Few events (in my lifetime anyway) have been as unimaginable, as unbelievable, as unbearable as 9/11. I definitely didn’t grasp the significance at the time, partly because I was an 18-year-old consumed with getting ready for the drive to college the next day, and partly because I was in California where New York felt so far away that it may as well have been imaginary. I realized it was a tragedy, but I didn’t understand what it means, what’s involved, when two people-filled, quarter mile-high buildings with acre-sized footprints collapse. The paper fluttering through the air. The shoes littering the ground. The other things so horrible that they aren’t mentioned. And the more I learn about 9/11, the more the reality sinks in. Recently it was because I watched “Center of the World,” part 9 in the New York: A Documentary Film series. And I figured the logical step after that is to visit the 9/11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center.
I was dimly aware that the 9/11 attacks were the second attempt on the Twin Towers, the first being an underground van-sized bomb detonated in 1993. The museum explores the events of both attacks, and honors the lives of the 2,977 victims in 2001 and the six victims in 1993.
The main exhibit is underground and goes through and around the foundations of the Twin Towers. (You can see one of the towers coming down from the ceiling on the right and stopping just above the original foundation under the walkway.)
“Steel columns, known as box columns for their rectangular shape and hollow center, provided structural support for the Twin Towers and created their distinctive facades. At the end of the recovery period following 9/11, what remained of these columns was cut to a level elevation, leaving the remnants visible here.”
This piece of steel (that went from floors 93-96) was directly below the point of impact when the first plane entered the North Tower. “The underbelly of the aircraft mangled the top of this facade segment with force sufficient to twist and shred the steel.” The piece of steel that was directly above the impact point (covering floors 96-99) is also at the museum. The airplane sliced through the two pieces, separating them from each other.
The “Renaissance Peace Angel” sculpture by Lin Evola was installed at Nino’s restaurant on Canal Street in lower Manhattan and “became a landmark for Ground Zero workers and volunteers, many of whom signed its cement base.”
Even though some of them were supposed to have gone off duty after their overnight shifts, East Village’s Ladder Company 3 showed up on 9/11 and headed for the North Tower. They were last heard from on the 35th floor before the building collapsed. There were so many stories of people who went back in to the towers.
The remains of the Vesey Street stairs. “This staircase once connected the northern edge of the World Trade Center’s Austin J. Tobin Plaza to the Vesey Street sidewalk below. On September 11, 2001, the stairs and an adjacent escalator provided an unobstructed exit for hundreds seeking to escape. To reach the stairs, many had to cross the Plaza beneath treacherous debris falling from the North Tower.” The sign is accompanied by this photo.
Freedom New York, by Frank Dammers. “Freedom New York offers a view of lower Manhattan from Brooklyn. On the right, the Brooklyn Bridge spans the East River. At the time Dammers was painting this, the rebuilding of the World Trade Center after 9/11 was only beginning. Yet he envisioned a bright, colorful future for the city, with One World Trade Center already standing tall in the skyline.” This painting is in a section with other supportive responses from around the world, including the gift of 14 cows from a Maasai village in Kenya.
At the heart of the museum is what they call the Historical Exhibition, and no photography is allowed. It’s a timeline interspersed with maps, news footage, photos, artifacts, transcripts, and voice recordings. Up to that point the experience had been heavy, but it was nothing compared to re-experiencing the event minute-by-minute: the confusion after the first plane hit the North Tower, the fact that people didn’t realize they were in danger in the South Tower until it was too late, the calm voice of the flight attendant saying she could see buildings–they were flying very fast and very low, an airplane seatbelt lying in the street, shiny brown patent-leather pumps with dried blood on them, the message a son left his mother saying he was safe (he wasn’t), the slow horrible realization after the second plane hit the South Tower, then the towers’ unimaginable collapse in mere seconds.

I didn’t realize that for about five minutes there they decided not to evacuate the South Tower, or that airlines couldn’t track the hijacked planes and only got updates from things like passengers calling their moms who then went and called the airlines. I didn’t fully appreciate the fact that the people on the planes had no idea where they were flying and had no way to give hints to the authorities.

On signs and interpretive plaques the museum places an oak leaf symbol next to the names of people who were victims, and I started to feel overwhelmed at the number of oak leaves. So-and-so went into this tower, was on this plane, worked on this floor, left this voice message, and … dang it, yeah, there’s an oak leaf. People walked through the Historical Exhibition without really talking, and the only other sound besides the news footage and voice recordings was everyone around me sniffling.

The exhibit is broken into three sections of before, during, and after, and it includes displays on the outpouring of support in New York and the ongoing mental health issues resulting from the attacks. It doesn’t sugar-coat or abbreviate anything. It showed images I’d seen on the news and then buried (the jumpers, I forgot about the jumpers). And I think that’s the point.
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