What the 9/11 Memorial Got Wrong

No American building project has been more closely watched than the site of the former World Trade Center. Nearly 13 years after the attacks, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum has opened fully, and nearly all the fences around the 8-acre memorial plaza have come down.

Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times, has spent a lot of time at the memorial since it opened. His verdict? “I don’t think this is a place that really feels like it’s part of New York,” Kimmelman tells Kurt Andersen. In the hours he spent there, Kimmelman saw plenty of tourists snapping photos, but he finds that the vast site fails as a public space. Perhaps the stone benches were too uncomfortable, or the list of rules too many: no eating, singing, or sunbathing; no chewing gum or using a lighter; no leafleting or drawing a crowd, are allowed on the tree-filled plaza. It’s not an environment to reflect on the liberties we cherish.

Unlike the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., the September 11 Memorial lies in the heart of a bustling financial district. Kimmelman thinks the site should serve not just as a place to mourn or find solace, but also as a public space where life goes on. “The ability of New York, and by extension America, to return again to life — and to return this place to life — would have been a very powerful statement,” he says.

Steep expectations have always loomed over what the World Trade Center site would become and how many interests it would serve. The dialog will continue long after the last stone has been set, Kimmelman says. “One of the most interesting thing about memorials generally is that the debate around them is the most democratic and hopeful thing that they produce.”

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