National September 11 Museum, New York City: Ladder Company 3 apparatus

New York’s National September 11 Memorial remembers the people who died in the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, as well as the victims of the other violent acts in Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11th and the 1993 bomb-attack on the basement of the Center’s North Tower.

Nearby stands the National September 11 Museum, dedicated on May 15th 2014, designed by the New York architectural practice Davis Brody Bond specifically to evoke memories without causing additional distress to survivors and the families of victims.  The entrance pavilion is by the Norwegian practice Snøhetta.

The below-ground 110,000 square-foot space incorporates surviving archaeology of the site, including footings of the towers, part of the slurry wall that holds back the Hudson River, and the transplanted Survivors’ Staircase, thirty-eight steps that formed part of the link from 5 World Trade Center to Vesey Street.

Major artefacts displayed include girder-work from the towers, part of the broadcasting antenna from the top of the North Tower, a badly damaged fire truck and other emergency vehicles.  There are objects, clothing, documents and photographs associated with those who died and those who survived, and tributes such as the Dream Bike, a motor-cycle restored by New York Fire Department firefighters on behalf of their lost colleague Gerard Baptiste.

Portraits of the 2,983 victims of the 1993 and 2001 bombings and commemorations from all over the world are displayed along with a rotating display of artefacts and recovered property associated with particular individual victims and survivors, many of them gifted by families, friends and colleagues, together with still photographs and audio- and video-material from before, during and after the attacks.

The layout is skilfully arranged to lead the visitor gently through a sequence of spaces that interpret sights, sounds and memories of the World Trade Center, the events of September 11th 2001, the rescue and recovery operations and the continuing rebuilding on the site.

Material that might be disturbing, such as a display about those who fell from the towers before they collapsed, is subtly flagged so that it can be avoided.  Friendly, unobtrusive docents are on hand to talk about the exhibits and the events.

This is not a place to rush through.  I spent three and a half hours there and didn’t see everything.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture The Big Apple:  the architecture of New York City, please click here.

National September 11th Memorial, New York City

If the task of replacing the landmark “twin towers” was a huge challenge to designers, the responsibility of commemorating the victims of the 9/11 attacks on the original site needed sensitivity and practical genius.

In comparison, the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania was sited literally in an open field.  The Pentagon Memorial in Washington is a public open space in front of the building, the only part of the Pentagon complex where photography is permitted.

In crowded Manhattan, however, there was a strong feeling – particularly from the loved ones of the victims, many of whose remains were never recovered from the site,– that nothing should be built where the towers stood.

Accordingly the National September 11 Memorial consists of the footprints of the original towers, rendered as twin pools, each one acre in area, lined with walls of granite over which flow waterfalls.

The designer, Michael Arad of the New York practice Handel Architects, entitled his concept “Reflecting Absence”, which is exactly what it does.

The street-level parapets have bronze panels inscribed the names of the victims of 9/11, including those who died at the Pentagon and aboard United Airlines Flight 93 and those who died in the 1993 bomb attack on the World Trade Center, grouped according to the location of their deaths.

The words “and her unborn child” are added to the names of the ten pregnant victims.

The trees surrounding the pools are long-lived deciduous swamp white oaks, with the exception of the “Survivor Tree”, a callory pear which survived the bombing and was nurtured by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation in the Bronx and returned to the site.  Six other survivor trees, three callory pears and three little-leaf lindens, are replanted near to City Hall and the Manhattan approach to the Brooklyn Bridge.

The empty spaces, the soothing sound of falling water and the presence of the inscribed names call forth thoughts and feelings about the place and what happened there that resonate for victims’ loved ones, survivors and visitors who, if they are old enough, remember exactly where they were on September 11th 2001.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture The Big Apple:  the architecture of New York City, please click here.

One World Trade Center, originally the Freedom Tower, New York City

Replacing the towers of the World Trade Center that were destroyed on September 11th 2001 was a hugely important and highly controversial part of the United States’ recovery from the attacks.

The landmark structure, One World Trade Center, otherwise known by its original name, the Freedom Tower, was designed by the master planner, Daniel Libeskind.   His plan for the whole site went through an extended series of revisions by the developer’s architect, David Childs of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

Libsekind’s original concept had an off-centre spire, suggesting the silhouette of the Statue of Liberty, and an open steel lattice at the top:  he originated the idea that the height should be the symbolic 1,776 feet, a reference to the date of the American Declaration of Independence.

David Childs’ final design has a 200-foot-square footprint and rests on a 185-foot-high windowless base, intended to resist ground-level attacks.  At the twentieth floor the rectangular plan breaks into four chamfers, so that the floor-plan becomes octagonal and then continues to a square diagonally opposed at 45° to the base, so that the sides of the building are in the form of isosceles triangles.

The initial intention to enclose the mast with a radome was cancelled to save costs.

Though the cornerstone was laid in 2004, practical construction began only in 2007.

The tower is 1,776ft high, over 400ft higher than the World Trade Center towers, and topped by a broadcasting antenna that takes its total height over 1,792ft.  It is formally designated as the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, but the CN Tower in Toronto (1,815ft) has the accolade of being the world’s tallest free-standing structure.

The top floor of the Freedom Tower, two storeys above the observation deck, is 1,368 feet high, exactly equal to the roof height of the original World Trade Center towers 1 and 2.  There are actually ninety-four floors, though the top floor is numbered 104.

It was practically completed with the installation of the spire on May 10th 2013 and formally opened on November 3rd 2014.

The views from the top of the Freedom Tower are spectacular – out into New York Harbour, up the narrow island of Manhattan, across to Brooklyn to the east and to the flat expanse of New Jersey to the west.

There is no access to the outside at the top of the Freedom Tower, though, so photographing the view is a frustrating exercise in dodging reflections.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture The Big Apple:  the architecture of New York City, please click here.