The Next American City Feature - The Architecture Of Memory

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19 The Architecture of Memory Post-September 11, memorials at the World Trade Center and Pentagon respectively symbolize the gaping pit where international commerce formerly towered, and the charred base of the military establishment. But Shanksville, where Flight 93 crash-landed, has only a naked field. How will that field look to future generations? BY JESSE HICKS

26 Slouching Toward Utopia Marketing, enterprise, faith and folly in the United States'most (in)famous planned communities BY GREG PRESTO

30 Art Collection, lnc. For more than a century, steel molded Pittsburgh's cultural framework. But the recent past has seen the city fending off bankruptcy, blight and brain drain. The Next American Cltydiscusses the history that once defined Pittsburgh, and the questions nearly every rust belt city faces BY MATTHEW NEWTON

AREHITEETURE I SIX.PLUS YEARS AFTER SEPTEMBER II, 2OOI, THE MEMORIALS IN NEW YORK ANO WASHINGTON ARE FINALLY TAKING SHAPE. BUT SHANKSVILLE, I{HERE FLIGHT 93 CRASH-LANDED IN RURAL PENNSYLVANIA, IS ONLY A NAKEO FIELO. HOT{ T{ILL THAT FIELO LOOK TO FUTURE GENERATIONS? 0N THE S0UTI{ERN TIP 0F MANHATTAN, L6 acres remain gaping, six years after September 1,1,. Construction cranes rise out of the hole, diligently assembling a new skyline. Developers say that by 2012, at a cost of $3 billion, a complex of office buildings will again scrape the sky. Its centerpiece, the would-be-iconic Freedom Tower, will rise tJ76 feet, making it the world's tallest office building. From its apex will rise an illuminated spire, echoing the Statue of Libert¡ the intense beam of light reaching over a thousand feet into the heavens. Below, at street level, the names of the dead will be inscribed. lN WASHINGT0I{, 8.C., freshly poured concrete awaits a collection of l-84 memorial benches, each overhanging a lit reflecting pool and inscribed to a victim of the attack. By Sept. 2008, according to plan, the benches will be arrayed in order of the victims' ages, from 3 to71,, beneath a protective canopy of maple tress. lN RURAL SHANKSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA, the wind comes in low and constant over the ñeld of a reclaimed strip mine. Above the site loom two dragline excavators. Enormous crane-like machines, this terrain belongs to them: A place of digging, stripping bare,only now recovering its barest protections. They stand several stories high, weigh 2,000 tons; their scale dwarfs anything in the human landscape. But they have done their excavating, unearthed enough. Now they stand unmoving, rusting skeletons reaching into the sky. From an outstretched boom some 200 feet in the air blows an American flag. Here at Shanksville lies a blank field and a story. >)

BY JESSE HICKS lÃllnter 200?, No.

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4, 2OO2t A youngster looks at angel f¡gures placed at the edge of the field near Shanksvillle. Pennsylvan¡a. where United Flight 93 crashed on Sept. il.2001. AUGUST

A SCARLESS FIELÍI Six years ago, passengers on United Flight 93 realized theil role in

suicide plot and decided to rush the cockpit. A struggle for control ensued; the plane came low over tlìe ridge now behind us, its wings rocking. It passed so that one witness clai¡ned, "You could probably count lorv - on its side the rivets." It struck the glound at 563 miles an hour: snroke rose high into the heave¡rs, a black exhalation from the earth. Nearby photogl'¿¡pher Val McClatchey captured the cloud's rise over an archetypal red barn, seconds aftel irnpact, and later titled it, "The End of Serenity." The Boeing 757 left a crater 115 feet rvide and 10 to 12 feet deep. No one survived. These facts, this story, bring thousands to Shanksville every year. Many expect to see something bigger, somethinggreater. Sornething nronumental. point Insteacl, the community volunteers - the Flight 93 Ambassadors to an American flag mounted on a fence about 500 yards au'ay, just inside the tlee line:T-hat's n,here it happer¡¿rl. That's where the plane came dowtr' Sacred ground. See how the hemlocks ale burned? But nature has reclaimed her dominion; beyond the scorched tlees there is no cratel', no obvious, comforting scar in the land. Crime scene investigators replaced the contarninated topsoil, and time has done the rest. Nature heals. Nature folgets. Nature is inclifferent. at least so we tell ourselves. We Human beings. howevel'. are not - or like to believe that we recognize and accouttt all suffering, that we lìonor heloism. We like to believe that hur¡an nlemory does trot yield so easily to the wearing force of tinre. We like to believe we can stare long enough at those faras,a1, trees and, yes, see u'here the burning jet fuel left its r¡at'k

