The Void

I feel as if I’m standing in the chasm between ruin and restoration. I’m wearing a faded olive green parka over a baseball tee and comfortable jeans tucked into brand new grey Doc Marten boots. This is the first time I’ve worn Doc Martens so they aren’t even close to being broken in yet. I was told to come in casual clothes and hard-soled shoes; things around here are still pretty messy. A moment ago, my feet were killing me, yet now, I hardly notice it.

I’m in a room without a ceiling. The walls are made of dark slate-colored tiles and I can see the tops of several partially-constructed skyscrapers peering out above them. It is dark outside and I notice the city lights. It’s so incomplete— it’s so beautiful.

James is standing a few feet behind me waiting and I can tell he doesn’t realize how immense this moment feels for me. I’m standing in a place where almost no one from the general public will be allowed to stand and I’m too busy taking it all in to notice that he is ready to move on.

This place is called “The Void.” In a few short months it will be full of water and no one will be able to walk through the submarine-like door that led me 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. We have been walking the construction site for about an hour. 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, we were on the museum—or bedrock—level when 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 I almost believed they were still there. I relived a sense of loss as I stared at the mess of equipment, materials, and signs and tried to make more of what I saw.

“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 our 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 we 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, I stared up at a gigantic slurry wall with row after row of large bolt-like protrusions showing on its face. I could hear the leakage dripping in from the day’s rain storm as Glover explained what these tiebacks were 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. I couldn’t help but marvel at the amount of patience these men must have.

Following my guide back up through all five levels of the site, my feet ached in pain (I wouldn’t dare ask for a break) and just as I thought I had reached my threshold, we came to a pair of makeshift plywood doors with an “Exit” sign stapled to the exposed wood. Above it, someone had scrawled in permanent marker “To Heaven.”

We pushed through.





(This is actually an assignment I just finished for SLC.)