Fleeing workers and shuttered businesses. Displaced families and children evacuated from local schools. These, too, are the stories of Sept. 11.

Along with its focus on the tragic losses of that day, the Sept. 11 Museum will give visitors a feeling for what it was like for residents and workers whose lives were changed on that fateful day.

During a computer-animated preview last month of the complex matrix of galleries and exhibits, museum director Alice Greenwald unveiled new details of a gallery dedicated to Downtown residents and business owners, whose lives and livelihood were upended in the wake of the Trade Center’s destruction.

“From our perspective, it’s an integral part of the story of 9/11,” Greenwald told a Community Board 1’s WTC Redevelopment Committee.

The gallery will include photos and artifacts collected from residents and shop owners, including the remarkably preserved “Chelsea Jeans Memorial,” a rack of discount jeans that had been in the window of a shop on Broadway a block from the Trade Center, caked in dust and ash. The gallery also will feature audio recordings, among them interviews conducted with residents. In one, played during Greenwald’s presentation, an emotionally wrought teenager tells of her family’s attempt to stay in their Tribeca apartment for as long as possible.

“They told us to evacuate, and we didn’t want to because we knew we wouldn’t be allowed back in for God only knows how long. And here’s my dad going, ‘We should go to the supermarket,’ except there’s no electricity,” says the unnamed girl, her voice shaking. “It’s pitch black dark, everything’s melting on to the floor.”

Another gallery, yet to be designed, will be dedicated to the recovery workers whose illnesses have been attributed to the toxic air. Greenwald said museum staff still need to determine how it will compile the names of those workers.

“We’re trying to get a comprehensive understanding of everyone who would be legitimately considered a victim of 9/11 related illness,” Greenwald said. “It has to be a system that can constantly be updated. That’s the challenge that we have, and we’re looking for ways to accommodate that.”

While the city’s Police and Fire Departments keep records of their own members who have died from illnesses attributed to work at the site, there are no such records for construction workers and other civilians who were part of the recovery. Committee member Elizabeth Williams said she did not want museum officials to delay designing and opening the gallery while waiting for a list that might never materialize.

“My concern is that the ones that we know have died because of 9/11-related illnesses not be recognized because you can’t come up with an empirical list of all the people who have died.”

Greenwald responded that the solution might be a user-generated database of recovery workers’ names provided by their own family members.
Catherine McVay Hughes, who chairs the redevelopment committee, said remembering those workers is not just about “simple justice.”

“It is vital to the future security of our nation that those who put themselves in harm’s way, responding to future attacks, be confident that their country will stand with them.”