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that we can lead the ash and knorv its rneaning.

Here lies the problenr: Absent the obvious symbolism of the World gaping pit where international Trade Center or the Pentagon sites - the cornmerce forrÌ1erly torvered;the charrecl base of the military establishment has only a nake clñeld,tabula tasa. "A comnron ñeld one day. -A Shanksville fielcl of honor forever," says the Flight 93 National Memorial Mission Statement. But how will that field look to the future? Remembrance takes many forms; melnory is a process of constant the World Trade Center renerval, not an end product. Shanksville - oflikethat process' Here, private vanguard at the stands and the Pentagon grief becomes public, shared. History takes shape as we, together, decide horv rve

will l'emember; what we rvill emphasize, rvhat

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rvill discard

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tlle questiorl of all cornmemoration, public or plivate, personal ol nalional: What will we choose to salvage from the wreck of time, a¡rd what rvill rve let go? horv we

will

see ourselves through the lens of mernory. This is

MEMORY IIR MEMORAB¡LIA? The Flight 93 Temporary Memorial, its name admitting the impossibility of etel'nal remembrance. does not aint for the monumental. Its tributes have a more human scale: A 4O-foot (in recognition of the 40 passengers) length of chain-link fence stands on the ridge ovellooking the clash site' Here. as at Oklahor¡ra Cit),, Colurnbine and the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial. thousands of visitors leave their orvtr mcmorial offelings. Such open commemoration bears ovelrvhelnling fruits. A large rvooden

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closs clorninates one sicle: nealb¡,, a plastic binder holcls a hanclwritten copy of Book of Wisclonr, Chaptcr 3 ("But the souls of the just are in the hancl ol Gocl. ancl the

tolment of dcath shall not touch thenr"), alongside the Prayer of St.

("O Divine Master. glant that I nray not so much seek to be consoled as to co¡rsole: to be unclel'stoocl as to understancll to l¡e lovecl as 1o love"). An oblong stone. painted black ancl inscribecl. "We lemember 5000+ victims." shares ground rvith a purple My Little Pony ancl a plastic Pooh Bear'. Dozens of baseball caps hang fronr the fence. some personalizecl ancl others only logos: The Anaheirn Angels. UCLA. VFW. Personalized license plates: FREEDOM and USA4ME. A laminated story of "-I'he -Iì'adgety of 91 1," b¡, eighth gracler Sarah Marie Re1,¡e1¿r. Stylized f'lags of the Pentagon and Tñin 'lbrvels. American fìags. A stuffecl lion. White plastic crosses. One homemade plaque leacls, "For our herocs of 9-11-01. Never forget "lest." thern lest we lre attacked again. - Bob ancl Cheryl Hargest." That stlangely archaic. ntakes remembrance an act uot just of preserving. but of constant vigilance. We rnust stand guald against fot'gettingl Santayana's over-quoted maxinr about thosc rvho cannot remeurber the past being doomed to repeat it - or having it repeated against them. Perha¡rs that "lest" alrests our moulning process at tlìe most basic levcl: "Neve r Folget." You'r,e seen this slogan. on l'-shilts. refrigeratol magnets, rvall hangings, lapel pins, mousepads. Perhaps you've seen the iconic to\\,ers. superinrposed with an American fìag. encircled by a pentagon. Maybe you've noticed the oval. European-style bumper stickel reading "9/ll" and "Never Forget." And maybe )¡ou've seen the more ominous expression. "Nevel'Forget, Never Folgive." We nrust rer¡renrber to never Francis of Assisi

