Local Professor Shares Experience at 9/11 Museum

Last Column towers over dozens of visitors in Foundation Hall. The slurry wall is seen in the background.
A view of the Last Column in Foundation Hall. Photo by Jin Lee.

Rutgers University professor Bruce Chadwick visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum recently and shared his experience with History News Network, calling the site “somber and yet sensational.”

Chadwick observed fellow visitors going through the exhibits as they learned about and remembered the events of the day. “[The museum’s] creators, designers and managers have achieved a nearly impossible feat – to open a museum that is an engaging, informative and unique educational study of the terrible event and at the same time a somber tribute to the people who worked and died there, as well as all of the hundreds of police and firemen who fell with them,” he wrote.

To Chadwick, “the most riveting, and sorrowful, exhibit in the museum” was the Last Column. Covered in photos and inscriptions by rescue and recovery workers, the Last Column was the final steel beam removed from the World Trade Center site at the end of the nine-month recovery period after Sept. 11.

For those visiting New York City, Chadwick contends “the 9/11 Memorial and Museum is a perfect place to spend a few hours.”

Read the full story here.

By 9/11 Memorial Staff

Previous Post

Remembering Monica Rodriguez Smith and her Unborn Child

The name of Monica Rodriguez Smith is seen etched on a bronze parapet at Memorial plaza. Smith was pregnant at the time of her death and the parapet also pays tribute to her unborn child. An inset image shows Smith smiling in an old photo.

When Monica Rodriquez Smith woke to report to the World Trade Center, she was aglow with excitement and eagerly anticipating motherhood. She was expecting her first child, a boy, and that day, February 26, 1993, was to be her last day of work before taking maternity leave.

View Blog Post

Next Post

The Lens: Capturing Life and Events at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum

The lights of the north and south pools create two square of light in the low-lying clouds overhead in this view from Memorial plaza.

After an early morning rain last Wednesday, a 9/11 Memorial staff member took this photograph showing light from the Memorial pools reflecting overhead.

View Blog Post