The Stories They Tell: Artifacts from the National September 11 Memorial Museum

archaeology

The Tridents structural icons

by Joe Daniels The two steel “tridents” that are visible through glass walls inside the 9/11 Museum have been central to the story of the World Trade Center at every stage of its history.

They were forged to implement a unique architectural design for buildings that would rise 110 stories into the sky.

They formed the distinctive Gothic arches that were so readily identified with the Twin Towers at Plaza level.

They stood in the rubble of the collapsed towers, becoming instant symbols of defiance and resilience.

Now they remain as icons of memory, the first artifacts that visitors encounter at the 9/11 Museum.

For nearly three decades, the tridents were the towers’ literal and figurative foundation. Reconstructed in the Museum, two of these tridents now symbolize the strength that was challenged by the 9/11 attacks.

At the time they were constructed, these columns were an innovation that set the towers apart from traditional skyscrapers. Rather than simply forming the perimeter of the buildings, they provided the structural support for towers rising to a height of more than a quarter mile. To maximize space on each floor of the 110-story buildings, the perimeter columns were engineered to bear an unprecedented share of the towers’ weight. The steel was manufactured at factories across the United States, and each piece was stamped with a code that identified its final placement within the towers.

After the Twin Towers collapsed, the tridents—some of them remarkably still upright—were among the only recognizable elements at the 16-acre landscape of rubble that had quickly become known as Ground Zero. The notion that they had remained standing—orphaned sections of the building facade perched in the debris—made them a focal point of public attention. The tridents were the last surviving reminder of the fallen buildings. Some people suggested that the pieces of facade be preserved for use as a memorial, in spite of the fact that they weighed hundreds of tons and were sharp-edged and unstable.

At Ground Zero, work went forward without respite, with thousands of people volunteering to assist in the rescue and recovery efforts. Ultimately, an estimated 3.6 billion pounds of material were removed over nine months so that the process of repairing the hole in the city’s landscape could begin.

The tridents, installed in the Museum pavilion, measure more than 80 feet tall and weigh more than 50 tons.

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archaeology

Impact Steel the force of violence by michael shulan Two huge sections of structural steel that were part of the facade of the North Tower captured, at the precise location of the plane’s impact, the crash of hijacked Flight 11 at 8:46 a.m. in a way no camera ever could.

Presented in the 9/11 Museum, they present a chilling physical record of the violence of that moment.

Artifacts tell complex and often surprising stories. This is especially true of these two steel remnants, which were originally connected on the North Tower facade, one above the other and spanning floors 93 through 99. Their size speaks to the original height and scale of the towers, while their brutally splayed and mangled condition illustrates the terrible forces that led to the towers’ destruction. They testify to the tragic fate of the crew and passengers aboard Flight 11 and to the plight of those who were trapped in and above its impact zone, as well as to the efforts of those who tried so valiantly to reach them, many of whom also lost their lives.

These column panels offer testimony of another kind, providing key evidence of what happened to the towers after the planes struck. Along with a number of other pieces of salvaged World Trade Center steel, they were the subject of extensive analysis at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where investigators referred to these two particular remnants as M-2 (spanning floors 96 to 99) and M-27 (spanning floors 93 to 96). NIST is a federal agency responsible for “advancing measurement science, standards and technology” in a number of fields, including building fire research. Investigations of structural collapse have been a long-standing part of NIST’s portfolio.

The NIST investigation faced a particularly severe set of challenges. Much of the physical evidence that would explain the collapse had been destroyed by the impact of the planes into the towers and their subsequent collapse. Surviving evidence would have to be identified within a debris field covering the 16-acre site at a depth of more than seven stories.

Many damaged steel remnants remained, but more than 200,000 tons of steel had been used to build the towers. Identifying the particular pieces of structural steel that could help determine the specific causes of the collapse required diligent search through mountains of tangled debris by people with the appropriate expertise. This work began in early October 2001 when volunteers from the Structural Engineers Association of New York started to select steel that might be useful in understanding the collapse. Investigators for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) also took part in marking off steel pieces, and NIST made additional steel selections beginning in February 2002.