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FOR THOSE THREE, PERHAPS II OR 2OOI, THE ANSWER TO THE OUESTION OF *TOO SOON' WAS, IN FACT, *TOO LATE.'

I2 YEARS OLB ON SEPT. II,

forget, the bumper stickel's. T-shirts, and nlagnets wat'tì tts ad infinitun-t I have a pen rvhich reads. "We Will Not Forget." follorved by "Texaco -Xpress Lube" ancl the business adcìress. It seems strange. this collusion of grief and consurnerism, but "NeveL Forget" has its comfort. It illustrâtes Eclwald Linenthal's cottcept of "venelative consunìption." September il nle morabilia, says the professor' of history ancl leligious studies at Incliana University Bloomington. becomes both a sacled lelic and commercial cornmoclitlr The "Never

Forget" headband offers a way to expless soliclality rvith the victims through the evcryday transactions of capitalist societ¡,. But hou,does the litany against folgetting ntake rneaning ofSeptember Il? As an affìrrnation of American values, "Never Forget" em¡rhasizes capitalism and national unity. But otheru,ise it falls flat; those po¡t-cttlture effluvia fail to aclvise us horv to remcmber. In the immecliate aftern]ath of traged1,, such an uncontplicated lesponse strikes us as appropliale. On the Penn State caurpus this April. follorving tlte stuclent shooting at Virginia Tcch, "We Remember 4/l6107" T-shilts appealed in a nratter of hours. simple declalations of empathlt "lt's alntost as if in the early days there's not much else to sa¡'." ¡s Linenthal puts it. Yet seeing lhose

WHAT CAN A MEMOR¡AL ACCOMPLISH, BEYfIND TRIGEERINE MEMORIES OF THE EVENT ITSELF? same shirts six months late¡ worn with seemingly no more thought to their message than to the average Abercrombie and Fitch polo, gives one pause.

What exactly do these casual commemorators wish to remember? I put the question to James M. Kristan, who claims to have the largest private collection of September 11 memorabilia in the world. "My collection is a whole story in itself," he says. "It's indescribable. I've got at least 1,500 square feet of stuff laid out. I had to get â warehouse donated." Kristan's documentary Moving On from 9/11, details his struggle with post-traumatic stress syndrome following the attacks. He eventually made pilgrimages to all three memorial sites; I met him in Shanksville, where his sleeveless shirt revealed a shoulder-wide tattoo of the iconic towers, with the legend, "Never Forget 9-11-01." He'd driven 10 hours, straight from outside Grand Rapids, and would drive back that same afternoon. He'd brought DVD copies of his documentary which he described as his gift to the families. I asked Kristan what we should learn from six years'perspective. "I don't know. I'd need a little time to ponder that." It seems important to note that after six years he and we still need a little time to ponder, to reflect. Kristan later answered: "The most important thing about 9/11 is: Never forget that horrible day. Never forget those heroes and everybody we lost, the innocent victims to the senseless cowards the terrorists." The passage of time brings distance but not perspective or clarity; we can only, it seems, "Never Forget." The process of commemoration stumbles after its first step.

