New York attractions: National September 11 Memorial & Museum (SLIDE SHOW)

New York attractions: National September 11 Memorial & Museum

Starting this year, the Municipal Art Society of New York will set up its annual Tribute in Light illuminations on the memorial’s grounds. (Since its inception in 2002, it’s been located in a lot adjacent to the WTC site.) The beams, which are switched on from dusk on September 11 until dawn on September 12, mimic the Twin Towers’ structure and act as a visible reminder of New York’s enormous loss in 2001. MAS recommends a number of places to view the Tribute in Light, including Washington Square Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Staten Island’s ferry terminal. Visit mas.org/tributeinlight for the full list.

New York attractions: National September 11 Memorial & Museum

TONY took this photo just before the 9/11 Memorial’s opening ceremony on September 11, 2011. Admission to the site is free, but advance tickets are required.

New York attractions: National September 11 Memorial & Museum

The World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition drew more than 5,000 entries from 63 nations. After reviewing the submissions for six months, architects Michael Arad and Peter Walker were declared winners for their design, “Reflecting Absence,” in early 2004.

Pictured: Rendering of “Reflecting Absence”

New York attractions: National September 11 Memorial & Museum

“Reflecting Absence” includes two deep, reflecting pools, each located where the Twin Towers once stood. At night, some 140 bulbs illuminate the pools.

New York attractions: National September 11 Memorial & Museum

Names of the victims of the September 11 attacks in New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania, and the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center are inscribed in bronze panels along the edge of each pool—2,983 in all. “The materials had to have a toughness that would weather [the elements],” “Reflecting Absence” architect Michael Arad told TONY in anticipation of the memorial’s opening in 2011.

The inscribed name of September 11 victim Berry Berenson along the North Pool. The widow of fellow actor Anthony Perkins (Psycho), who succumbed to his fight with AIDS on September 12, 1992 (almost exactly nine years earlier), Berenson was one of the passengers on American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the North Tower. The couple’s son, singer-songwriter Elvis Perkins, explored the loss of his mother on his touching 2007 debut LP, Ash Wednesday.

New York attractions: National September 11 Memorial & Museum

United Airlines Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer’s name is inscribed along the South Pool. Because of the efforts of Beamer and other passengers, their plane crashed in Pennsylvania before terrorist hijackers could reach their target. The events were portrayed in Paul Greengrass’s 2006 film United 93.

New York attractions: National September 11 Memorial & Museum

Known as the Survivor Tree, this Callery pear tree was discovered by September 11 recovery workers just a month after the World Trade Center attacks. After years of care in the Bronx’s Van Cortlandt Park, it blossomed from a severely damaged eight-foot tree to the healthy thirty-plus-foot one it is today, and moved back to the site in 2010.

New York attractions: National September 11 Memorial & Museum

There are more than 400 swamp white oak trees in the plaza. “The first ring of trees around each pool is exactly 212 feet across, from one side to the other, and that’s the dimension of the towers,” Arad told TONY last year. “All of the structural steel columns [of the Twin Towers] were on the perimeter of the building, and where those columns used to be, we have these trees growing.”

New York attractions: National September 11 Memorial & Museum

Construction for the memorial commenced in March 2006 and was completed just days before its public opening on September 12, 2011.