Text size:

WTC steel to rise inside 9/11 memorial

By AMY WESTFELDT | Associated Press Writer

7:00 PM EDT, September 4, 2007

This image provided by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum shows an artist's rendering of a pair of steel trident columns from the original twin towers inside the planned museum pavilion at the World Trade Center. The pavilion will serve as the entrance to the museum below. (AP photo/ National September 11 Memorial & Museum, Squared Design Lab / September 4, 2007)

NEW YORK - Visitors to the Sept. 11 memorial will see two huge pieces of the World Trade Center's original steel facade inside a glass-walled pavilion that leads them to the museum devoted to the terrorist attacks.

In new drawings released Tuesday by the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum, the trident columns _ each 70 to 90 feet high _ that stood near the base of the twin towers rise next to a stairway that leads visitors down to the museum.

Although the columns are inside the museum's entrance pavilion _ a design that has still not been formally released _ visitors to the 8-acre memorial plaza will be able to see them through glass.

Museum officials are still considering what other artifacts to showcase at the Sept. 11 memorial and where to put them. The site's original plan called for iconic artifacts from the towers to be displayed aboveground. A group of Sept. 11 family members had lobbied for years to have pieces of the steel facade at street level and the heavily damaged bronze peace sculpture "The Sphere," which is installed at a nearby park.

The columns are among more than 1,000 pieces of steel from the fallen towers in storage at a hangar at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The memorial to the 2001 terrorist attacks, which sets two water-filled pools above the towers' footprints and surrounds them with a plaza of oak trees, has been under construction for more than a year. The aboveground plaza is expected to open in 2009, the museum a year later.