New Yorks Triple Survivors
It wasnt until a few months after 9/11 that Rebecca Yamin realized that not all the artifacts from Five Points were lost on that terrible day. By a stroke of luck, the archdiocese of New York had asked in 2000 to borrow a few pieces for an exhibit on early Irish history in New York. Yamins lab lent them 18 of their most precious artifacts: childrens marbles, tobacco pipes with finely carved designs, and the most prized of alla delicate teacup painted with the image of Father Matthew, an Irish priest who preached temperance. At a time when Five Points residents were considered drunks and criminals, someone had carefully displayed this cup in their home.
The archdiocese returned the 18 artifacts in August 2001, and Yamin made the fortuitous call to have them sent straight to the Seaport Museum rather than returned to storage in Six World Trade. Today, they reside in the Museum of the City of New York, 100 blocks from their original home. A selection is on display in the museums permanent exhibit about the diversity of New York City at a time when German, Irish, and Jewish migration changed the citys makeup. The prized teacup bearing the image of Father Matthew sits prominently in a glass case along the museums wall.
Chief curator Sarah Henry calls the Five Points artifacts triple survivors. They outlasted the slum, withstood being discarded and buried, and narrowly escaped destruction on September 11th.
A Harrowing History Unearthed
From her years as a professor and tour guide, Wilson knew that most people believed the Black presence in New York began with a post-Civil War migration. The discovery of the African Burial Ground in 1991, during the construction of a federal office building near City Hall, proved otherwise. Along with evidence of a large early African community, it revealed a brutal picture of slavery in which young, expendable laborers were needed to build an industrial city.
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In the early 1600s, Dutch colonists gave a swampy, six-acre plot on the southern end of Manhattan island to freed Africans to bury their dead, often under cover of night, as no more than four enslaved people were allowed to congregate together by law. Over 150 years, some 15,000 free and enslaved Africans were buried in an area slightly larger than the average city block. Today it sits under Manhattans financial district.
The bones from the burial ground told a harrowing story of the conditions for enslaved men and women. Researchers found that in just one generation, distinctive African traditions such as shaved teeth and ornate jewelry had all but disappeared. Bones bore physical evidence of difficult, dangerous work, including skull fractures from heavy loads dropped on enslaved dockworkers. The average lifespan was between 24 and 26 years.
Unidentified 9/11 Remains Returned To ‘ground Zero’
Some family members of those killed in the attacks protested at Ground Zero
Thousands of unidentified remains from the 9/11 attacks have been returned to “Ground Zero” in a solemn ceremony.
Fifteen vehicles took the remains from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to a repository under the World Trade Center site.
The move has split opinion among the families of victims, with some holding a protest at the memorial site.
The 11 September 2001 attacks killed almost 3,000 people in New York, the Washington DC area and Pennsylvania.
The remains consist of 7,930 fragments of human tissue that could not be identified by forensic teams.
They were placed in metallic boxes, covered in the American flag and taken in a convoy comprising fire trucks and police vehicles to the site of the attacks in downtown Manhattan.
Uniformed firemen and police then placed the boxes in a dedicated facility located underneath the 9/11 Memorial Museum.
The repository is 65 ft underground and will remain under the control of the Office of the New York Medical Examiner. Only family members and forensics teams will be allowed direct access.
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How The 9/11 Attacks Unfolded
Getty ImagesThe New York City Fire Department lost 343 firefighters during the attacks.
At 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, people in New York City were going about their daily lives when tragedy suddenly struck. American Airlines Flight 11 had been hijacked by al Qaeda on its way from Boston to Los Angeles and it crashed right into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
At first, there was confusion as to what exactly happened. Some initially thought the plane crash had been an unfortunate accident due to a malfunction. But then, United Airlines Flight 175 also traveling from Boston to Los Angeles crashed into the South Tower. Soon after, it became clear that these plane crashes were not accidents.
Chaos ensued after the first airplane crash, with people panicking in the streets and in their homes, frantically checking in on their loved ones. Those who were among the unfortunate may have discovered that their family members or friends were stuck inside the burning World Trade Center.
In less than two hours, the iconic Twin Towers of New York City had turned to ash, leaving unimaginable suffering in their wake. That same day, terrorist attacks were also launched against the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., as well as a plane that went down outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
‘commitment As Strong As Ever’
The commitment today is as strong as it was in 2001, Desire said of his team.
We continue to push the science out of necessity to make more identifications.
The OCME’s first move in 2001 was to ensure that anything that could contain a trace of human remains was removed from Ground Zero and properly searched.
Over the next ten months, 1.8million tons of rubble was moved to Fresh Kills in Staten Island, where 1,000 people were involved in looking through the debris for even the smallest remains.