Original markings on the steel allowed investigators to locate this column on the northern facade of the North Tower.

Following pages: Prior to installation in the Museum, this column was stored in an empty hangar at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

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The steel was culled in several phases. Everything removed from the site was first searched for human remains or for recoverable property. Once cleared, some of the steel was dispersed among a number of recycling facilities in New Jersey. Pieces that were needed for further study were then set aside and given an alphanumeric marking; all steel with the letter M had been retrieved from the recycling company Metal Management, Inc., in Newark, New Jersey.

The formal NIST investigation began on August 21, 2002, and ended on October 26, 2005. It included the examination of 236 pieces of WTC steel, including M-2 and M-27.

The grotesque distortions of M-2 and M-27 signaled that they had endured an unusual amount of stress, but their tortured shape did not establish where they had been located in the standing towers. This proved a relatively straightforward problem to solve, however. Since all WTC steel had been fabricated for placement in specific locations in the buildings, each piece had been marked with a stamp or stencil that allowed it to be installed in its proper place. With the help of records from one of the original structural engineering firms of the World Trade Center, Leslie E. Robertson Associates, it was possible to resituate the salvaged steel. M-2 and M-27 spanned the epicenter of the attack.

The NIST report is clinical in its description of the impact of an airplane into the North Tower.

Regarding M-2, the NIST investigators wrote: “Panel M-2 (WTC1, column line 130, floors 96 to 99) was struck by the upper part of the airplane’s fuselage and the vertical stabilizer of its tail. . . . The damage observed on the recovered panel was largely a result of the impact. The lower part of all three columns was bent into the building with the 97th floor concrete slab acting as a fulcrum point.”

NIST analysts employed computer simulations, microscopic and other scientific analysis, and video and photographs of the impact zone taken during the event to answer a broad range of questions.

Most important of all was why the towers fell. NIST concluded that while the airplane impacts severed key columns and structural elements, they also tore away critically important fireproofing. Stripped of its protective covering, the remaining steel in the impact zone could not withstand the heat generated by the combustion of jet fuel, oxygen, and building materials. The resultant heat weakened the unprotected steel, which collapsed when it could no longer support the weight of the floors above.

M-2 and M-27 are terrible to behold. It seems impossible that steel stretching more than 35 feet, as M-27 originally did—steel that held a building a quarter mile into the sky—could be ravaged in this way. The sheer violence of the attacks inhabits these fragments in a way that cannot be found anywhere else in the 9/11 Museum.

Yet they also testify to the resilience that would characterize so much of the response to 9/11.

Remarkably, M-2 and M-27 were recovered and identified amid an ocean of debris. Then, through the dedicated efforts of more than 200 technical experts, their story was deciphered and explained in a massive public accounting of the collapse of the Twin Towers. Now placed in the Museum, they make a powerful contribution to the dialogue that takes place everywhere at bedrock between archaeology and architecture and between history and memorialization.

Michael Shulan is the creative director for the Museum at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Hijacked Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center between the 93rd and 99th floors.

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remembrance

The Last Column Standing tall

by Ronaldo Vega By midday on September 11, 2001, the New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC) had been assigned oversight responsibility for the recovery and cleanup at Ground Zero. This effort was completed on May 30, 2002. At DDC, Ronaldo Vega, a project architect, was assigned to the department’s Emergency Response Team. He worked at Ground Zero through the full nine months of the cleanup.

At first, the Last Column was just like any other column in the immense 16-acre field of horror and destruction that was Ground Zero, indistinguishable in size, shape, and condition from the structural columns around it.

Soon enough, however, the column stood apart from the rest. Unlike the other columns, this one would not yield to the heavy equipment that tried to pry it from the ground. It simply would not budge.

