The future memorial at the World Trade Center site belongs to all of America and must be treated with the same historical reverence as comparable sites in American history such as Shanksville Pennsylvania, Pearl Harbor, Gettysburg, and the Oklahoma City National Memorial. Transportation infrastructure and commercial development do not have a place in the sacred space within the bathtub area of the World Trade Center site where most of the remains of those murdered on September 11 were found.
The Coalition of 9-11 Families, where I am a board member, the Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York and many other civic groups are concerned that "America's Memorial" at the World Trade Center site is being considerably modified beyond recognition behind closed doors. The memorial has been and continues to be compromised by political and economic agendas. The results will be detrimental to our country's legacy.
An early compromise happened when Daniel Libeskind's design for the World Trade Center site was modified. Libeskind's original design went down six stories below street level, preserving the bedrock of the bathtub area of the World Trade Center site and designating the space for a memorial. In December 2002, the architect described his motivation for preserving this area in the following statement: "We have to be able to enter this hallowed, sacred ground, while creating a quiet, meditative and spiritual place. We need to journey down, some 70 feet into Ground Zero, onto the bedrock foundation, a procession with deliberation into the deep indelible footprints of Tower One and Two."
As the development corporation sought public input on the nine different designs for ground zero, Libeskind's design emerged as the plan the public wanted to see realized. But when the chosen design was revealed at a press conference in February 2003, it had changed considerably. The new plan only went three stories below street level. During the press conference no information was given on what would comprise the three additional stories, and no word was given on what would grace the sacred bedrock of the bathtub area.
Due to the advisory capacity in which we, the leaders of the Coalition of 9-11 Families serve, the Port Authority and Lower Manhattan Development Corporation privately informed us that they were considering plans to build a bus garage, transportation infrastructure, and perhaps even retail within this area of the site.
The efforts of the Coalition of 9-11 Families to clarify our position and to reveal the truth about the direction of the redevelopment process have been stymied. The Coalition of 9-11 Families is the largest September 11 advocacy entity. Comprised of major September 11 family organizations, we represent the memorial position of thousands of family members, survivors, rescue workers and concerned Americans. Our leadership has personally communicated our position to Governor Pataki and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. It is time to publicly set the record straight.
Our united vision is to:
Preserve from bedrock to infinity the sacred ground within the area surrounded by the "slurry wall." This area contains the bedrock footprints of the North and South Towers, the Marriott Hotel and World Trade Center 6. We define this area as sacred ground because this is the area of the site where the largest concentration of remains (nearly 20,000) of those murdered on September 11 were recovered.
We are opposed to any and all transportation (for example, the bus garage or other infrastructure) and commercial development (for example, a mall, retail, office space) within this area of the site. The memorial must be the centerpiece of the redevelopment. We conceded to the infringement of the PATH train station within this area as long as it is incorporated into the memorial (for example, it could be named Sept. 11 Memorial Station). We've also communicated that in the event that Greenwich Street and Fulton Street are extended through the site, they must be pedestrian only.
Ensure that a memorial museum to Sept. 11 is erected within the area encased by the "slurry wall," and that museum is dedicated to Sept. 11 and February 26, 1993 only; we oppose any inclusion of other themes/issues within the memorial museum.
Secure a repository in the area encased by the "slurry wall" where all unidentified and unclaimed remains of the individuals murdered on Sept. 11 can be interred.
Ensure that all new World Trade Center construction is hallmarked by quality, safety and security, and built under the legal jurisdiction of local building and fire codes. (The former World Trade Center, built by the Port Authority, was immune from federal, state, and city building and fire codes.)
Pledge to continue to petition political and redevelopment leaders to include an adequate number of family members, survivors and rescue workers in the decision making process
If these important principles are considered and plans behind closed doors cease, "America's Memorial" at the World Trade Center site can be realized and American history will be preserved for this and future generations.
Anthony Gardner's brother Harvey Joseph Gardner III was killed in the September 11 attacks. Gardner is President of WTC United Family Group, a board member of the Coalition of 9-11 Families and a member of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation Family Advisory Council.
Mario Gentile was one of 13,683 people from around the world who promised, by the 5 p.m. deadline on Monday, June 30th, to submit their designs for a 9/11 memorial on the site of the World Trade Center. Gentile had never designed anything like this before, but he decided to enter the international memorial competition because, he says, he needed to put his strong feelings "on paper."
