Staten Island Memorial Unveiled - Sep 12, 2004
Rounding out a long and intense day of events marking the third anniversary of 9/11, a memorial to Staten Island victims was dedicated on the borough's waterfront at the ferry terminal across the harbor from the Trade Center site. (NY1)

Fundraising For Memorial Has Yet to Begin - Sep 11, 2004
Eight months after the World Trade Center memorial design was unveiled, Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg have yet to find a prominent person willing to lead the foundation that's raising the money to build it. (New York Daily News)

Website Offers "Living Memorial" To 9/11 Victims, Families - Sep 9, 2004
A high-profile 9/11 organization launched an Internet-based memorial yesterday that will serve as a "portal of reflection, remembrance, interaction, education and scholarly research" about the terrorist attacks. (New York Daily News)

Memorial Planned For Flight 93 Victims - Sep 9, 2004
The 40 innocent passengers and crew who died on hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 should be honored because they played a role in the "only victory" during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said the father of one of the victims. That's what planners hope people remember as they submit designs for a crash site memorial in a national competition announced Wednesday. (Newsday )

Frederic Schwartz: Designer of Two 9/11 Memorials - Sep 9, 2004
Frederic Schwartz is standing on a peninsula at Liberty State Park where ground is to be broken tomorrow for the 9/11 memorial he has designed for New Jersey, only three-and-a-half hours after ground is broken in Westchester County for the 9/11 memorial he has designed there. But for a moment, his sad eyes are not focused on the empty sky across the Hudson River where the World Trade Center is supposed to be. (New York Times )

Construction on Staten Island's 9/11 Memorial Begins - Aug 17, 2004
Workers started installing a memorial to the September 11 victims on Staten Island Monday. (NY1)

Cantor Fitzgerald Finds New Home in Midtown - Jul 27, 2004
Nearly three years after 658 Cantor Fitgerald employees were killed in the attack on the World Trade Center, the stock and bond trading company has found a new home five miles from ground zero, on the East Side of Manhattan. Cantor signed a lease last week to move into space now occupied by Bloomberg L.P., the business information company founded by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, at Park Avenue and 59th Street, where Cantor plans to erect a monument to the co-workers who died in the Sept. 11 attack. (New York Times)

Benches Become Individual 9/11 Memorials - Jul 16, 2004
Since 1986, the Central Park Conservancy has run a program called "Adopt-a-Bench." For $7,500, one can have a brief message inscribed on a plaque. In return, the conservancy promises to maintain the bench forever. It was inevitable perhaps that, in this form of urban shorthand, some would speak for those who perished on Sept. 11. At least 21 benches reflect that day, though "there could be more," said Linda Blumberg, a conservancy spokeswoman. (New York Times)

Tribute in Light Gets Funding for Next Five Years - Jul 9, 2004
Intended originally as an ephemeral memorial, the twin-beam "Tribute in Light," which simultaneously marks the presence and absence of the World Trade Center, has been guaranteed a place in the night sky every Sept. 11 for at least the next five years. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation board voted yesterday to give $3.5 million to the Municipal Art Society, which helps produce the memorial. (New York Times)

New Jersey Picks Its 9/11 Memorial - Jul 1, 2004
A design featuring two stainless-steel walls that look from a certain perspective as if the World Trade Center towers had been neatly felled and had landed in New Jersey has won the competition for New Jersey's Sept. 11 memorial, Gov. James E. McGreevey announced yesterday. The winning proposal came from the Manhattan-based architect Frederic Schwartz. (New York Times)

The Integration of the Design Team at Ground Zero - Jul 1, 2004
Architect J. Max Bond Jr. has had to build bridges to reach Ground Zero, and now, for the first time in the redevelopment of the trade center site, an African American, is a major player (Washington Post )

Controversy Rages Over Jersey City's Proposed 9/11 Memorial - Jun 30, 2004
Chances are there would have been some degree of opposition sooner or later had anyone suggested building a 10-story, 175-ton nickel-surfaced teardrop suspended within a bronze-clad tower on a pier across the water from the World Trade Center site as a 9/11 memorial. (New York Times)

Jersey City Cools to Russian Sculptor's Offer of 9/11 Memorial - Jun 24, 2004
When an internationally known Russian sculptor offered last year to erect a 100-foot-tall Sept. 11 memorial on the waterfront opposite the World Trade Center site, the mayor of Jersey City embraced the idea as befitting a city that lost 40 residents in the attack. But with opposition from the city's new mayor and from community groups who consider the teardrop-themed sculpture simplistic and overly imposing, a resolution to accept the offer has been withheld from Wednesday night's City Council meeting, leaving its future in doubt. (WNBC)

Plans to Memorialize 9/11 Victims at Fresh Kills Prove Controversial - Jun 14, 2004
Fresh Kills was the world's most colossal dump when the city closed it in early 2001. And now that the Department of City Planning is developing a master plan for turning its 2,200 acres into a vast and innovative new park, it is could become the world's most controversial trash heap. The problem is not how many soccer fields to build or whether to plant oak trees or magnolias. Rather, a battle is looming over a comparatively tiny area of the vast landfill and the city's intention of preserving the painful memories of what happened here. (New York Times)

Sound Booth at Memorial Center Will Preserve 9/11 Memories - Jun 5, 2004
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s board on Wednesday approved a $500,000 payment to StoryCorps and September’s Mission to set up an oral history booth at the World Trade Center site by the three-year anniversary of the attack. The interviews will become part of the archives of the interpretive center that will be located under the W.T.C. memorial, said Anita Contini, vice president of memorial and cultural affairs for the L.M.D.C. The Library of Congress will also keep the records. (Downtown Express)

Advisory Council Calls for 'Powerful' Artifact to Mark Entrance to Underground Museum - Jun 3, 2004
A "powerful, visible" artifact from Ground Zero should mark the entrance to the World Trade Center Memorial Center, an advisory panel said yesterday. That recommendation was one of several made by the Memorial Center Advisory Committee in a draft released yesterday by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. The memorial center will be located underground at the southwest corner of the memorial site. (New York Daily News)

Ground Zero Museum Should Honor Each Victim: Advisory Council - Jun 3, 2004
The Ground Zero memorial museum should include touching tributes to each victim, including their personal effects and images, an advisory panel recommended yesterday. Such personal and moving memorials would be in addition to a "factual" account of the terrorists who killed the nearly 3,000 victims. (New York Post)

Westchester Picks 9/11 Memorial - Apr 30, 2004
Westchester County unveiled the winning design on Thursday for its own Sept. 11 memorial, a soaring sculpture with 109 intersecting steel rods, each representing a victim who lived in the county. The memorial, named "The Rising," was designed by Frederic Schwartz, an acclaimed Manhattan architect and a founder of the Think team. Think's entry in the master plan competition for ground zero was the runner-up in that contest. The Westchester memorial will be built at Kensico Dam Plaza, a county-owned park in Valhalla. Unveiling is scheduled for Sept. 11, 2005. (New York Times)

British Minister of Parliament Back NY 9/11 Memorial for British Victims - Apr 27, 2004
British Minister of Parliament Gisela Stuart is supporting a campaign to construct a permanent memorial to the 67 British citizens who died in terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. (Evening Mail)

Memorial Designer Joins NY Architecture Firm - Apr 25, 2004
Girding for the commission of a lifetime - translating an evocative idea into the reality of a permanent World Trade Center site memorial - New York's best-known unknown architect, Michael Arad, has joined a 50-person firm in Manhattan. On Monday, Mr. Arad was named a partner in Handel Architects, a 10-year-old firm that reshaped the Lincoln Center area in the 1990's with mixed-use projects for Millennium Partners. (New York Times)

Associate Architect Chosen for Ground Zero Memorial - Apr 14, 2004
A decade after preparing a sweeping plan to revitalize the public spaces at the World Trade Center, the firm of Davis Brody Bond was designated yesterday as associate architect for the memorial that is to be built on the trade center site. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation also approved a $45 million contract with the Gilbane Building Company of Providence, R.I., to dismantle 130 Liberty Street, a 40-story building near ground zero. (New York Times)

Top Architecture Firms Eye Collaborating Role on Ground Zero Memorial - Apr 7, 2004
Some of the best-known, largest and most prolific design firms in New York are vying to be named associate architect for the World Trade Center site memorial. Technically, the associate's role would be to help Michael Arad and Peter Walker realize their competition-winning plan, "Reflecting Absence," with two voids where the twin towers stood. But the caliber of the firms being considered by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation suggests that they might also play an influential role in refining the evolving design. (New York Times)

Memorial to British 9/11 Victims Planned for Hanover Square - Apr 5, 2004
Sculptor Anish Kapoor is to create a memorial in New York to the British victims of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre. The 19.5ft (6m) sculpture, Unity, will form the centrepiece of a memorial garden in Hanover Square, near the twin towers site. (BBC News)

9/11 Families Criticize Staten Island Memorial - Mar 24, 2004
Many unhappy families of World Trade Center victims are refusing to articipate in Staten Island's 9/11 memorial after hearing that some preliminary sketches of the victims don't look like their loved ones. The $2 million waterfront memorial, entitled "Postcards," will be covered with 9-by-11-inch tablets featuring facial profiles of Staten Island's 268 victims etched in granite. To create the initial paper and pencil sketches, families have been asked to submit pictures of the victims by April 1. But about 15 families have said the sketches are inaccurate or unflattering, said Dennis McKeon, who runs St. Clare's WTC Outreach Committee, a group that includes most Staten Island victims' families. (New York Post)

Design Approved For 1993 Trade Center Memorial - Mar 17, 2004
A design for a temporary memorial to the six victims killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing will include a piece of the original memorial destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, authorities said. The Port Authority received final approval for the design last week from victims' relatives, PA spokesman Steve Coleman said yesterday. (New York Post)

President Dedicates Long Island 9/11 Memorial - Mar 12, 2004
President Bush wept with 9/11 families yesterday as he helped break ground on Long Island for a memorial to honor those killed in the Twin Tower attacks. Anti-Bush protesters marched outside Eisenhower Park in East Meadow, but the flap over the brief shots of Ground Zero in Bush's recent TV ads seemed far away as hundreds of family members lined up, each with a single white rose pinned to a lapel. (New York Post)

Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Claiming That Firefighters Had Faulty Radios On 9/11 - Mar 11, 2004
A judge dismissed a lawsuit yesterday that alleged firefighters who responded to the World Trade Center on 9/11 were equipped with faulty radios. (New York Daily News)

Brooklyn Unveils 9/11 Memorial - Mar 9, 2004
It'll be a tribute in light and a warning in bronze. The winning design for Brooklyn's official Sept. 11 memorial, unveiled yesterday, is a 25-foot-tall pillar that was inspired by the trumpets blown by turn-of-the-century firefighters as they rushed to burning buildings. A spotlight on top will shine every night from 9 to 11 p.m. (New York Post)

Brothers Become Firefighters To Honor Friend Killed On 9/11 - Mar 9, 2004
Brothers Salvatore and Randy Ranieri grew up admiring their friend Kenny Watson, a firefighter who died Sept. 11. And yesterday, they made good on their vow to honor his memory when they became the newest members of New York's Bravest. (New York Post)

Brooklyn's 9/11 Memorial To Be Unveiled Today - Mar 8, 2004
The winning design for Brooklyn's official Sept. 11 memorial will do more than honor the hundreds of residents who died on that awful day - it will provide a spiritual connection to one of America's greatest triumphs. Artist Robert Ressler's winning design will be forged at the same Greenpoint foundry that produced the famous statue in Arlington, Va., of six Marines planting the American flag at Iwo Jima. Ressler's design will be unveiled this morning at the 69th Street Pier in Bay Ridge, where it will be installed this summer. The group backing the memorial still must raise $35,000 to maintain it. Checks can be sent to: Brooklyn Remembers, 9201 4th Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11209. (New York Post)

- Mar 5, 2004
On Thursday, the Hoboken Sept. 11 Memorial Fund, which the mayor organized three months after the attack, announced that four designs had been selected as finalists in the competition for a memorial. A final design for a memorial that will be erected at Pier A Park along the waterfront will be chosen by May, Mayor David Roberts said. (New York Times)

4 Finalists Picked In Competition To DesignHoboken's 9/11 Memorial - Mar 5, 2004
On Thursday, the Hoboken Sept. 11 Memorial Fund, which the mayor organized three months after the attack, announced that four designs had been selected as finalists in the competition for a memorial. A final design for a memorial that will be erected at Pier A Park along the waterfront will be chosen by May, Mayor David Roberts said. (New York Times)

Arad Demands Full Control Of Memorial, Creating Tension With Officials - Mar 4, 2004
Ground Zero memorial designer Michael Arad is pushing to gain total control of the project’s $350 million budget, as well as the power to personally hire construction and engineering firms, determine the treatment of the western slurry wall that was a feature of architect Daniel Libeskind’s plan for the site, and make all long-term scheduling decisions, according to several sources close to the rebuilding effort. (New York Observer)

Arad: Dispute Over Control Threatens Memorial - Mar 3, 2004
Ground Zero memorial designer Michael Arad has warned development officials in a letter that an escalating dispute over how to run the $350 million project could "prevent" his design from being built, sources told The Post. (New York Post)

Survivors, Relatives Of Victims Mark 1993 Bombing - Feb 27, 2004
Survivors and relatives of victims of the 1993 bombing on the World Trade Center Thursday marked the anniversary with a Mass, a moment of silence at Ground Zero and a preview of the temporary memorial planned to honor the six people killed in that earlier attack. (Newsday )

On Anniversary Of 1993 Attack, A Proposal For A Temporary Shrine - Feb 26, 2004
The memorial for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was destroyed on 9/11. Come the 12th anniversary of the attack, its survivors may once again have a spot. Today, at their annual breakfast, the survivors and relatives will be shown a proposal by the Port Authority for an interim marker that would stand until the permanent memorial, "Reflecting Absence," is built. No definite location for the marker has been chosen yet. (New York Times)

5,201 Memorial Designs Displayed On Internet - Feb 20, 2004
All 5,201 of the entries that the jury sifted through went on display at www.wtcsitememorial.org yesterday. Visitors to the site who signed on to second-guess the jury — "How could they have overlooked that?" — probably left with a new respect for the jurors' devotion and patience in going through the entire lot without pay. Visitors may also have left with a sense that the world cared, no matter how clumsy or inartful the expression. (New York Times)

New Spat Over Names On Memorial - Feb 20, 2004
Thomas Johnson, a member of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.'s board of directors, said yesterday at the organization's monthly meeting that he is "working hard" with "lots of people" to alter the plan to present names on the 9/11 memorial. He wants to remove the special designation given to rescue workers. (New York Daily News)

Some Families Still Not Happy With Order Of Names On Memorial - Feb 19, 2004
It matters how large the voids will be that mark the twin towers. And it matters how the grounds will be landscaped and how the horror will be evoked by crushed fire trucks and twisted steel columns. But no issue at the World Trade Center memorial will be so vexing - perhaps even irreconcilable - as the smallest and most personal. The names. (New York Times)

Memorial Contestant Accuses Jury Of Fraud - Feb 19, 2004
One of the 5,200 losing competitors in the World Trade Center memorial design competition has filed a complaint with the state Ethics Commission alleging fraud and impropriety in the selection process, the Daily News has learned. (New York Daily News)

A 9/11 Memorial For Hoboken - Feb 16, 2004
Two Downtown designers who have made their mark in Lower Manhattan are among the four finalists to design a memorial to the 57 Hoboken residents who died in the Sept. 11 attack. (Downtown Express)

All 5,200 Rejected Memorial Designs To Be Displayed Online - Feb 12, 2004
The 5,200 Ground Zero memorial-design entries eliminated by a jury in favor of "Reflecting Absence" will be displayed on the Internet as early as next week. (New York Post)

New Proposal Would Move 9/11 Remains To Ellis Island - Feb 10, 2004
Some 9/11 victims' families are exploring a proposal to move the incinerated remains of their loved ones from a Staten Island garbage dump to a permanent burial site that would be created on Ellis Island. (Star Ledger)

Interview With Michael Arad, Memorial Designer - Feb 10, 2004
Michael Arad was helping design one of the world's tallest buildings when the September 11, 2001 attacks hit New York. An Israeli who grew up in Jerusalem, London, the US and Mexico, Arad watched firsthand as the Twin Towers collapsed and nearly 3,000 people perished. Soon after, before a design competition was announced, he began formulating a plan for memorializing the dead with a set of inaccessible, empty spaces on the Hudson River. (Jerusalem Post)

The Unchosen Memorials - Feb 1, 2004
5,201 designs were submitted in the 9/11 memorial competition, from 63 countries and 49 states, from individuals of all ages, many without any design experience. An unscientific survey revealed everything from scaled-down twin towers to classical references to sources at which observers can only guess. Here is a sampling of 10, culled from Web sites, blind submissions to The New York Times and word-of-mouth recommendations. (New York Times)

Poet Criticizes Memorial, In Verse - Jan 27, 2004
Opinions about the plans for a World Trade Center memorial are easy to find. Precious few qualify as poetry, though. Eugene Schlanger's thoughts carry no more weight than anyone else's. But their lyricism is unmistakable, agree with them or not. (New York Times)

On Memorial, Great Minds Think Alike? - Jan 26, 2004
A memorial for Ground Zero designed by Stuvyestant High School students last June contains several now-familiar features: A series of ramps leading to two reflecting pools at the Twin Tower footprints. A wall of names around the pools honoring those people killed on 9/11. A handful of trees surrounding the pools on a street-level plaza. A cultural building nearby on Greenwich St. (Downtown Express)

The New PATH Station - Jan 23, 2004
In aesthetics and logistics, Mr. Calatrava's design aspires to be far more than a commuter rail station, vital as that is to Lower Manhattan. Its admirers are already mentioning it in the same breath as the old Pennsylvania Station, which was torn down in the early 1960's, and Grand Central Terminal, which Mr. Calatrava claimed as his "deepest inspirational object." (New York Times)

Michael Arad: Memorial Designer - Jan 21, 2004
What made Michael Arad stop feeling like an outsider and start feeling like a bona fide New Yorker was, he says, the horror of Sept. 11: he watched the second plane hit from his rooftop, raced downtown to find his wife and, from Fulton Street, experienced the collapse of the first tower. Even before the memorial contest, he began work on a memorial. (New York Times)

A New Contract For Memorial Designers - Jan 21, 2004
In approving a contract renewal Tuesday with the winning designers of the World Trade Center memorial, the board of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation established, for the first time, the consulting fees the two men will be paid. (Newsday)

At Ground Zero, Rebuilding With Nature In Mind - Jan 20, 2004
While most of the anguished debate about ground zero has focused on recreating and remembering what was once there, another effort has been moving forward to create on the site something that never existed, an environmentally sensitive city within a city that is attuned to nature as well as the real estate market. (New York Times)

Stories of the Memorial Jury - Jan 19, 2004
Above all else, it was a jury. It was sequestered, for six months, from those who would intrude. Its members were trapped in deliberation until consensus could be established. It called for expert testimony, then called for it again. It quarreled. It soul-searched. It schmoozed and, yes, it laughed. (New York Times)

