584

SITES SHOWN 667

TOTAL SITES

Living Memorials Project

http://www.livingmemorialsproject.net/

The cover of this catalog is an image taken

from the interactive Living Memorials

Project National Map. It shows the location

and site type of approximately 700 living

memorials created, used, or rededicated in

honor of September 11, 2001. These sites

were documented by USDA Forest Service

researchers from 2002-2006, and cataloged

in an archive of thousands of images that will

soon be made available to the public. 
EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION 

Living memorials are spaces created, used, or reappropriated by people as they employ the landscap

to memorialize individuals, places, and events. Ranging from single tree plantings, to the creation of ne

parks, to the rededication of existing forests, hundreds of groups across the country created a vast netwo

of sites that continues to grow.

“Land-markings: 12 Journeys through 9/11 Living Memorials” is a multimedia exhibition that compress

four years of research data and analysis on over 700 living memorials into 12 digitally authored journey

Social science researchers, urban ecologists, designers, and architects collaborated in order to colle

analyze, and present this dispersed collective response to the tragedy of September 11, 2001. As a resu

this interpretation presents memorials not only as mechanisms by which we mark events and individua

but also interprets the function and spatial location of these remembrances, treating them as emerge

forms that outline how we interact with our public landscapes.

Living Memorials Project

http://www.livingmemorialsproject.net/

NRS-INF-1-06
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 02

Journey 01: NYC Found Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 05

Journey 02: WTC Viewsheds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .08

Journey 03: Hudson River . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Journey 04: Brooklyn-Queens-Long Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Journey 05: Staten Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Journey 06: New Jersey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Journey 07: New England Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Journey 08: Somerset County, PA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Journey 09: Washington, D.C. – Arlington, VA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Journey 10: Forests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Journey 11: Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Journey 12: New Civic Grounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Index of Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Acknowledgment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Table of Contents

Land-markings: 

12 Journeys through 9/11

Living Memorials

ERIKA S. SVENDSEN AND LINDSAY K. CAMPBELL

01
Introduction

DATA COLLECTION Documenting living memorials that use the landscape as a way to remember

September 11, 2001, is a process that will never be complete. No researcher, however diligent, should have the

hubris to imagine that she can catalog and archive all of

the possible products of human ingenuity, creativity,

love, pain, and loss. Although we created a database of

nearly 700 sites nationwide and we conducted formal

interviews with several hundred project stewards, there

are thousands of sites that we have never visited or

interviewed. And even for those that we have visited—

sometimes three, four, and five times—the landscape

continues to evolve and shift. Some projects were ideas

that were never realized. Some sites are already gone.

Some memorials have changed beyond recognition.

Others remain exactly as they were constructed. And

still more are planned. In the end, it will be the trees

planted in these memorials that will help us measure

the passage of time.

In cataloging the living memorial sites for this exhibit, we

were reminded of a comment made by Peg Ogonowski,

whose husband John piloted American Airlines Flight 11

out of Logan Airport in Boston, MA. When asked if she

considered the living memorials sacred, Peg replied, “I

don’t know if I’d call them sacred, they’re very special.

They are a wonderful tribute to John. It’s also the big S

word, we’d all just rather have John back and leave all

these wonderful things behind.”

This is the research project we wish had never existed.

But because it does, we hope that it can serve as a way

to document the manner in which the public chose to

remember September 11.

COLLABORATION “Land-markings: 12 Journeys

through 9/11 Living Memorials” is a multimedia exhibit for the fifth-year anniversary of September 11. This

exhibit, as well as this catalog, is produced collaboratively by the USDA Forest Service Northern Research

Station, The Tishman Environment and Design Center,

at The New School, and Parsons The New School 

For Design. Compressing the photos, videos, print

material, data spreadsheets, and sounds that have been

gathered in 4 years of research, the exhibit and this 

Erika Svendsen photographing the Flight 93 crash site with Anne

Cumming in Somerset, PA

Lindsay Campbell interviewing Liz Sulik at Tribute Park in 

Far Rockaway, NY

Phu Duong’s conceptual diagram of video layering technique for

merging imagery, data, and soundscapes 

O U R M O T H E R S S E N T U S N E W S PA P E R C L I P P I N G S , W E S C O U R E D T H E I N T E R N E T, W E P L A N N E D O U T R O U T E S O N A M A P, W E P I C K E D

UP LOCAL NEWSPAPERS WHEREVER WE WENT, WE ASKED DOG WALKERS FOR DIRECTIONS, WE TALKED TO OUR FRIENDS AND THEIR

FRIENDS AND THEIR FRIENDS, WE GOT LOST, WE RAN OUT OF GAS ON THE NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE, WE BROUGHT CAMERAS WITH

US WHEREVER WE WENT, AND WE CALLED ERHART’S CLAM HOUSE TO ASK THE BARTENDER ABOUT THE MURAL OUT BACK.

02
publication are structured around 12 journeys. Some of

these journeys are almost directly based on transects or

paths that were traveled (Hudson River, Staten Island),

others are a thematic grouping of sites (forests, schools),

others are a collage of projects that we learned about over

time that seemed to belong together (WTC viewsheds,

New England families). Each journey is depicted in a

“sketch map” that visually represents geographic relationships between the sites and some aspects of the landscape.

These hand-drawn images recognize our subjectivity as

researchers and the way in which our own perception and

memory of social and spatial relationships shape the

organization of these journeys, referencing the work of

Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City (1964). These journeys

occur at multiple scales, from the metropolitan, to the

regional, to the national. They sometimes overlap or

seemingly contradict each other.

Early in our documentation we met with landscape 

architects, architects, urban planners, and new media

designers, all of whom contributed greatly to initial 

interpretations. The creative partnership forged with the

design firm Urban-Interface inspired an interpretation 

of this data through urban design and multimedia.

