Activity
1. Display or distribute copies of The New Yorker cover titled “Memorial Plaza.” Click on the image to use the pinch and zoom feature for closer viewing.
2. Ask students to look at the cover and write down observations about the cover. If working in small groups, direct students to share responses with classmates.
3. Lead a guided inquiry by asking the following questions:
- Where do you think this takes place? How can you tell? Tell students the location is the 9/11 Memorial in New York City.
- Who is visiting the Memorial? What are they doing? (As students identify people, share individual narratives—i.e., tourists with shopping bags, security staff to protect the site—to showcase the diverse audience with many different reasons for visiting.)
- Why do you think they are so many people? What makes you say that?
- When does this cover take place? (Tell students July 7, 2014, soon after the opening of the 9/11 Memorial Museum.)
4. Recap student responses, pointing out that it shows a crowded memorial filled with a variety of visitors engaging in different activities ranging from taking selfies and sitting on the parapets to quiet reflection and going to work.
5. Explain that even before the wreckage was cleared from the World Trade Center site, 9/11 family members, officials, and New Yorkers began contemplating commemorative and commercial possibilities for the site’s redevelopment. Some wanted to rebuild the 16-acre World Trade Center site, while others wanted the site to remain empty, and still others believed that a memorial should be created to honor the victims. Eventually there was a compromise: the buildings’ footprints were designated as sacred ground—represented by the 9/11 Memorial—and the remaining surrounding eight acres were dedicated to the rebuilding—represented by the new skyscrapers and the construction of a transportation hub.
6. Play the video clip excerpted from the program “The Architecture of Remembrance.” In this clip, Michael Arad, the principal architect of the 9/11 Memorial, discusses the importance of public space in the days after 9/11