Police Commissioner's Security Measures - Jan 18, 2004
Interview: Police Commissioner Ray Kelly Discusses His Department's Work At Fighting Terrorism And General Crime (WNBC)

Bloomberg Would Have Preferred Ground Zero School To A Memorial - Jan 17, 2004
Mayor Bloomberg disclosed that he would have built new schools where the World Trade Center once stood - instead of a memorial commemorating the dead. Talking on his weekly radio show yesterday, Bloomberg was careful not to criticize the winning design for the memorial, titled Reflecting Absence. But he suggested that a better approach would have been building new schools. (New York Daily News)

The Juror Who Gave Birth While Considering Memorials - Jan 17, 2004
She was pregnant in the spring when she and her fellow jurors attended combative public meetings about the World Trade Center memorial. She gave birth in June, and then worked with her colleagues considering 5,201 ideas before selecting the revised plan by Michael Arad and Peter Walker that was unveiled to the public on Wednesday. (Downtown Express)

An Abundance Of New Ideas In Revised Memorial - Jan 15, 2004
It seemed unlikely that there could be more surprises yesterday when the tweaked, updated, reconciled - and leaked - World Trade Center memorial was unveiled by Gov. George E. Pataki, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. After all, the name of the dark-horse winning design - Reflecting Absence, by Michael Arad, 34, and Peter Walker, 71 - was trumpeted last week, and artists' renderings and many of its signature features had been revealed on Tuesday. But though no curtain was parted to reveal the latest model at yesterday's much-anticipated ceremony, a wealth of new details was presented. (New York Times)

Memorial Will Cost Over $350 Million - Jan 15, 2004
It will cost more than $350 million to build the "Reflecting Absence" memorial at Ground Zero, a top development official said yesterday. The preliminary estimate includes the cost of building the tribute's signature reflecting pools and waterfalls, the park, and an underground museum that will contain 9/11 artifacts, such as a crushed fire engine or the last steel column to be removed from Ground Zero. (New York Post)

Public Introduced To Memorial Designer - Jan 15, 2004
Michael Arad is not accustomed to the public arena. That much is clear. In presenting his winning World Trade Center memorial model Wednesday in the glare of the international press and New York's political honchos, Arad seemed barely able to breathe. He spoke softly. His emotions seemed scarcely restrained. He seemed intimidated by the stage he now commands -- or perhaps it was that rarest of public qualities: an awestruck humility. (Washington Post)

Victims' Families Renew Request For 9/11 Records - Jan 15, 2004
Families of victims of the World Trade Center terrorist attack said Wednesday they will go back to court to find out more about the final hours of their relatives' lives on September 11, 2001. (CNN)

Artifacts, Bedrock of Footprints Included In Revised Design - Jan 14, 2004
Here is the long-awaited final design of the Ground Zero memorial called "Reflecting Absence" - a tranquil urban forest surrounding two cascading pools sunk into the footprints of the Twin Towers. (New York Post)

Order Of Names In Memorial Draws Criticism From Firefighters - Jan 14, 2004
The controversy over how to list the names of rescue workers in the Ground Zero memorial heated up yesterday, with firefighters voicing disapproval of a plan to list all the 9/11 victims together in random order. (New York Post)

Starting Over: A Firm Rebuilds After Being Hit Hard On 9/11 - Jan 14, 2004
When the planes slammed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, few companies were as hard-hit as a small, close-knit firm called Sandler O'Neill. Of the 83 people in the office that morning, only 17 got out alive. Employees lost mentors, assistants lost bosses, friends lost friends. This is the story of what happened next. (Fortune)

Families Of 9/11 Victims Start Fundraising Drive For Cultural Events - Jan 13, 2004
Relatives of Sept. 11 victims said yesterday they hope to raise $9.11 million by the third anniversary of the terror attack for educational and cultural programs tied to the Ground Zero memorial. Monica Iken, a World Trade Center widow who heads a family group called September's Mission, said money raised through the "9/11 Campaign" will pay for things like museum displays or workshops. Money for the construction of the memorial will be raised through a separate foundation being organized by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. (New York Post)

Firefighters Renew Effort For Memorial Name Distinction - Jan 13, 2004
Firefighters who want the names of 9/11 rescue workers listed separately in the Ground Zero memorial renewed calls yesterday for Gov. Pataki to back their demands. (Firehouse.com)

Turning Three Visions Into One Memorial Design - Jan 12, 2004
Now that Michael Arad and Peter Walker have been chosen as the designers of the World Trade Center memorial site, they are working intently to design it. They met last week at Mr. Walker's office in Berkeley, Calif., and this weekend at Studio Daniel Libeskind on Rector Street, three blocks from ground zero. They are trying to mesh Mr. Arad's arrestingly stark vision for the site with Mr. Walker's distinctive landscaping and Mr. Libeskind's master plan for the entire trade center site. (New York Times)

As Complaints Mount, Memorial Is Revised - Jan 12, 2004
The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency in charge of rebuilding the trade center site, and the selection jury it appointed have been trying to strike a delicate balance between artistic independence and responding to public concerns while considering revisions to Reflecting Absence, recently selected as the 9/11 memorial for Ground Zero. (Associated Press)

About Michael Arad, Memorial Designer - Jan 12, 2004
Upon being notified of the decision, Michael Arad called his parents in Jerusalem to tell them the news. "I'm very proud, happy, and emotionally moved," Moshe Arad told The Jerusalem Post. "I hope that the significance of this will be appreciated by both Israelis and Americans." Arad has been living in the U.S. since finishing his military service in the Israeli Defense Force in 1991. He received a BA from Dartmouth College, and a MA from Georgia Tech's College of Architecture. (Israel 21c)

Culture To Return To Memorial - Jan 10, 2004
Michael Arad wanted to take out almost all of the cultural buildings adjacent to the World Trade Center memorial in his original Reflecting Absence design, but his revised plan selected by the jury this week will restore most if not all of the museum and performance spaces, according to planning officials. (Downtown Express)

Childs Takes Freedom Tower Design to Community Board 1 - Jan 10, 2004
Freedom Tower architect David Childs offered more details Wednesday on security and public access for his building, a collaboration with site planner Daniel Liebskind that could restore Downtown’s skyline as early as 2006. At a Community Board 1 meeting, Childs stressed that much about the design for the 1,776-foot tower remained subject to change. But he presented one certainty along with the “fluid” plans: The building would be among the safest in the world. (Downtown Express)

Israeli Architect Chosen As Memorial Designer - Jan 10, 2004
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has chosen Israeli architect Michael Arad, a resident of New York, to design the monument at the devastated World Trade Center site in Manhattan. Arad, 34, was born in London. He lives in Manhattan and is an architect at the New York City Engineering Department. (Haaretz)

Memorial To Preserve World Trade Tower Columns - Jan 9, 2004
The 9/11 memorial will preserve traces of the north tower's steel columns and the building's bedrock footprint, which visitors will be able to view in an underground room, sources said yesterday. The revised memorial design, which is being fleshed out this week, would respond to groups of 9/11 family members who have demanded the footprints of both World Trade Center towers be preserved at bedrock. (New York Post)

How Memorial Acquired A Second Designer - Jan 8, 2004
When a proposal called Reflecting Absence was submitted last year to the World Trade Center memorial site competition, there was one name on it: that of Michael Arad, a young architect for the New York City Housing Authority. When Reflecting Absence was announced on Tuesday as the winner of the six-month competition, there was another name: Peter Walker of Berkeley, California, who has 45 years of experience in the teaching and practice of landscape architecture. (New York Times)

Memorial Design Wins Fans - Jan 8, 2004
Visitors to Ground Zero yesterday voiced approval of the minimalist memorial design chosen for the tragic site. "They went out of their way to make sure that the right memorial was chosen," said Gary Scarder, of Brooklyn. "It's definitely a compliment to those who we've lost." (New York Post)

Memorial Design Faces Revisions - Jan 8, 2004
The design of two pools standing in the World Trade Center's footprints was among the most minimal of entries in the Sept. 11 memorial competition. Its simplicity conveyed both profound loss and rebirth, a jury found in choosing it. But a day after hearing that designer Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker would present a significantly revised version of their ``Reflecting Absence'' design next week, some wondered how much of the original plan would be left. (Associated Press)

Reconciling The Site Plan And The Memorial Design - Jan 8, 2004
The two designers of the winning entry for the World Trade Center memorial are to meet today with Ground Zero master planner Daniel Libeskind in Berkeley, Calif., to begin the prickly task of making their disparate schemes fit together, sources said. (New York Daily News)

'Reflecting Absence' Picked As Memorial - Jan 7, 2004
The memorial at ground zero will be a teeming grove of trees above two deep reflecting pools within the outlines of the twin towers. At least that was the initial concept. For though the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation yesterday announced the winner of the competition to memorialize those slain at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and Feb. 26, 1993, it delayed a complete description of the design and its image, as well as access to its creators, until a high-profile unveiling planned for next week. (New York Times)

Experienced Architect Added To 'Reflecting Absence' Team - Jan 7, 2004
Yesterday, in announcing that Reflecting Absence had beaten two other designs that were informal semifinalists last week, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation said "significant" changes had been made in Mr. Arad's original design. The corporation also said Mr. Arad was collaborating with the landscape architect Peter Walker. Mr. Arad was virtually unheard of until the finalists were selected, while Mr. Walker has worked with some of the biggest names in architecture, including I. M. Pei, Rem Koolhaas, Norman Foster and Yoshio Taniguchi. (New York Times)

To Jury, Less Was More - Jan 7, 2004
In the end, the jury seemed to see the same thing so many people have seen at the World Trade Center site since Sept. 11, 2001: what is not there. Faced with many possible additions to the site, jurors in the memorial competition chose subtraction instead. As conceived by Michael Arad, Reflecting Absence would evoke the outlines of the twin towers as pool-filled voids in the earth, 30 feet deep and almost an acre each in extent. Perhaps more than any finalist, this design expresses loss in stark, unambiguous visual terms. (New York Times)

With Changes, 'Reflecting Absence' Is The One - Jan 7, 2004
A minimalist design that marks the World Trade Center footprints with two cascading pools of water is the surprise winner for the Ground Zero memorial, officials announced yesterday. A statement from the jury said the winning design "has evolved significantly" since it was first shown as one of eight finalists last November. (New York Post)

Cop Caught Videotaping Girl In Shower Blames 9/11 - Jan 7, 2004
A Port Authority cop who admitted to videotaping an 11-year-old Queens girl while she showered blames the horrors of 9/11 for his candid-camera work, his lawyer said yesterday. (New York Post)

- Nov 30, 1999
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Memorial Design is Chosen - Jan 6, 2004
After six weeks of deliberation, the jury assembled to choose a memorial for the site of the World Trade Center has made its decision, which it will announce today. The full description of the winning design will not be made until next week, said Matthew Higgins, the corporation's chief operating officer. (New York Times)

Jury May Decide On Memorial Today - Jan 5, 2004
The Ground Zero memorial jury will meet today and may pick a winning design, sources familiar with the competition said. The 13-member jury has narrowed its choices down to three designs and will focus on them in their discussions today. (New York Post)

Jury Is Said To Have Narrowed Its Choices - Dec 31, 2003
The jury that is to choose a design for the memorial at the World Trade Center site has narrowed its choices to two favorites, Garden of Lights and Passages of Light: the Memorial Cloud, people involved in the process said yesterday. Another design, Reflecting Absence, is also expected to be under consideration when the jurors reconvene early next week to judge the substantive changes that have been made, both at their request and by the artists themselves. (New York Times)

Tourists Return to New York - Dec 29, 2003
The tourists are back. Official statistics are hard to come by. But for the last week, more than 1,000 tourists a day have been dropping by NYC & Company's Visitor Information Center, a level not reached since before Sept. 11, 2001, a spokeswoman said. (New York Times)

PATH Traffic Down Significantly Since 9/11 - Dec 28, 2003
The new World Trade Center PATH station is moving just over 1/3 of the riders it did before 9/11 -- a dramatic indication of the job and economic losses in Lower Manhattan, Port Authority data show. (New York Post)

A Few Families Reject Compensation Fund - Dec 24, 2003
A handful of families have eschewed the money available to victims of the terrorist attacks, filing neither a lawsuit nor a claim through the federal Victims Compensation Fund. The exact number of families who filed is not yet known, because claims that were postmarked by the Monday deadline are still trickling in. As of yesterday, though, the Justice Department said that the families of 2,833 victims - more than 95 percent of the 2,976 killed on Sept. 11 - had filed claims. (Newsday)

Silverstein, Port Authority, Close Deal for $229 Million - Dec 24, 2003
Developer Larry Silverstein got more than $229 million in cash - all wrapped up in time for the holidays - when he closed a deal yesterday with the Port Authority to restructure the finances of his World Trade Center lease. The holiday bundle includes the return of the $98.5 million that Silverstein and his partners plunked down as equity when they leased the trade center from the Port Authority in July 2001, just weeks before the terror attacks. (New York Post)

Slow Down! says Giuiliani - Dec 22, 2003
STOP. Start over. It is not too late to get it right. So argues Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has studied the eight designs being considered for a World Trade Center memorial and does not like what he sees. (New York Times)

Deadline For Federal Victims Compensation Fund Looming - Dec 21, 2003
People who lost loved ones or were injured in the 9/11 terrorist attacks have until midnight tomorrow to file with the federal Victims Compensation Fund. Officials expect nearly 90% of those eligible to file, depite a slow start and months of controversy. (New York Daily News)

9/11 Relics Rust in Hangar - Dec 19, 2003
There are no planes behind the mammoth locked doors of Hangar 17 at Kennedy International Airport. Instead, it hides history. This is where a 100-foot-tall by 100-foot-wide section of the lower facade of the north tower — the infamous Gothic arches — is kept, disassembled into 25 pieces weighing 80,000 pounds apiece. Laid out on the floor are the crumpled remains of the north tower antenna. Parked in one corner is an assortment of crushed fire trucks. Here rests the last column removed from ground zero, complete with the graffiti from firefighters and ironworkers who recovered victims and cleaned the site. (New York Times)

Childs Reduced Height of Tower to Reach Agreement with Libeskind - Dec 17, 2003
In the end, the magic number for resolving the design impasse over the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site turned out to be 276 feet. That was how much the architect David M. Childs reduced the height of the tower he is designing for the developer Larry A. Silverstein, one of several gestures that allowed Mr. Childs's counterpart, Daniel Libeskind, to certify that the Freedom Tower would fit in with his overall master plan for the site. (New York Times)

Feelings on Memorials Vary, Two Separate Studies of Public Opinion Indicate - Dec 17, 2003
A report released Tuesday by Imagine New York concludes that many people view the jagged wreckage and other relics from the attack more favorably than the final eight memorial designs. Negative comments on the memorials outweighed positive comments for all eight finalists, the report said. A Pace University exit poll taken at the Winter Garden where the designs are on display offered another take on public reaction. Sixty-two percent of people backed the selection process, which has been controversial in some quarters. Two designs, Votives in Suspension and Suspending Memory, got the most positive reviews. (Newsday)

Decision on Memorial Design Delayed 'At Least A Month' - Dec 17, 2003
The panel mulling the permanent memorial for Ground Zero has ordered up changes in some designs and is delaying its decision at least a month, sources said yesterday. The 13-member jury, made up of architects, artists, historians and others appointed by Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg, had been expected topick a design by the end of the year. (New York Daily News)

9/11 Rugs Not Big Sellers on New York Streets - Dec 15, 2003
With an appraiser's scrutiny, Ed Cutting, a New York City firefighter, stared at a fine Afghan rug painstakingly hand woven in a style centuries old. Its handiwork depicted an epic scene. He stood Saturday in a weekend flea market at Avenue A and 11th Street in the East Village, at a booth displaying rugs. Several of the rugs, in a style usually reserved for depicting landscapes or abstract tribal patterns, showed a crudely rendered interpretation of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. (New York Times)

Trade Center Fireproofing Tests Suggest A Wider Problem - Dec 14, 2003
Hundreds of buildings nationwide with fireproofing similar to that used in the World Trade Center could be far more prone to structural damage during major fires than previously thought, according to preliminary calculations by federal investigators. The investigators are studying the precise causes of the World Trade Center collapse. Their work includes calculations of how heat moves through steel building components with small gaps or imperfections in fireproofing insulation. Their inquiry, which is still in its early stages, shows that during a fire such flaws can act as sluice gates for heat, allowing it to enter the steel, where it becomes trapped, weakening the structure. (New York Times)

Democrats Protest Use of Liberty Bonds for Queens Power Plant - Dec 13, 2003
A group of Democratic lawmakers yesterday denounced New York State's offer to a Massachusetts-based energy company of $400 million in tax-exempt Liberty Bonds, which are intended to revive Lower Manhattan after the attack on the World Trade Center. A state-run agency administering the Liberty Bond program announced on Thursday that it had awarded the bonds to Astoria Energy to help finance the 1,000-megawatt power plant it seeks to build in Astoria, Queens. (New York Times)

EPA Releases Downtown Lead Tests - Dec 11, 2003
Lead was the most common contaminant found among the 263 Lower Manhattan apartments the Environmental Protection Agency tested for a range of possible 9/11-related toxins, according to results released on Monday. Of the 222 apartments E.P.A. contractors tested before and after cleaning, 70, or 31.5 percent, had lead levels before cleaning that exceeded the agency’s conservative benchmark of 25 micrograms per square foot. After cleaning, 16 apartments still had levels of lead above the E.P.A. standard. E.P.A. spokesperson Mary Mears cautioned that urban environments often have background lead, making it hard to tell whether the lead detected in wipe tests came from the World Trade Center collapse. (Downtown Express)

Memorial Needs Vision, says Libeskind - Dec 10, 2003
Any memorial chosen for the World Trade Center site should link the city to the past yet move New Yorkers toward the future, architect Daniel Libeskind said Tuesday. Libeskind, who submitted the winning design for the redevelopment of the site, said he would work to integrate the vision of the winner of the memorial competition into his guidelines for the site. (Associated Press)

Libeskind Won With Smear Campaign, Says A Member of His Team - Dec 9, 2003
Architect Daniel Libeskind launched a political-style name-calling campaign against a rival design team to undermine its chances of being chosen as Ground Zero master planner, according to one of Libeskind's partners. In a lecture at SUNY Buffalo on Oct. 8, urban planner Gary Hack described the competition for the job - which Libeskind eventually won - as "the architectural equivalent of nuclear war." (New York Post)

Assemblyman Doesn't Want Liberty Bonds Used for Queens Power Plant - Dec 7, 2003
A Queens assemblyman is threatening legal action to stop the backers of a proposed power plant from using New York Liberty Bonds to fund the troubled project. "This is a continuing pattern of preferential treatment over more worthy projects," said Assemblyman Mike Gianaris, a Democrat from Astoria, who's weighing a lawsuit to block the bond issue. (New York Post)

