tribute center

They Come To Learn, Remember At Tribute Center

By Andrea Appleton
POSTED OCT. 2, 2006

The newly opened Tribute WTC Visitor Center at 120 Liberty Street makes no attempt to assign the Sept. 11 attacks a place in the arc of history. Events are instead presented in human terms—through the words of survivors, the crackly, futile transmissions of firefighters, and heartbreaking footage from the “pile.” There are, as well, relics from the towers—a mangled dinner fork, a briefcase so battered it seems ancient—that, though silent, speak in a language that is brutally direct.

“We’re hoping that the museum will tell the hometown story,” said Lynn Tierney, the Tribute Center’s president, as she guided a reporter through the galleries. “We want to tell the story at the same level as the guy who’s visiting from Ohio who also buys his coffee in the morning before he goes to work.”

It’s a story that Tierney knows well. A former public affairs officer for the Port Authority, she worked in the towers for 13 years, and was there for the 1993 bombing. By Sept. 11, 2001, she was a deputy commissioner of the Fire Department, and was on the scene with firefighters before the towers fell.

The Tribute Center, a project of the September 11th Families’ Association, is staffed by some 130 volunteer docents who, like Tierney, have a personal connection to the attacks. Lee Ielpi, whose firefighter son died in the towers, helped develop the center, which will welcome visitors until the permanent World Trade Center museum and memorial open in 2009.

“A million plus people come here every year to look at a hole in the ground,” Ielpi said. “What is out there for people to understand what happened?”

Tribecans Harry Kendall and Joan Krevlin, husband-and-wife partners at BKSK Architects, designed the Tribute Center’s interior architecture as well as the exhibits. They worked closely with members of the Families’ Association.

“It was probably the hardest project we’ve ever worked on,” Krevlin said. “Every decision, every photograph, every line had a very personal meaning for everyone who was involved. It was an intense process.”

The layout of the center’s galleries grew out of the limitations of the space as well as the founders’ concept. “We knew we wanted to move visitors through time and we wanted to try to find a sequence that was an emotional series that made sense,” Krevlin said. That was no small task in a building that previously housed a deli.

Visitors first encounter the World Trade Center as it was before Sept. 11, with a film clip that provides a sense of what everyday life in the towers was like. For those who remember that routine, it can be a warm and welcome reminiscence.

“We want to show the vibrancy of the community,” Tierney said. “You could buy your shoes there, you could get your nails done. The only thing that people have seen for five years is the towers in flames.”

The second gallery gives a timeline of events related to both attacks, in 1993 and in 2001. Visitors move past information panels that offer searing personal accounts. “You turn and it’s almost as if someone is speaking to you,” said Krevlin.

Rescue and recovery efforts are described in the third gallery. A documentary film flickers on the wall above displays of artifacts, including a garden tool used to comb for human remains.

Next comes a gallery filed with family photos and personal memorabilia, a tribute to the victims in life. Names scroll endlessly down a screen. It is a place where visitors tend to linger.

Before the center officially opened to the public, more than 4,000 survivors and victims’ relatives came to see it, along with hundreds of others, including rescue and recovery workers. Among them was Jim Connor, an ironworker with Local 40.

Connor worked for what he could only describe as “a long, long time” during the recovery operation. He also helped prepare a mangled steel beam, salvaged from Ground Zero, for display at the center. The 3,500-pound beam, twisted and fissured like clay, stands in one corner of a gallery.

On this first visit, Connor gripped an edge of the beam and wept as his parents stood close by.

More than 900 people passed through the Tribute Center on Sept. 18, the day it opened to the public. The mournful soundtrack from a film about the recovery filtered through the galleries. Most of the visitors took in the exhibits in silence as docents circulated, handing out tissues and sitting with those who wanted to talk.

“This is what makes it real,” she said, pointing to a wall of mementos and putting her palm to her heart. “It’s so touching.”

The Tribute Center received more than a thousand items from victims’ families for the exhibit commemorating their lives. Photos poured in, as did objects both poignant and humorous—a sailboat crank, a button for the ’70s glam rock band KISS, a swim cap.

“It’s such a privilege,” said Tierney, “to open these envelopes and see, ‘Thank you. Finally finally finally we have some place to send these to.’”

Some came to witness their personal experiences made public. Others had only seen the destruction on TV. Nicole Miller, from Oregon, a first-time visitor to the trade center site, crouched in front of a display case, peering at a pair of glasses that belonged to a victim.

Joseph Castaldo stood by a long blue wall covered with copies of the “Missing” posters that papered Lower Manhattan after the towers fell.

“My daughter could’ve been on that wall, right here,” he said, jabbing his finger at a poster. On Sept. 11 his daughter Michelle descended 62 flights of stairs from her Morgan Stanley office in the South Tower and escaped. Castaldo went straight into the soot and wreckage to find her.

“I saw all this in a much closer venue,” he said. “But I told my daughter I had to come, for her.”

In the last gallery, visitors sat at a long table and wrote their impressions on note cards. Many of the messages already pinned on the wall were from the families and friends of victims.

“I am changed. Every day is a gift,” read one. On another, crooked drawings of a smiling sun and flowers surrounded the writing. “I miss you Nana,” it said. “I love you a lot.” It was signed “Kamy,” in the labored script of a child.