Ed Welter with the illuminated Sphere on Liberty Plaza. The Fritz Koenig sculpture had been the center piece of the World Trade Center plaza for 30 years, and on Liberty Plaza, across the street from the World Trade Center site, since 2017. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
For the past 15 years, Ed Welter has been a volunteer and docent at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, as well as an active fundraiser for 9/11-related causes. (Welter, who works in construction management and is a co-owner of Woolworth Tours NYC, also gives tours of the Woolworth Building.) This is the story of his singular effort of nearly three years, to finally bring illumination to the Fritz Koenig Sphere, which had nightly stood in the dark since the Port Authority installed it on Liberty Plaza in 2017. The damaged 45,000-pound bronze sculpture, recovered from the rubble of 9/11 destruction, was the centerpiece of the World Trade Center Plaza for 30 years.
In 2023 my company had a small office at the World Financial Center that overlooked the 9/11 Memorial. I was looking down on it one day and I said to my assistant, “Sandra, I wonder why they never lit the Sphere.”
During COVID, I used to walk my dog up on Liberty Park at night and Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church looked beautiful all lit. But the most important artifact, the only one from the original Trade Center, was sitting in the dark and most people didn’t even know it was there.
Sandra said to me, “You’re an aggressive guy. Why don’t you write to the Port Authority?” My response was, “Well, first of all, I don’t know anyone.” I did ask around but with no success. A couple months later I participated in a talk about the Slurry Wall with Peter Rinaldi, one of the chief engineers of the Port Authority. Peter spent nine months working on the pile.
He had been retired from the PA for a long time. But I reached out to him and said, “Peter, do you know why the Sphere is not lit?” He said, “I don’t know why. It should be."
I said, “Do you know who I should contact? I don’t know where to start.” And he gave me the name of a woman who was in charge of the World Trade Center site of the Port Authority. I wrote an impassioned email to her. I said, “You know, I’m a resident. I volunteer here at the museum and I don’t understand why you don’t have it lit.” As simple as that.
She said, “We’ll look into it.” A few months later I got renderings, and they also got ideas from other memorials around the country. But then silence. I didn’t want to call or write a lot. I felt if I was too aggressive, they would just block me. They had other things to do. So I would wait three, four, five months and remind her that a lot of people loved the Sphere and that this would mean a lot to them. I wrote several more times with no response and finally found out that she had moved on and a new director had been appointed.
And then I started all over by writing to the new director. Her response was very positive. “This sounds really interesting. Let me see what’s been done.” One of the cards that I played, which definitely was helpful, was to copy every email to Beth Hillman, the CEO of the museum. She commented a few times. So at least they saw it wasn’t just some nut who kept writing them.
In July 2025, we finally had a meeting. It was great. We were invited to World Trade Center Four, and met in a boardroom at the Port Authority. The new director had three assistants with her, and everybody was taking notes and literally looking at each other like, “I don’t understand what, what went wrong here?” It was a hot summer day, and we went outside and took group pictures next to the sphere. Beth Hillman couldn’t make the meeting, but she joined us along with other Memorial officials outside by the Sphere. I’m glad she did. And the Port Authority promised to get it done.
I kept in touch, but I wasn’t getting any response. Then I got an email that said, “We researched this, and by the way, we already have the lights.”
Evidently, they were purchased a long time ago. They found them somewhere in their inventory warehouse. I was also told that the electric work, bringing power from the vehicle security center underneath, had also already been done. And no one knew!
Being involved in construction for 40 years, I’m saying, “Well, okay, so what’s the big deal? You can get a couple of electricians up there and basically connect the lights to the existing electric, and voila.”
After that, I would remind them every few months. And finally in December 2025, I think, they sent us an email saying the work is done. We’re working with our marketing team on basically how to introduce this.
I know a lot of survivors and firefighters and everybody’s thinking, if we know the date and the time, we can have 1,000 people up there. The community should know about this. The museum should know about this. The 9/11 community is huge; they would have come out if we had a date.
Well, they never said a word. They lit the Sphere in early January 2026 without saying a word, not even a follow-up email. One theory is that they didn’t want people to ask what took so long.
I love the memorial pools, but the Sphere once stood at the center of the two towers. It is the only visible above-ground artifact that can be placed at the site as it was on 9/11.
The lighting of the Sphere should have been done in 2017, when it was installed on Liberty Plaza. The process of getting it done was long and sometimes very frustrating but in the end the Port Authority came through and got it done. And for that I am very thankful!