A Look At Some Of The Other Memorial Designs - Dec 7, 2003
The eight design finalists for a Ground Zero memorial have been met with fierce criticism and a call for the jury to take a second look at some of the 5,193 submissions that didn't make the cut - but a review of dozens of these also-rans helps to underscore how difficult the judge's job has been. (New York Post )

Non-Finalists Discuss Their Memorial Designs - Dec 7, 2003
Some 60 people, including a 6-year-old boy, who were among the 5,000 entrants who submitted Ground Zero memorial designs, and lost, met in lower Manhattan yesterday to protest the closed-door judging process that produced the eight finalist proposals. The group ranged from a New York heart surgeon to a first-grader. (New York Post)

Corporate Incentive Program Being Rewritten to Focus on Lower Manhattan - Dec 6, 2003
A deal has been struck to renew a major corporate incentive program that will help lure jobs to lower Manhattan from outside the city, The Post has learned. The Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, known as REAP, will provide companies with $3,000 per job for 12 years if they come to downtown from outside the city. (New York Post)

Judge Rules Against Forcing Disqualified Memorial Design into Contest - Dec 5, 2003
A Manhattan judge yesterday sank the Twin Piers proposal for a Ground Zero memorial, refusing to order development officials to include it among the finalists being judged by the 9/11 jury. State Supreme Court Justice William Wetzel ruled that Twin Piers designer Fred Bernstein tried to get around the rules of the memorial competition, which barred a person from submitting more than one proposal. (New York Post)

Memorial Jury Wanted to Avoid Public Pressure With Single Stage Contest - Dec 4, 2003
Anticipating a frenzy of public criticism, the Ground Zero memorial jury pushed to keep all the designs secret until a winner was picked - but officials running the competition insisted on putting the eight finalists on display, sources told The Post. Numerous jury members, including Vietnam Veterans Memorial designer Maya Lin, warned that unveiling the finalists before a second stage of judging would make it difficult for them to do their job without coming under intense public pressure, said the sources, who are familiar with the panel's concerns. (New York Post)

Jury Can Change Memorial Plans - Dec 3, 2003
The 13-member jury deciding on the final design of the World Trade Center memorial will have the flexibility to make changes, Kevin Rampe, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., said Tuesday. "There's a high chance the selected design will be different from any of the eight you see out there now," Rampe told more than 500 attendees at a breakfast sponsored by Crain's NY Business, where he also discussed his vision for transportation and bond financing for lower Manhattan. "What was seen in the press was more of a first draft." (Newsday)

Community Board One Rejects One Memorial Design, Criticizes the Rest - Dec 3, 2003
Community Board 1’s World Trade Center redevelopment committee quickly ruled out one of the eight proposals for the ground zero memorial then spent most of the rest of Monday night lamenting at the lack of vision in the other seven. The board’s executive committee is expected to vote on a memorial resolution at its next meeting on Dec. 10, 49 Chambers St., room 709 at 6 p.m. in the hopes the 13-member memorial jury put together by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. will listen to the board’s recommendations. (Downtown Express)

Nadler Criticizes Maloney's Memorial Bill - Dec 3, 2003
A proposed bill by U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney about the World Trade Center memorial has angered Downtown leaders and reignited her rivalry with U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who accused his fellow Democrat of “invading my district.” The bill would authorize a study to see whether it is feasible to preserve the bedrock area where the Twin Towers once stood. If the area was subsequently landmarked before construction on the memorial began, the bill’s detractors say it would lead to delays, particularly since none of the eight possible designs announced in November preserve the entire footprint bedrock area. (Downtown Express)

Port Authority Pays Silverstein's Debt - Dec 2, 2003
The Port Authority agreed yesterday to use $710 million in World Trade Center insurance proceeds as part of a reordering of the project's tangled finances - buying back the rebuilding rights to the WTC mall and paying off the mortgage of Twin Towers leaseholder Larry Silverstein. (New York Post)

How Poorly Did the Environmental Protection Agency React to 9/11? - Nov 30, 2003
From the first days after Sept. 11, 2001, the fears and unknowns about health and air quality in Lower Manhattan were compounded by the politics that swirl, as always, around the Environmental Protection Agency. An arm of the federal government that is second-guessed and distrusted as perhaps no other had been put in charge of the environmental response. What was in the air and what people in Washington and New York believed about the E.P.A. were immediately intertwined. (New York Times)

Some Firefighters Have Left Spouses for 9/11 Widows - Dec 1, 2003
At least a dozen of New York's Bravest - some of them assigned to look after Sept. 11 widows - have left their wives for the spouses of their comrades killed in the terror attacks, sources told The Post. (New York Post)

Practical Problems Arise With Memorial Designs - Nov 29, 2003
It may be early in the process to worry about the designs' details, which will be refined and revised. But interviews with people who worry about such things for a living — an arborist, an urban planner, a civil engineer, a structural engineer and others — suggest that some problems are already apparent. (New York Times)

Ground Zero Workers Dropping Lawsuits Against City - Nov 29, 2003
Hundreds of workers who got sick after working on the World Trade Center recovery and cleanup are dropping their lawsuits against the city, officials said yesterday. (New York Daily News)

An Old Sign, Touting Marvels Of World Trade Center, Still Up On Church Street - Nov 28, 2003
hile "World Trade Center" signs around the new PATH station startled commuters and visitors this week, a smaller but even more poignant graphic remnant of the past was hiding in plain sight across Church Street. "What has 200 elevators, 1,200 restrooms, 40,000 doorknobs, 200,000 lighting fixtures, 7 million square feet of acoustical tile ceilings, more structural steel than the Verrazano Narrows Bridge — and was built for a final cost of over one billion 1970s dollars?" asks the colorful sign between seven-foot cast-iron posts, outside Century 21, near the corner of Cortlandt Street. "That's right, the World Trade Center." ...the sign would stay in place at least a year (New York Times)

Senate Rejects Extension of 9/11 Compensation Program - Nov 26, 2003
Congressional officials from the New York area conceded yesterday that their last-gasp attempt to extend the deadline for the federal government's extraordinary program to compensate the relatives of Sept. 11 victims had all but failed. (New York Times)

Memorial Cloud, Dual Memory Lead in Memorial Poll - Nov 26, 2003
Two designs - one featuring a light-infused glass cloud, the other incorporating pictures of victims - are emerging as the most popular Ground Zero memorial proposals. The civic group Imagine New York, in partnership with other organizations, including the Daily News, has been conducting an online survey to measure public reaction to the eight World Trade Center memorial designs unveiled last week. (New York Daily News)

Young Designers Dominate Memorial Competition - Nov 25, 2003
The unveiling last week of eight competing designs for a World Trade Center memorial has provoked an inevitable debate about whether any of the projects can properly honor those who died on Sept. 11, 2001. But nearly everyone has been struck by how many of these projects, plucked as they were from a pool of more than 5,000 anonymous submissions, are the work of young artists and not the architectural elite. (New York Times)

The Last Train Out on 9/11 - Nov 25, 2003
Noel Roman is haunted by the solitary figure of an older, well-dressed man who plodded up stairs toward the World Trade Center in the final moments of a world that ended on Sept. 11, 2001. "I'm not sure if he was limping or moving with a cane," says Roman, 44, who was at the controls of the last PATH train to leave the trade center before the towers collapsed. "I think he died, you know. What upsets me is that if we knew what was going on, that man never would have gone up those stairs." (Newsday)

Street in Queens Renamed for Firefighter - Nov 24, 2003
Hundreds of people gathered at a street corner in Queens yesterday to rename a street after firefighter Carl F. Asaro, who was killed at the World Trade Center. The intersection of 147th Street and Willets Point Boulevard in Whitestone, where Asaro was born and raised, now bears his name. (New York Post)

Silverstein To Get Cash Back in 9/11 Deal - Nov 22, 2003
The developer Larry A. Silverstein and his investors are getting back most of the cash they put up for their winning bid more than two years ago to take control of the World Trade Center in the largest real estate deal in New York history. Even so, Mr. Silverstein will remain in control of rebuilding the 10 million square feet of office space that is planned for the trade center site in the next 10 or 15 years. In the end, according to people who have been briefed on the deal, he will have little of his own money at risk for one of the most important corners of the Manhattan landscape. (New York Times)

On World Trade Center Memorial, Criticism Outstrips Praise - Nov 22, 2003
The experts having already weighed in voluminously on the subject, the Municipal Art Society asked ordinary people to give their perspectives on the eight finalists in LMDC's memorial competition for Ground Zero, in a handful of small sessions that seemed to blend the give-and-take of a creative writing workshop with the raw emotions of a 12-step meeting. (New York Times)

Memorial Favorites Chosen in Online NY Post Poll - Nov 21, 2003
Two Ground Zero memorial designs - a cloud-like canopy filled with light and another with sunken reflecting pools in the footprints - have emerged as the favorites, according to several Web polls yesterday. A survey on The Post's Web site the day after the eight final designs were released to the public showed "Reflecting Absence," by New York Housing Authority architect Michael Arad, as the lead proposal, garnering 26 percent of support from Post readers. (New York Post)

New Yorkers Split on Memorial Designs - Nov 21, 2003
Some memorials console, some teach. And the Sept. 11 memorial proposed for the World Trade Center site may eventually do both. But after the announcement on Wednesday of the eight final designs in the competition, New Yorkers remain deeply split over the memorial's most basic outlines: What is its purpose? Whom is it for? And when should it be done? (New York Times)

9/11 Memorial Jury Confronts Conflicting Agendas - Nov 20, 2003
The jurors of the 9/11 memorial competition had many constituencies to please. And many were unhappy, although there was nowhere near the vehemence as when the initial plans to rebuild the site were announced last year. The chorus of conflicting voices ranged from the outraged to those who found inspiration in the proposals' creativity, but many also expressed the need for further contemplation. (New York Times)

Several Versions of Recollection and Grief - Nov 20, 2003
Eight possible memorials at the World Trade Center site, each deferring in some way to the ghosts of the twin towers, were shown to the nation yesterday. The plans, chosen by a 13-member jury for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, did not come from the hands of celebrated architects but rather a diverse group of designers, many of them young, who live in and work in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Chicago, Houston, Paris, Ithaca, N.Y., and Oakland, Calif. (New York Times)

Families of 9/11 Victims Get Preview of Memorial Finalists - Nov 19, 2003
After seeing the eight finalists in the 9/11 memorial competition, family members of those killed in the attack used words like "reverential" and "respectful" to describe the designs. And "overwhelmed" when speaking of their own feelings. But some expressed disappointment that the plans did not set aside more of the twin towers' foundations as a setting for the memorial. (New York Times)

Competition's Confidentiality Pact Raises Questions - Nov 19, 2003
Don't talk about it. Don't criticize us. We own all of the information (including your notes). That's the message in the open-ended confidentiality agreements that Lower Manhattan Development Corp. officials required memorial competition finalists to sign, according to a blank copy obtained by Newsday. (Newsday)

Families of 9/11 Victims Ask Park Service to Take Over - Nov 18, 2003
Families of 9/11 victims made a last-minute plea yesterday for the National Park Service to intervene at Ground Zero and preserve the area where the majority of the dead were found. The families asked that the "historical ruins" where the twin towers once stood be saved and included in a memorial to the terrorist attacks' 2,752 victims. (New York Daily News)

Disqualified Designer Sues LMDC - Nov 18, 2003
A Ground Zero memorial designer who was disqualified as a finalist went to court yesterday to force officials to put his plan back in the running - but redevelopment officials accused him of a "shell game." The judge in the case said he may force the LMDC to reinstate the design. (New York Times)

Officials Oppose Plan to Put Park Service in Charge of Memorial - Nov 17, 2003
Just days before eight Ground Zero memorial designs are made public, development officials yesterday criticized a proposed federal study aimed at putting the National Park Service in charge of the tribute. They said a bill introduced in Congress by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan) that authorizes the study could cause delays in rebuilding if it is passed But Maloney and 9/11 family members said the study is needed to determine whether the Twin Towers' "footprints" should be given landmark status - which could keep anything but the memorial from being built on them. (New York Post)

Extra Security at NYC Landmarks After Bombing in Turkey - Nov 17, 2003
Police have stepped up security at synagogues and major public places in New York in response to the terrorist bombings of Jewish temples in Turkey, officials said yesterday. The measures include posting police cars outside some synagogues and ordering patrol cars or beat cops to pass by others more frequently. Increased police presence was also ordered for city landmarks like Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the East River bridges and other high-profile spots, sources said. (New York Post)

Wife of Police Officer Who Died on 9/11 Won't Get His Pension - Nov 12, 2003
Less than three weeks before his death in the World Trade Center, NYPD Officer Santos Valentin and his wife signed a separation agreement. Now a Manhattan judge has ruled that although the agreement did not specifically remove her as his beneficiary, Selena Valentin will not get her husband's pension, which is worth an estimated $2 million. (New York Post)

Queens Museum of Art to Replace WTC Model With Miniature Tribute in Light - Nov 11, 2003
Twin pale-blue laser beams will replace the miniature replica World Trade Center towers that still stand in the Panorama of the City of New York at the Queens Museum of Art. The Tribute in Light, named in honor of the WTC victims of the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, is scheduled to be complete within the next three months. The Panorama, a scale-model of the entire city, is a permanent exhibit at the museum, where currently a red, white and blue ribbon is intertwined around the model towers. (Newsday)

- Nov 11, 2003
(Select one or type in another)

Possible Memorial Finalist Disqualified - Nov 7, 2003
An unusual proposal for a World Trade Center memorial was initially selected by judges as a potential finalist - but then got bounced when it was discovered the author broke contest rules, The New York Post has learned. The proposal, dubbed Twin Piers, called for two enormous jetties, the size of the Twin Towers, extending into the harbor from Battery Park - bypassing entirely what was supposed to be the main memorial site inside the Ground Zero pit. (New York Post)

Memorial Designs To Be Unveiled By Nov. 17 - Oct 31, 2003
New Yorkers next month will get their first look at eight designs chosen as the finalists for a Ground Zero memorial, Gov. Pataki said yesterday, as he announced steps to move forward with the rebuilding of lower Manhattan. The eight designs will be unveiled the week of Nov. 17 in an exhibit at the Winter Garden, the governor said. (New York Post)

De Niro Investing In TriBeCa Hotel - Oct 31, 2003
Actor Robert De Niro is an investor in a deal to build a new luxury hotel in TriBeCa, to be funded with $38 million in tax-free Liberty Bonds, Gov. Pataki said yesterday. The actor - who last week revealed that he is fighting prostate cancer - wants to break ground on the six-story, 83-room hotel at Greenwich and North Moore streets before the end of the year. (New York Post)

Some Say WTC Health Survey Is Poorly Run - Oct 30, 2003
The city’s World Trade Center Health Registry has not asked enough questions of enough people, downtowners criticized at an environmental forum last week. At the event, sponsored by New York University School of Medicine and held in the landmark Woolworth Building, scientists presented 9/11-related research to an overflow crowd of more than 120 people. Some said that the forum failed to provide the practical health information they were seeking. (Downtown Express)

65,000 call for special 9/11 honors - Oct 22, 2003
A group pushing for special recognition for rescue workers at the Ground Zero memorial brought petitions signed by 65,000 people to Gov. Pataki's midtown office yesterday. Leaders of the group, Advocates for a 9/11 Fallen Heroes Memorial, said they hope that the governor will influence the 13-member panel choosing the memorial design to include separate recognition for firefighters and police officers. (New York Daily News)

Community Board Postpones Decision on 9/11 Street Names - Oct 22, 2003
Faced with a heart-wrenching request from family members, Community Board 1 officials decided last week to postpone any decisions on renaming area streets for Sept. 11 victims until plans for the World Trade Center memorial are announced. (Downtown Express)

Winter Garden Visitors Confused Over Plans - Oct 15, 2003
Although tourists continue to view the World Trade Center site from the Winter Garden’s expansive second-floor picture windows, many do not know that the memorial has not been selected yet, thinking it was already part of the selected site plan of Daniel Libeskind. (Downtown Express)

Memorial Finalists Selected, But Not Revealed - Oct 10, 2003
The jury picking a memorial for the World Trade Center site has selected a group of finalists from among 5,200 submissions, and the designers have been asked to begin refining their ideas. Development officials yesterday refused to discuss details of the competition and would say only that the public will see a number of designs in the "coming weeks." (New York Post)

Rudy: New WTC All About Greed - Sep 11, 2003
Rudolph Giuliani, reflecting on the second anniversary of the terror attacks that capped his mayoralty, said a 1,776-foot office tower planned for Ground Zero is more a tribute to "greed" than to World Trade Center victims. Giuliani, who was grayer at the temples and heavier of frame than when he left City Hall at the end of 2001, called for the creation of a 70-foot deep memorial on the site where the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. plans to erect the world's tallest tower. (Newsday)

Families Want Names on 9/11 Wall - Sep 9, 2003
The families of three retired firefighters who died at the World Trade Center want them included on the list of firefighters who died in the line of duty. The families plan a news conference tonight at Ground Zero to call on the Fire Department to inscribe the names of Capt. James Corrigan and firefighters Phillip Hayes and William Wren on the wall at the department's Brooklyn headquarters that lists firefighters who died in the line of duty. (Newsday)

Personal Tributes to 9/11 Victims - Sep 7, 2003
A grand memorial for all 2,792 who died when the twin towers were destroyed is to be built someday at the former site of the World Trade Center. But as a bitter feud brews over exactly what the memorial should be, the loved ones of the lost have quietly created personal tributes. (New York Daily News)

The 9/11 Memorial: There's Nothing So Closed as an Open Competition - Aug 31, 2003
Ever since the effort to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial made a star of a 21-year-old architecture student named Maya Lin, the open competition -- one that invites all comers to submit proposals -- has been the gold standard in selecting a design for a public memorial. So when officials overseeing the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan began to consider how to erect a homage to the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, there was little question how they would structure the contest. Now, however, as the jury that will pick the winning design for the World Trade Center memorial trudges through 5,200 entries -- three times the number submitted for the Vietnam memorial in 1981 -- it might seem that the purpose of the exercise has been turned on its head. For while an open, anonymous competition is intended to make sure that every entry receives a fair viewing, the flood of proposals ensures that hundreds or even thousands of entries are likely to get no more than a moment's glance from jurors. On the other end of the spectrum, many of the world's most esteemed artists and architects avoid such competitions altogether, given the cost of their time and the extremely long odds against winning. (New York Times)

Honoring the Dead in the City That Never Weeps - Aug 31, 2003
From the very start of serious planning, it was clear that the Sept. 11 memorial at ground zero would face a host of obvious and largely unprecedented challenges. As the design effort has proceeded, however, a less obvious challenge has begun to make itself felt. It arises from the fact that the commemorative ground sits right in the heart of Lower Manhattan, amid the busy streets and soaring towers of the downtown business district. It is the challenge of creating a memorial in a city that, for most of its history, has abhorred the very idea of memorials. (New York Times)