Gentile may well be typical of those who entered the competition in at least one important way: However spontaneous and emotional his initial impulse, he is far from an amateur. A graduate of the Columbia School of Architecture, he makes his living designing Manhattan interiors. Indeed, some say it would have been difficult for a complete architectural amateur to have met the demanding technical guidelines set forth by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.
Those who did send in designs had to figure out how their proposal would best memorialize September 11, even as those closest to the tragedy disagreed on the details and concepts for the memorial. They also were presented with both a lengthy list of guidelines and a hint from the development corporation that the winning design may be one that need not follow the rules after all.
The Competition
Each would-be memorialist pre-registered for the competition in May. They received a number, so that all of the submissions will be anonymous, and then had a month to finish their designs and send them in. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has not yet released the number of people who have mailed in their proposals.
The memorial jury -- made up of artists, architects and academics, as well as a downtown resident and a victim's family member -- will spend all summer evaluating the designs. They will not know any of the designers' names until after they agree on five finalists this fall.
This is a good thing, said Gentile, because it puts the focus on the design itself. Vietnam Veterans Memorial designer Maya Lin, now a member of the 9/11 jury, won that 1981 anonymous memorial competition when she was an undergraduate student at Yale.
Downtown architect Frederic Schwartz, along with other architects in the THINK team, was a finalist in the competition to design the entire World Trade Center site earlier this year, but ultimately lost to Daniel Libeskind. Schwartz is now entering this second competition run by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, this time for the memorial. "I think they did an excellent job of setting up the competition by going around the world, looking at competitions, carefully writing a program, carefully writing a mission statement.... And the jury -- now, it's an excellent jury. It's good because it's diverse," said Schwartz, who has entered 50 architectural competitions in the last 25 years.
Although the contest is open to anyone age 18 or older (and, officials have said that even those under 18 can enter with an adult), some say that the guidelines are so detailed that only an architect would be able to create a design that follows the rules. They are "way too strict," said Gentile. "The more limitations, the less people [will be able to compete]," he explained.
The guidelines tell designers to create a memorial that recognizes each person who was killed in the September 11 attacks in New York, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania, as well as the victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Manhattan architects Raul A. Smith and Clementina Ruggieri said that they worked together to create one design that not only met the requirement to individually recognize the victims, but "also one which engages all the volunteers and, ultimately, anyone in the world who feels the need to heal by going to Ground Zero."
The guidelines also say that the design needs to create a space for "contemplation," "make visible the footprints" where the World Trade Center towers stood and convey the "historical authenticity" of September 11. Designers are told to situate their memorial -- which will need to accommodate 8,000 to 50,000 visitors a day -- in the 4.7-acre site set aside for the competition.
However, the development corporation has suggested that the rules may not be binding after all, leaving competitors unclear about just how flexible the contest is. Designs that do not stay inside boundaries specified for the competition "may be considered by the jury if, in collaboration with the LMDC, they are deemed feasible and consistent with site plan objectives," according to the development corporationÕs guidelines.
Controversies and Compromise
This is surely one of the most publicized memorial competitions in history, and all of the attention may have created even more challenges for would-be designers, not only architectural challenges, but also emotional ones. This may be one reason why people like Rosemary Jensen, registered for the competition but didn't ultimately send in a design. Jensen, a freelance publications production artist said that she just couldn't come up with a design that fit.
Many of those closest to the September 11 tragedy have conflicting, and very emotional, opinions, which they have shared in public forums and private meetings.
"You can't take a public opinion poll," said Schwartz. "People from maybe the same family might say build nothing there or build the world's tallest building there... You would hope it would heal everybody's wounds but it won't."
Controversies over the memorial abound, over what the details of the design should be to how it should be situated. Even though rebuilding officials selected Libeskind's overall design for Ground Zero -- with its designated space for the memorial -- way back in February, people continue to argue over the space for the memorial. While Libeskind sunk the memorial space 30 ft. below ground level, exposing the World Trade Center's original foundations, some downtown residents are upset with the idea of a large hole in the middle of everything, fearing it will cut off neighborhoods. Many victims' family members, however, consider the plot sacred ground and approve of how Libeskind's design sets it apart.
While Schwartz did not give the details of his design, or say whether or not it puts the memorial 30 feet below, Gentile said that his design (in pdf format) incorporates the sunken space. "I think the scar should be left in the earth," he said. "It is not going to cut off [the neighborhood]. I think it will be an improvement from what was there."
Listing the Names
Another tense debate over the memorial concerns how the names of the victims should be listed (if the chosen design does indeed include a list, guidelines merely stipulate that each victim should be individually recognized). Family members of firefighters who died on September 11 are passionate that they should be listed together, with their titles,
But others say that separating the victims of 9-11 would suggest that some of the people who died were more important than others.
