Baltimore honors 9/11 with memorial’s moving shadow
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In Baltimore, Maryland, architects Steve Ziger and Doug Bothner designed a 9/11 memorial featuring steel columns recovered from the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
The memorial, located along the Inner Harbor, includes three 22-foot steel columns resting on 50 Danby marble blocks, totaling 200,000 pounds, sourced from the same quarry as the Washington Monument.
Bothner described the experience of seeing the recovered artifact as profoundly moving, prompting the decision to present the steel “as a body at rest.” The memorial’s design incorporates the adjacent World Trade Center building, which casts a shadow across the marble blocks on September 11th.
This shadow marks the times of key events from the day of the attacks, the strikes on the North Tower, the Pentagon, and the crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, with a bell ringing at each point during the annual commemoration. The memorial also features a separate limestone memorial echoing damage to the Pentagon and polished granite columns representing the passengers of Flight 93. Governor Martin O’Malley commissioned the memorial in 2010, and Ziger|Snead completed it within nine months.
Bothner had a personal connection to the tragedy, as a close family friend died on one of the hijacked planes. The memorial’s design intentionally keeps the names of Marylanders lost on 9/11 inscribed on a lit portion of the memorial, symbolizing hope and remembrance.