The 9/11 Memorial: Finding Comfort in the Safety of Names - Aug 31, 2003
The competition guidelines for the memorial at ground zero require that the design "recognize each individual who was a victim" on Sept. 11, 2001, and on Feb. 26, 1993, when the World Trade Center was first attacked. It's a safe bet that many of the 5,200 submissions interpret that as some kind of list of names. By aesthetic and social consensus, names are today a kind of reflexive memorial impulse, lists of names having come almost automatically to connote "memorial," just as minimalism has come to be the presumptive sculptural style for memorial design, the monumental blank slate onto which the names can be inscribed. (New York Times)

Memorial Space at Ground Zero Will Hold Unidentified Remains - Aug 25, 2003
The remains of more than a thousand people who died in the attack on the World Trade Center will be preserved in a memorial space built at ground zero, in the hope that science will advance to the point that they can be identified, according to city and state officials. Many relatives of victims killed in the attack have asked that unidentified remains be interred at the former World Trade Center site. The challenge was to accommodate that wish in a way that did not complicate the project design but did preserve the remains for future scientific study. (New York Times)

$100G Each for WTC Finalists - Aug 19, 2003
When finalists for the World Trade Center memorial competition are chosen sometime this fall, each team will receive more than $100,000 to further develop its ideas, redevelopment officials have decided. The board of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation authorized $937,300 Thursday for as many as eight memorial finalists to develop models and three-dimensional computerized designs. Finalists will be chosen this fall from the 5,200 designs submitted to the agency. (Newsday)

Families Want 9/11 to be Day of Giving - Aug 13, 2003
A group of Sept. 11 victims' families and a nonprofit organization want to turn the bleakness of the anniversary of terror into a yearly push for good works and kindness to others. Soon after the 2001 attacks, the group One Day's Pay began planning to ask communities to honor those who died by volunteering their energy or money for good causes. "It's a simple idea," said David Paine, a public relations executive who is president of One Day's Pay. "All we're saying to people is, observe Sept. 11 by doing something good for someone else." (New York Daily News)

Jones Beach 9/11 Memorial Dedicated - Aug 10, 2003
Approximately 150 relatives, friends and dignitaries gathered Friday at the entrance to Field 4 at Jones Beach to unveil and dedicate a 5-foot-high memorial honoring the seven 9/11 victims who either worked at Jones Beach or Robert Moses State Park or was a relative of someone who did. (Newsday)

WTC Families Angry At Giuliani's Call for Special Recognition for Rescue Workers - Aug 9, 2003
Relatives of civilians killed in the terror attacks yesterday were pained and dismayed by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's call for a Ground Zero memorial with special recognition for rescue workers. (New York Daily News)

Giuliani: Special Memorial Recognition for Rescue Workers - Aug 8, 2003
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani declared yesterday that the hundreds of rescue workers in the terror attacks should get special recognition at the Ground Zero memorial. Giuliani addressed the controversial issue after meeting with the panel responsible with shaping the tribute to those who were killed on Sept. 11, 2001. (New York Daily News)

Poll Backs Single 9/11 Memorial - Jul 29, 2003
Half of New Yorkers living downtown believe there should be a single memorial at Ground Zero - with no special distinction for slain firefighters and rescue workers, a new poll shows. About 25% favor a memorial that honors everyone who died and "especially identifies the firefighters and rescue workers," according to the survey tobe released today by Pace University. An even smaller group, 21%, says there should be two memorials at the disaster site - one for the rescue workers and one for everyone else who died. (New York Daily News)

Trade Center Is on Track, Downtown Residents Say - Jul 29, 2003
Residents of Lower Manhattan say the effort to rebuild downtown and the World Trade Center is moving in the right direction, and they are generally satisfied with the new design for the World Trade Center site, according to a poll by Pace University released yesterday. But many downtown residents say that some of the power to make decisions about the rebuilding should be in different hands. (New York Times)

Bus Parking Garage Proposed Near Trade Center - Jul 23, 2003
Hoping to settle a dispute with the families of Sept. 11 victims, officials involved in the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan said yesterday that they had found an alternative site to park the buses that will bring tourists to the World Trade Center memorial. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said they had begun discussions with the Battery Park City Authority about building an underground parking garage on an undeveloped parcel of land along West Street between Vesey and Murray Streets. Officials had originally suggested building the garage underneath the memorial, but many of the victims' families objected. (New York Times)

A Waterfall at the WTC? - Jul 21, 2003
Far from some quixotic idea, a 150-foot waterfall facing the WTC memorial area is part of the approved site plan by architect DanielLibeskind. It is without a doubt the largest, least-talked-about aspect of the Libeskind scheme. (Downtown Express)

5,200 Have Designs on WTC Memorial - Jul 17, 2003
The competition for the World Trade Center memorial attracted 5,200 submissions from 62 nations and every state except Alaska, making it the largest design competition in history, development officials said today. (Newsday)

Why Top Architects Skipped 9/11 Memorial Contest - Jul 17, 2003
Many of the people most qualified to design a memorial at ground zero — eminent architects — didn’t even bother to try out for the opportunity to commemorate the September 11 victims. Renowned architects from Frank Gehry, who created the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, to Bernard Tschumi, who designed Paris’ Parc de la Villette and Columbia University’s Alfred Lerner Hall, to Richard Meier, who designed the Getty Center, didn’t submit plans in the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s ongoing memorial contest. Architects say they avoided the biggest memorial design contest ever because Daniel Libeskind’s master plan proved constraining to people used to leading creative efforts. (New York Sun)

Officials Favor Larger Site for Trade Center Complex - Jul 15, 2003
ruggling to solve an urban-planning Rubik's Cube, the Port Authority is now inclined to expand the World Trade Center redevelopment site to the south by acquiring the property on which the doomed Deutsche Bank tower stands. Since planning began last year, it has never been clear how the trade center superblock alone could comfortably accommodate 10 million square feet of commercial space — roughly what used to be there — and also provide room for a memorial, transportation and cultural centers, new streets, shops and the space and infrastructure below ground needed to make it work. (New York Times)

Coalition Urges Memorial Panel to Ignore the Rules - Jul 9, 2003
Some relatives of World Trade Center victims want the panel choosing plans for a permanent Ground Zero memorial to think a little outside the boxes. The Coalition of 9/11 Families mailed letters to all 13 jurors on the committee, asking them to allow for a tribute that exceeds the guidelines set out for judging ideas submitted for the tribute. (New York Daily News)

WTC Family Members Debate Where To Put Bus Depot - Jul 3, 2003
A memorial at the World Trade Center site is expected to attract millions of visitors from all over the world each year, and the question of where to house tourist buses they'll use to get there has some family members offering alternatives. (NY1)

Trade center beam begins journey to North Carolina - Jul 3, 2003
Firefighters dedicated a 3,000-pound beam from the World Trade Center on Thursday and sent it by convoy to Camp Lejeune, N.C., where it will become the centerpiece of a Sept. 11 memorial in a July Fourth ceremony. (Newsday)

Graffiti WTC Memorial Site - Jul 2, 2003
Underneath the names listed on memorial plaques at the World Trade Center site, visitors can view six information panels featuring illustrations and descriptions of the towers _ now covered with graffiti. (Newsday)

Plans Pour In for Memorial at 9/11 Site - Jul 1, 2003
For months the talk about the World Trade Center site has concerned office space, building designs, street grids, transit hubs and financing, but yesterday attention turned to what many people first thought of immediately after Sept. 11 — a memorial to the dead. (New York Times)

Monday Is Deadline To Submit Ideas For WTC Memorial - Jun 29, 2003
Monday is the final day for participants to submit an idea for the World Trade Center memorial. The competition was open to any adult in the world, but registration is already closed. Nearly 14,000 people from 94 countries have signed up. (NY1)

Giuliani Wants to Nearly Double Size of Memorial - Jun 26, 2003
Rudy Giuliani wants to nearly double the size of the planned Ground Zero memorial - and believes federal intervention might be necessary to guarantee a fitting tribute. The ex-mayor said the "sacred ground" within the site's retaining walls - about 9 acres - should be preserved to honor those killed on Sept. 11, 2001. Doing so would roughly double the area now proposed for the memorial by rebuilding officials, including Gov. Pataki. (New York Daily News)

Audacity, Democracy, Grief: Memorializing Ground Zero - Jun 25, 2003
For $25 each, more than 13,000 people from 94 countries and all 50 states have signed up to submit a design for the World Trade Center site memorial competition. They're due by next Monday. Then a jury of 13 architects, artists, and family and community members will wade through the submissions and hold public hearings to come up with a final design. The process is as big and audacious as New York itself, while its democratic character is as American as the town meeting. Coming so close to the event, which is unusual in the history of memorial building, the process is also marked by unusually raw emotions. (Christian Science Monitor)

Bloomberg's Comments Anger 9/11 Families - Jun 22, 2003
Mayor Bloomberg told a New Jersey couple who want to reclaim WTC ashes from a city dump that he had difficulty supporting their cause because "I intend to leave my body to science." His new comments have angered families of 9/11 victims, who describe them as "cold," "heartless" and "dismissive" of their grief. (New York Post)

9/11 Injury Claims Go Federal - Jun 23, 2003
A Manhattan federal court judge has ruled that plaintiffs claiming they were injured during recovery efforts at the World Trade Center site between Sept. 11 and Sept. 29, 2001, should have their cases handled in federal court. The judge also ruled that those injured during cleanup efforts at other sites after that date should bring their cases in state court. (Newsday)

Pentagon 9/11 Memorial Design Winner To Be Displayed - Jun 21, 2003
The winning memorial design for the Pentagon victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and five other finalists will be displayed at the Municipal Art Society starting June 30. The winners, Manhattan-based Julie Beckman and Keith Kaseman, had never entered a competition before creating their design to honor the 184 victims who died at the Pentagon. (Newsday)

Garage at WTC Isn't Ruled Out - Jun 18, 2003
Even though Gov. Pataki told Sept. 11 victims' families that he opposes putting a bus garage at Ground Zero, the idea remains on the table. Environmental and rebuilding documents released yesterday by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. repeatedly refer to using the site's underbelly as a potential bus depot. (New York Daily News)

Conflicts Over Memorial, West St. Tunnel - Jun 18, 2003
The issues of whether or not to bring the World Trade Center memorial to street level, build a parking garage underneath and an adjacent vehicular tunnel along West St. headed on a collision course last week. Disputes on all three interrelated issues intensified at various meetings. (Downtown Express)

Telemarketer Admits WTC Fraud - Jun 17, 2003
The president of a Long Island City telemarketing firm pleaded guilty Monday to pocketing tens of thousands of dollars he falsely claimed he was collecting for the families of police officers killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. (Newsday)

Whitehead: Placement of 9/11 Memorial Up to the Jury - Jun 13, 2003
The head of the agency overseeing Ground Zero reconstruction said yesterday the placement of the Sept. 11 memorial is up to the panel that will select the design. "The door is slightly ajar, but not very far ajar" on a proposal to raise to street level the sunken memorial in architect Daniel Libeskind's plan, said John Whitehead, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. (New York Daily News)

Environmental Review Ahead for LMDC - Jun 13, 2003
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's project plan for the World Trade Center site is about to go through a rigorous environmental review process, and by law, the public gets its say. The agency is also facing pressure from government officials and advocacy groups to distribute the remaining $1.3 billion allocated by Congress for downtown's redevelopment. (Newsday)

Memorial Jury Hears Residents, Families Clash - Jun 11, 2003
The tensions between relatives of the 9/11victims and Lower Manhattan residents played out last Thursday at an invitation-only meeting before 12 of the 13 jurors who will decide on the memorial to those who died in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11 2001 and the six who died in 1993 when the Twin Towers were bombed. (Downtown Express)

Bloomberg Stirs Memorial Feud - Jun 8, 2003
Wading into an emotionally charged debate, Mayor Bloomberg said police, fire and other emergency service personnel deserve special recognition on the memorial that will be erected at Ground Zero. "I personally believe that that memorial at the World Trade Center site must provide recognition to the firefighters, police officers and EMTs who, like Michael, fell saving the lives of others," Bloomberg said at yesterday's funeral Mass for Michael Cammarata, 22, the youngest member of the Fire Department to die in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. (New York Daily News)

9/11 Volunteers Denied Millions for Wages, Medical Bills - Jun 9, 2003
Hundreds of volunteers who gave all they could to New York after the Sept. 11 attacks are being shut out of state programs designed to cover medical bills and lost wages of those hurt at Ground Zero. Although Congress gave New York $150 million in emergency aid to pay for workers' compensation, the state has used only $44 million of the money. (New York Daily News)

9/11 Relatives, Residents Call for Fitting Memorial Plan - Jun 6, 2003
Relatives of World Trade Center victims made emotional pleas last night about the permanent memorial at the site during the final public hearing by the panel that will pick the design. The family members squared off with people living near the 16-acre site, many of whom don't like the current proposal for a sunken memorial up to 30 feet below street level. (New York Daily News)

Thousands Vie to Design W.T.C. Memorial - Jun 4, 2003
Thirteen thousand six hundred and eighty-three people have four weeks to submit their idea of how best to memorialize the victims of the 9/11 attacks and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. (Downtown Express)

Interview: Architect Daniel Liebeskind Discusses His Plan For Memorializing The World Trade Center - Jun 4, 2003
Interview: Architect Daniel Liebeskind Discusses His Plan For Memorializing The World Trade Center, Post-9/11. (wnbc.com)

13,000 Register For WTC Memorial Contest - May 31, 2003
Some 13,683 people registered for the trade center memorial competition, coming from all 50 states and 94 countries, redevelopment officials said Friday. The competition has attracted the largest number of registrants for a design competition in history, although it remains to be seen how many people submit designs for a memorial, said Kevin Rampe, interim president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. (Newsday)

Memorial Jury to Decide How to List 9/11 Rescuers - May 31, 2003
A Top rebuilding official said yesterday that the guidelines for the World Trade Center memorial were flexible enough to allow the professional affiliations of firefighters and other rescue workers to be listed on it with their names, if the memorial jury chose a design that did so. The issue has been the subject of aggressive lobbying and demonstrations by firefighters and other rescue workers in recent weeks. While some firefighters have campaigned for a separate memorial for rescue workers, a larger number have asked that "F.D.N.Y." or other such affiliations be listed with the names of rescue workers who were killed at the trade center. (New York Times)

Panel to Decide on a 9/11 Separate Memorial - May 31, 2003
Firefighters battling to have fallen rescue workers singled out in a Ground Zero memorial to victims of the Sept. 11 attacks got a glimmer of hope yesterday when a key official said the decision will be left to a "memorial jury." Lower Manhattan Development Corp. interim President Kevin Rampe said a 13-member panel, not the LMDC, will decide whether firefighters, cops and ambulance workers who died Sept. 11 are distinguished from others. (New York Daily News)

Jury for Sept. 11 Memorial Is Facing Spirited Lobbying - May 30, 2003
An intense lobbying effort is under way, both in public and behind the scenes, to influence the jury that will choose the design for a memorial at the World Trade Center site. A group of family members of victims of the Sept. 11 attack that serves as an advisory council to rebuilding officials met with the jury this week. Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has been promised a similar private session. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Gov. George E. Pataki and board members of the lead rebuilding agency will also be offered meetings with the jury. Publicly, firefighters, downtown residents and business leaders have begun to push to have their desires represented in the memorial. (New York Times)

Firefighters Insist WTC Memorial List Uniform Affiliations - May 29, 2003
Hundreds of firefighters and their relatives packed a public hearing last night in Manhattan to demand special recognition for firefighters and other uniformed personnel in any World Trade Center site memorial. Their pleas for listing the affiliation of each of the more than 400 uniformed services members who died on Sept. 11 dominated the hearing at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. (Newsday)

At Public Hearing, 150 Rally for Special 9/11 Memorial - May 29, 2003
Chanting "Never Forget," nearly 150 firefighters rallied outside a public hearing in Tribeca last night where officials met to take suggestions for a permanent Ground Zero memorial. The firefighters' anger centers on a decision by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. that the memorial not distinguish between civilians and rescuers. (New York Daily News)

Chinatown Businesses Battle SARS Fears and Rumors - Apr 30, 2003
As rumor played tug-of-war with reality last week in Chinatown, community members voiced concern that an outbreak of the SARS virus—actual or perceived—could bring further economic damage to an area already struggling with fears of the illness. (Downtown Express)

In 9/11 Memorial Competition, Rules Are Set to Be Broken - Apr 29, 2003
Officials overseeing the competition to design a memorial to the victims of the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center promised yesterday that all entries would be considered, even those that stray from the official guidelines for the placement and content of the memorial. (New York Times)

WTC Memorial Design Contest Begins - Apr 28, 2003
Anyone anywhere in the world can register for the competition to select a World Trade Center memorial, starting Monday. While the guidelines require designers to be at least age 18, teens and children can participate, provided an adult registers for them and serves as designer of record -- no design, architecture expertise or experience needed. (Newsday)

Push for Second 9/11 Memorial - Apr 27, 2003
A disturbing photo of a firefighter walking to his death on Sept. 11, 2001, is being used in a public relations blitz by a group that wants special honors at the Ground Zero memorial for uniformed workers. Posters of the photo are going up around the city today, a day before officials launch the international competition for the permanent tribute to the nearly 3,000 people who died in the World Trade Center attacks. (New York Daily News)

Angry 9/11 Families Seek Federal Role In Memorial Plan - Apr 24, 2003
A coalition of victims? families groups is pushing the federal government to take a larger role in the September 11 memorial, driven by anger and mistrust toward the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and a desire to create a national monument. The "federal outreach" has begun already and will climax with a mid-May trip to Washington. (New York Sun)

Kids Can Submit WTC Memorial Plans - Apr 18, 2003
Children and teens with memorial designs for the World Trade Center can submit them, even though the competition requires would-be entrants to be 18 or older, redevelopment officials said. Anyone under 18 can enter, provided they work with an adult willing to register with the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. for the young person or group of people, and serve as the designer of record. (Newsday)

Development Corporation Announces Memorial Jury, Calls for Victims to Be Honored Equally - Apr 11, 2003
Officials overseeing the creation of a memorial to victims of the World Trade Center attack rebuffed a request yesterday from a group of New York City firefighters for separate recognition of uniformed rescue workers on the memorial. The development corporation also announced the selection yesterday of a 13-member jury to judge the competition. The jury, which includes prominent artists, architects, scholars, a woman whose husband was killed and a downtown resident and business owner, will choose a design in late October or early November, officials said. (New York Times)

Governor's Pals On Memorial Jury - Apr 11, 2003
A former top aide to Gov. Pataki and a contributor to the governor's re-election campaign were appointed yesterday to the panel that will choose a design for a Ground Zero memorial. Neither Mike McKeon, a former Pataki spokesman who recently joined a private consulting and lobbying firm, nor downtown businesswoman Julie Menin, who gave the governor $11,000 last year, has the sort of arts or design background that officials have repeatedly said would be needed as jury members judge what could be thousands of design submissions. (New York Post)