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SELECTIVE MEMORIES Increasingly, we demand this kind of "instant memorialization," as Don Stastny calls it, in which not-forgetting becomes the central duty. Stastny, architect and adviser to the Flight 93 Memorial International Design Competition, notes how in places such as Oklahoma City, Columbine and Virginia Tech, temporary memorials formed almost immediately. Permanent memorial designs appeared mere days later, often by the hundreds, as concerned citizens made themselves heard. Yet in that rush to remember, Linenthal notes, "You're doing it so soon that it's the first generation's take on the meaning of what happened, how that meaning should be represented, what should be remembered, what should be

forgotten, what can't be said that maybe could be said a hundred years later." Those permanent memorials by their nature stand for decades, and as first drafts of collective memory will have their blind spots, their telling lacunae. What might we be able to say about September 11 that we cannot say perhaps now? What might we learn if afforded the time and space - and most importantly, the desire to reflect? To offer but one example, Tom Junod's Esquire article, "The Falling Man," details his quest to find the subject of one iconic September 11 photo. As Junod describes the man, "ln the picture, he departs from this earth like an arrow. Although he has not chosen his fate, he appears to have, in his last instants of life, embraced it. [...] His black high-tops are still on his feet. In all the other pictures, jumped the people who did what he did appear to be struggling - who against horrific discrepancies of scale. They are made puny by the backdrop of the towers, which loom like colossi, and then by the event itself." Global tragedy has framed, not d\¡/arfed, this man's decision. As Junod discovers, the photo's haunting intimacy the choice - capturingproved too of horrible, purposeful death over horrible, arbitrary death much for many viewers. Newspapers received angry letters from subscribers; many press outlets self-censored the photo. Just as filmmakers had digitally removed the twin towers from movies released soon after September 11, many editors chose to erase the Falling Man from our national memory. Describing his ideal memorial, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, "Those who visit should be able to relive the experience in a way

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that does justice to the enormity of the events." Such reliving would, presumably, include the Falling Man; as cultural critic Slavoj Zizek says, "The true choice apropos of historical trauma is not the one between remembering and forgetting them: Traumas \¡/e are not able or ready to remember haunt us all the more forcefully. We should therefore accept the paradox that, in order to really forget an event, we must first summon up the strength to remember it properly." Remembrance, then, demands both strength and humility in the face of enormous events. Even though, as Wyatt Mason points out, "The destruction of the World Trade Center is the most exhaustively imaged disaster in human histor¡" but the proliferation of images does little to further our comprehension. We have not yet exhausted the possible narratives, the stories we use to make sense. The opposite, in fact; we continue to tell stories about that day. In New York City, a group named StoryCorps has allied with the World Trade Center Memorial Museum in an effort to record at least one oral history for every life lost on September 11. Those stories,2,973 of them, offer a different kind of memorial; they offer us voices preserved as though in ambel confronting the simplest and most profound questions: "Can you tell me the story of what happened to you on September l1th, 2001?" "What was your first thought when you realized what was happening?" And of course, "What do you want people in the future to know about what happened on 9/11?" None of these questions promise simple answers, nor should they. Instead, they hope to speak to human experience in a wây stone monuments, perhaps, cannot. So often our speech stumbles when trying to comprehend September 11 as Norman Mailer puts it, "We speak in simples as experience approaches the enormous." We speak in simples, grasping at archetypes: The planes, the towers. the terrorists. The heroes. The victims. Even our shorthand reduces the enormous to the vaguely comprehensible: The events, the attacks, the tragedy or simply the date, 9/11. We speak of a mythical pre-9/11 world, as though we are all the Falling Man, coloring our present with postlapsarian menace. The Falling Man, despite our existential horror of him, is part of the story. A story that continues to unfold.