"There is a question about what's the difference between a military memorial and a memorial for a tragedy that occurred that involved people of various different status," said Reinhold Martin, who directs the Advanced Architectural Design program at Columbia University's School of Architecture and is closely following the competition. "Firefighter is probably in between in the popular imagination; in between a soldier and a regular citizen."
How are the designers mitigating such conflicting desires? "You do it as you live life," said Schwartz. "You try to make the best decisions. I don't think you can make all of this a compromise, because if everything is a compromise you'll have a compromise. It is just finding what you think in your heart is right. Heart has to dictate over intellect."
In his design, Gentile created a field of columns, each inscribed with the name and description of one of the victims. He arranged the columns so that the first rows would be the rescue workers, then those in the planes, then people who worked in the towers.
It is not just the architects who will have to worry about pleasing the public. The jury members will have the difficult task of selecting something that conflicting groups can agree on. "The jury is not in isolation. They will be affected by the public, even if they don't realize it; by the mixed feelings many people have about how this is working," said Martin. "What they should be focusing on, I think, is some kind of dignity or discretion as opposed to kitsch. It's very difficult to avoid kitsch in this circumstance. They're going have to balance the sense of discretion against this media-driven demand for some sort of more spectacular thing."
Striving to Memorialize 9/11
More people registered for the September 11 memorial competition than any other design competition in history. While the number of people who actually sent in designs has not yet been released, it is clear that architects, designers and regular people around the world were overwhelmingly compelled to create a memorial for 9/11.
"Through our design we simply want to be another voice," said Smith, who entered the contest with Ruggieri. "And we hope that, as a voice among many, we can contribute to a more meaningful selection process."
"My incentive is doing something great for all the people," said Schwartz. "Just as a dancer or an artist has some abilities given to them, I have certain abilities so I want to use them to do something for these people who were murdered. For their memory, for their families, for the city, I want to give something back. That's what it is; that's why I do public work."
Martin has a very different take. "Fame is the incentive, but they wouldn't tell you that."
The Pentagon design. |
By the time New York City's September 11 memorial jury narrows the Ground Zero memorial competition down to five finalists, the Pentagon will have already broken ground on its memorial - selected way back in March - for the 184 victims who died there on 9/11.
Many in New York wonder how the rebuilding and memorial process in Washington D.C. has gone so quickly, and seemingly so smoothly, as New Yorkers still struggle with some of the most basic questions about rebuilding. And some families of those who died in the attack on the World Trade Center - many of whom have struggled since the beginning for a voice in the rebuilding process - are surprised to learn of the extent to which Pentagon family members were consulted and included. Some involved in the memorial process in New York are asking, should we follow the Pentagon's example?
A Fast Pace
The response in Washington has been markedly different than in New York. Just one day after American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into a portion of the Pentagon's outer ring, Pentagon officials put rebuilding efforts in motion. While many civilians were killed at the Pentagon, including 59 airline passengers, the attacks were handled with military efficiency. The day after the attacks, the Pentagon announced their plan to have the destroyed area rebuilt within twelve months. On the one-year anniversary of September 11, 3,000 dislocated Pentagon employees were moved into new offices in the rebuilt wing.
Planning for a memorial to the 184 people killed in the Pentagon attacks progressed as expeditiously. The Baltimore office of the Army Corps of Engineers took charge of the memorial site selection and design in the month following 9/11. Their first point of order was to solicit advice from family members of those killed, who organized into a Family Member Steering Committee.
In July 2002, the Corps announced an open, international competition to design the memorial, with guidelines largely developed by the families. It called for a design that would sit on a 1.98-acre site, just 165 feet from where the plane hit the building, and that would "speak generally - as the U.S. government's official response, it represents all Americans, and specifically - it must also embody the deeply personal tragedy that the events of that day visited on the families of the victims." The competition was judged by a 13-member jury, which included two family members.
In just three days, the jury sifted through more than 1,100 entries, and selected six finalists, who were given eight weeks and $20,000 to produce a more detailed plan of their proposal. On March 3, 2003, five days after Daniel Libeskind's chosen design for the World Trade Center site garnered worldwide attention, the jury announced the winner in the Pentagon Memorial competition: the design by Kaseman Beckman Amsterdam Studios.