Vietnam Memorial Architect May Sit on Jury - Apr 10, 2003
Maya Lin, the architect who designed the famed Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, is expected to sit on the jury that selects the final tribute to the World Trade Center victims, sources told the Daily News yesterday. Lin's participation on the jury would preclude her from submitting her own ideas for the Ground Zero memorial — something that many architects and victims' families had hoped she would do. (New York Daily News)

Britain to Bury WTC Girder in Memorial - Apr 10, 2003
A section of steel girder from the World Trade Center will be buried in a planned memorial garden to prevent distress to victims' relatives, officials said Wednesday. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which is overseeing the memorial's construction, said the intention was to make the garden a place where people could look forward to the future. The blackened, twisted piece of metal from Tower One was given to Britain by the New York Mayor's Office for a memorial in London's Grosvenor Square, opposite the U.S. Embassy. (Associated Press)

New York to Extend Deadline for WTC Families to Sue - Apr 10, 2003
Families of World Trade Center victims would have until March 2004 to file wrongful death lawsuits under an agreement Wednesday by New York officials to extend the deadline by six months. (Associated Press)

Panel, Not Public, Will Pick Final 9/11 Memorial Design - Apr 9, 2003
Oficials overseeing the competition to design a memorial to victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, said yesterday that the public would not be asked to comment on individual memorial designs, even after a handful of finalists are chosen. The process, outlined yesterday by Kevin M. Rampe, the interim president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and Anita F. Contini, a vice president, contrasts with the method used by rebuilding officials to select a winning design for the World Trade Center site. (New York Times)

City and State at Odds on Millions to Fight Terror - Apr 3, 2003
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. George E. Pataki are suddenly at odds over tens of millions of dollars in homeland defense money that Congress is poised to approve, with each man lobbying at the other's expense in Washington for a larger share of the aid. The dueling messages from Albany and City Hall come at an extremely sensitive time, with leaders on Capitol Hill working out the final details on how to best allocate as much as $1 billion in federal aid to help the most vulnerable states and localities defend themselves against terrorist attacks. (New York Times)

Fire Department Group Seeks Special 9/11 Tribute - Mar 31, 2003
A group of retired firefighters still wants a Ground Zero memorial to honor uniformed rescuers separately from other victims - even though officials already nixed the idea. "Why in God's name would anyone not want to recognize what these brave, brave men did?" John Finucane, a retired FDNY lieutenant who's leading the charge, said. (New York Daily News)

9/11 Memorial Will Pay Tribute to All Victims - Mar 14, 2003
A memorial to the victims of Sept. 11 will recognize all of those killed as a single group rather than as members of separate groups like firefighters, rescue workers or World Trade Center tenants, rebuilding officials said yesterday. Directors of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation agreed at a board meeting yesterday to adopt a resolution laying out the guidelines for the memorial's content, including the provision that all the victims receive comparable recognition. (New York Times)

Memorials Proliferate in Crowded Downtown - Mar 13, 2003
Lower Manhattan's many memorials, including the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Irish Hunger Memorial, have prompted discussions among residents, urban planners and historians about the potential effect of so many monuments to death and loss on a living neighborhood, as well as concerns about the influx of roughly five million tourists once the memorial is built. Today the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is expected to release its mission statement for the World Trade Center memorial. (New York Times)

Photos, Flags and Other Mementos Stolen From a 9/11 Memorial - Mar 12, 2003
Thirty photographs, four flags and other mementos have been stolen from a sidewalk memorial to three officers at State Supreme Court in Manhattan who died in the attack on the World Trade Center, officials said yesterday. (New York Times)

Picking Jury for 9/11 Memorial Is First Task - Mar 10, 2003
The first hurdle for planners responsible for creating a 9/11 memorial is to pick the jury that will choose the winning design -- and decide whether to include victims' relatives on the panel. Relatives of World Trade Center victims have called for family members to be on the jury. But some officials, including LMDC memorial head Anita Contini, have stressed the need for a panel made up of architects and other design professionals. (New York Post)

World Is Interested In How NYC Memorializes Attacks - Mar 10, 2003
Quite apart from the fact that people of many different nationalities died in those attacks, every nation has its own sad or traumatic events to remember and cannot help but be curious as to how others choose to translate loss or outrage or grief or even defiance into physical form. Fashions change in public memorials, as in all things. (Japan Times)

Residents Oppose Tomb At WTC Site - Mar 4, 2003
A tomb holding the unidentified remains of Sept. 11 victims - the proposed soul of a Ground Zero memorial - is being vigorously opposed by downtown community leaders who fear it would turn their neighborhood into a cemetery. Manhattan's Community Board 1 is preparing a resolution opposing the return of all the unidentified victims' remains to the disaster site. (New York Daily News)

Pentagon's Memorial Design Unveiled - Mar 4, 2003
"The first thing to know about the Pentagon Memorial design unveiled yesterday is that it is in exactly the right place -- only 60 yards or so away from the point of impact and directly along the flight path taken by the murderous plane that struck the building on Sept. 11, 2001," writes Benjamin Forgey in the Washington Post. "The second thing to say is that the competition-winning design by two young New York architects does much to honor and intensify the meaning of this already significant location." (Washington Post)

Governor Compared Opposing WTC Plan To "Death" - Mar 1, 2003
Moments before he would cement his decision to go with the Daniel Libeskind plan for Ground Zero, Gov. Pataki compared the runnerup scheme's towers to "death," sources said yesterday. Pataki said he believed the latticework towers of design team THINK were a ghostly reminder of the fallen World Trade Center. The towers "look like death to me," Pataki said, according to several sources. (New York Daily News)

WTC Architect Sees 9/11 Memorial Within 4 Years - Feb 28, 2003
The architect named to redesign the World Trade Center site hopes a memorial, transit station and cultural buildings will be built within four years, although Port Authority and Lower Manhattan Development Corp. officials Thursday said it could take longer. (Newsday)

Officials Plan New Memorial to '93 Attack - Feb 25, 2003
State officials said yesterday that they would erect a temporary memorial to the victims of the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center and that it would include a fragment of the original memorial, which was destroyed in the collapse of the twin towers in 2001. The announcement came two days before the 10th anniversary of the bombing, which killed six people (New York Times)

Officials To Announce Winning Design For WTC - Feb 24, 2003
On Thursday the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation will announce the winning design to be the basis for reconstruction at the World Trade Center site. The two finalists, Berlin-based architect Daniel Libeskind and the New York-centered consortium known as Think, have spent the last three weeks revamping their ideas to answer certain concerns of rebuilding officials. The deadline for their final proposals is Tuesday. (NY1)

Rockaway Artist's Tribute Will Honor Victims of World Trade Center Attack - Feb 17, 2003
Drawing on a variety of materials and themes, 40 artists submitted entries for a memorial to the 70 residents of the Rockaways, including many firefighters, who lost their lives at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Though entries were submitted from as far away as Greece, the winning design came from a local artist. "The Heavens Over the Rockaways" was designed by stained-glass artist Patrick Clark of Rockaway Park. (Newsday)

Designs Leave Blanks for 9/11 Memorial Contest to Fill - Feb 12, 2003
When rebuilding officials selected the finalists for the design of the World Trade Center site, their choices instantly raised a difficult question: In light of the finalists' designs for memorials to victims of the attack of Sept. 11, 2001, what is left for a memorial competition? Plenty, according to the architects. They say their site plans -- Daniel Libeskind's, with a deep pit remaining at ground zero, and the Think group's plan, featuring tall cultural towers -- offer acres of space, spread over multiple parts of the site, that could be the subject of the memorial competition. (Select one or type in another)

City Medical Examiner Now Can ID Hijackers Remains - Feb 7, 2003
The FBI has given the city medical examiner's office DNA profiles from the 10 hijackers who crashed planes into the Twin Towers so their remains can be separated from those of their victims, officials said yesterday. (New York Post)

2 Finalists Picked for WTC Site - Feb 5, 2003
A pair of dramatically different visions for Ground Zero - one that evokes the original twin towers and another that preserves the scarred foundation of the World Trade Center - were embraced as finalists by rebuilding officials yesterday. For the first time since the struggle to resurrect lower Manhattan began more than a year ago, officials also defined the area for a memorial to the victims of the terrorist attacks. (New York Daily News)

A Bittersweet Honor for a 9/11 Victim - Feb 2, 2003
In a few weeks, Roger and Rosalie Marti will be able to look out the front window of their brick twin home in Glendale, Queens, and see a green and white street sign on the corner that says Michael A. Marti Street. Since the terrorist attack, the City Council is renaming 217 streets after people who died at the World Trade Center, most in Queens and Staten Island. If bereaved families continue putting in requests, there could be more. (New York Times)

Safety Concerns for Memorial Below Street Level - Jan 27, 2003
A proposal to place the Ground Zero memorial seven stories below street level at the bottom of the World Trade Center pit would limit the size of crowds that could visit it and raises safety and evacuation concerns, security experts told The Post. Several of the proposed designs for Ground Zero include memorials in enclosed spaces below street level or in the upper floors of tall buildings. (New York Post)

An Interview With Anita Contini - Jan 27, 2003
In an interview with the New York Sun, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation official Anita Contini said that the memorial committees she oversees have decided not to include a religious component -- like the cross that was found at Ground Zero -- in the memorial. Contini also said that much of the public feedback about the preliminary memorial guidelines has called for including more forceful language, like the word "terrorist." (New York Sun)

Families: Rebury 9/11 dead at WTC - Jan 22, 2003
Families of Sept. 11 victims from New Jersey urged downtown rebuilding officials last night to exhume the "ashen remains" of loved ones at the Fresh Kills landfill for reburial at Ground Zero. A crowd of 100 relatives focused on the retrieval issue - which they termed "nonnegotiable" - at the only forum on the rebuilding effort held in New Jersey. (New York Daily News)

1908 Design to Be Entered in 9/11 Memorial Competition - Jan 21, 2003
Yet another world-class architect has created yet another design for ground zero. It is futuristic in the extreme, nearly as tall as the Empire State Building, topped with a star and polychromed in tile and marble. The architect? Antoni Gaudí, the Barcelona visionary who was the greatest Spanish exponent of the Art Nouveau style. And the plan, for a New York hotel, was conceived in 1908. A group of Catalan artists and an American architect intend to enter the never-realized Gaudí plan in the formal ground zero memorial design competition of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, scheduled to begin this spring. (New York Times)

Debate Continues on a Range of Memorial Issues - Jan 21, 2003
The battle over what the permanent World Trade Center memorial should contain and who should choose its creator is escalating even as officials hope to launch a global design competition by April. At issue is everything from whether rescue workers should be singled out in the tribute to whether unidentified victims' remains should be interred at the memorial. (New York Daily News)

Praise for World Trade Center Memorial Draft - Jan 19, 2003
As the latest round of World Trade Center site plans attracts increasing criticism, the effort to develop a memorial at the site is moving ahead on schedule, with praise for its first steps. Officials at two of the nation's most beloved memorials - the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, and the Oklahoma City National Memorial - applauded the draft mission statement and guidelines for the trade center memorial, which were released Jan. 8. (Newsday)

Three Designs for Ground Zero Emerge as Favorites - Jan 17, 2003
Three vastly different designs for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center, one emphasizing tall towers, another an excavated memorial site and a third a large public garden, appear to be receiving the greatest support in public discussions about the future of the site and of Lower Manhattan. However, only about one-third of people responding in comments submitted to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's website noted a preference for one plan over the others. (New York Times)

Garden of Remembrance To Honor 9/11 Victims - Jan 16, 2003
A "garden of remembrance" honoring the victims of Sept. 11 will be designed by Dutch horticulturist and landscape artist Piet Oudolf in lower Manhattan, the city announced yesterday.The garden of remembrance will encompass 10,000 square feet of perennial plantings, flowers and passages for meditation, according to the Battery Conservancy and the city Parks Department. (New York Post)

Public Says "Slow Down" At Hearing On Memorial - Jan 15, 2003
If there was one demand people made last night to those in charge of building a memorial for the World Trade Center site it was to slow down. "What's the rush?" asked Amy Rogers of Manhattan. "Let's do it right." She was among scores of speakers at the continuation of a two-night public forum at Pace University on the redevelopment of the site. (Newsday)

A Hint of Rebuilding Fatigue - Jan 15, 2003
A citywide series of public hearings yesterday and Monday to gauge response to the new designs and guidelines for a memorial to victims of 9/11 attracted little more than a predictable array of single-issue zealots and almost no substantive comments about details of the plans. Few officials of the rebuilding effort were happy with Monday night's meeting. "In the end, it didn't feel like a particularly useful meeting, and that was fairly dispiriting," said one board member. (New York Times)

New Trade Center Plans Draw Old Complaints - Jan 14, 2003
Instead of offering specific feedback on the new designs, unveiled last month to great fanfare and significant public interest, many of the more than 700 people who attended a hearing at Pace University in Lower Manhattan focused instead on issues that rebuilding officials have heard repeatedly, including calls to rebuild the Twin Towers and demands to remember those affected in Chinatown and the Lower East Side. "This is not what we expected or hoped for," one Lower Manhattan Development Corporation director at the meeting said on the condition of anonymity. "These are the same people we've heard from before, saying the same things." Meanwhile, attendance in the outer boroughs and Long Island, where the public hearings were supposed to be simulcast with the one in lower Manhattan, was below expectations, with only about 60 people showing up. (New York Times)

New Issues as Hearings Address Rebuilding - Jan 13, 2003
At citywide public hearings today and tomorrow, officials will explain more details about each of the nine designs released last month for the World Trade Center site. In addition, they will discuss the process they are using to narrow those options to a single plan for redeveloping the site and creating a memorial to the victims of Sept. 11. What officials from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey say they need now is comment on what one of them calls "the public realm" ? which plan provides the appropriate setting for a memorial, for a new railroad station and for a street system that will serve downtown. (New York Times)

Designer of World Trade Center Plan Open To Altering "Pit" Design - Jan 10, 2003
Faced with criticism from residents and relatives of World Trade Center victims, architect Daniel Libeskind said he'd be willing to alter his design's signature element - the open hole he wants to leave to the bottom of the Ground Zero pit. "I provided a space which . . . has a dignity for thinking about the memorial," Libeskind said of his design, which leaves open about two-thirds of the excavated trade center pit, known as the "bathtub," complete with exposed concrete walls. (New York Post)

Draft Guidelines Released for Trade Center Memorial - Jan 9, 2003
A World Trade Center memorial should recognize each person killed in the attacks in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, as well as those killed in the bombing at the trade center in 1993, according to a preliminary outline for the development of the memorial released yesterday. The memorial should also include a tomb for unidentified remains of victims found at the site and may include some surviving elements of the trade center buildings, the outline stated. (New York Times)

Build Memorial First, Says Victims Family Group - Jan 8, 2003
A coalition representing victims' relatives demanded last night that a memorial be built at Ground Zero before anything else - and complained that most rebuilding plans ignore that concern. Lee Ielpi of the Coalition of 9/11 Families said relatives of those killed in the terror attack on the World Trade Center have always wanted a memorial occupying the entire 9-acre "bathtub" to rise first on the site. Ielpi said only two of the nine architectural plans for the site - the ones by Daniel Libeskind and United Architects - set aside the needed space for a memorial. (New York Daily News)

Victims Family Group Cool To Idea of Keeping Pit Empty - Jan 8, 2003
A Ground Zero design proposal to preserve the empty pit where the Twin Towers once stood is getting a cool reception from a surprising quarter - the 9/11 families who have campaigned for months to set aside the trade center "bathtub" area for a memorial. "We don't want to leave a hole in the ground," said Lee Ielpi, a member of the Coalition of 9/11 Families, whose firefighter son Jonathan was killed. "I don't want to go below grade for the memorial. I want the memorial to be up in the sunlight." (New York Post)

Skyscrapers Would Come Later At Ground Zero, Says Planner - Jan 7, 2003
A top lower Manhattan planner predicted last night a memorial for terror victims, a transit hub, stores and cultural institutions would be the first structures to rise from the ruins of Ground Zero. Giant office towers will only be rebuilt after the initial round of contruction has been completed, Alexander Garvin told downtown's Community Board 1. (New York Daily News)

Families: Rebury 9/11 dead at WTC - Jan 1, 2003
Families of Sept. 11 victims from New Jersey urged downtown rebuilding officials last night to exhume the "ashen remains" of loved ones at the Fresh Kills landfill for reburial at Ground Zero. A crowd of 100 relatives focused on the retrieval issue - which they termed "nonnegotiable" - at the only forum on the rebuilding effort held in New Jersey. (New York Daily News)

9/11 Memorial Park Re-opens - Dec 23, 2002
City officials will open today a redesigned Memorial Park - an area behind the medical examiner's office where hundreds of 9/11 victims' relatives gather to be near their loved ones' remains. Memorial Park had been closed for several weeks while officials remade the area into a serene shrine in time for Christmas. (New York Daily News)

Tribute in Light Returns - Dec 23, 2002
A group of relatives of World Trade Center victims flipped the switch on their own miniature Tribute in Light on Staten Island yesterday - after City Hall blocked a full-blown display. The families parked a flatbed truck with two sets of powerful spotlights near a local WTC memorial known as the Angels Circle, at the corner of Fingerboard Road and Hylan Boulevard. (New York Post)

Rebuilding Below Ground Zero Is at Issue - Dec 20, 2002
For months, vocal family members of the World Trade Center dead have called for the one-acre squares where the twin towers stood to be preserved for a memorial to the victims, not only on the surface but also down to the bedrock some 85 feet below street level. On Wednesday, when new plans for the site by seven groups of architects were unveiled, several drew on that sentiment. But if those plans are adopted, space reserved for a memorial below ground level could create significant challenges for officials in planning the underground elements of a rebuilt trade center site. (New York Times)

Victims' Families Preferred Designs with Most Memorial Space - Dec 19, 2002
Relatives of Sept. 11 victims showed an early preference for two of the new World Trade Center designs unveiled yesterday: the pair with the greatest area set aside for memorial space. The designs by Studio Daniel Libeskind and United Architects met with approval from family members concerned with preserving the "bathtub," the six-acre expanse bounded by retaining walls built to keep seepage from the Hudson River away from the original Twin Towers. (New York Post)

Families, Residents Offer WTC Plan - Dec 17, 2002
The World Trade Center site should be divided into three sections, including a nine-acre memorial area containing the footprints of the Twin Towers, a coalition of residents, architects and family groups said yesterday. The proposals emerged from several meetings among members of the different interest groups over the past few months which had been often portrayed at odds in the redevelopment process. (Newsday)

Outspoken 9/11 Widow Joins Memorial Panel - Nov 28, 2002
Monica Iken, the widow of a Sept. 11 victim and one of the most outspoken advocates for victims' families during the rebuilding process, has been appointed to one of the two committees overseeing the planning of a memorial. Iken was notified of the appointment by letter this week, more than a week after the committees were announced. Some family members had complained publicly that rebuilding officials were ignoring people who have sometimes criticized the rebuilding effort. (New York Times)

