Philadelphia to Get a New, Controversial 9/11 Memorial

Philadelphia is long overdue to get a 9/11 memorial. Most major cities have one – even my own hometown has one, recently constructed. It’s an oversight that city officials have been talking about fixing for a long time. And now, it seems, the City of Brotherly Love will finally get its own memorial. Sounds like a plan, right? Well, like so many things going on in Philadelphia these days (soda tax, anyone?), it’s actually pretty controversial.

This artist’s rendering depicts how the Philadelphia 9/11 memorial will look.

Philadelphia Magazine posted the news with the title: “It’s Official: Philadelphia Is Getting a Hideous 9/11 Memorial.” The piece goes on to lambast the “brilliant minds” of the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA), who approved the final design yesterday morning. The way is now clear for construction of the memorial to begin. There is no set start date, but the target completion date is September, obviously before the 11th, which will mark the 15th anniversary of the tragedy.

According to Philly Mag, “The Philadelphia 9/11 memorial will be located at Fifth and Race streets across from the lightning bolt Ben Franklin memorial sculpture at the base of the Ben Franklin Bridge.” Herein lies the first problem. That location is on a traffic median, and pedestrians/visitors will have to dodge traffic to get to see the memorial. DRPA board member Antonio Fiol-Silva, who didn’t agree with the plan, was quoted, talking about the adjacent Ben Franklin memorial: “I feel that I’ve got to someday get the courage to make the dash across the road to the site in the middle there — and I don’t know if you’re going to have to peel me off the side of the road.”

Then there’s the discussions about the aesthetics of the memorial itself. The memorial will include artifacts from the 9/11 sites, including “dirt from the United Flight 93 crash site in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and a piece of steel beam from the North Tower of the World Trade Center.” But then, the magazine points out, the Liberty Bell is included twice (unnecessarily, it is implied) in the design: one mounted before two high pillars, and one engraved in a paved design on the ground.

Will the memorial end up successful, or, as Fiol-Silva called it, “an attractive nuisance” for vehicular traffic? It remains to be seen.