Linking sociology to ecology to media in the interpretation of this project, we collectively began to explore the

network of living memorials as designed and emergent

systems in cities. Moving beyond data collection brought

new knowledge that fueled our interest in the process 

of creation of new public spaces. These spaces exist in

multiple realms; they are physically created by hundreds

of dispersed stewards, but they are also constantly 

recreated conceptually by visitors, observers, and

researchers like us. Registering all of the countless tactile

and interpretive interactions involved in place-making is

beyond the bounds of our endeavor. Nevertheless,

current technologies such as personal video devices

afford immediate access for capturing and representing a

wide range of localized cultural practices ranging from

displays of national pride in a civic space to subtle

notions of remembrance associated with planting new

saplings in an existing forest stand. Video is a media 

format that can merge data, imagery, mappings, media

clippings, drawings, and sound to allow for an editorial

voice to move through what is an incredibly rich and textured time-space. We crafted the 12 journeys to make

explicit one approach to organizing field observations of

various kinds of remembrances. Finally, the exhibition

recognizes the value of public processes as a constant act

to bring shape, acceptance, and knowledge to new forms

of social practice. Thus, we envision the exhibition as a

step along a much longer path of understanding the 

relationship between on-the-ground environmental

stewardship, the design fields, and qualitative urban 

ecological research.

SOCIAL ECOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS Disturbance in

any system often provides researchers with an opportunity to better understand the functioning of that system.

In the case of natural disaster, such as hurricanes or

03
floods, nature can be treated as an external force that is

often blamed for human failings. In the case of

September 11, as an act of terrorism, nature provides

society with a self-regulating healing mechanism. People

ascribe certain human ideals to nature, such as freedom,

beauty, strength, health, longevity, or even redemption.

As a result, it is not at all unusual for memorials that

integrate nature into remembrance to emerge in the

days, weeks, months and even years following a tragedy.

We consider the emergence of September 11 memorials

part of a socio-ecological process of disturbance and

resilience. They represent acts tied to traditional,

almost universal, mourning rituals and beliefs. Still,

the location of these memorials reminds us that in the 

case of September 11, we lost the things that center us,

most notably the body, the city, and control of what is

public and what is private in our lives. As we identified

permanent memorials in traffic islands, near train 

stations, in front yards, along waterfronts and in local

parks, we began to explore Emilie Durkheim’s (2001)

notion of how the ordinary becomes sacred. The ordinary in this case was the interstitial space between

home and work. We considered this to be another form

of the public commons.

Within this notion of the commons, we found an ideological response that at first glance may tempt the

researcher to separate memorials into those representing

war and peace. We documented many yellow ribbons

and American flags. We paid particular attention to those

which embodied what Nancy Fraser (1992) has deemed,

the ‘subaltern-counter publics.’ These spaces were the

places of counter narratives. Taking this further, we tried

to see if certain types of beliefs, as they were reflected in

memorial designs, were situated in particular locales.

Instead, we found that ‘peace’ labyrinths and community

gardens emerge alongside parks that treat 9-11 like other

wars. Not unlike the memorial processes in each of the

three crash locations, there is a great deal of variation

which exists within a particular place. It is important to

note that this variation is not typically apparent

through the design of a site. Instead, the variation we

found emerges from the site’s location, function, and

the stewards themselves.

In sum, what we have to offer is just a beginning—an

introduction to some of the broad scale patterns in

form and function that we observed as well as the

micro-level nuances that make each site unique. These

findings are informed by a research approach rooted in

the methods of social ecology, including interview, site

observation, ethnography, and photo narrative technique, and by our ongoing engagement with new media

and the design fields. This work is also, inevitably,

informed by our own biases, backgrounds, and beliefs.

Wherever possible, we attempted to allow the stories of

the projects themselves to come through, leaving our

observations as provocations or open questions.

Indeed, we hope that this project will invite reflection,

response, and debate.

Living Memorial Project 

inding Strength in Our Natural Systems 

Site Typologies 

Fore

ark 

ommunity Garden 

ivi round 

oun Space 

ese

epla

egister Your Site 09 10 11 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

584 ITES SHOWN 667

OTAL SITES

The Living Memorials Project National Map,

created by urban-interface

04
NYC Found Space

05

Journey 01

Once a location was discovered—in a tree pit, a window box, a vacant lot, or a crack in the sidewalk—a

seed was quickly planted and covered with fresh soil.

The intentions of this eclectic group of New York City

residents were threefold: to honor the individuality of

those lost through the diversity of nature; to help fill the

psychological void between recovery at the World Trade

Center site and the construction of a memorial; and

perhaps most directly, to re-establish a feeling of control

which might extend to the larger community through

the presence of these defiant sunflowers.

“The official September 11 memorial in NYC will not be

in place any time soon. We felt something should be in

place —not just at Ground Zero, but everywhere. There is

a power and healing that comes with digging in the dirt,

planting new life and nurturing its growth. It also grows

community. Sunflowers are easy to grow, and brighten up

the most forgotten, neglected places. Like New Yorkers, sunflowers are tenacious, surviving and thriving in adverse

conditions. Sunflowers improve the ground and air where

they grow, attracting birds and butterflies. They make

sense as one tall way to remember life and make it a bit

better— it’s hard not to look up in their presence.”

—Bianca Bob’s Sunflower Project NYC Web site

Immediately following September 11, friends, shopkeepers, school teachers, transit and rescue workers,

chose places of social meaning throughout New York

City to erect shrines of flowers, candles, images and

other types of ephemera. Many individuals sought to

reappropriate this public space for permanent use

through planting trees, flowers, or in some cases, painting murals. The materials required for these efforts were

The sites in this journey radiated out from the crash site at the

World Trade Center and are dispersed throughout the five

boroughs of New York City.

IN THE SPRING OF 2002, VOLUNTEERS GATHERED ON DESIGNATED STREET CORNERS IN

LOWER MANHATTAN TO LOOK FOR PLACES TO PLANT SUNFLOWERS. 

ce
06

either accessible or available to independent citizens or

informal groups. Using symbols of nature, many people

sought to interact with the city through stewardship of

the land.

This journey in search of found space represents a

deliberate act of an individual or group to appropriate

a physical place and ascribe to it a new social meaning.

