Two granite pools, which appear almost bottomless in their stygian depths, now mark the ground where twin towers stood and form the core of a somber memorial park that will open next month on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Given the tumult over its design, the eight-acre memorial is a surprisingly effective emotional prompt for our feelings about that day's quartet of hijackings, which claimed 2,977 lives.
As the first fragment of the devastated site to be repaired, the National September 11 Memorial - which honors everyone who died in the 2001 attacks and the 1993 car bombing - bears an immense burden. With other catastrophes, the commemorations were merely expected to help mend wounded hearts. This one, on the very spot where tragedy occurred, must also mend the broken cityscape of lower Manhattan, once the world's premier financial center, now a place in search of a new identity.
The memorial, however, is but half of ground zero's 16 acres. The rest remains a churning landscape of half-finished buildings. In many places, the guts of the underground metropolis are still exposed, and the noise of construction makes normal conversation difficult. Because the area is a work zone, access to the memorial will be controlled and visitors will need reservations to enter. Let's hope security-mad officials don't make that system permanent.
The process of designing the memorial wasn't pretty, either. The collaboration between Michael Arad, an unknown New York architect who emerged as winner of a 2003 competition, and the California landscape architect Peter Walker was essentially a shotgun marriage. Rising costs and other practical concerns forced Arad to scale back his original ambitions for the memorial, titled Reflecting Absence.
