Sept. 11 museum moves closer to reality

"No Day Shall Erase You From The Memory of Time."

That quote from Virgil's Aeneid, picked for its sense of defiance and triumph of memory in the face of loss, will be the first thing visitors see on entering the main exhibit hall of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at Ground Zero.

During a special media tour of the cavernous construction site seven stories down Tuesday, Alice Greenwald, executive vice president of programs for the museum, pointed out what will develop from the rough-hewn world of concrete and steel in coming months.

"It is a tremendous construction project and as you can see here, the spaces of the museum are coming into reality," said Greenwald, amid the din of machinery and trucks.

With exhibition halls and corridors still hard to visualize, some dramatic elements are in already place. Among them is the "survivors' staircase," which hundreds of people used to flee to safety from the trade center plaza to Vesey Street. The bases of the unique trident steel columns, sheared off as debris rained down in the collapse of the towers, are preserved and will be used for an exhibit on the Twin Towers' construction.

"It is as if you are visiting a battlefield," Greenwald said.

The trade center was constructed in the 1960s and its slurry wall, noted Greenwald, is deemed an archaeological asset by the federal government, requiring it to be preserved and available to the public. The best way to assure that access is to go down seven stories to the bedrock, explained Greenwald.

The museum and memorial will commemorate not only the trade center victims, but also those who died in the attacks in Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa. A memorial park, which is now only a bare concrete plaza, will be studded with trees. It is expected to open on Sept. 11, 2011 - the 10th anniversary of the attacks. Also opening that day will be two cascading waterfalls and pools, occupying the footprints of the Twin Towers.

Under the south tower footprint will be a memorial exhibit in which visitors can see pictures and recorded remembrances of the those who died on Sept. 11 and in the February 1993 bombing attack.

The Virgil quote will likely be made of reforged trade center steel. It will be mounted on a wall behind which will be space to hold unidentified remains of trade center victims. Greenwald stressed this private area is not an interment site. The city medical examiner's office will have sole access as it works on identifying the remains.

Some family members have objected to including pictures of the hijackers in the museum area. But Greenwald said it will only amount to a tiny part of the space. "We will be presenting them as criminals," she said. "We feel the September 11 story has a historical context. It wasn't the tsunami. It didn't come out of nowhere. Human beings perpetrated this."