This act is the physical embodiment of a basic human

need to exhibit some measure of control over one’s

environment, to create, to teach, and to leave a legacy.

In this way, found spaces are not unlike roadside cross

memorials. As Everett notes in her detailed account of

Texas roadside memorials, these are extraordinary spaces

that occupy a place in the public landscape and in our

imagination between the home and cemetery. They

become places to meet, communicate, remember, and

reflect. But perhaps most importantly, both found space

and roadside memorials are considered sacred by those

who experience them (Everett 2002). Whether they are

temporary or permanent, formal or informal, these

memorials separate us from the every day. Similar to

roadside memorials, the sustained existence of found

space eventually requires legitimization by government

and the community surrounding found space.

Found spaces appeared beyond New York City, radiating

throughout the country. For a brief time these spaces

also emerged in other countries: United Kingdom,

France, and Australia. But what happens when the context in which these memorials were created changes from

disaster to recovery to remembrance—and inevitably to

resolution? Are these spaces still memorials? Do they

continue to exist at all? 

Park Slope Street Tree, Brooklyn, NY

FDNY firefighters at the Living Memorial

Trail, Bronx, NY

“We felt something should be 

in place—not just at Ground

Zero, but everywhere. There is a 

power and healing that comes

with digging in the dirt, planting

new life and nurturing its growth.

It also grows community.”

– Sunflower Project NYC Web site
07

Our preliminary findings suggest that many found spaces

continue to exist online in a virtual community or in

communities on the ground. Yet, the social meaning of

these found spaces has already begun to change as the

events associated with September 11 evolve and other

local and global catastrophes emerge. For example, the

Living Memorial Trail in the South Bronx consists of new

trees planted from river to park to the streets in Hunts

Point and is incorporated into a larger community health

initiative. By the time of its official dedication in 2005,

the Rockaways’ Waterfront Tribute Park was dedicated

not only to those lost on September 11, but etched 

along the brick pathways, also includes remembrances

for Rockaway residents who died from other causes on

other days. Do these changes in social meaning alter the

original intention of memorializing September 11? Or

does this suggest that found spaces are more than

ephemeral shrines or momentary ‘shouts in the street?’

Perhaps instead, these sites offer a unique and unexpected opportunity to reflect on ourselves, our communities,

and what we hold most dear—noting that we need ways

to remember and memorialize that go beyond the passive

experience and officially designated sites.

Bianca Bob and volunteers with the

Sunflower Project NYC, New York, NY

The Daffodil Project, New York, NY

JOURNEY 01 SITES

East Village Murals

Manhattan, NY

Living Memorial Trail

Bronx, NY

Living Memorial Grove 

of Survivor Trees 

at Brooklyn Bridge

Manhattan, NY

Lower Manhattan 

Engine 10 Firehouse

Manhattan, NY

Lower Manhattan Streetscape

Manhattan, NY

Michael E. Brennan Memorial Tree

Long Island City, NY

Park Slope Street Tree

Brooklyn, NY

Sunflower Project NYC

Manhattan, NY

Sunset Park Mural

Brooklyn, NY

Suntowers

Manhattan, NY

The Daffodil Project

New York, NY

Union Square Park

Manhattan, NY

Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition

Memorial Garden

Brooklyn, NY

Trees New York Living Memorial

Manhattan, NY

Twin Tower Memorial Garden

Far Rockaway, NY

This journey in search of found

space represents an opportunistic

act of an individual or group to

appropriate a physical place and

ascribe to it a new social meaning.
Journey 02

08

WTC Viewsheds

From Mt. Mitchell in New Jersey to Sherwood Island

State Park in Connecticut to the Rockaways in Queens,

these are all places where people stood and could see

the Twin Towers, the massive New York City icons.

These sites have always been places for gazing at the

city’s skyline, but the events of September 11

renewed—and in some cases formalized—the meaning

and function of these sites. All of these sites, now

memorials, are land that bore witness to the day and are

associated with the physical memory of the event. We

are compelled to mark the land below, because we cannot mark the sky where these tragic events took place.

People across the United States found ways to connect

with the event through the concept of the viewshed—

which we define as all of the areas that share a common

view of a notable site. The WTC was not actually within view of Haverstraw, a town along the Hudson River

in New York State, but the stewards of the project

retraced the path of the planes and consider their

waterfront park a sacred viewshed. Even farther away,

people evacuated and secured their buildings of significance, from Chicago’s Sears Tower to St. Louis’

Gateway Arch. In the immediate days after September

11, these measures were done out of precaution, but

some cities later created memorials or held events at

these sites of significance. People developed a renewed

sense of importance of their local viewsheds of monuments, buildings, landscapes, and skylines, in solidarity

with what happened in New York City.

THE MEMORIALS CREATED IN VIEW OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER (WTC) FORM AN

UNEVEN STAR-SHAPED JOURNEY WHICH OFFERS A WAY TO READ THE TOPOGRAPHY

AND GEOLOGY OF THE NEW YORK CITY REGION.

The memorials created in the view of the former World Trade

Center form an uneven star-shaped journey, which offers a way

to read the topography of the New York City region.
Connecticut’s 9-11 Living Memorial in Sherwood Island

State Park, Westport, CT

September 11 Memorial at Richard W. DeKorte

Meadowlands Park, Lyndhurst, NJ

09

Some of the memorials symbolically attempt to restore

the skyline, or at least remind us of what once was.

At the Richard W. DeKorte Meadowlands Park in 

Lyndhurst, NJ, two footprints position viewers in front of

a sculpture of the skyline that lines up with the actual

skyline—and included the Twin Towers. Beside that

sculpture are two small piers that extend out into the

marshy water, each pier made of 110 slats—the number

of floors in the Twin Towers. At an old Brooklyn waterfront pier—future site of the Brooklyn Bridge

Park—gardeners and other volunteers planted hundreds of daffodils in two, long rectangular beds. Each

spring, visitors to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade can

gaze at the skyline directly across the river, with two

bright yellow flower beds lying below, a silent reminder

of the towers, the day, and the people who were lost.

