9/11 Memorial Opens in New York City

The national memorial to the victims of the September 11 attacks opened Monday in New York City, where creators envision a space for visitors to experience a "moment of silence" and personal reflection about the universal tragedy.

"What I wanted to do here was really encourage that moment of introspection and to bring people to the very edge of these enormous voids and reflect on what happened here that day," architect Michael Arad told reporters before the opening. "There's not a single and universal and correct way to understand what happened that day."

Comparing the effect of the memorial to a "moment of silence," he continued, "How you use that moment of silence is very much a personal matter. The whole world will come here and should come here."

Titled Reflecting Absence, the memorial consists of two acre-size reflecting pools that occupy the site where the World Trade Center's Twin Towers once stood. Each pool contains cascading 30-foot waterfalls surrounded by bronze panels inscribed with the names of 2,983 victims from the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, as well as the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Hundreds of white oak trees line the plaza surrounding the memorial.

In an unusual feature that Arad calls "meaningful adjacencies," victims' names are organized into nine broad groups, including the four hijacked flights, the two towers, the Pentagon, first responders, and the 1993 bombing. Next of kin submitted 1,200 requests for individual names to be placed together, and the designers used a complex algorithm to arrange names according to who they were with and where they perished.

The September 11 attacks claimed the lives of LGBT people including Mark Bingham, who was aboard Flight 93 in Pennsylvania; David Charlebois, the copilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon; and Graham Berkeley, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 175, whose partner, Tim Fristoe, read his name Sunday at the ceremony commemorating the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

Designed by Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker, the memorial is part of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum located on half of the 16-acre World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan. The museum component is due to open by September 11 next year.

"We have a lot of work ahead of us," said memorial president and chief executive officer Joe Daniels. He spoke over noise from nearby construction projects, including One World Trade Center, which will become the tallest building in the United States at 1,776 feet upon completion in 2013.

Victims' family members were the first to tour the memorial at Sunday's dedication ceremony, attended by officials including President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush. Some 400,000 people from more than 60 countries already have made reservations to visit, according to Daniels.

So far, the memorial has raised $410 million in private donations, plus government contributions. Last week U.S. senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii introduced legislation to provide $20 million per year in federal money for maintenance and operations, an arrangement similar to that of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The costs of the 9/11 memorial include highly visible security measures. Visitors Monday underwent airport-style screenings, while police officers and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolled the plaza.

"This is a place where people expect security," Daniels said when asked about the tone created by the precautions at the site many hold sacred. "They deserve to be protected here."