The 9/11 Memorial & Museum provides sense of peace, some victims' families and visitors say

Monica Iken-Murphy has vivid memories of the fight she waged for a memorial at the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in lower Manhattan.

A 9/11 widow — her husband, Michael Iken, a 37-year-old bond trader worked on the 84th floor of the south tower — she created a nonprofit called September’s Mission to advocate that the site where so many had perished be preserved as a memorial.

There were conversations with former New York City Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani. Navigating the competing interests of the victims and their families, the immediate neighborhood, the developers. Countless meetings. 

Twenty-five years after al-Qaida terrorists hijacked passenger jets and slammed them into the Twin Towers, Iken-Murphy still spends time at the memorial that sits on eight acres of the formerly decimated site, now flanked by more than 400 white swamp oak trees. And says she is at peace when she is there.

"It’s my happy place," said Iken-Murphy, 56, of Manhattan. "You don’t even feel like you’re in the city. You go there and you kind of get lost in your little world. ... He took his last breaths, his last steps there. Anytime I go there, I feel him."

The 9/11 Memorial & Museum site is visited by millions annually — not just those who were touched by the tragedy personally, but for people from around the world. The symbol of the worst terrorist attack on American soil is an iconic sight — the footprints of the Twin Towers with the names of those who died that day etched into bronze. At the center are two reflecting pools.

Millions of visitors

But 25 years on, the museum has struggled financially. Publicly filed financial documents show the museum was operating with a nearly $20 million deficit, according to its 2024 990 forms filed with the IRS, the most recently available.

In June, the museum launched a $75 million fundraising plan in an effort to educate millions of young people about the attacks.

"Many in my generation remember exactly where we were on that horrific day," the 9/11 memorial’s president and CEO, Elizabeth Hillman, said last week. "Yet 100 million Americans were not even born — or were too young to remember for themselves today."

According to the American Alliance of Museums, about 55% of American museums have reported having fewer visitors last year than in 2019, before the pandemic.

Some 11.3 million people visited the 9/11 memorial and 2.4 million went to the museum last year, according to the site’s most recent annual report.

"I think visiting New York, it’s one of the places you have to visit," said Lisbeth Aubry, of Montreux, Switzerland, who spoke in August to Newsday in French at the memorial.

Owen Ford, an 18-year-old incoming Yale freshman from Natick, Massachusetts, has visited the memorial and museum twice and has been struck by the sense of calm there, despite being in the midst of a bustling metropolis.

"There’s a lot of movement in the city," said Ford. "The memorial, it’s a lot more peaceful. ... The scale of the memorial’s kind of baffling," he said. "It takes up so much space in a huge urban area. It’s huge. It’s striking."

Moses Pretrick, 59, and his wife, Sophia Pretrick, 55, who live in the Federated States of Micronesia, a small island chain in the Pacific, stopped at the memorial and museum for the first time when visiting New York City in August.

"When I was watching it on TV, I thought I was looking at a movie or something," Moses Pretrick said of the attacks. "But I guess being here, looking at the place, what really comes to mind is, 'how did the people around this area feel at that particular moment when the buildings were falling, or when the planes hit the buildings?' The sort of horror ..."

The site of the World Trade Center complex was destroyed in the attack by mastermind Osama bin Laden, who justified attacking the United States because of what he considered to be Western interference in the Middle East, the oppression of Muslims and Palestinians and America's support for Israel. The Twin Towers were reduced to rubble and many nearby buildings were also destroyed or heavily damaged.

Complex redevelopment

Redeveloping the site was championed as a rebuke to the attacks. But it was perhaps the most complex development project ever undertaken, with an infinite number of competing interests.

New buildings were constructed on the 16-acre site that housed the World Trade Center complex. In July, officials held groundbreaking for 2 World Trade Center, the final commercial building planned for the new complex. The 55-story building will house the headquarters for American Express. It is expected to be completed in 2031.

One World Trade Center — the tallest building in New York, at 104 stories and 1,776 feet — opened in 2014.

A series of other buildings have filled the site — a performing arts center and other offices, as well as the Oculus, a transportation hub that connects 11 subway lines and commuter rail and ferry service and features a shopping mall.

But 5 World Trade Center, a proposed apartment tower on Liberty Street, has faced a series of delays over funding.

John Feal, a longtime 9/11 advocate and founder of the Nesconset-based FealGood Foundation, was seriously injured serving as a demolition supervisor at Ground Zero after the attacks. He visits the memorial and museum frequently and praised its newest exhibit recognizing the acts of service that were inspired by the tragedy — including the advocacy that he and other undertook to ensure federal dollars for those suffering from 9/11 illnesses.

He says he is pleased that at this year’s annual reading of the victims’ names, there will be a 7th bell toll to honor first responders and those who died from 9/11-linked illnesses.

"The museum evolves with the 9/11 community," said Feal. "The 9/11 community’s a finite community. It’s getting smaller. We’re not getting bigger. They have a responsibility to continue to tell our story. And I think they’re doing a good job."