On September 11, many people stood at viewsheds as

witnesses, wanting to do something, but powerless to stop

the events that unfolded before their eyes. Liberty State 

Park in Jersey City, NJ, directly across the Hudson River

from the WTC, was a triage site, but tragically, there were

not as many treatable wounded victims as had been

anticipated. Though there were thousands of heroic

efforts by first responders and other volunteers, neither

the WTC site nor the city could physically accommodate

all those who wanted to help. As a result, people began to

create living memorials by planting trees on their own

grounds to connect and respond to the event. Liberty

State Park now has a Grove of Remembrance of 691 trees,

honoring all of the New Jersey victims who were lost.

“We are also creating a window to the future, creating an

area that is viable not only from a cultural perspective, but

from an ecological perspective. A window where we can

come and explore what an urban forest actually looks like.

That’s why we feel that Liberty State Park is the perfect place

for this project and has great potential towards living in the

future as well as remembering and honoring the past.”

—Frank Gallagher, New Jersey Division of Parks and

Forests

People across the United States

found ways to connect with the

event through the concept of the

viewshed—which we define as all

of the areas that share a common

view of a notable site.
JOURNEY 02 SITES

Connecticut’s 9-11 Living

Memorial, Westport, CT

Grove of Healing at Sunset Park,

Brooklyn, NY

Healing Trees Project, 

Yonkers, NY

Memorial Treeway of Champion

Trees in Calvary Cemetery,

Queens, NY

Rockaway Partnership Waterfront

Tribute Park, Rockaways, NY

Long Island Nursery LMDC Tree

Tagging for WTC Memorial,

Manhattan, NY

Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition

Memorial Garden, Brooklyn, NY

Grove of Healing in Seaside

Nature Park, Staten Island, NY

Hoboken September 11

Memorial Tree Grove, 

Hoboken, NJ

Monmouth County 9-11

Memorial, Atlantic Highlands, NJ

New Jersey Living Memorial, 

A Grove of Remembrance, 

Jersey City, NJ

Waterfront Statues and Plaques,

Jersey City, NJ

WTC United Family Group

Memorial, West Orange, NJ

“This is a unique site in America. This is a site within the

vision of the Statue of Liberty, and in the spot where many

of our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents

came to this country. This is also a site in America that

was right across from the World Trade Center. Many families spent considerable thousands of hours here looking

for loved ones, praying, and reflecting. It’s also a site that’s

natural, that reclaims the earth, and hopefully provides

an opportunity for healing: spiritual healing and natural

healing.”

—Former New Jersey Governor, James McGreevey, at the

2003 Liberty State Park Arbor Day Planting

On that day it was apparent that we live in a media-rich,

networked environment, with compression of space

and time, where everyone experienced the details of the

tragedy almost simultaneously, through radio, television, and the internet. Does this compression make

those places that are physically—or at least visually—

connected to the site that much more sacred? Or has

that sense of connectedness become more universal

regardless of place? Does this make viewed images of

the tragedy sacred as well? 

On September 11, many 

people stood at viewsheds as

witnesses, wanting to do

something, but powerless to

stop the events that unfolded

before their eyes. 

10

Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition Memorial Garden, Brooklyn, NY

Volunteers at the New Jersey Living Memorial, A Grove of

Remembrance at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ
Hudson River

Stewards in this journey engage in the act of landmarking, or the ritual of marking land in order to claim

a particular history. As the journey moves from urban

neighborhoods to suburbs and towns, stewardship

communities are defined by their resource base beliefs,

and their topographies. Collective values shape memorials’ form and intent. Reading the forms, symbols, and

iconography of the memorial spaces, as well as their

special events and everyday uses, reveals that all share this

majestic landscape yet its sociopolitical history is interpreted and integrated differently into belief systems

pertaining to the land.

Urban ecology groups, such as the New York Restoration

Project, the Green Guerillas, Greening for Breathing,

and Groundwork Yonkers, saw September 11 as a singular, tragic event, but also placed it in the context of

different stressors and tragedies facing inner city residents every day. These stressors include lack of open

space, lack of jobs, lack of activities for youth, and poor

air quality, to name just a few. A language of healing,

public health, and peace pervaded the memorial

designs and their accompanying programs of participatory design, planting, and maintenance. Trees were

planted in memory of September 11 with hopes for a

brighter future in general, which often led to a focus on

youth engagement and programming. At Brook Park

THIS JOURNEY LOOPS THE LOWER HUDSON ESTUARY STARTING AT HIGHBRIDGE PARK

IN NORTHERN MANHATTAN, GOING THROUGH SEVERAL SITES IN THE BRONX AND A

NUMBER OF TOWNS IN WESTCHESTER COUNTY AND PUTNAM COUNTY BEFORE CROSSING

THE RIVER AND RETURNING THROUGH ORANGE COUNTY AND ROCKLAND COUNTY

TOWARD NEW YORK CITY.

This journey loops the Lower Hudson estuary starting in

northern Manhattan, going through several sites in the Bronx,

Westchester County, and Putnam County before crossing the

river and returning through Orange County and Rockland

County toward New York City.

11

Journey 03
and several other community gardens in the Mott

Haven area of the South Bronx, labyrinths were created

to promote peace, unity, and healing through their

construction, physical presence, and use as a path for

walking and contemplation. Often a blending of events

was observed, where individuals brought the challenges

of having lost loved ones to their involvement with new

memorial projects. At the same time, individuals

brought different histories and legacies to these projects, as many residents in the Bronx and Yonkers are

recent immigrants to the United States.

“I think [this project is] different from any other thing we

work on. When we planned tree day, we had a lot of people

involved who aren’t normally and it was great and I think

people felt really good about it. But this is—I think—going

to be at a much deeper level. You’re coming together to 

create something permanent, a memorial, that has to do

with healing and pain. Everyone has someone that they can

think of, they can relate to that. But not everyone does that

experience in a group; in fact, I’d imagine that most people

don’t. You do it with your family in some ways. So when you

do this with former strangers in a NYC neighborhood—that

has to take it to a much higher and deeper level.”