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FIIREBODINGS OF OZYMANDIAS If we cannot

say what that story means to us, we can say even less about what it may mean for generations to come. "A field of honor forever" rings with admirable hope, but memory's half-life guarantees nothing lasts forever. Our memorials may outlive us, may outlive the people we know, but they may also outlive their meanitrg. We should acknowledge that our plastic 9/11 pens may outlast their message. As Stastny puts it, "Twenty years from now, when a new generation comes to look at this, they may have absolutely no recognition of who the people were, or what the real meaning of this place is. We ask our jurors to look for designs that will still have validity, because they may bring a certain point home." Call it the "Ozymandias" criterion, in honor of Shelley's famous sonnet on the fleeting nature of life and art: Permanent memorials must carry their own meanings forward to generations who have no direct experience on which to build their own stories. In the story of Shanksville and Flight 93, I've already seen one memorial fail the "Ozymandias" test: Paul Greengrass's United 93. On a Saturday afternoon, I waited in line at the local Blockbuster. In front of me stood three young men in cargo shorts, striped polo shirts and backwards baseball caps. One of them leaned forward and asked the cashier, "Hey bro, is this

good movie?" He turned the DVD case around: United 93. "Uhm, well, it's about September 11..." the cashier began. "OK, cool," the consumer replied, evidently pleased with his choice' The three left the store without further discussion. For those three, perhaps 11. or 72 years old on Sept. 11,2001, the answer to the question of "too soon" was, in fact, "too late." For them, the events of September 11 had already taken on the sepia shade of distant history. a

www.americanclty.org

Like World War II, it was an event mined for entertainment, whether the final production had the earnest reverence of. Saving Private Ryan, lhe

Crescent

testosterone-fueled explosiveness of Pearl Harbor,or thepop-intellectualism ofa Ken Burns documentary. "Never Forget" holds no power here.

Mecca. Tom Burnett Sr., father of one of the victims, agees: "I told them we'd be a laughingstock if we did this," he said tothe Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Burnett has refused to allow his son's name to be used in the memorial. Mike Rosen of. the Rocky Mountain Neps offered a simple solution: "Just come up with a different design that eliminates the double meaning and the dispute." Double meaning, for Rosen, is one meaning too many. For him, disputation has no place in memorial. The World Tiade Center site has taken a similar approach.ln 9/11: The Culture of Commemoration, David Simpson describes the design as "an orgy of nomination: the 'Park of Heroes,' the 'Wedge of Light,' the 'Garden of the World,' 'Memory's Eternal Foundation"' all overseen, of course, by the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower. Presumably there's no misinterpreting that singular message. Yet, Simpson wonders, what depth of reflection can such a memorial provoke? "One might think that any democracy requiring this sort of browbeating in the name of architecture must be in deep trouble," he writes. Democratic memorials might dare to risk multiple meanings. They might dare to invite active participation reverential to be sure, but with an

What, then, can a memorial accomplish, beyond triggering memories of the event itself? For Stastny, a memorial should be "experiential" marked by space and reflection rather than "objective" the typically monumental

memorial. A useful memorial, in other words, speaks to the living, offering

more than an unapproachable headstone. For Linenthal, such reflection provokes the "hope that visitors will not only remember the dead in these particular situations and what they've done, but also extend that sense of caring to victims of terrorism and political violence around the world."

of Embrace." Rawls claims the

design celebrates the Muslim

hijackers of Flight 93, the crescent is a symbol of Islam and oriented toward

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I¡ISSENTING VOICES For the September

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memorials, such expansive empathy seems unlikely.

