The Other 9/11 Memorial Is Taking Shape

In Pennsylvania, 300 miles from the new 9/11 museum in New York City, a different kind of memorial is coming together.

Brown Bird Design
This is the thirteenth September since 9/11. Earlier this year, deep beneath the ground where the World Trade Center towers once stood, a museum chronicling the events of that day opened to great fanfare, mixed reviews, and long lines. It cost more than $700 million to build. Admission for one is $24. There's a gift shop.

Brown Bird Design

(Illustration by Brown Bird Design)

Out in western Pennsylvania, in a field 75 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, another memorial is under construction, just as important and on its way to being astonishingly beautiful. It is the Flight 93 National Memorial, commemorating the 40 passengers and crew who gave their lives there so that others might be saved. But this memorial is strangely unpublicized, the full $70 million to complete it hasn't been raised, and it's not due to be finished for another two years. The delay is a national disgrace. Part of the problem is the site itself. It sprawls over 1,200 acres—and may grow to 2,200 acres—while the memorials in New York and at the Pentagon are contained on 8- and 2-acre plots, respectively. Ground Zero required years of clearing and preparation, but the obstacles were plain to see. The field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on the other hand, held surprises. Much of the land was once an open-pit coal mine, and the environmental damage required painstaking surveying, sampling, and storm-water management to contain acid mine drainage. A reclaimed wetland was enlarged to present a restored habitat to visitors. Site prep and land acquisition ate up a decade.

Finally, this past spring, the second of three major construction phases began. It includes an 800-foot pedestrian bridge over the wetland, a visitors center, and a 9/11 learning facility. These join two other important pieces already in place: a long, black-granite walkway that traces the path of the plummeting plane and a zigzagging white-marble wall engraved with the victims' names. Eventually, 40 groves of trees, one for each passenger and crew member, will surround the central feature: a 400-acre bowl that was regraded and seeded with native grasses and wildflowers.

The most prominent element of the memorial will be a 93-foot-tall concrete sculpture with 40 chimes, the Tower of Voices. Paul Murdoch, the Los Angeles– based architect who is designing the memorial, says the tower expresses a vital part of the United Airlines Flight 93 narrative: After the passengers learned that the plane was part of a terrorist attack, they resolved to force it down, and their phone calls home became a brave but desperate chorus. I love you. Kiss the kids for me. Goodbye.

As of July the $1.5 million for the tower had not been secured.

Murdoch says the tower, like the wall of names and the black path, is designed to elicit a visceral reaction. "Our intent was to create some very focused moments in that large landscape," he says. "We want visitors to move through the memorial, experience these moments, and then move along and process them."

And so Murdoch is leaving much of the site untouched, as quiet and peaceful as it was before the impact that transformed it forever.

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