On September 11, 2001, two airplanes, hijacked and commandeered by al-Qaeda terrorists were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact of the planes along with the subsequent destruction caused by the collapse of the buildings took the lives of nearly 3,000 civilians and rescue personnel. The development of a suitable memorial has been a long and conflict-ridden process, with a memorial plan finally reaching approval in 2004. “Reflecting Absence,” designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker was chosen out of thousands of entries, in what was the largest design competition ever held. The memorial, which will be completed by 2009, will be the most expensive project of its kind in history. The design turns the foundations of the towers, the “footprints,” into two reflecting pools, with waterfalls flowing into the recesses below. The area underneath the pools forms the heart of the memorial and will be visible from street level. A low wall inside, framed by the cascading water from above, will include the names of those killed. There are also plans for a World Trade Center Museum which will attempt to place the attacks in their appropriate historical context.
I saw the World Trade Center site for the first time last fall (2007). Everything was blocked off, there wasn’t a single flower or any type of memento in sight other than the colorful city-sanctioned posters advertising things that were yet to come. The only little hole in all of the grating to clearly see the site was at the top of a set of stairs at one end of a bridge. Looking through this spot, I looked across the whole site and on the other side hung an enormous banner above the Century 21 department store that read “A Favorite Destination for Savvy Shoppers”…The New York Times.
I felt compelled to take a few photos and then see the display at the ground level of one of the surrounding buildings that explained (with no historical context) what happened on 9-11 and what has happened since. The whole experience was frustrating I think due to the lack of serenity or personal touch to the site or perhaps due the arrogant perspective I felt the display had.
I first visited ground zero in 2003. The site had been cleared and, although there was still damage evident to the surrounding buildings, the empty space looked ready for something new. It felt very sterilized for a place that has elicited so much emotion around the world and was the genesis of two long and costly wars. It wasn’t until I visited St. Paul’s Chapel across the street that I felt the emotional release that I so badly needed.
My experience was not a religious one but one of my faith being renewed in humanity, which was such a contrast to the emotions I had just experienced across the street. The little church had survived the catastophe with damage to some tomb stones and the loss of a great tree in the small cemetary yard. It became the base for an eight month volunteer effort to aide in the clean up. It provided food, massages, a place to rest, and many forms of comfort to those working on the rescue and then clean up efforts. People left notes on the fence looking for their missing loved ones and offering suportive words. Items and notes were sent from around the world with messages of condolence, peace and hope. The church collected many of these items and put them on display in remeberence of those who were lost and those who helped during this terrible tragedy. Visiting St. Paul’s Chapel was both heartbreaking and healing and the little church is such a wonderful example of how each of us can make a big difference with simple actions.
I have visited the site twice.
The first time was in 2004. There was construction being done, things being hauled away, everybody was quiet and it was really difficult to see anything. That’s all I remember.
The second time was August of 2007. I was sickened by it. There were vendors everywhere, selling pictures of the WTC, offering to take pictures, selling T-shirts, etc. The mood, rather than being somber and respectful as it was a few years earlier, was just as another tourist attraction. I want to go again when the memorial is completed, hopefully it will mean more to people at that time.
I was living in downtown Manhattan when the Twin Towers were attacked; what struck me in the aftermath is that the site of the attack has become an incredible tourist attraction…it makes me wonder about peoples’ desire to be attached somehow to tragedy, to trauma, to connect with suffering, to gain some sense of specialness and special tragicness by being touched by suffering. At the same time as someone who saw the planes fly in (quite literally one zoomed over my head that morning), it feels like the profundity of the event has taken on metaphorical importance outside of New York much more than it is experienced by New Yorkers (or those I know, anyway).
I don’t mean at all to belittle what happened or the horrible deaths and suffering that day and since, in the name of some war on terror, but what is striking to me is how for New Yorkers that day seems like a million universes away, it is not part of my everyday consciousness, though it was for several months; I remember the day I reazlied, ‘hey, i haven’t thought of that day yet today.’ I realize, however, that if I had lost a family member of friend in that event, I’d likely feel otherwise absolutely.
As for the memorial site itself — it always seemed to me the most appropriate thing would be to have a park with a reflecting pool, something thought provoking and serene, noncommercial and not to allow for rebuilding, but to have the absence of building be the reminder of what was.
I take your point about wanting to be connected. We visited the site in 2003 on the second anniversary of the event. My wife and I came on our first holiday visit to NYC from England specifically to include that day, simply because the whole dreadful day in 2001 made such an impression on us.
As we stood listening to the children reading the names of the dead, two things struck me. One was a man from Korea, who somehow managed to stand completely still throughout, head bowed and wearing Korean mourning clothes. He just held a picture of his loved one. He was so dignified in his grief.
The other was an American who just held a small toy. It was a model of one of the fire trucks that had attended the site. His brother had been a fireman and was killed that day.
Somehow we all seemed to be part of a greater whole in a community of sorrow. It was only after it was over and the Salvation Army distributed some cold water to everyone that the spell was broken. It was a strange day, full of grief and sorrow, but one I would not have missed
WTC shortly after 9/11 scrawled on the “Memory Wall”: “May the wings of angles carry you home to heaven”
I experienced armed police with M-16s while visiting Ground Zero in New York City. People were taking pictures with these police.
I had several hours to kill in New York and so thought I would stop by the WTC site, to make a connection to a place that had become so iconic in our American psyche. What I was struck by was emptiness, both the space and within myself. I felt nothing. I intellectually knew what I was looking at, but it was so hard to put together the images I had of 9/11–the flames, the bodies arching through the air–and the vague memories I had of visiting the top of the tower, when I was 8 or 9 years old–that food was ridiculously expensive and how I liked the Empire States’ building better.
Standing there, about five years after the attacks, I couldn’t see past the hole. A great emptiness, a negative space, a space of death and destruction reaching beyond the boundaries of the one event, and stretching onto years of war and misguided patriotism. I see the hole and I don’t know what to feel. It’s just a hole, but so much more.
I then went to the church across the street, the one that had miraculously survived the blast, the falling ash and steel, and had become a rescue center, where survivors were taken and rescue workers were fed. There were pictures of people, stories on the wall, art projects done by school children in response to the tragedy. The side chambers of the main room were dedicated to those who had died, and those who had risked their lives rescuing those who lived. The space felt far more like hallowed ground than any memorial they might build. There was a silence, a hushed reverence in the church that left me (not at all a religious person) feeling touched and contemplative.