At that point, the Last Column was no more than a three-foot stump in the middle of a roadway that was used to remove debris. Later, this ramp would come to be known as the Tully Road, named for the construction company that had responsibility for that quadrant of Ground Zero.

As the recovery effort continued, more and more of the column was exposed, and yet it still resisted every attempt to extract it. The column’s insistence on staying in place seemed deliberate, and it impressed everyone there. It may seem strange to ascribe human attributes like tenacity to a steel column, but we all valued such attributes greatly during that challenging time, and we found them where we could.

Across the site, workers recognized this column’s determination and looked at it with increasing levels of awe and respect. We couldn’t bring ourselves to cut it down, as we had so many others. To our way of thinking, it had become a test of wills, and the column was winning. Besides, it served a useful purpose as a lane divider. “Stay to the right of the column going up and down the ramp,” we used to tell the truckers.

There was more to this column, though. As we excavated the road and the pile receded, the column was marked with a spray-painted inscription: SQ 41. This was written by FDNY Squad 41 as a marker for their As its name suggests, the Last Column was the final steel column left standing at the World Trade Center site.

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9 / 11 — the planes

Shattered Plane Fragments aboard flight 77

by Ian Kerrigan While waiting to board her plane at Washington Dulles International Airport, Leslie A. Whittington mailed a postcard to her sister and brother-in-law. “Well, we are off to Australia,” the note began.

Whittington, an economist and associate professor of public policy at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., was scheduled to spend the fall 2001 term on sabbatical as a visiting fellow at Australian National University in Canberra. Alongside her in the airport terminal were her husband, Charles S. Falkenberg, and their young daughters, Zoe Falkenberg, age 8, and Dana Falkenberg, age 3.

They were all flying on American Airlines Flight 77 to California on the first leg of their journey.

Flight 77 took off at 8:20 a.m. with six crew members and 58 passengers, including five terrorists, on board. As the plane reached cruising altitude about half an hour into the flight, hijackers forced their way into the cockpit, where they killed or incapacitated Captain Charles F. Burlingame III and First Officer David M. Charlebois. Taking control of the aircraft, the hijacker pilot turned off the transponder to prevent air traffic controllers from tracking the plane. The hijackers reversed the course of the Los Angeles–bound plane, setting their new flight path toward the nation’s capital.

From the rear of the plane, where passengers and crew had gathered, two phone calls were made, providing critical information about what was occurring aboard Flight 77. Passenger Barbara K. Olson called her husband, Ted Olson, who was at his desk at the U.S. Department of Justice where he worked as U.S. Solicitor General. She informed him that hijackers had taken over the flight with knives and box cutters. After the call, her husband alerted other federal officials to the hijacking. Flight attendant Renée May called her mother, Nancy May, and told her that hijackers had seized control of the plane and forced passengers and crew to the rear. When the call was disconnected, Mrs. May telephoned American Airlines to alert them to the terrorist attack.

A window fragment from Flight 77 was recovered at the Pentagon crash site.

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9/11—First responders

Mickey Kross’s Fire Helmet the collapse of the towers

by Lynn Rasic Logically, there should be no firsthand account from inside the collapse of the World Trade Center. The weight and force of a 110-story building falling down should have marked an impassable boundary between those who escaped and those who didn’t. In the case of the South Tower, this logic held. No one survived the collapse. Miraculously, in the North Tower, chance prevailed over logic.

In the 9/11 Museum, a fire helmet worn by FDNY Lieutenant Mickey Kross—one of the first objects to be donated to the collection—testifies to this improbable outcome.

So much about that morning didn’t make sense. At 8:50 a.m., when the call came to Engine 16 on East 29th Street in Manhattan, Lieutenant Kross figured that somehow “a small private plane” had hit the North Tower. Arriving on the scene, Kross realized that things were much worse than he had imagined.

