The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 84

The memorial situation keeps getting murkier and murkier.

In the current plan, body parts are to be kept in a climate-controlled room about 35 feet east of the vessel, under the supervision of the city's chief medical examiner. They will be easily removable from there for further examination as DNA identification techniques improve. An adjoining vestibule, open only to victims' relatives, will offer a view into the room where containers of body parts are stored.

The vessel, 30 feet square and 9 feet high in the center of the main chamber, will be symbolic.

"I just don't see the point," said Diane Horning, the president of W.T.C. Families for Proper Burial, speaking for herself. "Our loved ones aren't symbolically dead. But everything that's been given to us is symbolic."

Everything has been synthesized and rehashed to the point of senselessness. The awful truth is that at present more than 1,000 people have never been properly identified via remains. There was simply no technology available with which to make the DNA identification. The existing remains have been kept in temperature controlled facilities at the NYC Medical Examiner's Offices. The WTC Families for Proper Burial is a group that would like to see the filings from Fresh Kills returned to Ground Zero and given a proper burial instead of continuing to stay at the Fresh Kills landfill. That's really not feasible - between the costs and the size of what would be required (more than a million tons of debris, that potentially includes human remains). However, a true Tomb of the Unknowns makes more sense than the jumble of po-mo symbols designed thus far. Perhaps this is where the design will ultimately go, but like everything else with the WTC rebuilding, it isn't easy or obvious to those in charge with the rebuilding until things come to a crisis point.

Meanwhile, the Drawing Center finds new home.

In interviews, officials at the center, currently based in SoHo, described their search as something of a roller coaster ride from dejection to giddy hope. Scouring abandoned buildings, vacant parking lots and high-rises, they fell in love with some locations and flatly rejected others, while learning the perils of what its president calls a "lack of nimbleness" by losing out to quick bidders.

The site they ultimately chose, known as New Market, is by no means a done deal: the building currently there, which would be razed to make way for new construction, is owned by the city, which has not yet entered negotiations with the Drawing Center. But city cultural officials have so far voiced support, signaling that the Drawing Center, an institution devoted to historical and contemporary works on paper, may soon be able to declare victory.

"The ultimate desire of the city is that they be relocated and contribute to the revitalization of Lower Manhattan," said Kate D. Levin, the city's commissioner of cultural affairs. The city and the Drawing Center have yet to start formal discussions.

More than $10 million will be given to the Drawing Center to make sure that this happens. Where's similar funds to assist Chinatown businesses who are struggling to survive without the political connections available to the Drawing Center?

UPDATE:
The memorial fountain, which designers originally sought to have operate year round, but later said that it might need to be turned off in cold weather, have again said that fountain will run year-round. Meanwhile, another 9/11 victim was finally identified via DNA testing.

The medical examiner had announced that they were halting the identification process last year, but new technology may give the same bittersweet hope to the families of 1,151 other people whose remains are still unidentified.

"We exhausted the technology as it existed up until the early part of 2005, but we always said to the families that we'd never stop trying," said ME spokeswoman Ellen Borakove.

The medical examiner still has 9,069 unidentified remains, officials said.

UPDATE:
Corrected date of posting to 1/12/2006. I had started a draft of the posting yesterday, but finished it today.

UPDATE:
Gothamist also picked up on the waterfall story and the final resting place for WTC victims' remains.