By Matt Chaban 9/11/12 10:44am

The Neverending Story

The museum (at right) is coming back to life. (Getty)

9/11 Museum Will Be Finished as Cuomo and Bloomberg Reach Deal on Eve of Anniversary

It is one of those September 11 bright clear mornings today. Perhaps the sun is shining a little bit brighter because after nearly a year of delays, construction is set to resume at the 9/11 Museum at ground zero.

The museum was supposed to have opened today, a year after the memorial plaza on which it sits finally opened to the public, but a dispute over who owed whom millions of dollars in unpaid construction costs halted construction last fall, and the site has sat dormant ever since. For a time it looked like nothing would happen as pressure mounted going into the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, but an agreement was reached this weekend between Governor Andrew Cuomo, who shares control of the Port Authority, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who oversees the 9/11 Memorial Foundation. Read More

By Sarah Grothjan 6/29/12 2:40pm

Faux-gress

The sphere (Getty Images)

Neither Sphere Nor There: Port Authority Wants Sculpture, Just Not Sure Where

When it comes to anything World Trade Center progress moves at a notoriously glacial pace. But the decision of what to do with Fritz Koenig’s Sphere—damaged and dented, but still intact after the WTC attacks— has been excruciatingly slow, even by World Trade Center standards.

Still, as of Thursday, a small bit of progress was made when Pat Foye, executive director of Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said he believes the sphere should be made part of the World Trade Center memorial, The Wall Street Journal reported. Read More

By The Editors 3/07/12 11:25am

opinion

Easing the Pain of Loss

New York City has never experienced sudden, massive loss of life as it did on Sept. 11, 2001. Sadly, however, there is no reason to believe that 9/11 will be a once-in-a-lifetime event. Natural disasters and the prospect of additional terrorist attacks obviously cannot be ruled out in the decades to come. Read More

By Elise Knutsen 11/17/11 11:15am

The Neverending Story

The 9/11 memorial

9/11 Memorial Gets a B- for Attendance

Attendance at the newly opened 9/11 memorial has been underwhelming, to say the least. Despite the millions of dollars that went into the project, over 30% of people who have reserved tickets to visit the site in recent months have failed to show, DNAinfo reports.

It’s not all bad news, though. Despite the AWOL ticket holders, tens of thousands of people are still visiting the site each week. Read More

By Matt Chaban 9/22/11 11:29am

The Neverending Story

Picture 3

How Do We Know the 9/11 Memorial Is Really Real? Because It's on Google Maps, Of Course

For too long, it seemed like the 9/11 Memorial might never get built, certainly not in time for 10th anniversary of the attacks. (There is a reason The Observer categorizes all our ground zero stories as “The Neverending Story.”  The 9/11 Memorial opened to the public last week, but with access tightly regulated—it’s still a very active construction site—it can be a little hard to believe it. But in case there was any doubt, we now have that most official of proof something exists: the memorial has been added to Google Maps. Read More

By Matt Chaban 9/14/11 8:45am

The Neverending Story

Woolhead at work. (Timothy Schenck)

Joe Woolhead, the Poet-Photographer of Ground Zero

The World Trace Center site may be the most famous construction project since the Tower of Babel, if not the most contentious.

But most of the work has taken place behind some 13,000 feet of blue construction fencing, and so to the extent that we have watched the progress, we’ve mostly relied on the images sent out from behind the fence—many of them the work of Joe Woolhead. The official photographer for Larry Silverstein and the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, he has spent almost every day for the past seven years documenting the slow pace of construction at Ground Zero. If it was not one of his images gracing a magazine spread or appearing in a documentary still, then he almost certainly was helping to guide the lens of Annie Liebowitz, Robert Polidori, NOVA, or Korean news crews—whomever might be parachuting in for a shoot.
No one has spent more time at the World Trade Center site than Joe Woolhead. No one knows it better. To see it through Joe Woolhead’s eyes, or lens, is to witness the halting, hectic, heartfelt transformation of the 16-acre site from ground zero to the World Trade Center, from a warzone back into a workaday corner of the city. Read More

By Matt Chaban 9/11/11 8:52pm

The Neverending Story

President Obama addresses the crowds before the opening of the memorial. (Getty Images)

Ground Zero, 2001-2011: How the 9/11 Memorial Changes Everything—and Nothing

It was a day of quiet grace, open grief and occasional grumbles, a time for solemnity, reflection and togetherness. The 9/11 Memorial was commemorated today not with the cutting of a ribbon but the ringing of a bell, the same bell that had clanged for the past nine years, calling out the impacts of those four planes, the collapse of those twin towers. Amidst the silence, there was only the echo of the bell and the distant rush of waterfalls, the signature voids of the 9/11 memorial. Read More

By Matt Chaban 9/07/11 9:37am

How Some Remember

9-11_Flag

The Official 9/11 Flag, Newest Piece of the Memorial Economy

The 9/11 memorabilia economy has generated millions, perhaps even billions of dollars over the past decade. There have been snow globes and statuettes, posters and flip books. Flags are not uncommon, but typically they are of the red-white-and-blue extraction. Now, thanks to Governor Andrew Cuomo and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, we have an official 9/11 flag, which was unveiled at the museum yesterday. Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/28/11 3:50pm

The Neverending Story

8 Photos

Getty

Clear Skies for 9/11 Memorial: Hurricane Irene Actually Helped Ground Zero

Hard work and luck have paid off at ground zero yet again.

There was the potential for the 9/11 Memorial plaza to be devastated by Hurricane Irene, as one of the site’s marquee features is a grove of hundreds of newly planted Swamp White Oak trees and thousands of granite cobblestones. As the good news from the tropical storm keeps trickling in—no fatalities from the storm, less damage than expected, a city of now fully stocked liquor cabinets—it turns out the memorial has come through remarkably unscathed. Read More