Do You Know How the September 11th Memorial is Arranged?
One architect's years-long effort to make sure each person is properly remembered around the reflecting pools in Lower Manhattan
A few years ago, I went down to the September 11th Memorial in Lower Manhattan and asked visitors a simple question: Do you know how the victims’ names are arranged around the reflecting pools?
One might assume it would be alphabetical, but as soon as you look at the names etched in bronze parapets, you know that that isn’t the case. Some visitors guessed that it was in order of day of birth or the person’s location in the towers. No one I spoke with got the question correct.
The arrangement has been described as an order of “meaningful adjacencies.” This system, coined by the memorial’s lead architect Michael Arad, would be a reflection of the relationships the victims shared, keeping them in proximity of those friends, family members, and colleagues, to which they were closest.
2,982 names are etched around the two pools in Manhattan. Why go with that system for the names? Other routes, numerical, alphabetical… could be easier. This system, one based on relationships, is amorphous and difficult, with no one correct answer.
Arad said that this system “allows relatives, friends, co-workers and people who had just met but shared their last moments together to be listed side by side on the Memorial.”
But it also allowed their families to be able to congregate when they visited the pools together years and years afterwards.
Initially, the architectural team relied on computer systems to create an algorithm that would arrange the names. But it was imperfect.
Arad then tasked fellow architect Amanda Sachs with researching the victims, speaking with their families, creating a web of relationships, and then arranging the order of the names. It took her years to complete.
“It was very difficult,” Sachs said. “But the idea really was to create meaning within the names arrangement.”
Meaningful Adjacencies
“Alphabetical order really takes away the individuality from these victims,” Amanda Sachs told my former colleague, NY1 Anchor Pat Kiernan on his podcast Crosstown (which I was the Executive Producer for).
“There were there are many cases of five or six or more people with the same last name,” Sachs said. “There were nine Kelly’s, three of them with the first name. So when you have things in alphabetical order, you get to see a lot of similar names.”
Initially, Sachs relied on news reporting and public record to find the relationships. Then, they sent surveys out to the families to see if they had requests on how their loved ones’ names should be grouped. Then, she painstakingly built models and arranged the names. She’d also reach out to the families to confirm connections and relationships.
In her telling years later, there were still names that stood out to her. FDNY Capt. Patrick “Paddy” Brown and Capt. Terence “Terry” Hatton were two in particular. Hatton became trapped in an interior collapse on September 11th and Brown was attempting to rescue him. Both were killed that day and though they hailed from two different FDNY ladders, their names were grouped together by Sachs.
The Connection That Couldn’t be Made
On Tuesday Morning, September 11th, 2001… Ruth McCourt of New London, Connecticut and her four year old daughter Juliana boarded United Flight 175 in Boston. They were heading to Disneyland. Ruth’s best friend, Paige Hackel, was planning to meet them there.
The friends couldn’t make it on the same flight, so Paige boarded American Airlines flight 11 instead. Both planes were hijacked.
At 8:46 a.m. American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower. 17 minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 would crash into the South Tower.
Two friends, on these two fatal flights. But with the memorial built around “North Tower” and “South Tower” Amanda struggled to bring these two stories together.
“We had to put Paige in the North Tower, because these were the rules,” She told Kiernan on Crosstown. “We considered moving her name, we tried rotating the names so it would be as close as possible to the South tower… but we just couldn’t do it.”
“I think that was the one adjacency we didn't actually manage at the end of the day,” she said.
Still, nearly 3,000 names were connected in a matter that gave them solemn individuality, and the opportunity for their families to connect at the pools year later whether they knew the other visitors or not.
If strangers gather around names nearby at the pools even these 23 years later, they can trust, thanks to Amanda Sachs, that there are actually only a few degrees of separation between them… and an opportunity to reflect, together, on their loved ones.
You can listen to the full episode of Crosstown with Pat Kiernan here.
Oh I had no idea. And the story of Ruth, Juliana and Paige is heartbreaking - in every way.
Thank you for this. I've not visited the memorial tho' a dear friend's brother's name is there.
May the memories of all be for blessings.