He was facing north, the fire truck blocking his view of the buildings, when he heard a huge explosion from the South Tower. That would have been at 9:03 a.m. Not knowing that another plane had been flown into that building, Kross and his men took shelter from a torrent of “meteors” raining down on them—in fact, chunks of steel and concrete from the tower that Kross remembers as being “the size of refrigerators.”

They reported to the fire command in the lobby of the North Tower and were ordered up the B stairway to a command post that had been set up on the 23rd floor. B had been designated an “attack” stairwell, to be kept empty of civilians so that firefighters could get upstairs quickly. But the chaos inside the building had sent people down any evacuation route they could find, and stairwell B was filled with people. Engine 16’s climb to the 23rd floor took them much longer than anticipated.

While looking for the fire chief at the command post, Kross heard a commotion in the C stairwell.

Josephine Harris, a Port Authority employee from the 73rd floor, was having trouble walking. Eventually, at Kross’s urging, she and her supervisor, Joseph Garcia, continued down the B stairway.

Suddenly, while looking for his men, Kross felt strong tremors tossing the North Tower. “I didn’t know what was going on,” he remembered. “The building’s shaking, really noticeably shaking, and I thought maybe it was the elevators coming down the shafts, maybe they cut loose.” It was 9:59 a.m., and the South Tower had just collapsed.

Quickly, the order to evacuate the North Tower went out across FDNY radios. If the South Tower could go, so could the North Tower. Kross headed back down stairwell B, where he caught up with Josephine Harris, along with a group of firefighters from Ladder 6 who were helping her.

The helmet worn by FDNY Engine 16 Lieutenant Mickey Kross, who survived the collapse of the North Tower.

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tribute

Lady Liberty spontaneous memorial

by Adina Langer In the decades since the Statue of Liberty welcomed ships bringing new immigrants or troops returning from war into New York Harbor, it has remained the quintessential symbol of the American ideal of freedom.

The attack on the World Trade Center never threatened the Statue of Liberty. The targets that day were younger symbols of American power and achievement. In an instant, though, the attack renewed the very question that greeted those long-ago ships steaming across the harbor: what is the essence of the United States of America?

In the heart of one Manhattan neighborhood grappling with devastating loss, the Statue seemed to offer some answers.

The big firehouse on Eighth Avenue and 48th Street in New York City was home to two fire companies and an area command: Engine Company 54, Ladder Company 4, and Battalion 9. Stationed in the heart of Manhattan’s theater district, the firefighters had painted their company motto onto their rigs: Never Missed a Performance.

The call from the World Trade Center brought 15 firefighters from Engine 54/Ladder4/Battalion 9 to lower Manhattan.

None survived. In all, 343 New York City active duty firefighters would die on 9/11.

Across the city, firehouses became shrines to the fallen. Flowers and memorial tributes filled the sidewalks outside their doors. This was especially true around the firehouse on Eighth Avenue, where floral tributes stretched as far as 30 feet around. Lieutenant Robert Jackson, who had been off duty on 9/11, remembered “an outpouring of love” from neighborhood residents and visitors: “People could not do enough for us.” Two local residents, Gerry McCarthy and Heather Holland Wheaton, began tending daily what had become a memorial shrine outside the firehouse.

A few days after the attacks, Jackson came to work early and found standing amid the flowers a ten-and-a-half-foot, buff-colored polyurethane model of the Statue of Liberty. It was like many he’d seen outside bus tour offices and souvenir shops nearby. No one had seen the statue being delivered.

“She just appeared,” Gerry McCarthy told the New York Times. “In a few days, somebody put rosary beads around the neck. And flowers. Then somebody had a great big yellow bow and put it where the flame is.” To make attaching the tributes easier, McCarthy and Wheaton wound spools of yarn around the statue and placed clothespins on the threads.

Standing more than 10 feet tall, Lady Liberty is covered in memorial tributes.

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