—Elena Conte, Greening for Breathing

“One of the great things about working with Green

Guerillas is that it’s bringing people together on a very

local level. I worked with groups in the past that were

national advocacy, Clean Air Act kind of stuff. And for

me, in a way, that’s so impersonal that I get less motivated and impassionate about it. But community gardens, I

think, are solving very local problems in the immediate

neighborhood by the people that are affected. It’s not just

open space and the environment, it’s other things as well,

like taking care of kids, eating well, all these other things

that I think gardens address in our communities. And I

think the living memorials project is also that. In a time

when everyone is feeling less safe and less secure and less

certain, just the idea that you can create community

around trees and the environment and acknowledge those

feelings with your neighbors—when normally you don’t

really know your neighbors—this sort of provides the

opportunity to deal with that. So I think they’re kind of

one and the same.”

—Rebecca Ferguson, Former staff member at Green

Guerillas

Across Westchester and Putnam Counties, many stewardship groups interpreted September 11 as an act of war

and worked to create memorials that placed September

11 alongside the Revolutionary War and World War II in

the annals of history. Memorials frequently employed

symbols such as the flag,the eagle,the star. Often symbolic trees were planted such as two evergreens to represent

the Twin Towers, or an oak to represent strength. Most of

these memorials were located on civic grounds. The

Lower Hudson-Long Island Resource Conservation and

Development Council created an “American Patriot

Garden” program, which gave resources and support to

Volunteers at the Highbridge Park Living

Memorial, New York, NY

Healing Trees Project, Yonkers, NY

12
create patriotic gardens throughout the region. Generally,

memorial sites were selected that referenced the town or

the counties’ involvement with prior wars, such as the

Scarsdale American Legion Memorial site along historic

Mamaroneck Road, where George Washington’s soldiers

marched during the Revolutionary War. The Hudson

River, along with Bear Mountain and West Point

Academy, were other sites and landscapes of social significance that serve as reference points to these memorials.

Public officials, senior citizens, and veterans groups were

frequently involved in planning and stewardship at these

Westchester sites. In contrast to the explicit focus on

youth programming in the urban sites, these suburban

sites sought to connect with future generations more

indirectly, through the shaping of history and leaving

physical legacy through their memorials.

“Each plaque shows Scarsdale community’s participation in

that war. ... Our thought on this process was that future

generations of Scarsdale and Westchester can come, go

through, and understand what came before. What sacrifices

were made, why they were made, and what was the purpose...The flags represent the idea that we have a

patriotic site. Flags are symbolic of patriotism and the

upwelling of patriotism after 9-11 made us feel that it

would be appropriate to have the flags here. There are 50

flags for the 50 states.”

—Nelson Heyer, Scarsdale American Legion

Nelson Heyer at the Scarsdale American Legion

Memorial Garden, Scarsdale, NY

13

“In a time when everyone is feeling

less safe and less secure and less

certain, just the idea that you can

create community around trees and

the environment and acknowledge

those feelings with your neighbors

this sort of provides the opportunity

to deal with that.” 

– Rebecca Ferguson, Green Guerillas

JOURNEY 03 SITES

Bedford Canine Tribute Park,

Katonah, NY

Harmony Grove Peace Walk and

Labyrinth, Bronx, NY

Highbridge Park Living Memorial,

Manhattan, NY

Rockland County American Patriot

Garden, Haverstraw, NY

Trees for Life and Unity—Bronx,

Bronx, NY

Village of Cold Spring American

Patriot Garden, Cold Spring, NY

Living Memorial Trail

Bronx, NY

Healing Trees Project

Yonkers, NY

Alumni Memorial Fields at 

Riverdale Country School

Riverdale, NY

Garrison Elementary School

American Patriot Garden

Garrison, NY

Mahopac American Patriot Garden

Mahopac, NY

Orangetown American 

Patriot Garden

Orangeburg, NY

Scarsdale American Legion

Memorial Garden

Scarsdale, NY

September 11 Memorial at Jacobi

Medical Center

Bronx, NY

Town of Clarkstown American

Patriot Garden

New City, NY

Town of Highlands American 

Patriot Garden

Highlands, NY

September 11 Memorial at Richard

W. DeKorte Meadowlands Park

Lyndhurst, NJ

Endor Community Garden

Riverdale, NY
Journey 04 Brooklyn-Queens-Long Island

14

The social and eco-cultural diversity on the island is staggering and renders the search for order or pattern in

memorial form and function a challenging one.

This journey begins in a Queens neighborhood which

has always been a crossroads between New York City

and Long Island. Chartered as Long Island City in 1870

along the banks of the East River, this area was once

known for its fertile soils. In the early 20th century,

Long Island City (LIC) served as a critical transportation link which fueled the region’s industrial growth.

Today residents and urban planners try to mediate different and competing legacies of the past, not unlike the

memorial stewards.

LIC is host to a single street tree planted just outside the

fence at the LIC Roots Community Garden, in memory

of New York City firefighter Michael E. Brennan. The

tree, dwarfed by the surrounding industrial and 

transportation infrastructure, is a tiny fragment of

nature, transplanted and cultivated by humans. On the

day that it was dedicated, hundreds of neighbors and

students from the adjacent Robert Wagner School,

where Michael’s mother Eileen Walsh worked, flooded

the street to listen to speeches and tie yellow ribbons on

the tree, showing that in people’s hearts and minds, it

was not just a single tree. It was a signifier of the forest,

a signifier of Brennan himself, and a symbol of hope for

the future. This tree, provided by the New York City

Parks Department and planted in the spring of 2002,

This journey travels through the heart of several neighborhoods

in Brooklyn and Queens before following the Long Island south

shore out to Montauk and then back west along the north shore.

