Baltimore Metro Region

The 9/11 Memorial of Maryland’s components are actual artifacts from each of the sites impacted during the terrorist attacks of that day: the World Trade Center in Manhattan, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

“We wanted to acknowledge all those devastated by the tragedy in New York, but 68 Marylanders died, as well, many of whom were at the Pentagon,” says Rand Griffin, chair of the Public Art Commission appointed by Governor Martin O’Malley to develop the memorial.

“Marylanders [from 14 of 23 counties] perished. So we wanted a Maryland focus to honor those who fell and who came to the rescue.”

The new memorial stands high at Baltimore’s World Trade Center, the tallest pentagonal building in the world. Its centerpiece is three large sections of shattered steel from the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

“These two-and-a-half tons of once-vertical columns fell 96 stories and landed in a horizontal position,” says Douglas Bothner, project manager at Ziger/Snead, the Maryland architectural firm that designed the memorial.

“We could have resurrected the structure as a vertical column that has risen, or displayed it diagonally in the act of falling. But we thought it would be most powerful to lay it on its side.

“We feel it speaks to the destruction of the day left horizontal, rusted, and torn.”

The columns rest on a 35-foot-long, 17-foot-wide marble bed. On the east side of the building are three 5,000-pound limestone blocks from the west wall of the Pentagon.

“They were seemingly indestructible pieces of lime taken from their wall and scattered, so they are stacked in disarray to reflect the destruction from the plane’s impact,” says Bothner of the two blocks offset in white marble, with the third resting on top.

All that remained from the Shanksville site was a tremendous hole in the ground. “Because there were no physical artifacts, we chose three polished black granite slabs from the area,” says Griffin.

This part of the memorial, which also sits on marble, is the most abstract. It is also, perhaps, the most startling.

When viewing the slabs, “You’re staring at the Pentagon memorial to your left,” says Griffin. “In the reflection of the granite, you see the steel columns.”

Maryland’s 9/11 victims are also honored on the 27th-floor observation deck of Baltimore’s World Trade Center. There, visitors will find photographs of those who died, along with information about that terrible day’s events.

“Maryland is the only state to have a 9/11 tribute of this scale—one that remembers Marylanders, but pulls together the entire day,” says Griffin. “Not just through each of the three structures, but even in the way we have used the building itself.”

Stirringly, the building serves as a sundial, creating a shadow that moves across several inlaid grooves, each representing an event from September 11th, starting at 8:46 a.m., when the first plane struck the World Trade Center, and concluding at 10:50 a.m., the precise moment at which the Pentagon wall collapsed.

For more information about the 9/11 Memorial of Maryland, visit www.maryland911memorial.org.