Port Authority Releasing Their Own Master Plan For Ground Zero - Nov 22, 2002
The Port Authority will release its own master plan for the World Trade Center site by February, detailing the memorial’s size and location and transportation improvements, the agency’s executive director said Thursday. The master plan, being developed by architects hired by the Port Authority, will include mass transit, vehicular and pedestrian access and the minimum and maximum square footage of the commercial space. (Newsday)

Rebuilding Official Praises Designs For World Trade Center Site - Nov 22, 2002
Seven architecture teams commissioned by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to design plans for Ground Zero have created work that is "astoundingly innovative, creative and exciting," according to Roland W. Betts, a Lower Manhattan Development Corporation director. Memorials on the tops of buildings and below ground, a formal 19th-century-style garden and the tallest building in the world are among the elements included in several new sets of plans being drawn up for the World Trade Center site, according to rebuilding officials who have seen them. (New York Times)

Some Victims' Families Feel Influence on 9/11 Memorial Slipping Away - Nov 16, 2002
One of the most potent political forces to rise from the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center -- the widows and other family members of those killed last year on Sept. 11 -- has found its influence over the rebuilding and memorial efforts gradually but significantly eroding. (New York Times)

Two Boards Are Appointed to Guide Sept. 11 Memorial - Nov 15, 2002
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation appointed two committees this week to oversee the 9/11 memorial effort, as part of what the agency's chairman called a "new phase" in rebuilding downtown. He also said yesterday that the public would be able to see exhibits next month showing the new plans for the World Trade Center site. Advertisement (New York Times)

WTC Families Angry at New Process for Planning Memorial - Nov 14, 2002
A group of World Trade Center families is lambasting a new process for crafting the Ground Zero memorial - charging that officials in charge of rebuilding are trying to silence the more vocal relatives. "There's not an open process and there should be," Jack Lynch said yesterday. Lynch, who lost his son Sept. 11, slammed the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. for creating two 11-member committees to plan memorial guidelines in virtual secrecy - without telling its larger family advisory council. (New York Daily News)

9/11 Families Back a Federal Role for Memorial - Nov 13, 2002
A group of World Trade Center victims' relatives backed a proposed federal bill yesterday to bestow national memorial status on the Ground Zero memorial. The bill would give the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. up to three years to create a memorial design - but would grant federal officials final approval. It also calls for the federal government to fund half the tribute's construction cost and pick up all the maintenance tab once it's done. The National Park Service would maintain the memorial. (New York Daily News)

Families Propose WTC 'Tomb' - Nov 12, 2002
Still reeling from the creation of a new committee structure to develop a memorial at the World Trade Center site, a coalition of 9/11 families is proposing a tomb-like structure to house unidentified remains of those lost Sept. 11. (Newsday)

Ground Zero Officials to Hire Mediator - Nov 8, 2002
Ground Zero officials are broadening their memorial planning process beyond victims' relatives - and hiring a special mediator to help put together the permanent tribute. The move, expected to be announced as early as today, follows Gov. Pataki's reelection - and leaves some victims' relatives worried that their input will be devalued. (New York Daily News)

Memorial Fence at St Paul's Chapel Being Cleared - Nov 8, 2002
A grass-roots memorial to the victims of the World Trade Center attack that grew in the last year from a few remembrances on the fence surrounding St. Paul's Chapel to a cluttered collection of tributes is slowly being cleared, one flag, one shirt, one doll at a time. One day a week, workers will clear away memorial tributes on 10 feet of the fence, five feet in each of two sections. The fence should be clear shortly after New Year's Day. (New York Times)

WTC Families Call for Half of Site to Be Used as Memorial - Nov 2, 2002
Worried that rebuilding officials haven't heard their wishes, a group of Sept. 11 victims' families implored architects designing new Ground Zero plans yesterday to use roughly half the site for a permanent memorial. In a letter sent to the six teams recently charged with crafting new visions for the site, the relatives asked them to honor the "bathtub" area, a 9-acre swath of land that includes the twin towers' footprints. (New York Daily News)

New Yorkers Among Pentagon Design Finalists - Oct 30, 2002
When they learned of the competition to design a memorial at the Pentagon, Brooklyn architects Edwin Zawadzki and Mason Wickham finally found a way to assist in the recovery after Sept. 11. The Fort Greene couple and two other New York City teams have been named finalists in the Pentagon memorial competition, three of six chosen from 1,126 eligible submissions to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. (Newsday)

WTC Planners Taking International Memorial Tour - Oct 30, 2002
City officials, civic leaders and Sept. 11 victims' families are heading to Europe to look at how cities abroad planned rebuilding efforts - and created memorials. The 50-person trip will come a month after lower Manhattan planners toured memorials around the U.S. (New York Daily News)

Firehouse Memorial Honors Its Heroes - Oct 14, 2002
Made with granite, stained glass and love, a memorial to 10 firefighters from Engine 8/Ladder 2 who died in the terrorist attack now fills their midtown firehouse. Relatives of the 10 men broke into applause seeing the 9-foot-high memorial and then wiped away tears as they placed single red roses upon it. This scene was repeated in many of the city's 75 firehouses during the FDNY's weekend dedicated to its fallen. (New York Daily News)

Lessons From A Memorial Tour - Oct 13, 2002
Officials who toured memorial sites last week learned about remembering the little things. The five-day, five-city tour of 18 memorials early this month both startled and comforted the officials and the relatives, giving them, they said, fresh perspectives on their efforts to create a memorial to the victims of Sept. 11. (New York Times)

Trinity Church Struggles With Memorial Fence - Oct 11, 2002
The Sept. 11 memorial fence surrounding St. Paul's chapel, while once lauded as a tapestry of love and support, is now being called an eyesore. The elements have dulled bright inks and softened new cloth into sagging rags. The fence, at a certain angle, could be mistaken for a camp for derelicts. The Trinity Church leaders, de facto caretakers of the tattered collection, are struggling with what to do with what started as an outpouring of grief and support. (New York Times)

Size Not Important For Memorial, Officials Say - Oct 7, 2002
The memorial to victims of the Sept. 11 terror attacks that rises at Ground Zero must be driven by the power and clarity of its message, and not the amount of land it stands on, rebuilding officials said. "The power of a memorial is not related to its size," said Lower Manhattan Development Corp. President Lou Tomson, sitting in the airport at Montgomery, Ala., after his entourage visited the Rosa Parks Museum and the Civil Rights Memorial - the last stop of a five-day national tour. Anita Contini, who's overseeing the LMDC memorial process, said most people felt "the more simple ones had more power." (New York Post)

Memorial Tour Yields Ideas For World Trade Center Site - Oct 7, 2002
A memorial first, a museum later. That was the suggestion of a special panel, which just returned from touring memorials around the country to help plan the future of the World Trade Center site. The group also looked at some of the practical pitfalls of memorial design, such as using material that wears away too quickly, and advised on the need to hear many voices and represent a variety of interests in selecting a jury to judge competing memorial designs. (New York Daily News)

Oklahoma City and New York: Two Cities Visited By Disaster - Oct 5, 2002
As Lower Manhattan Development Corp. officials visited Oklahoma City Friday, as part of a six-day memorial-research trip across the country, they found a city with plenty of experience to share. A major piece of advice development corporation officials heard was "include everyone." Oklahoma City lost 168 people when Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. The outdoor memorial, featuring 168 empty chairs and a shallow pond, opened in 2000. A museum opened in 2001. (Newsday)

Steel-Beam Cross Considered for Memorial - Oct 5, 2002
A cross made of steel beams from the World Trade Center that has stood for a year at ground zero will be considered for inclusion in a permanent memorial to the victims of the attack on the World Trade Center, officials overseeing the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan said today. (New York Times)

Families of NYC Victims Want Mention at Pentagon Memorial - Oct 4, 2002
Families of the World Trade Center victims reacted with disapproval at reports Thursday that the Pentagon memorial will list only the 184 victims who died in the attack on the Pentagon. The Pentagon's design competition already has narrowed its search from more than 1,100 entries to six finalists, with the final selection planned for December. "The families said they want to focus on this small group," said Carol Anderson-Austra, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project manager. "They're a little sensitive because New York gets an awful lot of press." (Newsday)

Vietnam Memorial Team Advises a Slow Pace - Oct 3, 2002
The founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund cautioned visiting New York officials yesterday not to make the "mistake" of rushing to design and build a Sept. 11 memorial. "I think they're moving at the speed they have to move at, because this plays so big on the world stage," said Jan Scruggs, a former infantry corporal. (New York Daily News)

Rebuilding Officials Begin Tour At Shanksville, Pennsylvania - Oct 2, 2002
In the abandoned coalfield where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed, the wall of impromptu remembrances overflowed with hundreds of flags, police patches, little angels and firefighter caps. It resembled many such tributes that sprang up in New York City a year ago. And it supported one lower Manhattan development official's desire to link somehow the three Sept. 11 memorials -- in Pennsylvania, at the Pentagon and in Manhattan. Lower Manhattan Development Corporation memorial director Anita Contini sees many similarities among how the three Sept. 11 memorial sites will be created -- from talking to the families to including other interested parties. (Newsday)

Architects Debate Whether Or Not To Rebuild At Forum - Sep 30, 2002
At the first Columbia University Seminar on Art and Society at the New-York Historical Society, Daniel Libeskind, the architect who designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, and Sherwin B. Nuland, the author of "How We Die," argued about one question concerning the rebuilding at the World Trade Center site: Should there be something rather than nothing? Or nothing rather than something? (New York Times)

Rebuilding Officials Set For Tour of Memorials - Sep 29, 2002
As the planning for Ground Zero enters a new phase, rebuilding officials are turning greater attention to the memorial - starting with a five-day tour of permanent tributes around the country. Anita Contini, who is overseeing the memorial process for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and relatives of two Sept. 11 victims are about to begin a whirlwind tour around the nation, meeting with officials at Shanksville, Penn., the Pentagon, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Oklahoma City. (New York Post)

Creator of a Memorial Wall To Face Review By City Art Commission - Sep 29, 2002
A Brooklyn native spurred creation of a granite memorial wall in honor of the 115 Brooklyn-based firefighters who died on Sept. 11, but the project hit a bump when the man found he must get approval of the city Art Commission before the wall can be erected. (Newsday)

Examiner Proposes DNA Screen to Separate 9/11 Hijackers Remains from Memorial - Sep 25, 2002
The Medical Examiner's Office wants to extract DNA samples from the possessions of the Sept. 11 hijackers - so the remains of the terrorists can be identified and separated from their victims. Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch asked the FBI to provide the terrorists' belongings at the request of victims' relatives, who want the killers' remains removed before unidentified and unclaimed remains are interred in a future memorial at Ground Zero. (New York Post)

WTC Panel to Tour Memorials - Sep 18, 2002
Redevelopment officials will visit more than a dozen memorials around the world before selecting the design for a permanent tribute to the 2,801 victims of the World Trade Center attacks, officials said yesterday. (New York Daily News)

Commemorations Begin As Anniversary Nears - Sep 8, 2002
As the anniversary of Sept. 11 approached, New Yorkers and visitors to the city remembered the terrorist attacks with tributes, ceremonies and recollections of private grief. Events taking place Sunday included a memorial walk led by paralyzed police detective Steven McDonald and the presentation of a plaque honoring transit workers. A coalition of groups opposed to President Bush's war on terror and his plans for attacking Iraq held a march from Times Square to Union Square. (Associated Press)

16-Acre Memorial Has Little Support From Local Politicians - Sep 3, 2002
Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani allies such as Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Pataki - who control development on the World Trade Center site - failed yesterday to back Giuliani's call for preserving the entire 16-acre area for a tribute to those killed Sept. 11. (New York Post)

Giuliani Says WTC Offices a Possibility - Sep 3, 2002
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said yesterday that the World Trade Center redevelopment effort should focus on a memorial but didn't rule out putting up buildings on the site. In the current issue of Time magazine, he writes, "If it were up to me, I'd devote the entire 16 acres to the memorial" - a stance at odds with that of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other officials. (New York Daily News)

Many Minds, Each Envisioning a Different 9/11 Memorial - Sep 2, 2002
In planning for a memorial in New York City to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks at the World Trade Center and elsewhere, a struggle for control of the process has laid bare a tangle of unending grief, cultural chasms, distrust of government and pure and simple rage among a host of disparate groups. Residents of Lower Manhattan, business owners, architects, commuters, historians and relatives of the dead are vociferously making their views known. (New York Times)

Proposals Pouring In For WTC Site - Aug 29, 2002
More than 2,000 ordinary citizens, artists and great architects have been inspired to put their ideas for the World Trade Center site on paper. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the Port Authority, and other government officials have received a wide range of proposals. Anita Contini, the corporation's memorial director, asked people to stop sending any more plans until criteria for the memorial are announced early next year. The agency won't consider any proposals already sent, said Contini, responding to questions at a GothamGazette.com online interview. (Newsday)

Long Island Teen Creates 9/11 Memorial - Aug 26, 2002
Two Atlantic Beach residents who died on September 11 were honored yesterday with a memorial next to Atlantic Beach's new village hall. It was a memorial conceived and designed entirely by Zara Zimmerman, who will be a high school senior. It was Zimmerman's idea to honor the only two Atlantic Beach residents who perished on Sept. 11, and it was her idea to have two pieces of the World Trade Center included at the site. (Newsday)

Neighborhood of Memorials Ponders the 9/11 Addition - Aug 23, 2002
As the public wrestles over the design of a permanent 9/11 memorial, some downtown residents are worried that their community will be turned into a kind of "living graveyard." Battery Park City and adjacent Battery Park are already home to more than a dozen memorials and monuments. As the Sept. 11 anniversary approaches, some downtown residents are calling for a limit on the size of a permanent World Trade Center memorial. Other residents and family members of victims want a large memorial that they say will make a statement about the scope of the tragedy. (Downtown Express)

1,600 Vie For 9-11 Pentagon Design - Aug 23, 2002
Some 1,600 people already have met Friday's deadline to register for a design competition for the September 11 Pentagon memorial, run by the Army Corps of Engineers. Proposals must be submitted by Sept. 11, with a winner announced on Dec. 23. Under the Corps plan, the winning design will occupy nearly two acres about 165 feet west of the point where American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the facade. The winning design cannot rise above 78 feet - the Pentagon's height - and cannot include restrooms, museums or staff. (Associated Press)

Staten Island Victims' Families Angry at Search for Design - Aug 21, 2002
Lower Manhattan Development Corp. officials ran into criticism last night over how they intend to select a design for a World Trade Center memorial. At the first of five public hearings, nearly 60 relatives of Sept. 11 victims accused the LMDC of giving higher priority to commercial development at the site than to a fitting tribute to the fallen. (New York Daily News)

Tense Exchange at Meeting on Memorial - Aug 21, 2002
Emotions were raw last night at a public meeting for a World Trade Center memorial as relatives of victims questioned the authority of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. A tense interchange occurred at the Staten Island meeting after victims' family members asked who would make the final decision on the memorial design. (Newsday)

9/11 Victims' Names to Fence in Memorial - Aug 20, 2002
The names of all the Sept. 11 World Trade Center victims will be displayed on a temporary memorial -- a fence around the site, downtown redevelopment officials said last night. The city medical examiner's office issued the first comprehensive list of the victims yesterday but cautioned that the 2,819 names may not be the final tally. (New York Daily News)

Makeshift Memorial Brings Event to Human Scale - Aug 19, 2002
David Cohen, the owner of Chelsea Jeans, a clothing store a block from where the World Trade Center used to be, created a preserved shrine leaving things as they were when the impact of the blasts ruined his store. Mr. Cohen's shrine was just one of the makeshift memorials that sprang up around the city after Sept. 11. Now, the process to design an official memorial has begun. (New York Times)

Design Competition For 9/11 Memorial Starting Early Next Year - Aug 16, 2002
An international competition to design a memorial to the victims of the terrorist attack of Sept. 11 is expected to begin early next year, with a winning design to be selected by the second anniversary of the attack, rebuilding officials said yesterday. Officials of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation said that it would conduct a public hearing in each of the city's five boroughs over the next three weeks to gather comments on the concept and design of the memorial. (New York Times)

Political Ad and 9/11 Speech May Be an Unwelcome Mix - Aug 15, 2002
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg expressed concern yesterday about a plan by the New York State Democratic Party to offer its own rendition of the Gettysburg Address in a television ad honoring the Sept. 11 dead. (New York Times)

Smithsonian Struggles With 9/11 - Aug 13, 2002
Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's cell phone and baseball cap, a stairwell sign from the World Trade Center, a piece of limestone from the Pentagon, a uniform from a Navy officer who rescued a Pentagon victim. Those are some of the items that will be on display when the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History opens its exhibit, "September 11: Bearing Witness to History," on the anniversary of the attacks. (Associated Press)

Brooklyn Tribute on Waterfront - Aug 12, 2002
More than 2,000 people are expected to pack the 69th Street pier in Brooklyn to honor the World Trade Center victims on the Sept. 11 anniversary. (New York Post)

Families Plan 9/11 Walks in New York City, Virginia - Aug 12, 2002
Family members will carry photographs of loved ones who died in the Sept. 11 attacks during two "remembrance walks" in Virginia and New York next month, organizers said yesterday. (New York Daily News)

Stone Statues Honoring 9/11 On Shoreline - Aug 10, 2002
Three months after the Sept. 11 attacks, New Jersey artist Stephen Shaheen set out to build a stone monument dedicated to the victims of the attacks, dubbing it The Memorial Project. Last week, he finished the two main sculptures, 13-foot-high statues. (Associated Press)

Memorial Run Set for Sept. 14 - Aug 8, 2002
The victims of the Sept. 11 attacks will be remembered next month with a four-mile memorial run along Manhattan's West Side, from which the twin towers were once visible. (Newsday)

NYPD Plans WTC Service - Aug 8, 2002
The Police Department will hold a separate memorial for its officers killed on Sept. 11th. (Newsday)

Remembering Sept. 11 in a Personal Way, or Maybe Ignoring It - Aug 8, 2002
The Times asked 20 New Yorkers how they plan to observe the anniversary of Sept. 11, and got at least 10 different answers. While some plan to stay at home and remember Sept. 11 with their familes, others said they had had more than enough remembrance of Sept. 11 already. (New York Times)

Artists Meet Frustration at Ground Zero - Aug 7, 2002
New Yorkers have needed a memorial since day one. Indeed, by September 12, they were everywhere—those spontaneous heartfelt shrines. Artist Mary Miss and two collaborators found inspiration in those clusters of candles and flowers. They conceived of "Moving Perimeter" last October as a temporary piece, meant to address that need for ritual and a gathering place. Despite a base of support and a great deal of attention from the media, the temporary memorial did not happen. (Village Voice)

Schedule for the Ceremony - Aug 7, 2002
A full schedule for the Sept. 11 commemoration, beginning with five bagpipe processions in each of the five boroughs. (Newsday)

