This is my first time ever at the Skyscraper Museum (I didn’t even know this existed!), and my third time visiting the World Trade Center site and memorial. The Skyscraper Museum was located at the edge of Battery Park, a more expensive and upscale neighborhood with its towering commercial & condominium buildings overlooking the trendy Jersey City, Statue of Liberty, Wall Street & the Charging Bull, and ferry services to both Ellis and Governors Island. It is also steps away from the World Trade Center Memorial. The Museum is located in a building once again build along the curve of the road following the Hudson River. The size of the museum was small, but had very informative and visually captivating exhibitions. The way the Museum and its exhibitions are set up makes you feel like you are in a Skyscraper. There are many mini models of NYC Skyscrapers as well as development plans with focuses on high-rise buildings as “products of technology, objects of design, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence”. There was also this reflective metal flooring tiles that makes it feel like I’m inside an elevator going up and down a NYC skyscraper.
The highlight of the trip was the World Trade Center Site. It was a fairly good day, and there was an abundance number of tourist, as well as many white collar employees having their lunch break at the WTC memorial site. The memorial is located at the World Trade Center Site, the former location of the Twin Towers that were destroyed during the September 11 attacks. A fun fact about the memorial is that, its not only dedicated to the aftermath of the 9/11 attack, but also commemorating the 1993 WTC bombing, which killed 6 people. The memorial itself is two large square holes deep into the ground, with repeating water flowing down all four sides like a waterfall. The names of the fallen are carved into the outer walls of the memorial. The waterfalls are intended to mute the sounds of the city, making the site a contemplative sanctuary. There are also over 400 white oak trees that were planted throughout the memorial to further enhance the site’s reflective nature.
In my personal views, this visit was definitely a cultural landscape. A cultural landscape is defined as “cultural properties that represent the combined works of nature and of man”. Two 1-acre (4,000 m2) pools with the largest man-made waterfalls in the United States comprise the footprints of the Twin Towers, symbolizing the loss of life and the physical void left by the attacks. The memorial serves the interests of the public. It is a symbol for us to never forget what happened, and that we New Yorkers can overcome this and rebuild. There is also a callery pear tree recovered from the rubble at the World Trade Center site in October 2001 was later called the “Survivor Tree”. When the 8-foot tall tree was recovered, it was badly burned and had one living branch. The tree had been planted during the 1970s near buildings four and five, in the vicinity of Church Street. Memorial president Joe Daniels described it as “a key element of the memorial plaza’s landscape”.
