A new memorial center has been created in Shanksville, Pennsylvania to honor the people on United Airlines Flight 93 which crashed in a field on September 11th when passengers fought back against the terrorists.
Here’s an Associated Press report via FOX News:
Flight 93 memorial visitor center is dedicated
A new visitor center has been dedicated on a Pennsylvania hill overlooking the site where United Airlines Flight 93 came down during the 9/11 attacks.
The visitor center is at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville. It uses photos, video, artifacts and interactive displays to tell the story of how passengers and crew fought to regain control of the plane. The hijackers are believed to have wanted to crash it into the U.S. Capitol.
An outdoor platform offers a commanding view of the crash site where 33 passengers and seven crew members were killed.
U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said at Thursday’s dedication that the center captures “the real honor of the 40 and what they did.”
Watch this short but amazing time-lapse photography video of the center being built:
Nick Malawskey of Penn Live filed a report this week which describes the dual nature of the site:
Inside the new Flight 93 visitor center in Somerset County
There is a hard truth engrained within the Flight 93 Memorial near Shanksville.
On one hand, there is the beauty of the natural landscape itself, the rolling hills that are part and parcel of the land north of Somerset. There is also the artistry of the memorial, which, over the last 14 years, has slowly risen out of the earth. Every detail here is carefully choreographed, from the monuments to the manner in which visitors interact with the land. And there is the terrible truth of what happened here, a knowledge that is inescapable as one walks the grounds.
It is beautiful and horrible all at once.
This truth is at the core of the new National Park Service welcome center – which will open Thursday – in the heart of the Flight 93 Memorial. From the outside, its angled planes rise from the slowly rolling hill, a study in modern architecture that still feels strangely organic.
Inside, soft light fills a long space. The effect causes the walls and ceiling to melt from one’s perception, leaving only 10 large panels, set in rows that mirror the seating of an airplane.
The Penn Live article also has a slideshow with photos of the memorial which you can see here.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
Thanks for posting. Couple years back the design was going to be (?) a crescent like half circle pointing towards Mecca and many were very unhappy about it (to say the least)… the memorial is very nice, appropriate, a work of art, beautiful and touching.
I’ll have to go see it some time…
“The Crescent of Embrace” or some such pretentious rubbish it was going to called. The idea that it was “pointing towards Mecca” was the least of its problems — it looked exactly like a damned Islamic “Star and Crescent” symbol, fercryinoutloud.
The only things that should be pointing towards Mecca are nuclear tipped ICBMs.
Towards Mecca, Qom, the imam’s well, and every place they consider holy. Turn it into a sea of glass.
Amen. The best memorial would be the destruction of the state sponsors of terrorism.