Revised Memorial Plan Unveiled

New York officials on Wednesday unveiled revised plans for a memorial to the victims of Sept. 11, a design dominated by two reflecting pools and a dense grove of trees that will be the centerpiece of the rebuilt World Trade Center site.

The “Reflecting Absence” plan -- which has been expanded to include a cultural center, a room with artifacts from the terror attacks and a chamber with unidentified remains -- will offer “healing and remembrance, and mark the sacrifice of those who died here,” Gov. George E. Pataki said.

But the memorial also may be a monument to enduring controversy. The selection of architect Michael Arad’s design earlier this month only intensified a long-running debate over how victims’ names should be listed on a wall at the site.

During a late-night meeting with family members Tuesday, the architect and other officials decided against putting firefighters’ and other rescue workers’ names in a separate list, as those groups had asked. Instead, the memorial will list all the victims randomly, but allow for a special insignia to be placed after rescue workers’ names.

“I think this reflects the feeling of many families, that everybody gets a dignified remembrance,” said Nikki Stern, who lost her husband, a business executive, in the attacks. She is a member of the Family Advisory Council that helped select the winning memorial design.

“But we also wonder where you draw the line,” she added. “Should the families of airline stewardesses have a set of wings next to their loved ones’ name? Should members of corporations have their corporate logo listed after their name too?”

The decision drew immediate criticism from rescue workers, who said their unique sacrifices on Sept. 11 were being ignored. Firefighters, police and other groups said they supported the idea of one common memorial, but were visibly angered that the rescue workers couldn’t be listed separately at the memorial.

“It’s a disgrace,” said Jim McCaffrey, a member of Firefighter Advocates for a 9-11 Fallen Heroes Memorial. “These are people who made the ultimate sacrifice to save others, and all we’re asking is that they be given their own separate space in the list.”

As he spoke, McCaffrey held a large sign reading: “Keep them together,” and stood in a freezing wind outside Federal Hall in Manhattan, where Pataki unveiled the plan.

Such friction was to be expected, said Vartan Gregorian, chairman of a 13-member jury that selected Arad’s design from 5,201 international entries in a competition that began in April. The task of finding a satisfactory memorial design for family members, rescue workers, neighborhood leaders and New York political figures -- not to mention the nation as a whole -- was difficult, he said.

“How to collect the disparate memories of individuals and communities together in one space and give them material form has always been the daunting challenge of any memorial site,” Gregorian said. “It has posed a humbling challenge to us, the 13 jurors charged with finding a single memorial design only two years after the attacks.”

The memorial is also intended to honor the victims of the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and those who died aboard an airliner in Shanksville, Pa. -- as well as those killed in the 1993 bombing attack on the World Trade Center, officials noted.

Jurors -- who included Maya Linn, the designer of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington -- said one of their chief goals was ensuring that the winning entry would jibe with the master plan for the 16-acre area by architect Daniel Libeskind. Last month, he and architect David M. Childs unveiled Freedom Tower, a 1,776-foot-tall building that will dominate the rebuilt area, along with other commercial buildings.

“Reflecting Absence” was selected from among eight semifinalists. But before jurors gave Arad the final nod, they asked that he be teamed with Berkeley-based architect Peter Walker to provide additional landscaping, officials said. In particular, they asked that the original vision of bleak, empty spaces around the twin reflecting pools be replaced with a grove of trees, benches and other parklike amenities.

Arad, 31, works for the city’s Housing Authority, where he has designed two police stations.

Under Arad’s design, the memorial will fill the footprints -- or the rectangular outline of where each of the twin towers once stood -- with two reflecting pools and cascading water. Visitors will be able to descend 30 feet to a room filled with artifacts from the attacks, such as a crushed fire truck, and a private gathering room for victims’ families.

The memorial would include an exposed section of the slurry walls -- or the original foundation of the World Trade Center -- a cultural center that has yet to be designed and a museum recounting the attacks, officials said. Work on the entire site was expected to be finished within 10 years, according to John Whitehead, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which oversees development of the site.

“No final development plans are ever going to satisfy everyone, especially on something so emotional,” said Stern.

“But the memorial does what many of us had hoped: It takes you down into the worst possible moments, then brings you back up to the light. When it’s finished, we think this could be turned into a life-affirming place.”