Sept. 11 to Be Marked With Music and Tributes - Aug 7, 2002
New York City will be transformed into a state of perpetual commemoration on Sept. 11, with readings, concerts and odes to the dead, tributes that in many cases grew out of ideas from people around the world. The business of the city of New York will not cease, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said yesterday, in detailing the city's plans to mark the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Rather, it will yield to various events in all five boroughs, beginning with a march into ground zero led by bagpipers and including a visit from President Bush and a reading of the names of every person who died in the World Trade Center attack. (New York Times)

Names of 9/11 Victims To Be Read On Anniversary - Aug 6, 2002
The names of every person killed in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center will be read at the first anniversary ceremony of the tragedy, relatives of the victims were told last night. While plans for the commemoration are not complete, the family members also were told that bells around the city would be rung at the exact time the Twin Towers were struck - 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m. - and at the times they collapsed - 9:50 a.m. and 10:29 a.m. Definitive plans for the ceremony are to be announced today by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. George Pataki, who plan to participate. (Newsday)

Broadway Shows To Be Closed September 11 - Aug 6, 2002
Many Broadway theaters will go dark on Wednesday, Sept. 11, the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Traditionally, theaters offer matinee and evening performances on Wednesdays. The following shows have announced there will be no performances that day: "Aida," "Beauty and the Beast," "Chicago," "42nd Street," "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune," "The Graduate," "Into the Woods," "Les Miserables," "The Lion King," "Mamma Mia!," "Noises Off," "Oklahoma!," "Rent" and "Urinetown." (Newsday)

Design Ideas Pour Into Office Of Rebuilding Agency - Aug 6, 2002
More than 2,000 unsolicited proposals for a Ground Zero memorial have been sent to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation since it was established at the end of last year. The corporation, which is charged with overseeing the permanent Sept. 11 memorial, is in the midst of setting up a process for designing the tribute, most likely through an international design competition. The new executive in charge of the project, Anita Contini, started her job only yesterday and has been getting familiar with the issues. Many of the submitted designs will likely be entered into the international competition, LMDC officials said. (New York Post)

9/11 Survivors Take on Mission of Remembrance - Aug 5, 2002
A new breed of activists have transformed the pain of losing a loved one on Sept. 11 into a shared quest to accomplish something lasting. They are homemakers, electricians, insurance executives, retirees and teachers who have joined forces to change laws guiding building construction and put their stamp on redevelopment plans for downtown. (New York Daily News)

Bush to Mark Sept. 11 With Visits - Aug 3, 2002
President Bush will mark the Sept. 11 terror attacks anniversary by visiting New York, the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania where United Flight 93 crashed. (Associated Press)

Possible Plan for Sept. 11: Tributes in Each Borough - Aug 1, 2002
Simultaneous tributes in parks in each borough will unite New Yorkers on the evening of Sept. 11 as part of the official plans for commemorating the city's darkest day, officials said. Mayoral spokesman Ed Skyler refused to comment on official plans, saying Mayor Bloomberg would announce them publicly soon. (New York Post)

Wednesday Last Day for WTC Memorial Service Ideas - Jul 30, 2002
City officials planning ceremonies to commemorate the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks say they have received more than 4,000 suggestions, ranging from a candlelight vigil in Central Park, to a parade down Broadway honoring rescue workers, to a nationwide moment of silence. Wednesday is the final day to offer ideas.Suggestions for the ceremonies can be made on the city’s Web site at www.nyc.gov, or by calling 212-788-7799. (Newsday)

Dilemma Over How to Mark Sept. 11 - Jul 28, 2002
With just six weeks left until the first anniversary of Sept. 11, national, state and local leaders haven't announced any concrete plans on how they're marking the day of remembrance, leaving puzzled businesses and institutions to fill the void. (New York Post)

Many Ideas to Mark Mournful Anniversary - Jul 21, 2002
A silent parade from Ground Zero to Central Park. Fireworks. Individual air balloons representing every victim. Rivers nationwide dyed red. Those are among the hundreds of suggestions people from around the globe have made given in the month since Mayor Bloomberg created a Web site and a voice mailbox for ideas about how best to mark the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. (New York Post)

First Panels of Project to Honor 9/11 Victims on Display Saturday - Jul 11, 2002
The first 60 panels of a quilt honoring Sept. 11 victims go on display this weekend in Central Park. Nearly 400 families and friends of those who died Sept. 11 have each agreed to make a 3-foot-by-6-foot panel. (Newsday)

Stamp Tribute to 9/11 Heroes - Jul 5, 2002
This week, the Postal Service presented a tiny yet powerful memorial to Sept. 11 — the Heroes of 2001 Stamp.The stamp features the Thomas Franklin photograph of three firefighters raising the American flag at Ground Zero and is available nationwide. It sells for 45 cents, 8 cents of which will be donated to the September 11th Victims' Fund. (New York Daily News)

Giant Sept. 11 quilt displayed - Jul 5, 2002
A giant American flag being decorated with quilted squares from around the country was unveiled in the park on the nation's birthday. The September 11th Quilt Project was begun as a way to bring New Yorkers and the rest of the country together to heal after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center, said project co-founder Alexis Owen of Denver. (New York Daily News)

Maya Lin "Quietly" Talking to Ground Zero Officials - Jul 3, 2002
The artist who designed the much-praised Vietnam Memorial in Washington says she has "quietly" been talking to officials involved in the Ground Zero tribute. Architect Maya Lin is also reportedly worried that average New Yorkers won't have as big a say as 9/11 victims' relatives in the Ground Zero memorial. (New York Post)

Executive to Handle 9/11 Memorial Construction - Jul 2, 2002
A Merrill Lynch executive long involved in downtown cultural events will oversee the building of a memorial to the victims of Sept. 11. Anita Contini, 58, will be named vice president and director for memorial cultural and civic programs today by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. (New York Daily News)

Towers' Land to Remain a Memorial, Pataki Says - Jun 30, 2002
Gov. George E. Pataki vowed yesterday at a memorial ceremony for Sept. 11 victims that there would be no commercial development on the land where the twin towers stood. (New York Times)

Families Show Vision for Large Memorial - Jun 28, 2002
Victims' families advising the developers of the World Trade Center site unveiled their vision for a large memorial complex yesterday. They called for an indoor/outdoor complex that encompasses roughly 9 acres, about half the available land. (New York Daily News)

Arts Organizer Said to Be Choice to Oversee 9/11 Memorial Effort - Jun 28, 2002
Moving to fill what will be one of the most scrutinized jobs in the rebuilding of downtown, the agency in charge of the effort is preparing to appoint a Merrill Lynch executive who is a longtime organizer of downtown cultural events to oversee the creation of a memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11 attack, according to officials involved in the effort. (New York Times)

Mayor Now Not Sure What Size of Memorial Should Be - Jun 26, 2002
Mayor Bloomberg, under increasing fire from 9/11 families, yesterday partly detracted his suggestion that a smaller memorial at the World Trade Center site might be better than a larger one. (New York Post)

Dog Statues Coming to City - Jun 26, 2002
About 300 life-size German shepherd sculptures made of fiberglass, intended to honor the hundreds of search-and-rescue teams that scoured the rubble of the World Trade Center after Sept. 11, will be placed mainly in front of firehouses, police precincts and parks throughout the city from mid-August through November. (New York Daily News)

Giuliani Supports 'Grand' Memorial - Jun 25, 2002
Families of Sept. 11 victims met with former Mayor Rudy Giuliani last night and won his support for a large memorial that could include much of the World Trade Center site. (New York Daily News)

Beams of Light May be Back for Sept. 11 Observance - Jun 21, 2002
The sponsors of the popular "Tribute in Light" memorial hope to bring it back for the one-year observance of Sept. 11 and are seeking support from the victims' relatives. (New York Post)

Some Neighbors Seek Greater Voice on Plans for Sept. 11 Memorial - Jun 19, 2002
Downtown residents and civic groups say they are worried that the early planning for a memorial is being left behind or closed to public input. Meanwhile, the official rebuilding effort is hurtling toward a master plan for the site. Downtown residents and civic groups say they are worried that the early planning for a memorial is being left behind or closed to public input. (New York Times)

Flushing Cemetery Dedicates WTC Memorial - Jun 18, 2002
To help preserve the memory of those who perished in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, Flushing Cemetery has dedicated a new memorial. The World Trade Center Memorial features a 6 1/2-foot-tall granite slab depicting the twin towers. On either side of the slab is a granite block, the left block dedicated to the victims and the right to those involved in the rescue efforts. (New York Daily News)

Giuliani Calls for a 'Grand' Memorial, Clashes with Bloomberg - Jun 14, 2002
A day after Mayor Bloomberg upset families of Sept. 11 victims by saying the final World Trade Center tribute should not be so big that it feels like a "cemetery," former Mayor Rudy Giuliani called again for a "grand, soaring memorial." Giuliani avoided criticizing Bloomberg. But he was passionate about his vision for a memorial. (New York Daily News)

Mayor: Memorial's Size a Concern - Jun 13, 2002
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said yesterday that the size of the memorial to honor victims of the World Trade Center attack should not overshadow the needs of downtown residents and businesses. The mayor's spokesperson later said that his comments were in response to concerns expressed to him by Battery Park residents (Newsday)

Push on to Keep Cross at Ground Zero for Good - Jun 6, 2002
A movement to keep the Ground Zero cross at Ground Zero got a boost yesterday when a redevelopment official suggested it be made part of a permanent memorial. An effort is afoot to make these steel girders — found broken into the shape of a cross in the rubble of Building 6 — part of permanent memorial. Ed Malloy, a board member of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., asked the agency to incorporate the steel cross into the design of a planned Sept. 11 memorial at the World Trade Center site. (New York Daily News)

Council Proposes Tree Memorials - Jun 4, 2002
Members of the City Council want to plant hundreds of "freedom trees" throughout the five boroughs to honor those killed Sept. 11. With support from a member of the Coalition of 911 Families Group, Councilman James Sanders Jr. (D-Queens) will ask the council to endorse putting trees on public property in neighborhoods where city victims lived. (Newsday)

Ceremony Honors Those Lost As Recovery At WTC Site Ends - May 31, 2002
A solemn and wordless procession punctuated by tears, the tolling of bells and muted applause rose out of Ground Zero and up into the sunny streets of lower Manhattan yesterday on a morning as bright as the September day terror shattered the city. There were no speeches by the many elected officials and dignitaries present. The only words uttered aloud called those assembled to attention. The removal of debris remaining after the clearing of nearly 2 million tons of rubble is expected by the middle of next week. (Newsday)

Memorial Day Celebrations Recall September 11 - May 28, 2002
Nothing felt entirely familiar across the New York region as cheering crowds and quiet prayer commemorated the first Memorial Day after the Sept. 11 attacks. The shadow of Sept. 11 fell across Memorial Day this year in many ways. A number of those who attended holiday parades yesterday said they had never attended Memorial Day celebrations before. "The difference is night and day," said one man. "We were attacked, and while I never paid much attention to the military, today I welcome this parade." (New York Times)

President of Redevelopment Group Sees Consensus Emerging on Memorial, Overall Plan - May 27, 2002
Louis Tomson, president of Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the agency charged with rebuilding the World Trade Center site, said that a broad consensus is emerging to develop the site as a cultural, business and transportation hub, including a "reverential" memorial that could take up almost half of the 16-acre site. (Newsday)

Kin Uniting on Memorial - May 21, 2002
A broad consensus is emerging for the first time among families of those killed Sept. 11 on how much of the World Trade Center site should be used for a permanent memorial. The families recently presented a proposal that calls for the memorial to consist of the footprints of the twin towers and the Marriott World Trade Center Hotel, as well as the land inside the site's retaining wall. (New York Daily News)

Mural and Garden At Staten Island School Pays Tribute To 9/11 Victims - May 13, 2002
A mural and a garden at Intermediate School 51 in Staten Island pay tribute to the victims of September 11.The mural, painted by IS 51 graduate Marco Cammayo, 23, was inspired by the famous news photo of three firefighters raising the American flag at Ground Zero. Below the mural, students planted a garden. (New York Daily News)

Memorial May Need Two Years For A Design - Apr 25, 2002
Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday it could take as long as two years to come up with a fitting design for a World Trade Center memorial. Bloomberg made his comments a day after development officials said they hoped to have a master plan for the disaster site by Dec. 1 -- but conceded it could take longer to design a permanent memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. (New York Daily News)

Tomb Of Unknowns Could Be Part of Ground Zero Memorial - Apr 18, 2002
A proposal for a tomb of unknown victims -- reminiscent of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia --has been steadily gaining favor at meetings among victims' relatives, Mayor Bloomberg and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. officials, family members said yesterday. The tomb of unknown victims would hold the unidentified remains of hundreds killed Sept. 11. (New York Daily News)

Tribute In Light Ends As Spotlights Fade Into Dawn - Apr 15, 2002
The twin pillars of light that rose as an ethereal monument to the losses of Sept. 11 ended their monthlong illumination early yesterday morning, the 88 searchlights silently blending into the hazy dawn before a police officer pressed a button and cut off the 616,000 watts of power. "They aren't turning them off," said a security guard at the scene. "They are fading off in the morning light." (New York Times)

Queens Public School Receives Solidary Quilt From California Elementary School Students - Apr 14, 2002
Students at Public School 206 in Rego Park received a "solidarity quilt" made by children at an elementary school in California as a show of support for city school kids in the aftermath of Sept. 11. (New York Daily News)

Hundreds Downtown Bear Witness End of Tribute In Light - Apr 14, 2002
Hundreds of people traveled to lower Manhattan yesterday to view the last night of the Tribute in Light. Police said crowds were greater than at any time since the twin shafts of light were turned on March 11, the six-month anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center. (New York Daily News)

Tribute In Light Going Dark After This Weekend - Apr 11, 2002
Two pillars of light that have stood sentry in the night sky over Ground Zero will go dark this weekend as planned, officials said yesterday. Although the Tribute in Light has captivated New Yorkers and visitors with its uplifting effect and some have called for keeping the tribute going, the memorial will shine for the last time Saturday. (New York Daily News)

Mapping Ground Zero's Future - Apr 10, 2002
The Daily News presents a visual representation of the ideas presented yesterday in the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's blueprint and principles for rebuilding. (New York Daily News)

Head of Rebuilding Authority Asks For Money To Keep Tribute In Light Going - Apr 10, 2002
Downtown rebuilding czar John Whitehead yesterday asked businesses to donate $100,000 to keep the Tribute of Lights burning beyond this weekend, when it is scheduled to go dark. (New York Post)

Plans for a Makeover of Lower Manhattan in a Blueprint of Downtown - Apr 10, 2002
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation yesterday made public a blueprint for a commercial and cultural makeover of downtown Manhattan, an outline that includes a new Freedom Park with memorial and museum, and a transit hub connecting subway, commuter rail and ferry lines. While the outline issued yesterday was only a general document, with few specifics or timetables, John C. Whitehead, chairman of the development corporation, said the proposals should serve as evidence that the rebuilding process has begun. (New York Times)

Mayor Will Not Name A Relative of September 11th Victim To Board of Rebuilding Authority - Apr 9, 2002
Mayor Bloomberg angered families of Sept. 11 attack victims last night by refusing to budge on his decision to not appoint any of them to the agency charged with rebuilding lower Manhattan. John Whitehead, head of the development corporation, tried to reassure the families by promising them more involvement in the agency's work. But many are increasingly concerned that they will be shut of the process — particularly the planning of a permanent memorial. (New York Daily News)

City-State Rebuilding Agency Approves Preliminary Blueprint For Redevelopment - Apr 9, 2002
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation on Tuesday morning approved a preliminary blueprint for rebuilding lower Manhattan. The board -- charged with distributing roughly $2 billion in federal aid and with overseeing downtown rebuilding -- approved a redevelopment plan that includes proposals for “a museum of freedom and remembrance” near the World Trade Center site and a redesign of the downtown street grid to improve pedestrian access and link neighborhoods. (Associated Press)

Worshippers Celebrate Easter Near Ground Zero - Mar 31, 2002
Worshippers filled a chapel a block from the World Trade Center site Sunday for a candlelight sunrise Easter service. "The message of Easter is a message of hope, and hope is something to which we cling amid the devastation of ground zero," said Father Lyndon Harris, who delivered the sermon at St. Paul's Chapel. Newsday has a slideshow of photographs taken at the mass. (Associated Press)

Good Friday March Leads To Ground Zero - Mar 30, 2002
More than 1,500 people walked from St. James Cathedral in Brooklyn across the Brooklyn Bridge to a church near Ground Zero. In a spiritual trek known to the faithful as "The Way of the Cross," the throng paused four times to reflect on the various stages of Jesus' suffering and death described in the Bible. (New York Daily News)

Tribute In Light May Be Part of Permanent Memorial After Going Dark - Mar 30, 2002
The twin beams of light forming a nocturnal memorial to World Trade Center victims will go dark in mid-April as planned, but may be incorporated into a permanent memorial, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday. The temporary memorial, Tribute in Light, costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to maintain, Mr. Bloomberg said, adding that the agreement with the residents of Battery Park City limits its glow to about a month. (New York Times)

Survey Reveals New Yorkers Support Keeping Tribute In Light Past End Date - Mar 29, 2002
Quinnipiac University released a poll yesterday showing that 39 percent of 1,038 registered voters in the city feel the Tribute in Light should stay on until a permanent memorial is built and that 36 percent feel the lights themselves should be permanent. Twenty percent feel the lights should be turned off April 13, as planned. And that is what will happen, said Kent L. Barwick, president of the Municipal Art Society, the chief sponsor of the project, in part because it was approved by various community groups, government agencies and victims' family members as a brief, finite gesture. (New York Times)

Parents, Residents Protest WTC Dumping Operation - Mar 20, 2002
Dozens of students, parents and teachers gathered today to protest World Trade Center debris-hauling barges moored near their schools. The protesters said they are concerned about dust from the debris-hauling operation, and diesel fumes from trucks and other heavy equipment. (Associated Press)

Museum Looking For Home For World Trade Center Photo Exhibit - Mar 17, 2002
A gripping photo exhibit of the devastated World Trade Center by a renowned New York photographer could skip the city because of a dispute involving the Museum of the City of New York. The exhibit, originally slated to be held at the Tweed Courthouse, is now uncertain because Mayor Bloomberg cast doubt recently on the move to the courthouse as a result of the city's financial crisis. (New York Daily News)

Tribute in Light May Last Longer Than A Month - Mar 13, 2002
The powerful "Tribute in Light" -- the two columns of light evoking the fallen World Trade Center -- may have a life beyond its one-month stand. Although many officials said the beams of light were not a viable option as a permanent memorial, they allowed that they might be brought back on a case-by-case basis, including possibly for the one-year anniversary on September 11 of this year. The mayor said he will defer to the judgment of the Municipal Art Society. (New York Daily News)

Memorials Mark Six-Month Anniversary of Attacks - Mar 12, 2002
Two memorials were unveiled yesterday in somber ceremonies. In the morning, Mayor Bloomberg led a ceremony with a moment of silence at 8:46 AM, the time the first plane hit the first tower, at Battery Park in front of the "Sphere" memorial. At the end of the day, the daughter of a Port Authority police officer flipped a switch and lit up the skies with the "Tribute in Light," a memorial of two light beams reaching into the sky only blocks from Ground Zero. (New York Times)

