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Community Corner

Proposed 9/11 Memorial Recalls Images of World Trade Center

Park Ridge will construct a 9/11 memorial, and is looking for residents' opinions and input on a proposed design.

 

A proposed 9/11 memorial featuring a 6-foot segment of an I-beam from Ground Zero is designed to evoke the World Trade Center and the tragedy that happened there, according to the architect who won the competition to design it.

The memorial, to be built near the fire station at Devon and Cumberland, could be done as early as next September, although a recent Park Ridge Public Art Commission meeting where it would have been discussed was cancelled.

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Earlier: 9/11 Remembered

The city’s plan is to pay for the memorial – at an estimated cost of more than $200,000 -- with private donations, according to acting city manager Shawn Hamilton, and a rendering of it is on display at the Park Ridge Public Library. There is a box there to collect input from residents.

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Evanston-based architect John Myefski said that the proposal calls for setting the beam at an angle, reminiscent of the shards that remained at the Ground Zero site after the 9/11 attack. It will be encased in a transparent, glass-like case that has the same shape as one of the Twin Towers. The glass shroud will protect the beam from damage and vandalism, and make it easier to light it.

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That case will be set inside a large square, defined by an angled, broken wall, designed to evoke the footprint  of the second tower that fell. That wall, also translucent, will encase the words that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey require to be included in any memorial including the beam.

Those words are: “Artifacts recovered from the World Trade Center after Sept. 11, 2001, courtesy of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and in memory of the 2,752 victims, including 343 New York firefighters, 37 Port Authority police officers and 23 New York City police officers.”

The Park Ridge Fire Department received the beam from the Port Authority in 2011.

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