It’s a room without a ceiling. The walls are made of dark slate-colored tiles and the tops of several partially-constructed skyscrapers are peering out above them. It is dark outside, but lit by the city lights. It’s so incomplete— it’s so beautiful.
Standing in the chasm between ruin and restoration, things around here are still pretty messy. James is waiting a few feet away, but he doesn’t seem to realize the immensity of this moment. This is a place where almost no one from the general public will be allowed to stand and taking it all in, it’s hard to notice he is ready to move on.
This place is called “The Void.” In September it will be full of water and no one will be able to walk through the submarine-like door that led here. It is actually the bottom of a very large fountain—one of two being constructed here in Lower Manhattan. They are to serve as the “footprints” of where the Twin Towers once stood. The symbolism is clear: a fountain to reflect upon the tragedy; a void to remember the loss of human life.
James Glover, Senior Project Manager of the 9/11 Memorial, is now edging back toward the “submarine” door. It has been about an hour since this tour began. There are five levels to the memorial: the plaza (where the public will be able to view the finished fountains), a piping gallery that will organize water flow, a large A/C and heating level, a pumping and filtering level that will clean debris and cycle water, and a memorial museum underground directly below the “footprints.”
About fifteen minutes ago, on the museum—or bedrock—level, Glover pointed and said, “This is the North Tower, and that’s the South Tower.” The statement so simple, so matter of fact that for a moment one almost believes they are still there. You relive a sense of loss to stare at the mess of equipment, materials, and signs and try to make something of it.
“The company I work for, we do construction management. When they had the first bombing in ’93, our company came in and did the whole assessment and rebuild and we kept doing a lot of refurbishment on the Twin Towers. But once the Event happened, we just kind of rolled into play and continued our services,” said Glover. Although he has obviously been working at this location for much longer, he moved here six years ago to begin the 9/11 Memorial project. “When I first got here, we still had a medical examiner sifting through and finding bone fragments.”
Managing a project with so many challenges, Glover seems more than unnerved by the impatience of the public. He reiterates this at least three times during the walk-through. On several occasions, a construction worker would be digging at the site, find something, and have to report it. Work would cease, and the area would be tented off for examination. Glover cringed as he described archeologists invading, armed with what he referred to as their “little brushes.” Not everything found at the site has been small, however. Last summer construction was halted due to the discovery of a ship from the 1700s. “There’s a lot of history here,” Glover remarked as he continued through the 16-acre site.
In fact, the entire site is built on fill. Back when the older buildings were being constructed, extra land that was moved away from those sites was built up on the shore of the Hudson and eventually expanded the island of Manhattan significantly. This has been a major challenge in the construction of the 9/11 Memorial because the soil is very moist and slushy. The site is only about 800 yards from the current shore of the Hudson.
Underground, there is a gigantic slurry wall with row after row of large bolt-like protrusions showing on its face. Evidence of leakage is audible as it drips in from the day’s rain storm while Glover explains what these tiebacks are for. Without these large reinforcements, the wall would basically cave in on the workers because its weight cannot be supported by the soft soil. Each row represents how far the job has come. While workers cleared out debris from the destruction of the Towers, they installed new rows of tiebacks as they dug further and further into the wreckage. It seems impossible not to marvel at the amount of patience these men must have.
Following James back up through all five levels of the site, the journey back begins to feel endless, but at the top there is a pair of makeshift plywood doors with an “Exit” sign stapled to the exposed wood. Above it, someone has scrawled in permanent marker “To Heaven.”
Just push through.
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