Memorial Ceremonies Around The City This Week - Mar 11, 2002
A listing of the dedications and moments of silence taking place this week. Starts with the tribute at Battery Park at 8:46 AM with the unveiling of "The Sphere," and includes the opening of the Tribute of Light at 6 PM in Battery Park City. (New York Times)

Best Viewing Spots for Tribute In Light - Mar 11, 2002
Gotham Gazette provides a list of the best viewing spots in each borough and New Jersey for seeing Tribute in Light, the interim memorial that opens tonight. Aside from the spots listed here, the Tribute in Light can also be seen anywhere from where the original Twin Towers could have been seen. (Gotham Gazette)

Solemn Service To Unveil Sculpture Memorial on March 11 - Mar 9, 2002
Monday's somber ceremony in Battery Park marking the six-month anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks will begin with a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. — the moment the first plane struck the World Trade Center. Surrounded by victims' relatives, Gov. Pataki and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani will make brief remarks. Then the Fire Department will conduct a ceremonial ringing of bells to commemorate the 2,820 innocent lives lost there that day, among them 343 members of the FDNY and 60 cops from the NYPD and the Port Authority. The 25-minute ceremony will end with a second moment of silence to mark the attack of the second hijacked plane. (New York Daily News)

Visitors May Be Able To Touch Sculpture In Interim Memorial - Mar 6, 2002
Visitors to a temporary memorial will be allowed to touch part of a damaged spherical sculpture that survived the Sept. 11 terror attack, according to a plan under consideration by the city. The 15-foot-high Fritz Koenig sculpture "Sphere," which once stood in the plaza of the World Trade Center, will be the centerpiece of a new memorial in Battery Park. The memorial will be unveiled on Monday, the six-month anniversary of the attack. A low fence will surround the sculpture, and an opening on one side will let visitors touch the monument's bronze surface, the source said. (New York Post)

Focusing On The Tribute of Light - Mar 4, 2002
The Tribute of Light memorial will be made of 88 searchlights pointing at the sky. With a cost of $500,000, the idea from the memorial went from simple illustration in New York Times Magazine to reality within months, thanks to the help of the Municipal Art Society, financing from corporations and foundations, and a lot of lightbulbs. (New York Times)

Interim Sculpture Memorial Set For Battery Park - Mar 3, 2002
A bronze-and-steel spherical sculpture that is to be part of a temporary memorial to the victims of the World Trade Center attack will probably move to Battery Park, rather than to Battery Park City as originally planned, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Saturday. Residents of Battery Park City were unhappy with the idea of their home becoming the site of yet another memorial. (New York Times)

Battery Park City Residents Ask For New Site for Interim Memorial - Mar 2, 2002
Battery Park City dwellers asked Mayor Bloomberg yesterday to come up with another site for an interim memorial to World Trade Center victims after officials unveiled a surprise plan to put it in the southern half of their neighborhood. The area already is home to several other memorials, including the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Irish Hunger Memorial, which is under construction. "We live in Battery Park City. We don't want to live in memorial park city," said Linda Belfer, president of the Gateway Plaza Tenants Association. (New York Daily News)

Families Approve of Two Interim Memorial Ideas - Mar 1, 2002
At a meeting of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's advisory council last night, families of those who perished in the World Trade Center attacks approved tentative plans yesterday for two temporary memorials near the site. (New York Daily News)

Tribute of Light Approved for 6-Month Anniversary - Feb 28, 2002
Beams of light evoking the bases of the twin towers will soon soar near Ground Zero in a temporary memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, officials said yesterday. "It would appear that it will be built," Mayor Bloomberg said, hours after meeting with members of victims' family groups. The "Tribute of Light," will consist of two 50-foot squares of light, Bloomberg and others said. It will be illuminated from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. beginning March 11 — the six-month anniversary of the attacks — through April 13. The squares will rise above an empty lot at Vesey and West Sts. in Battery Park City. (New York Daily News)

Downtown Coalition Presents Rebuilding Recommendations - Feb 27, 2002
Rebuild Downtown Our Town, R.DOT for short, yesterday presented its initial recommendations for the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan. The coalition of Lower Manhattan residents, businesses and professionals, advocates a mixed-use, mixed-income district, with connections to local and regional transportation and state-of-the-art communications systems. In many respects, its proposals are similar to those previously made by New York New Visions, a coalition of architects, planners and designers. (Gotham Gazette)

Memorial to 1993 World Trade Center Victims Destroyed - Feb 26, 2002
A memorial commemorating the six victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was destroyed on September 11. Only a small fragment of the 1993 memorial has been recovered, said Charles Maikish, the former executive director of the trade center. This morning, that fragment will be taken to St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church on Barclay Street for a Mass of remembrance for those killed in the 1993 bombing. (New York Times)

Service Held for 1993 World Trade Center Victims - Feb 26, 2002
Six victims who were killed nine years ago when terrorists bombed the World Trade Center were remembered today with a Mass near ground zero, where terrorists slaughtered about 3,000 on Sept. 11. About 200 people attended the service at St. Peter’s Church, just a few steps from the Trade Center site. (Newsday)

1993 Victims Families Included in Advisory Council - Feb 25, 2002
Families of the six victims killed in the 1993 attack at the World Trade Center will have a voice in the group formed after Sept. 11 to coordinate redevelopment of the trade center site and creation of a memorial to the victims. Relatives of the 1993 attack worried their loved ones were being forgotten, especially because the granite fountain memorial dedicated to the victims of the first attack was destroyed when the twin towers crumbled on Sept. 11. (Newsday)

9/11 Families Approve Temporary Memorial - Feb 23, 2002
The families of September 11 victims have given the green light to a temporary memorial using a bronze sculpture that once stood on the World Trade Center plaza. The families also gave their nod to a triangular parcel of land in northern Battery Park City, dubbed Teardrop Park, as the favorted site for the much-anticipated interim memorial, said Christy Ferer, the mayor's liaison with victims' relatives. (New York Daily News)

Two Memorial Proposals Close To Approval - Feb 22, 2002
Two proposals for temporary memorials to the victims of the World Trade Center attack, one using huge beams of light and the other a damaged bronze sculpture, are moving closer to approval, city and state officials said yesterday. The remains of the spherical bronze sculpture by Fritz Koenig that stood in the World Trade Center plaza would serve as the centerpiece of a temporary memorial being considered by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the group overseeing the rebuilding of downtown. The memorial would remain in place for as long as two years, while a permanent memorial was conceived and installed at the site of the fallen towers. (New York Times)

Interim Memorial Site Down To A Couple Contenders - Feb 19, 2002
The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is eying two parcels for the interim memorial: a large, undeveloped lot in Battery Park City and the scarred, eastern edge of Ground Zero, agency chairman John Whitehead told The Daily News yesterday. The top candidate is a Battery Park City parcel — known as Site 26, between West St. and the Embassy Suites Hotel on North End Ave. But another nearby site — a small, triangular park on Murray St. — also has been gaining favor, they said. Sources said another Battery Park City parcel also is being considered. Included with the article is a map of the proposed sites. (New York Daily News)

Twin Towers in the Harbor - One Memorial Plan - Feb 14, 2002
Timothy Noah of Slate.com highlights today a memorial idea proposed by Fred Bernstein. The memorial would consist of two tower-length piers jutting out into the harbor, both piers inscribed with the names of those who died in the towers on September 11. The piers would also serve as docks for boats back and forth between Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. (Slate.com)

Many Voices, but Little Dialogue on Memorial for Trade Center Site - Jan 26, 2002
The rebuilding of Lower Manhattan has the makings of a bitter New York struggle, a dialogue of disparate views of grief, money, power, politics and design, inflamed by differing passions, but with no framework to reconcile them. In all likelihood, that struggle will begin with a memorial. Absent any official guidance, hundreds of people in roughly a dozen ad hoc groups have already started gathering in small numbers and discussing plans for a memorial. But many of the participants say that until their efforts are coordinated… little progress is likely to be made. This contrasts sharply with what happened after the Oklahoma City bombing (New York Times)

WTC Advisory Groups To Be Announced - Jan 26, 2002
On Monday, the group will announce the members of four advisory councils - for the families of victims, downtown residents, restaurants and retailers, and arts, education and tourism - which will make recommendations to the corporation's board by March 15. Beyond the initial four advisory councils, others dealing with a range of downtown industries will be added, each with about 15 members, said John Whitehead, the corporation's chairman. To help the group develop those plans, Whitehead plans to hire a full-time staff of 10 to 20 people, he said. He also said the corporation would sublease office space in One Liberty Plaza, facing Ground Zero. Whitehead made it clear he thought that some of the site should be saved for commercial development, rather than saving it all for a memorial. (New York Daily News)

September 11 Kin To Meet Bush - Jan 21, 2002
A group of families of World Trade Center victims will be traveling to the White House tomorrow to witness President George Bush's signing of the Victims of Terrorism Tax Relief Act. In an effort to get the federal government on their side, they reportedly will urge the president to set aside the entire World Trade Center site for a memorial. (New York Post)

SoHo Photo Exhibit a WTC Shrine - Jan 20, 2002
A gallery in Soho filled with 4,000 donated photographs chronicling the events of September 11 has been trying to close its doors since Thanksgiving. However, the demand of 3,500 visitors streaming in every day has kept it open indefinitely. The exhibition does not single out any individual photographers - there are no names on the pictures, and no rights owned on any of them. The pictures, which can be seen at the 116 Prince St. gallery or online at their website (http://www.hereisnewyork.org) will eventually be moved to an archive somewhere else in the city. (Newsday)

Firefighters Block a Plan for Statue in Brooklyn - Jan 18, 2002
After a series of complaints from firefighters, plans to honor firefighters with a statue memorial have been abandoned. The bronze statue would have depicted a now-famous Bergen Record photograph of three firefighters raising the American flag after the collapse of the World Trade Center. However the statue would have represented a black, a white, and a Hispanic firefighter instead of the three white firefighters in the original photograph. Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said that the
Fire Department will now be reevaluating what kind of memorial will be erected for the firefighters. Opponents of the statue had collected the signatures of more than 1,000 firefighters who objected to the design. (New York Times)

Gallery Shows WTC Design Proposals - Jan 18, 2002
At an exhibition in a Chelsea art gallery, about 50 architects and artists are showcasing their proposed designs for what to build on the site of the World Trade Center. "This is what I could do to help," said Max Protech, the owner of the gallery. The designs vary in size, shape, and range. A few called for making the entire 16-acre space into a memorial, and others focused more on the conceptual and abstract. There were also proposals for smaller-scale buildings and mixed development of residential and office buildings, including an interactive display where people could create up to 81 potential designs for the area. The show will likely run for about a month, after which it will tour the country. (Associated Press)

WTC Owner Sets Aside Tower Footprints For Memorial Site - Jan 15, 2002
Sources say that Larry Silverstein has instructed architects he has commissioned for the rebuilding of the site of his former World Trade Center to make space for a memorial in their plans. The space set aside would be at the "footprints" of the former Twin Towers.

Meanwhile, September's Mission, a group of relatives of World Trade Center victims, will hold a meeting with designers and architects tomorrow to come up with their own proposals for a memorial covering the entire WTC area. (New York Daily News)

Mike: Hold Contest For Tribute At Ground Zero - Jan 11, 2002
Mayor Bloomberg supports holding a competition to choose the designer of the memorial tribute to the World Trade Center victims that will be built at ground zero, officials said yesterday. (New York Post)

From parks to twisted towers, designs for WTC memorial multiply - Jan 11, 2002
There is no shortage of design ideas for the World Trade Center site, from a 70-story sundial to two towers spiraling down to a 35-foot deep pit. One firm has contemplated a design consisting of 440 evergreens and a below-street waterfall. This initial burst of ideas has been described as therapeutic by some but banal and overly sentimental by others. (Wall Street Journal)

Dozens of Ideas are Floated For WTC Development - Jan 8, 2002
Designers, planners and architects along with politicians and the relatives of the victims of Sept. 11 have offered up a number of ideas for what to develop at the World Trade Center site. Ideas range from permanent memorials to mixed use of commercial and memorial space. In the next ten days, a number of design proposals will be made public at a Chelsea gallery and from the Institute of Urban Design. Ultimately the process will go through the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporation, most planners agree. (Newsday)

Bloomberg Vision for Ground Zero: Memorial and More - Jan 4, 2002
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and John Whitehead, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporation, want the former World Trade Center site to be used for more than just a memorial. After a meeting, Bloomberg and Whitehead supported the use of the site for office space, as a memorial to the victims, and possibly retail space as well. (New York Times)

Motorcycle Tribute to 9/11 - Jan 1, 2002
Thousands of bikers riding Harley-Davidsons rode into New York yesterday, circling Ground Zero to commemorate the victims of Sept. 11. (New York Post)

The Forgotten - Dec 22, 2001
The planners, survivors and philosophers who contemplate the monument that will certainly be built to mark the trade center disaster would do well to realize that not a single memorial has successfully held the attention and affection of New Yorkers for more than a generation or two. In 1904 the General Slocum, a wooden excursion boat carrying picnickers from Manhattan, caught fire in the East River. More than 1,000 passengers, all New Yorkers, died horribly, drowning or burning to death. The vast majority of the casualties were women and children. Yet, who remembers the disaster today? The two memorials that were erected, one in Tompkins Square Park and another in Queens near the victims' graves, are largely ignored. More people mourn the passing of the Brooklyn Dodgers than the victims of the Slocum fire. (New York Times)

Statue Will Salute Bravest Flag Raisers - Dec 21, 2001
A statue inspired by three firefighters who raised the American flag amid the rubble of the World Trade Center was unveiled yesterday, with officials saying it will serve as a permanent symbol of their bravery and strength. The statue, "Flag-Raising at Ground Zero," will be cast in bronze and is expected to be installed at the MetroTech complex in April. (New York Daily News)

Mayor: No Biz at WTC? - Dec 21, 2001
In his last radio show while in office, Mayor Giuliani suggested yesterday using the entire 16-acre site at Ground Zero for an interactive memorial that could draw millions of visitors a year.For weeks, Giuliani has spoken about the importance of erecting a major memorial at Ground Zero, where nearly 3,000 people lost their lives in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, including 402 firefighters and cops for the city and Port Authority. But yesterday the mayor suggested - apparently for the first time - that the whole site could be set aside as a memorial, as opposed to a memorial combined with commercial development. (New York Daily News)

Interim Wtc Park Will Be Built First - Dec 20, 2001
John Whitehead, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corp., said a temporary memorial, featuring a park, will be built at Ground Zero until the permanent memorial built . (New York Post)

Remembering the dead - Dec 13, 2001
To some, re-creating the towers would send the strongest possible message to the world that America will not be cowed by an act of terrorism. But others would like to see the site, or a large part of it, turned over to a lasting memorial to everyone who died there. (BBC News)

Remembering the dead - Dec 13, 2001
To some, re-creating the towers would send the strongest possible message to the world that America will not be cowed by an act of terrorism. But others would like to see the site, or a large part of it, turned over to a lasting memorial to everyone who died there. (BBC News)

Silverstein Sees Mixed Use At WTC Site - Dec 12, 2001
Larry Silverstein, who holds the lease on the World Trade Center site, told
Newsday that he is now considering building several office buildings, a
museum, a performing arts center and a memorial on the site. In an interview with Newsday he said the buildings would be from 50 to 65 stories high. The performing arts center and museum, he said, would improve the quality of life for families who live in lower Manhattan. The developer, who is currently battling with insurers over how much compensation he will receive for the destruction of the trade center, said he hopes to begin construction next year and finish by 2005.
(Newsday)

Coalitions work to create plans for WTC site - Dec 10, 2001
At least four separate ad hoc groups are drawing up plans to guide the
rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, and expect to funnel their
proposals to the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corp., the new state agency
created to oversee the rebuilding of the 16-acre trade center site.
The New York City Partnership and Chamber of Commerce has created NYC
REBUILD, an infrastructure task force.

The American Institute of Architects has put together NEW YORK NEW VISIONS,
an umbrella group of 18 organizations to ensure that the planning and design
community have a voice.

The Regional Plan Association has organized THE CIVIC ALLIANCE FOR
REBUILDING LOWER MANHATTAN, made up of civic, advocacy and environmental
groups.

Rebuild Downtown Our Town, known as the R.DOT COALITION, is made up of
residents, businesses and planners in Lower Manhattan who are eager to have
a say in how their neighborhoods are rebuilt.

The coalitions are hoping that their ideas will give the agency a head start
on its deliberations and pave the way for wide public support for its
eventual decisions. They have begun talks among themselves on collaborations
in an effort to reach a consensus on rebuilding.

"What you want to do is shape a program leading to a master plan," says Bob
Yaro, executive director of the Regional Plan Association, who is involved
with several of the groups.

But given the broad-based nature of the organizations, conflicting agendas
could easily emerge, making it more difficult for the state agency to win
public backing for its reconstruction plans. The agency also must contend
with the plans of Larry Silverstein, the developer who holds the lease for
the World Trade Center buildings, and the many groups of victims' families
that have formed to lobby for a memorial on the site.
"I'm concerned that we end up with deadlock like we had at Columbus Circle
or Times Square, where we had development sites sitting for decades or
longer," Mr. Yaro says. (Crain's New York Business)

Firefighters Oppose a Plan to Record Their Memories of Sept. 11 - Dec 7, 2001
In the days after the Sept. 11 attack, the Fire Department tried to gather
its surviving firefighters to record an oral history of the day when more of
their colleagues perished than any other. It was to be a kind of spoken
monument of scarred memories, captured in individual voices, to immortalize an awful but seminal event. The department officials wanted to act fast to get the most detailed recollections, in the rawest terms. But the plan hit a wall as soon as it began, and the bid to document the department's saddest and most heroic moments has turned into an ugly dispute between department officials and many firefighters and their unions. (New York Times)

Shrine to WTC Civilian Victims - Dec 7, 2001
A makeshift memorial to the civilian victims of the World Trade Center attacks has been scaled back, while a similar nearby shrine to fallen cops and firefighters has received a more permanent home. The memorials, which sit opposite one another along a path that leads from the Hudson River esplanade in Battery Park City to the fallen south tower on Liberty St., are now strikingly disparate. Battery Park City Authority officials said the changes were made this week for maintenance reasons and to protect thousands of mementos from the coming cold weather. (New York Daily News)

Committee Leader Says Victims' Memorial Will Be Main Priority - Nov 30, 2001
John Whitehead, the newly appointed chairman of a commission charged with rebuilding Lower Manhattan, said yesterday that establishing a memorial to the victims of the World Trade Center attacks would be among the first priorities for the panel. As for everything else: "We want it to be done right and we want it to be done well," Mr. Whitehead said of the redevelopment effort. "How quickly it's done is not the primary concern." (New York Times)