After our Greenwich Village food and cultural walking tour, I took my gals back to the Christopher Street subway and traveled farther downtown to Rector Street where we walked a few blocks to the 9/11 Memorial which recently opened on September 11 of this year.
The National September 11 Memorial is a tribute of remembrance and honor to the nearly 3,000 people killed in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center site, near Shanksville, PA, and at the Pentagon, as well as the six people killed in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
The Memorial's twin reflecting pools are each nearly an acre in size and feature the largest manmade waterfalls in North America. The pools sit within the footprints of where the twin towers once stood. The Memorial design was selected from a global design competition that included more than 5,200 entries from 63 countries.
The names of every person who died in the 1993 and 2001 attacks are inscribed into bronze panels edging the Memorial pools. The names are stencil cut into the parapets allowing for paper impressions or rubbing. At night, light shines up through the voids created by each letter of a name. More than 400 trees are planned for the 8 acre plaza, including the single surviving tree that was left standing after the attacks, which has been transplanted in between the North and South Pools.
