Manhattan Memorial
January 7, 2004
My parents always taught me that you should pick your fights carefully, which advice I am ignoring right now. The fight over the memorial space in Manhattan has me bothered.
Not many people like the new design for various reasons. But not many people liked the World Trade Center when it was built either. But in time it became part of the city.
But the issue is not really one of aesthetics. A lot of people — including the families of victims — are unhappy with the choice made for other reasons. One example cited in a “recent Washington Post article”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60568-2004Jan6.html :
bq. Sally Regenhard, whose firefighting son died in the twin towers’ collapse, is more emphatic. She’s a member of the Coalition of 9/11 Families. “All of the finalists looked like a combination of a trip to Disney World and a big box store,” she says. “This is sanitized. You would never know that nearly 3,000 people met a brutal and unnecessary death here.”
What’s the preference?
bq. Family members desire a memorial that incorporates the iconic elements of the fallen towers: the twisted metal beams that resembled a crucifix and the jagged skin of the north tower, which for weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, seemed to rise from the center of the smoking pit of rubble.
But the area surrounding the towers is not open parkland but busy city. Or it was. We focus on the 2,792 dead, but the attack on the Towers was an attack on our economic heart. The loss of the towers closed shops, took jobs, and had a terrible impact on the still living. Manhattan is trying to heal and recover. To do that, some sanitizing *needs* to occur. You don’t let a wound fester just so you can remember the pain of the cut.
Building a memorial of twisted steel and metal in the middle of Manhattan would mourn the dead but would certainly not look forward to life. It would say “time stopped here; we cannot go on.” Worse, the memorial would sacrifice the living — people who depended on that space for jobs and small businesses that relied on the many thousands who worked there — to the memory of the dead.
Yes, my first feeling on the towers is that the space should be left open and undeveloped — a park. But demanding a horrific memorial would be paralizing. It would say to terrorists of all stripes: you can shut down anything you want *if only you kill enough people*. If you kill enough people in the heart of New York, New York will become parkland. Everyone will give up and go home.
Is that the message we want to send?
I think it’s important to rebuild *and* make the space commercial. To do so is to make a memorial that says we will not be immobilized by terrorism. We will remember, but we will also move on.
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January 7th, 2004 at 9:26 am
The towers actually had a very large open space between and around them. I used to eat lunch there sometimes when I worked downtown, because it was so open and had such a great view, so I remember it well. That original space was quite large enough to hold the type of memorial that woman talked about without sacrificing space needed for the new buildings.
January 7th, 2004 at 10:25 am
What’s interesting, though, is that by and large, New Yorkers HAVE healed from this tragedy. Yes, there are times you’ll see people looking up from the streets when they hear a jet overhead, or jump a little when a loud bang is heard, but the latter happened before that day.
Having a memorial with pieces from the wreckage in it is not standing still in time. It’s a reminder — bitter, perhaps == of what can happen if you’re not paying attention to the world, which, I think, is needed more and more.
January 8th, 2004 at 10:48 am
I went to the competition exhibit the day after Christmas and the chosen memorial was the ONLY one I really liked. It’s simplicity is what makes it work.
I’ve talked to my dad about this and also a close friend and we all have the same opinion. The memorial needs to be something that is going to last a very long time. Most of the designs would require an extensive amount of maintenance and just won’t last for coming generations. Is the idea to comfort the families right now, or to create a lasting memory of what happens when people hate each other?
Look at the Vietnam Memorial Wall in DC. It’s simplicity is very powerful. Even people who don’t have a direct connection to anyone who fought or died in the war are affected by it.
If the memorial becomes neglected over the next few generations (as the children and grandchildren die), it’s going to take a long time for the Wall to completely fall apart. It doesn’t have fancy lighting and running water that will stop working as power systems change.