In the first six weeks after the attack, around 500 victims were identified, mostly through fingerprints and dental records.
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Cell Phone Used By Mayor Rudy Giuliani
Embroiled today in legal and financial troubles, politician and lawyer Rudy Giulianiwon accolades in 2001 for his leadership in a time of tragedy. Then at the end of his seven-year stint as New York Citys mayor, Giuliani used this Motorola i1000plus cell phone to coordinate emergency efforts on that September day. Arriving at a command center on the 23rd floor of World Trade Center Building 7 just after the second plane hit, he was evacuated as debris threatened to topple the building. Giuliani remained at the center of the crisis for the next hours, according to the museum, which also houses the mayors windbreaker, boots, coat and cap in its collections.
Giulianis cell phone isnt the only one in the museums 9/11 collection: A bright green Nokia phone used by Long Island Railroad commuter Roe Bianculli-Taylor and a boxy Ericsson T28 used by Bob Boyle, who worked near the World Trade Center, both testify to the importance of communication during a crisis.
Cell phones were not as ubiquitous in 2001 as they are now, says Yeh. And they certainly did not provide the relief that one might imagine, for instance, in New York City, where cell towers went down. With millions of people trying to call, it was impossible to communicate. And not everyone had cell phones, so this sense of chaos and terror was made worse.
Controversies Surrounding The Museum
Little Syria
A neighborhood that was once called Little Syria, a center of Christian Arab immigrant life in the United States beginning in the 1880s, once existed just south of the site of the World Trade Center. The cornerstone of St. Joseph’s Lebanese was found under the rubble, next to St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at 157 Cedar Street. Both congregations were founded by Christians who had fled Ottoman oppression in the Middle East. Activists lobbied for the Museum to include a permanent exhibit about the neighborhood to “help the thousands of tourists who visit the site to understand that immigrants from Ottoman lands have played a patriotic role in the country’s history,” arguing that it was important to memorialize the multiethnic character of “Little Syria.” The old Christian Syrian neighborhood was demolished in the 1940s due to the construction of the BrooklynBattery Tunnel.
Never Forget
General admission tickets to the museum are $24, a price which has raised concerns. Michael Bloomberg agreed, encouraging people to “write your congressman” for more federal funding.
Placement of unidentified remains
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A Nest Of Vipers Redeemed
In 1991, the same year that the African Burial Ground emerged from a construction site, another archaeological discovery was being made at the nearby site of a planned federal courthouse. Beneath a parking lot, researchers came across the remains of Five Points, once one of the worlds most densely populated neighborhoods and 19th-century Manhattans most notorious slum.
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In the popular imagination, Five Points was infamous long before Martin Scorseses 2002 film Gangs of New York. Newspapers in the mid-1800s dubbed it a nest of vipers. Visitors like Charles Dickens described the neighborhood of German and Irish immigrants as a hotbed of crime, violence, and prostitution. To well-heeled New Yorkers, the neighborhood was a cautionary tale of urbanism and justification for their disdain of immigrants and the working class.
The wealthy often fill the historical record with their own artifacts and perspectives, while the legacies of working classes are rarely preserved. But the Five Points sitewhich included the remains of 14 diverse properties, from a rabbis home to a brothelyielded more than 850,000 working-class artifacts. To archaeologists, the staggering collection of everyday items such as soda bottles, tea sets, thimbles, and inkwells was a nearly miraculous find in a city constantly being torn down and rebuilt.
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Why Victims’ Families Are Furious About 9/11 Memorial Museum
The museum features a gift shop, as well as human remains.
May 19, 2014& #151 — The 9/11 Memorial Museum, set to open to the public this Friday, is at the center of an intense debate.
The New York City-based museum costs $24 to enter, and the gift shop offers pricey coffee mugs, T-shirts, key chains and stuffed animals. A separate part of the museum also houses some 8,000 unidentified human remains from the terrorist attacks.
Those juxtapositions tribute and commercialism, trinkets amid tragedy have victims families fuming.
Jim Riches doesnt plan on visiting. His son Jimmy, a firefighter, was 29 when he died in the attacks. It took more than six months to find some of Jimmys remains. The rest, Riches believes, are unidentified and in the repository.
My sons friends are going to have to pay $24 to go down and pay their respects, Riches said. I think thats a disgrace. Its the only cemetery in the world where you have to pay a fee to get in.
Diane and Kurt Horning tells ABC News theyre appalled by what theyre calling greed and commercialism. They lost their son Matt Horning in the twin towers.
I wouldnt expect such an intrusion at Arlington Cemetery or at the Pentagon Memorial or at any cemetery, they said.