WITH THE VARIED POPULATIONS, LANDSCAPES, STREET MORPHOLOGIES, AND BUILT

ENVIRONMENTS OF BROOKLYN, QUEENS, AND NASSAU AND SUFFOLK COUNTIES, IT IS

SOMETIMES DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE ALL A PART OF ONE LANDMASS:

LONG ISLAND. 
15

was the first of what would eventually grow to a formal

memorial grove program across all five boroughs—

including MacNeil Park in Queens and Sunset Park in

Brooklyn. It was an inspiration, a spark.

“When we started this garden 4 years ago, we had one idea

to provide a little bit of green space in this concrete and 

former industrial neighborhood where we are. What you

see is the result of the 4 years of hard work, of volunteer

effort.....A commons or a town square is important to the

fabric of every community. The expressions of our public

losses and our public triumphs must be marked in public

places. And here on Thompson Avenue in Long Island

City, we don’t have one here yet.”

—Noah Kauffman, a founder of L.I.C. Roots Garden

Moving from the edge of Queens into the heart of

Brooklyn, community gardeners in three different neighborhoods see their sites as spaces of healing, not just 

after September 11, but every day. The 64th Street

Community Garden in Sunset Park features a September

11 memorial walkway outside the garden fence, along

the public sidewalk, in the shadows of the Gowanus

Expressway. Risking litter, vandalism, and the inhospitable shade of the overpass, gardeners sought to use the

memorial to invite the public into the garden. The First

Quincy Street Garden in Bedford-Stuyvesant, in partnership with the nearby Vulcan Society, pays special tribute

to black firefighters who were lost on September 11. They

dedicated a sculpture of a “hook and ladder” that was salvaged from materials on the garden site, showing the

infinite capacity of humans to renew and create. On

September 11, 2003, the garden held a dedication with a

ceremony of remembrance; 42 uniformed firefighters, 20

family members, survivors, and hundreds of neighborhood residents attended.

“Absolutely and categorically it is sacred space because

when we had our memorial ceremony, we had a bishop of

an international fellowship and a priest of an African

Church. They came, we had a libation—sprinkling of the

water—and we sounded the names of each of the firemen

that we were memorializing, so this is a sacred space. That’s

why I said absolutely and categorically, we consider it to be

a sacred space.”

—Herb Tibbs, First Quincy Street Community Garden

In Brownsville, the expanding name of the former Jes’

Good Rewards garden is evidence of its shifting meaning

and use. Since September 11, it is now the “Jes’ Good

Rewards/Benjamin Keefe Clark III Memorial Children’s

Learning Center and Wildlife Habitat Garden.” Clark

perished on September 11 while working as a chef for

Fiduciary Trust on the 96th floor in the World Trade

Center South Tower. The garden features a flowering

dogwood tree dedicated in memory of Clark.

Each of these urban memorials is a patch of sacred

ground. Trees planted in memory of someone; spaces

rededicated to events; and the expansion of the 

Dedication attendees at the Michael E. Brennan Memorial

Tree, Long Island City, NY

Community gardeners at the First Quincy Street Garden

Memorial to NYC Black Firemen, Brooklyn, NY
16

memorial beyond the garden gate, are all seemingly small

gestures, but in the crowded, contentious landscape of

New York City, they are truly monumental. Residents

found ways to draw upon social networks and biophysical resources to create new places of meaning,

thereby reinvigorating the physical and emotional

“hearts” of their neighborhoods.

Further away from central Brooklyn and Queens, along 

the southern shore and into Long Island, the memorials

change, representative of a breaking point in the physical

orientation of neighborhoods and towns. West of the New

York City border there is high density, with neighborhoods 

oriented around boulevards and subway stops, and open

space is at a premium. East of that border, density drops off

and the primary reference points become the axes of the

shores,the highways, and the Long Island Railroad (LIRR).

Like beads on a string, towns stretch out along the rail 

and roadways from New York City. Although reverse 

commutes are on the rise, most still work in Manhattan—

the node of nodes. And Babylon, Ronkonkoma, and Port

Jefferson are as much associated with journeys as they are

with a single destination, for these towns are also the

names of the branches on America’s busiest railway. It is

only fitting that—as in New Jersey—many of the memorials we found were at town centers and transit centers,

marking the spot with the most direct link back to

Manhattan. For example, the train station in Malverne 

features a September 11 memorial beside trees and plaques

to other events and honored individuals.

But on weekends and in summer, the orientation of Long

Island shifts to its shoreline. In contrast to the tidy town

centers and the congested roadways, people turn to the

beach as a release from the order. In that way, the beach is

very much like the forest: a place where humans go to connect with systems larger than themselves. We found

memorials at the edge of the sea at Breezy Point, Jones

Beach, Babylon, and even all the way at the eastern tip of

Long Island at Montauk Point. In fact, there are at least 

two memorials in Montauk: one at the lighthouse features

inscribed benches arranged in a circle, and the other, just a

block away from the LIRR terminus, hearkens to the found

space murals of NYC. It is a painted rock with an American

flag and the statement “We will never forget.”

Other natural resources of the island that are integrated

into memorials include the Pine Barrens on the North

Shore, which are being restored and replanted in memory of September 11. At a smaller scale, natural beauty

can be found at sites like the Clark Botanical Garden 

in Albertson, where the picnic grove was rededicated 

to September 11. At St. Anthony’s School in South

Huntington, an existing outdoor shrine encircled by a

grove of trees was rededicated and inscribed with the

names of alumni who were lost.

Not only were memorials physically linked to

Manhattan or the shore, but they are symbolically and

politically linked through their placement and design

Breezy Point Memorial, Breezy Point, NY

September 11 Memorial in Cedarhurst Park,

Cedarhurst, NY
17

with America’s engagement in war. Halls Pond Park in

West Hempstead is the quintessential Long Island town

park, with a September 11 memorial in close proximity

to memorials to Vietnam and the two World Wars. At a

larger scale, Eisenhower Park—the main park for

Nassau County—is centered around a monumental

core with flagpoles, and many memorials large and

small, to prior events. Across the pond is the new

September 11 memorial that was dedicated by

President George W. Bush along with Nassau County

officials and family members of September 11.

