Ground Zero - Then and Now

New North Memorial Pool

The North and South reflecting pools contain the largest manmade waterfalls in North America, each descending nine meters into a square basin. Arad says the pools represent “absence made visible,” with water flowing into voids that can never be filled.

The bronze parapet surrounding the North pool displays the names of 9/11 victims including those who were in 1 WTC and on American Airlines Flight 11 that hijackers flew into the building, and those killed in a February 26, 1993, terrorist bombing beneath the North Tower.

New Memorial Plaza service structures

More than 400 swamp white oak trees surround the Memorial plaza’s two reflecting pools.

Two small buildings also are located on the footprint of the former hotel. American landscape architect Peter Walker’s company PWP Landscape Architecture, which designed the plaza, says the two buildings primarily provide ventilation for facilities underneath the plaza. It says they also contain service spaces and a security command post.

New 2 WTC

2 WTC’s basement levels and superstructure are completed to street level in December 2012.

But construction is halted in 2013 by developer Silverstein Properties until it finds anchor tenants for the new tower.

A metal shed surrounding 2 WTC’s inactive building site becomes a popular tourist attraction, thanks to colorful murals painted on its exteriors.

Commissioned by Silverstein Properties and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in June 2018, street artists paint the murals to beautify the area with uplifting images and complete the project in September of that year. An Oculus Beer Garden opens on the Church Street side of the site in October 2020.

New WTC Oculus Transportation Hub

The WTC Oculus Transportation Hub PATH station opens to the public on March 3, 2016. The station's distinctive white roof features two wing-like upward-sloping ribs sitting atop two arches. It is intended to resemble a dove released from the hands of a child, according to architect Calatrava. Between the arches is a narrow skylight that opens up on temperate days and annually on 9/11.

The Transportation Hub’s $4 billion cost makes it the most expensive U.S. train station, almost doubling its original $2.2 billion budget. The station also takes seven years longer to complete than originally planned.

Two of the station’s below street-level floors house part of the Westfield World Trade Center shopping mall, managed by French commercial real estate company Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW). It replaces a single-level underground mall destroyed on 9/11 beneath the original World Trade Center complex.

New 7 WTC

New Silverstein Family Park

Silverstein Family Park, a triangular-shaped site built on the eastern side of the original 7 WTC’s footprint, is completed in 2004.

Designed by New York landscape architect Ken Smith, the 1,390 square meter park features a circular fountain surrounded by groves of trees and shrubs. It is intended to be a peaceful refuge for office workers, locals and visitors.

Originally installed in the center of park’s fountain is a red “Balloon Flower” sculpture by American artist Jeff Koons. The stainless-steel 2.7 meter-high sculpture, which becomes the park’s symbol, is removed in October 2018 to be refurbished while the fountain undergoes repairs. The fountain is later restarted, but Silverstein Properties tells VOA the sculpture continues to be refurbished in Europe in August 2021.

Undeveloped land parcel reserved for future 5 WTC

Ten years after authorities finish deconstructing the 9/11-damaged Deutsche Bank Building, the southern part of its footprint remains undeveloped in 2021, as plans for the construction of a future Five World Trade Center tower await approval from several governmental agencies. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation retains ownership of the land parcel known as site 5, which is bounded by Washington, Albany and Greenwich streets.

After the National September 11 Memorial plaza opens to the public in September 2011, LMDC allows the southern portion of site 5 to be used as a waiting area for ticketed visitors to the plaza, which is surrounded by a fence. The site 5 waiting area is vacated on May 15, 2014, when a dedication ceremony is held for the National September 11 Museum and the Memorial plaza’s fence is removed, giving visitors free access to the plaza for the first time.

LMDC decides to develop the vacated southern portion of site 5 into a temporary park as part of a project with Downtown Alliance, a nonprofit group that advocates for Lower Manhattan businesses. The park opens to the public on September 2, 2014. Named Albany Street Plaza, it features benches, trees and a colorful mural on a wall separating it from a police command post.

LMDC allows the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to builds trailers on the northern portion of site 5 in 2014. The trailers contain office space for the Port Authority Police’s World Trade Center Command, which moves into the temporary facility on April 24 of that year.

In a major step toward realizing the vision of a 5 WTC tower, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, LMDC and the Port Authority issue a request for proposals on June 26, 2019, seeking plans from developers to either lease or purchase the site for the construction of a commercial or mixed-use building.

LMDC and the Port Authority decide on February 11, 2021, to enter into exclusive negotiations with a consortium of developers that proposes to lease the site and build a largely residential tower. The 99-year lease would require the developers to pay rent directly to the Port Authority.

The consortium is led by U.S. firm Silverstein Properties and Canadian-owned firm Brookfield Properties and includes two smaller New York-based firms, Omni New York and Dabar Development Partners.

The Port Authority tells VOA that negotiations with the consortium on finalizing the lease for a future 5 WTC continue through August, with no word on when they are likely to conclude.

New Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church & National Shrine

Almost 20 years after the original church is destroyed on 9/11, construction of a new Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine nears completion at a nearby site in August 2021. It is designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, whom the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America first commissioned to draw up plans for the new building in 2012.

Calatrava’s design, released in 2013, envisions a domed white marble building surrounded by four pillars, modeled on Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia and Church of the Holy Savior in Chora, two iconic former Greek Orthodox churches later converted into mosques by Turkish authorities in 2020. Located at 130 Liberty Street on the eastern side of the World Trade Center’s new Liberty Park, construction of the estimated $20 million project begins with a ground-breaking ceremony on October 18, 2014 and reaches a “topping out” stage with a temporary cross placed on the building’s skeletal dome on November 29, 2016.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which agreed to let the archdiocese rebuild the church at 130 Liberty Street as part of a 2011 land swap agreement, signs another deal on August 21, 2017, to lease the site to the archdiocese for 198 years. The new agreement sets the rent for the church-shrine at a nominal $1 per year and gives the archdiocese the option to buy the site at any time during the lease, also for a nominal fee. The archdiocese agrees to let the Port Authority maintain ownership of the site so that the governmental agency retains responsibility for securing permits and regulatory approvals during the construction process.

But building work stops in December 2017 when Swedish construction company Skanska says the archdiocese is not paying it. The archdiocese reveals months earlier that it is in a severe financial deficit that has been building for years and hires PricewaterhouseCoopers in April 2018 to investigate the church-shrine project’s finances and major cost overruns.

The investigators conclude in October 2018 that there is no evidence of fraud or improper usage of funds by archdiocese members. The archdiocese also accepts the investigators’ call for the creation of a new independent entity, “Friends of Saint Nicholas”, to raise funds to complete the stalled project.

The Friends of Saint Nicholas group raises millions of additional dollars from private donations, enabling construction to resume on August 3, 2020. Total raised funds reach $95 million in June 2021, almost five times the original projected cost of the rebuilding.

In a statement to VOA, the archdiocese says the church-shrine’s exterior is expected to be completed by the evening of September 10, 2021, when it will be illuminated from the inside for the first time.

The archdiocese says that while interior work continues into 2022, an opening of the doors ceremony called a thyranoixia will be held on November 2, 2021, to coincide with a New York visit of Turkey-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople.

New Museum Pavillion

The new 9/11 Memorial Museum is dedicated in a May 15, 2014, ceremony led by then-U.S. President Barack Obama and 9/11 Memorial chairman Michael Bloomberg. Fences around the 9/11 Memorial plaza are removed on the same day, enabling free public access for the first time. The museum opens to the public on May 21 after eight years of construction whose cost, including the memorial plaza that opened in 2011, totals $700 million. The museum and memorial complex is the most expensive to be built in the United States.

The above-ground entry pavilion is designed by Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta, while the below-ground museum spaces are designed by New York City-based architectural firm Davis Brody Bond. Its exhibition spaces are designed by New York City firms Thinc Design and Local Projects, LLC and Illinois-based Layman Design.

The museum features 10,200 square meters of space devoted to telling the story of 9/11 and the February 26, 1993, terrorist bombing at the World Trade Center through artifacts, imagery, personal stories, and interactive technology. Visitors make a ramped descent into a vast underground cavity where the original WTC complex was based. The museum’s two main spaces are the Memorial Hall featuring a wall with a giant line of text quoting ancient Roman poet Virgil saying “No day shall erase you from the memory of time;” and the Foundation Hall containing a section of the WTC’s original slurry wall, a retaining wall built to keep out waters of the nearby Hudson River when the site was excavated in the mid-1960s.

Other highlights of the museum include the Survivor’s Stairs, a staircase that was part of the original elevated WTC Plaza and provided a lifeline to office workers fleeing the WTC complex on 9/11; and the Last Column, a piece of WTC steel that was the last to be removed from Ground Zero at the end of recovery work at the site in May 2002.

One controversial feature of the underground complex is a repository for unidentified and unclaimed remains of WTC victims from 9/11. It is located behind the museum’s Memorial Hall wall bearing the Virgil quotation and is accessible only to staff of New York City's Office of Chief Medical Examiner. A private space exclusively for relatives of 9/11 victims called the Reflection Room is next to the repository. At the time of the museum’s opening, the repository houses about 8,000 pieces of human remains that medical examiners are tasked with trying to identify as part of an open-ended operation at an off-site DNA lab.

Some family members of WTC victims protest the repository, saying it is insensitive to house the potential remains of their loved ones deep underground in a space adjacent to a major tourist attraction. Other relatives see the underground repository as an appropriate facility.

Debate also erupts over the museum’s original $24 standard ticket price for adults, with some 9/11 victims’ family members calling it excessive. Supporters say the adult ticket price, which has since risen to $26, is consistent with the scale and value of the museum and memorial complex, whose operating and management expenses for 2019 total $73 million.

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum says more than 17 million people have visited the museum since its May 2014 opening. It says more than 50 million people from around the world have visited the Memorial plaza since it opened in 2011.