The Memorial: Light Benches
The architects, Julie Beckman and Keith Kaseman, both recent graduates of the Columbia architecture program, were living in New York on September 11, 2001. Both are relatively unknown designers with no major projects. At the center of their scheme, which is called "Light Benches," 184 benches - each bearing the name of a victim killed in the Pentagon attacks - are cantilevered over small, lit pools. The benches are ordered along what Beckman and Kaseman call an "age line," ranging from 3 years for the youngest victim, to 71 for the oldest. To find a victim's name, a visitor to the memorial would locate the year in which that person was born, and then travel along that line to the birth day. The benches are also oriented along the flight path that American Airlines Flight 77 was traveling moments before crashing into the Pentagon. A grove of 70 cedar trees surrounds the field of benches.
Construction of the memorial is scheduled to begin this summer and be completed by September 2005. Like most memorials, the Pentagon 9/11 memorial will be funded through private donations rather than by public money.
Victims' family members, who have been at the forefront of the Pentagon memorial process since the first meeting in November 2001, have assumed much of the responsibility for fundraising.
Involving the Families
In both New York and D.C., victims' family members were closely involved in planning the guidelines and mission for each memorial. But at the Pentagon, family members were given a more significant role in choosing the winning design. The memorial jury invited family members to view all of the original 1,100 competition entries, even before the jury began going through them. Their comments were shared with the jury. "Family members have always been the primary decision makers," said Brett Eaton, spokesman for the Pentagon Renovation Project, the agency that is managing the memorial construction.
In New York, the memorial jury is reviewing the 5,200 designs submitted to the competition in private. "I think that the families would appreciate having an opportunity to review the finalists prior to the decision," said Imagine New York coordinator Michael Kuo, whose father died on 9/11, "but I do believe that the jury should have the ultimate say. I wouldn't want to mislead the families into thinking that they have a chance to lobby for one design over another."
Involving the families of Pentagon victims was easier than in New York for several reasons. First, there were far fewer families, a majority of whom were members of a military family, where compromise and agreement is an accepted way of life. As Jim Laychak, a competition juror whose brother died at the Pentagon on September 11, said, "It was important for the family members to be united, and to compromise when necessary. We all wanted the best memorial, and so our focus was to work together to make that happen."
The World Trade Center site memorial jury has one victim's family member, Paula Grant Berry. At public hearings about the memorial, some family members of those who died on 9/11 have said that Grant Berry should not be their sole representative. "I would have loved to see more family members on the jury," said Monica Iken, who lost her husband in the World Trade Center attacks and went on to establish September's Mission, "But D.C. was a different dynamic. There, families are the primary stakeholders. But here, there are so many different interests - the owner, the builder, downtown residents. Family members are just one strong voice among so many others."
"A lot of families have said they're very comfortable with one family member. Some said they wanted none, as they thought that families were just too close to the situation. For this same reason, no Vietnam veterans were on the jury to design the Vietnam memorial," said Anita Contini, who is the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation official in charge of the memorial. "Family members did have meetings with the jury and the jury is aware of the families' point of view, as well as the point of view of other stakeholders - residents, the international community and the communities of those impacted by the attacks at the Pentagon, Shanksville and in 1993."
Kuo said that he feels that having high-caliber design professionals on the jury - even if that means less representation from family members - is very important. "Take a look at Maya Lin's sketches from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial competition," he says. "If I were on that jury, I would have never been able to visualize how those black, white, green and blue pastel sketches would somehow be developed into what is widely acknowledged as the most powerful memorial in the country today."
Different Places
Another significant difference between the two memorials may be that at the Pentagon site, the remains of all but five people were identified. In New York, however, the World Trade Center site is the final resting place for hundreds of people whose remains were not identified. This makes questions about rebuilding, and memorializing, much more complicated. The Pentagon, a government building in the suburbs of Washington D.C., is also a different sort of place than Ground Zero, in the heart of lower Manhattan.
Reed Kroloff, former editor of Architecture magazine and an advisor to the Pentagon memorial competition, said, "While the Pentagon is a public space, it's still a military building. Had this happened to the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial - icons of the city - the response would have been far different, and far more difficult."
New York and Washington are, of course, just different cities in general. New York is a designer's town, and a place where discourse, and disagreement, have often led to some of the city's best projects. As Terry Riley, architecture curator at MOMA and Chairman of the Pentagon Memorial Jury said, "New Yorkers have a tendency for critical discourse more than any other place. It helps to define who we are as a city."
Aimee Molloy is the Director of Exhibits at the Municipal Art Society. The exhibit "Results of the Competition to Design the Pentagon Memorial" is on view at the Urban Center Galleries, 457 Madison Avenue, through August 12, 2003.