The difference between the memorials of the city and

those of the suburbs is striking, but so too is the diversity

among sites within the boroughs and among sites in

Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The memorials of this

journey confirm that ideological variation exists within

small, eco-cultural patches. What is interesting about this

is that it can be spatially understood through short term

changes in the use and function of open space.

JOURNEY 04 SITES

64th Street Community Garden

Brooklyn, NY

Breezy Point Memorial

Breezy Point, NY

Cedarhurst Park 

September 11 Memorial

Cedarhurst, NY

Trees for Life and Unity —

Brooklyn

Brooklyn, NY

East Islip 9-11 Memorial

East Islip, NY

Eisenhower Park American 

Patriot Garden

Hempstead, NY

Erhart Clam House Mural

Freeport, NY

First Quincy Street Garden

Memorial to NYC Black Firemen 

Brooklyn, NY

Halls Pond Park

September 11 Memorial

West Hempstead, NY

Heroes Walk at 

Twin Lakes Preserve

Bellmore, NY

Jes’ Good Rewards/Benjamin

Keefe Clark III Memorial

Children's Learning Center 

and Wildlife Habitat Garden

Brooklyn, NY

Jones Beach State Park

Hempstead, NY

Long Island Nursery LMDC 

Tree Tagging for WTC

Manhattan, NY

Montauk Lighthouse 9-11

Memorial

Montauk, NY

September 11 Family Group—

Russian Family Memorial

Brooklyn, NY

September 11 Memorial Grove 

in Prospect Park

Brooklyn, NY

September the 11th Community

Memorial Garden in Forest Park

Queens, NY

Town of Babylon September 11

Hometown Memorial

Babylon, NY

Montauk Rock

Montauk, NY

Michael E. Brennan 

Memorial Tree

Long Island City, NY

9-11 Seaford High School

Memorial

Seaford, NY

Saint Anthony’s 

High School Memorial

South Huntington, NY

September 11 Memorial at

Malverne Train Station

Malverne, NY

Long Island Pine Barrens

September 11th Community

Forestry Restoration Project

Port Jefferson, NY

Clark Botanical Garden

Memorial Grove

North Hempstead, NY

Twin Tower Memorial Garden

Far Rockaway, NY

Brooklyn Botanic Garden 

Liberty Oaks

Brooklyn, NY

Town of Babylon September 11 Hometown

Memorial, Babylon, NY
Yet Staten Island households have a long history of

balancing two lives: one which is lived on the island 

and the other, which is experienced through the necessity of work in Manhattan.

Despite being proximate to the World Trade Center

(WTC) site, Staten Islanders felt the need to memorialize

their own at home after September 11. Memorial shrines

were created at the doorsteps of private homes, fire stations, transit stations, and schools. As time passed, what

became remarkable was that Staten Islanders, often a

group of friends, took it upon themselves to appropriate,

organize, and produce public space in the name of those

lost on September 11. Nearly all reported they wanted to

recreate a public commons—whether a park, a garden,

or a woodland—as a place where everyone can go.

Ordinary traffic islands gained new significance as 

‘healing gardens’ and ‘spiritual centers.’ The Healing

Garden occupies a 65 x 439 feet traffic median owned by

the New York Department of Transportation. It is 

located on main roads in the shadow of the Staten Island

Expressway. The median’s location adjacent to FDNY

Rescue Station 5, which lost a number of firefighters on

September 11, gave it heightened significance after the

event. Members of a local garden club planted nearly

100 trees at this site commemorating those who died. In

some ways, this memorial is no different than other

more notable memorials—even the memorials at the

Pentagon, Shanksville, and the WTC. The hope in all

cases is that this will be a call for ‘survivors’ to return,

reflect, and replant these trees again.

ALTHOUGH IT IS ONE OF THE FIVE BOROUGHS, STATEN ISLAND IS TYPICALLY CHARACTERIZED AS DISTINCT, EVEN SEPARATE, IN ITS IDENTITY, POLITICS, AND VERNACULAR

LANDSCAPE FROM THE REST OF NEW YORK CITY. 

This journey begins near the exit to the Bayonne Bridge and

winds through the patchy landscape of Staten Island, ending

in a waterfront site near Great Kills harbor.

Journey 05 Staten Island

18
What Staten Island memorials reveal is not only the

cycle of resilience but that this cycle is not neutral.

Social tensions exist within it. Staten Island memorials

began as public commons but encountered conflicts

over the use and social meaning of public space. One

resident of a densely populated, suburban-style neighborhood re-appropriated the traffic island in front of

her home, creating a shrine for each Staten Island victim

along with a vibrant selection of seasonal plantings. Well

known as ‘Angels’ Circle,’ the site has become so popular

that city officials installed new traffic signs to ensure

public safety.

Along the shores of Great Kill Harbor, a de-mapped

street was reclaimed for a September 11 memorial tree

grove by residents of a private condominium complex.

The grove was intended as a reflective element integrated

into a recently created park along the shoreline. Just a few

years ago, this area was an abandoned dumping ground 

until area residents reclaimed it as a park. They named

the site Seaside Nature Park, and legally incorporated

their group as Turnaround Friends, Inc. Despite the

increasing number of visitors to the park, the site’s local

memorial status, and the legitimacy of this group as 

a land steward, several trees were removed when the 

de-mapped street was sold by the city to a private 

developer. Resigned to fate, the group painstakingly

transplanted some of the trees to a nearby location.

Across the island at the Staten Island Botanical Garden,

tempers flared as neighborhood dog-walkers and hikers

protested the clearing of a remote wooded area to create

a formalized ‘garden of healing.’ The living memorials of

Staten Island remind us of the human need to create, to

control, and to connect to others, particularly in the

aftermath of a disturbance and despite the challenges of

limited space and access to that space. Perhaps because

it is embedded within the process of resilience, the

notion of the commons is what remains critically

important to individuals, as evidenced by Staten Island’s

What Staten Island memorials

reveal is not only the cycle 

of resilience but that this cycle 

is not neutral. Social tensions

exist within it.