Early plans for the World Trade Center site included an International Freedom Center museum. It would have staged exhibits on various genocides and crimes against humanity to illustrate the difficult process of establishing "international freedom." Critics balked at placing the September l.l. attacks within a larger struggle for freedom, however, with The New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff declaring the museum's design "Orwellian," a "theme-park view of American ideals in an alluring wrapper." After much politicking, then-New York Governor George Pataki banned the IFC from the World Trade Center site. Of course, the practicalities of memorial-building influenced his decision. Fundraising for a $3 billion dollar rebuilding has enough challenges without adding a controversial design to the mix. Developer Larry Silverstein's insurance settlement following September 11 paid $1 billion, supplemented by $ZSO million from the State of New York and another $1 billion in bonds issued by New York's Port Authority. (Such impressive sums tend to attract intense scrutiny; MSNBC's David Shuster, for one, has questioned the impartiality of the design competition, suggesting Pataki exerted influence in exchange for political donations.) New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has stepped in, helping raise over $165 million. Potential major donors such as Cantor Fitzgerald and PricewaterhouseCoopers have withheld donations, however, until the grouping of victims' names has been determined. The Pentagon memorial hopes to raise $32 million, but large donations have come slowly. And in Shanksville, the initial fundraising brought in only $i0.4 million in two years. The National Park Service has taken ove¡ hoping for at least $30 million. But as time passes, donations only get harder to come by. One memorial outside any of the crash sites does include multiple voices, despite the difficult political-economic environment. In Phoenix, Arizona, a state-sponsored 9/11 memorial included panels that put the attacks into historical context. Among the inscriptions, visitors read, "Middle East violence motivates attacks in US," "Foreign-born Americans afraid" and "Terrorist organization leader addresses American people." Needless to say, the inclusion of such timely, newspaper-headline sentiments provoked controversy. When right-wing bloggers quickly denounced the memorial, Arizona governor Janet Napolitano responded, "This Memorial is unique, bold, dynamic, educational and unforgettable. The thoughts and remarks etched in stone will serve as learning tools for all of us, our children and our children's children." That memory and thought might work in concord seems to have struck many as anathema to "Never Forget." The Flight 93 permanent memorial has its own unintended controversy, whipped up primarily by Califomia blogger Alec Rawls. Architect Paul Murdoch originally titled the maple-tree landscape in his design, "The

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THAT'S WHERE THE PLANE CAME IIOWN. SEE HfIW THE HEMLOCKS ARE BURNEB? Wlnter 200?, No. l?

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understanding that debate and discussion also serve memory.

For former New York Governor Pataki, howeve¡ "In the end, there is no right way to remember. It is only right that we remember" a slight expansion upon "Never Forget." Again one thinks of the Ozymandias criterion, imagining "the decay / Of that colossal wreck" at the third or fourth centenary of the Freedom Tower, its names worn smooth by time, What then will it mean? It's unsurprising that a politician would evade such a question, but that doesn't mean we all get off so easily. "Never Forget" marks a beginning, not an end. As long as people can share it, the process of memory is never complete, always in contestation, necessarily unstable. As Stastny puts it, "I think a memorial, like a city, is never finished."

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A TWICE-TOLB TALE We remember in stone and in story; neither lasts forever. All memorials are temporâry, subject to the ravages of time. Shanksville, for now, has no elaborate cenotaphs, no Freedom Tower stretching for the sky. The fence collects its tributes; benches record the passengers'names. There is a small wooden building, not much bigger than the average bathroom. It offers shelter from the wind, the breath that always blows here, always animating, always threatening to erase. On the coldest days, the Flight 93 Ambassadors huddle inside this humble outpost. There you'll find them, ready to tell the story. When I visited in January, I found Emily Jerich and her husband, Stan, waiting. She asked whether I'd heard "the story." I had, many times, from many different sources, and I learned to appreciate them as variations on a theme not "the" story, but a collection of voices, reading from the same event, each with its own rhythms and revelations. The stories were extended names, ways of finding home in an event so challenging to our comprehension. Admixtures of dread and hope, they did not try to deny time, but only to understand it, to find a place within it. Jerich recounted her version of the story emphasizing a Bible found in the wreckage, not open to a particular page as some claim, but flapping in the wind. She speaks in conditionals: If the plane had waited only four minutes, if it had flown only three more seconds. Had it waited four minutes, the plane would have been grounded. Had it flown for three more seconds, it might've struck Shanksville's only school. She calls her ambassadorship a duty, is proud and humbled "To be here, to guard the place, to tell the story." Late¡ another ambassador arrives, Sue Strohm. She tells a less detailed version of the story saying she realizes she's there to listen as much as to speak. "The plane went over everybody's house," she says. And everyone has their story.

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