On Monday, February 14, 2011, we will officially close our Friends Memorial Facebook account and will move to the new National September 11 Memorial & Museum page. We value the Friends Memorial community and the comments, questions and feedback we receive on a daily basis. Let’s continue the conversation at the new page.

 Please "Like" the new page at:

National September 11 Memorial and Museum

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum Page promises to:

1)    Keep you informed about the 9/11 Memorial opening on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

2)    Answer your important questions about visiting the Memorial when it opens, the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site in lower Manhattan, and the Museum in 2012.

3)    Connect you with our Twitter tweets and MEMO blog posts all from one page.

4)    Share photos and video of our progress from every vantage point, so you can witness history in the making. 

5)    Invite you to special events and programming, and share new materials with you. Educating the world about 9/11 and its impact on history is core to our organizational mission.

By 9/11 Memorial Staff

The 9/11 Memorial is just 472 days away from opening on September 11, 2011. The construction momentum is mounting with the achievement of a new milestone -- 100% of the Memorial's structural steel is now in place.  This steel, weighing more than 8,000 tons, is more than was used to build the Eiffel Tower.  To date, more than 85% of the project's concrete has been poured. The total amount of concrete will be 49,000 cubic yards, equaling twice the volume of the Macy’s building in Herald Square, New York.

About 400 construction workers are on site daily, getting the waterfalls' mechanical pumps installed, waterproofing the Memorial Plaza, and prepping for the installation of hundreds of oak trees starting later this summer.

As seen in the recent aerial photo posted above, the Memorial site is marked by real, visible progress. You can track the project's construction through EarthCam's live webcam.

Even from thousands of feet in the sky, the two acre-sized 9/11 Memorial pools can be made out.

Photographer Joe Woolhead routinely snaps pictures (like the one above) of the construction progress at the World Trade Center site. Find more of his photos here or visit www.national911memorial.org.

The Memorial is on track to open in 2011. The memorial pools are fully framed in steel, while nearly 100 percent of the steel for the project has been installed.

More than 60 percent of concrete has been poured. When construction’s completed, the total amount of steel will equal 8,151 tons – that’s more than what was used to build the Eiffel Tower.

By Michael Frazier, Sr. Communications Manager for the 9/11 Memorial