In a statement, museum representatives tell ABC News that the museum receives no government funding and relies on private fundraising, gracious donations and revenue from ticketing and carefully selected keepsake items for retail.
/11 Families Angry Over ‘disgraceful’ City Plan To Store Remains At Museum
Relatives of people killed in the attacks are planning to picket delivery of last unidentified human remains to $700m museum
Relatives of people killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks will begin a series of protests on Saturday against the storage of the remains of their loved ones inside the new 9/11 museum in New York.
Family members, who are pleading with President Barack Obama to intervene, are planning to picket the early-morning delivery of the last unidentified human remains to the $700m museum, which opens beside the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan later this month. They are due to be housed there in a basement level.
Riches said that he and up to 50 other relatives would demonstrate as a procession of police, fire and EMS officials travel with the remains from the medical examiners office in the Kips Bay neighbourhood to the museum site, at about 7am. A previous order to keep the delivery secret made by then-mayor Michael Bloomberg as he left office was reversed by Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Norman Siegel, a lawyer for several of the relatives, said they would mount further protests at next Thursdays ceremonial dedication of the museum by Obama, and its 21 May opening to the public. We will not rest until the remains are removed from this commercial venture, he said. A lawsuit brought by Siegel to stop the citys plan was unsuccessful.
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Desire said the office has upgraded its tools and resources with the latest technology and has worked with other scientists around the world to help reach their goal.
And even if his team identifies the hundreds of remains still unaccounted for, Desire acknowledged that no amount of science can ever fill the void that was left behind in the families’ hearts.
“We provide answers. We provide here’s something physical that you’re now able to have a whatever kind of ceremony, reflection, whatever you choose. It’s our job. Our job is, our job isn’t to bring closure. That’s up to the family to decide,” he said.
Uniform Worn By Pentagon Rescuer Isaac Hoopii
Isaac Hoopii, a K-9 police officer at the Pentagon, was taking his canine companion, Vito, to the vet when he received an unexpected call over the radio: Emergency. Emergency! This is not a drill. A plane has crashed into the side of the Pentagon. Blaring his cruisers siren, the Hawaii native headed back to Arlington, driving so fast that he actually blew out his transmission.
Hoopii carried eight peoplesome dead, others still hanging onout of the burning building. But flames and thick black smoke billowing everywhere soon made it impossible to enter the Pentagon again, according to Yeh.
People trying to escape the building got turned around and couldnt find their way out, the curator adds. To guide them, Hoopii used his powerful baritone, standing at an exit and shouting for those in hearing distance to follow his voice. Many people remember hearing that voice in the darkness and following his voice to safety, says Yeh. Today, the museum houses Hoopiis uniform, as well as Vitos collar and shield, in its collection.
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Window Washer Jan Demczurs Squeegee Handle
On 9/11, this unassuming squeegee tool saved the lives of six men. As Smithsonian recounted in July 2002, window washer and five others were riding an elevator in the World Trade Centers North Tower when their ride suddenly started careening down. Pressing the emergency stop button, the men managed to halt the elevators plunge at the buildings 50th floor. Upon opening the compartments doors, however, they found their escape route blocked by a thick wall of Sheetrock.
The only sharp object at hand was Demczurs squeegee blade. Taking turns, the men scraped away at the drywall, slowly carving an exit. We just started working, Demczur told Smithsonian. Focused on this way to get out. We knew we had only one chance. Then, disaster struck: Demczur dropped the blade down the elevator shift, leaving the group with only the squeegee handle. But the men persevered, using the small metal tool to continue pushing through the Sheetrock. They emerged in a mens bathroom and raced down the towers stairs, escaping the building just a few minutes before it collapsed.
After the attacks, Shayt decided to track down Demczur:
Demczur donated both the handle and the debris-covered outfit hed worn in the elevator to the Smithsonian.
Melted Coins Recovered From The World Trade Center
When Flights 11 and 175 struck the World Trade Centers North and South Towers, respectively, their jet fuel sparked intense, multi-floor fires that reached temperatures of up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The contents of the buildingdesks, papers, carpets, ceiling tiles and even paintfueled the fire, according to the museum. After the collapse, the fires continued to burn for weeks.
Among the warped, melted objects found in the towers debris was this clump of coins. A similarly charred tin filled with melted coins and burned paper was recovered from a damaged office at the Pentagon. Fused together by the flames, the pile mirrors the twisting, wrenching and tortured steel and aluminum fragments similarly recovered from the wreckage, said Shayt in a curator reflection.
It took five or six trips to finally find the steel that we now have, Shayt added. Steel that is manageable in size and yet robust enough to reflect the size and grandeur of the World Trade Center. Also steel that could be identified by its tower and its floor level.
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