twin towers were, although it is almost sacrilegious to say this mow but google tells the tale) from the day the design was revealed, we though the Freedom Tower was pretty impressive.

It seems strange that the construction in this area is still underway but it is. Just last month Santiago Calatrava’s Oculus, that unearthly winged structure taking form at the World Trade Center, opened to limited pedestrian traffic in June. We had heard how stunning the space was so we visited it first before heading to the memorial. While much of it remains under construction you certainly have a sense of what will be . . .