'Last column' of World Trade Centre to return to Ground Zero
The last column of the World Trade Centre left standing after the September 11 attacks will be the first piece of the Twin Towers to return to Ground Zero, memorial officials said today.
The “Last Column”, which was covered with tributes to those who died in the attacks, is being prepared for a return to the trade centre site in Manhattan.
The 35ft steel beam weighs 65 tons and will be housed in a specially-built, temporary shelter until the Memorial Museum can be constructed around it over the next two years.
It was the last piece of the Twin Towers carried from Ground Zero on May 30, 2002, as thousands of rescue workers and tradesmen stood and saluted.
Alice Greenwald, director of the Memorial Museum, said: “It’s become a symbol of the attack itself as well as a symbol of the recovery that followed.”
Museum officials and the Port Authority have been working at John F Kennedy Airport’s Hangar 17 for four years to preserve the rusting column which was covered with impromptu memorials.
The hangar is filled with material which represents around a tenth of one per cent of the debris which was recovered from Ground Zero.
The Port Authority has allocated $10m (€14m) for the preservation of World Trade Centre artefacts at the hangar, and museum officials will decide which of those will be displayed.
Joe Daniels, president of the Memorial Foundation, told the New York Post that once a date is set for the return, many of the workers involved in the final day of the cleanup will return.
“It will have a feeling of coming full circle,” he told the paper.
“It’s really going to be an uplifting event.”
