9-11 Museum Going Up In New York City Offers Raw Experience

NEW YORK – The Sept. 11 museum is taking shape 70 feet below ground, a
cavernous space that provides an emotionally raw journey and ends at bedrock
where huge surviving remnants and spacial voids reveal the scale of the
devastation of what once was the World Trade Center.

The museum's architects, director and two victims' family members led
members of the news media Tuesday on a tour of the subterranean space, which
commemorates nearly 3,000 people who died in the 1993 and 2001 terrorist
attacks.

There are no display cabinets yet, no exhibits. It is still a construction
site. But it was easy to visualize the intent of the spaces, clearly
articulated by the acute voids created by the fallen towers.

Authentic structural elements that survived the terrorist attacks are there:
the slurry wall that kept the Hudson River from inundating the Financial
District, the last column of trade center steel ceremonially removed from
the site in 2002; the survivors' staircase that served as an escape route
for hundreds; and foundational box columns that anchored the building.

The slurry wall, still in place and measuring 60 feet by 60 feet, and the
other huge artifacts define the museum's design.

The $45 million museum occupies about 120,000 square feet beneath the 8-acre
memorial plaza, the centerpiece of which is "Reflecting Absence," two square
reflecting pools set above the footprints of the north and south towers.

If the museum were above grade, said architect Steven Davis, a partner at
Davis Brody Bond Aedas, "you'd be saying 'wow, how cool.' But because it's
underground ... the progress is less than evident."

Wearing hardhats and protective eye gear, the media reached bedrock level —
where the main exhibition spaces will be located — along temporary wooden
stairs and a freight elevator. The din of construction equipment was
deafening at times.

When the museum opens in 2012, the tour will start at an above-ground glass
pavilion, where a 665-foot long "ribbon," or gently sloped ramp, will carry
visitors through the site.

The ribbon — reminiscent of the ramp that workers used to build the original
towers and during the recovery efforts following the attacks — will wind
down 45 feet to the Memorial Hall, or lobby, past a three-pronged trident
column recovered from the trade center rubble.

The memory of the twin towers is triggered from different areas of the
museum by the depth of the memorial pools in the cavernous site. The pools
will be clad in a recycled aluminum material similar to that used in the
original towers. Special lighting will make them appear to be floating over
the space.

"They exist in true reference to their place and their position on the site
so you can see immediately the relationship of the placement of the memorial
pools with the actual location of the tower footprint itself," Davis said.
"This is something we thought was very important, this spatial accuracy."

Parapets of varying heights along the ramp will reveal different parts of
the museum as visitors go down.

Museum architect Mark Wagner said the ramp is not intended to be a bold
architectural statement, but rather an access path that allows the events of
9/11 to unfold. On Tuesday, it was still covered in rough concrete. The
surface will be dark wood, while the underside will be muted, finished in
dark, raw metal.

Stairs or an escalator will provide the final 25-foot descent to bedrock,
and to a trapezoidal expanse containing the 60-foot high slurry wall that
held back the Hudson.

"You begin to understand that the slurry wall is the separation between the
basement of the original trade center" and the river, Davis said.

The last standing 36-foot steel column that was removed from the trade
center debris at the end of the nine-month recovery effort in 2002 stands in
front of the slurry wall. It became a spontaneous memorial to the victims;
construction workers and family members covered it with tributes,
photographs and inscriptions. On Tuesday, it was sheathed in a
climate-controlled covering.

The tower's foundational steel box columns are exposed at bedrock in the
floor slabs, providing an outline of the buildings. The federal government
said the column bases and slurry wall should remain in place.

The final descent runs parallel to the Vesey Street stairs, known as the
survivors' staircase, encased in wooden scaffolding on Tuesday. The 37 steps
served as an escape route for people fleeing. It stood for years as the last
remaining above-ground remnant of the original complex.

There are also several places where visitors can stand between the remnants
of the two towers.

Thousands of unidentified remains of 9/11 victims will be stored in the
museum, in an area reserved for the medical examiner's office; an adjacent
room will be set aside for family members. These areas will be off limits to
the public.

A quotation from Virgil's "Aeneid", "No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory
of Time," will be incised into the wall that separates the private and
public spaces.

"The wall is only a membrane that separates us from them, and it's our
obligation to remember," said museum director Alice Greenwald.

Anthoula Katsimatides, whose brother died in the attacks, said she hoped
visitors will "learn something about one of those beautiful people who
passed away on that day" and come away with "a sense of peace and a sense of
hope."

The idea for the museum design began with "all the things we were given,"
the remnants of the complex.

"A traditional museum design is an icon which contains exhibits," he said.
"But this museum, the icon is the exhibit."