Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and like many we were riveted to the television watching all the live coverage at the National September 11 Memorial at Ground Zero. The 9/11 memorial plaza opened yesterday morning at 10 a.m., almost the exact minute ten years earlier when the first tower fell. In the place in which the World Trade Center’s twin towers once stood are two reflecting pools with the names of 2,977 people killed in the terrorist attacks in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, as well as the six who died in the bombing of the trade center in 1993. There are also over 400 oak trees planted to provide a canopy over the Memorial.
According to the 9/11 Memorial, “The Memorial’s twin reflecting pools are each nearly an acre in size and feature the largest manmade waterfalls in the North America. The pools sit within the footprints where the Twin Towers once stood. Architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker created the Memorial design selected from a global design competition that included more than 5,200 entries from 63 nations.”