19

Garden of Healing in the Staten Island Botanical Garden,

Staten Island, NY

The Healing Garden, Staten Island, NY Photo provided

by Carolyn Pinto
public designs, programming, and stewardship persistence at the living memorial sites. The conflicts are a 

subtle reminder that the commons is a high ideal which

may become accessible in the days immediately following

a tragedy. But without vigilance, the commons passes

with time and becomes elusive once again. Further, the

Turnaround Friends story suggests that the local 

commons, created by local civic power and agency, is

often difficult to sustain when transferred to a larger scale.

Still, the fact that citizens—rather than the state—made

themselves ‘first responders’ to recognize the need for

the commons is an important lesson learned from

Staten Island. At the same time, how many memorials

does Staten Island, or any community, need? 

The number of memorials which are feasible and 

desirable may depend on something as straightforward

as the current demographics as well as the cultural 

history and physical structure of a particular place.

The notion that there would be or could be a single 

memorial to honor the victims of September 11 is

rather impossible to imagine. At the same time, should

public space deemed sacred by a particular group be

considered a form of privatization? Or should this type

of emergent stewardship be cultivated as a democratic

ideal—a way to gain entry back to the commons?

JOURNEY 05 SITES

9/11 Mural on Richmond Terrace

Staten Island, NY

Angels’ Circle

Staten Island, NY

Crescent Beach Park—

Flagpole/Memorial for

9/11 Victims

Staten Island, NY

God Bless America Mural

Staten Island, NY

Nursery with USA Sign

Staten Island, NY

Patriotic Painted House

Staten Island, NY

School with Yellow Ribbons

Staten Island, NY

The Healing Garden of the

Federated Garden Clubs of 

New York State

Staten Island, NY

Grove of Healing in Seaside

Nature Park

Staten Island, NY

Garden of Healing in the Staten

Island Botanical Garden

Staten Island, NY

NYC Parks Department 9-11

Memorial Firehouse Trees

Staten Island, NY

20

Angels’ Circle, Staten Island, NY

Grove of Healing in Seaside Nature Park,

Staten Island, NY

...the commons is a high ideal

which may become accessible in

the days immediately following a

tragedy. But without vigilance, the

commons passes with time and

becomes elusive once again.
Fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters left home and

did not return. Cars were left at train stations until

grieving friends and family could find the strength to

retrieve them. Many families of September 11 have

been forced to mourn absent a body. Still, there is 

an ‘obligation to the corpse’ (Harrison 2003, 143).

Without a body or a grave site, points of departure

became the sites of New Jersey’s living memorials,

marking as sacred the intersection between private and

public; the journey between home and work.

On a regional scale, one is challenged to locate the center

in this diverse and densely populated state. By the 

time of the first anniversary, the New Jersey Tree

Foundation, working with local citizens and family

members, decided that due to its service as a triage 

station on September 11 and its proximity to lower

Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, Liberty State Park

would be the site of their living memorial: a grove of

691 trees and a remembrance walkway maintained by

volunteers. The New Jersey Governor’s office eventually

followed their lead, but emphasized that the grove

would flank the site of New Jersey’s official memorial.

The New Jersey state memorial to September 11,

“Empty Sky,” is a built memorial design featuring two

long stone walls which serve to narrow the focus on the

lower Manhattan skyline.

In addition to the official state memorial, there are 

hundreds of local memorials to honor and ‘center’ loss

MANY OF THE NEW JERSEY VICTIMS OF SEPTEMBER 11 COMMUTED DAILY INTO MANHATTAN.

AS A RESULT, NEW JERSEY MEMORIALS LINE THE TOWNS ALONG THE COMMUTER RAIL

CORRIDORS SERVING AS A VIVID REMINDER THAT THIS TRAGEDY STRUCK WITHOUT WARNING, INTERSECTING THE COURSE OF DAILY LIFE. 

New Jersey memorials dot the towns along the commuter 

rail and highway corridors, serving as a vivid reminder that this

tragedy struck without warning, intersecting the course of 

daily life. 

New Jersey Journey 06

21
using the diversity of New Jersey’s topography and

viewsheds. In addition to civic centers and town parks,

living memorials can be found near ponds, meadows,

cliffs, and woods, suggesting a subtle tension between the

tree and the stone. As scholars of roadside cross memorials suggest, there remains a struggle between conformity

and protest (Everett 2002). The notion of war and peace

are intertwined in many of New Jersey’s memorials as

they serve to mourn the body as well as to refuse to 

passively accept death.

Moving from the secular to the sacred, these sites combine beliefs with ritual (Durkheim 2001). Both belief

and ritual are particular to a place, time, and people.

Thus far we have found civic groups which were established or flourished in association with a post-World

War II generation have emerged as the chief architects

of September 11 memorials in New Jersey. Service

organizations representing local clergy associations,

boy scouts, garden clubs, firefighters’ associations,

policemen benevolent associations, Elks’ Lodges, and

the VFW posts have taken the lead in memorial

fundraising and construction. Incorporating September

11 as both an act of war and remembrance, school groups

created many memorials on behalf of entire districts,

individual schools, teachers, or members of the PTA.

Memorials were established by citizens persuading their

local municipalities or individuals acting within branches

of government or through public-private partnerships.

Despite the variation found in site location, the repetition

of memorial form in New Jersey is particularly common.

We find that memorials appear to mimic each other as

they reproduce the circle, the stone, a list of names, a

symbolic tree, a bench, a piece of WTC, and often

include American flags and trees adorned with yellow

ribbons. Still, subtle differences do exist. A stone and flag

mark the way onto a path leading visitors to a simple

bench and pond amidst a prolific wildflower garden in

Franklin Lakes, NJ. A flag, stone circle, bench and 

markers surround meticulously tended flowers at the

living memorial in Wyckoff, NJ. Yet the memorial’s 

viewshed is across the playing field into the dense

woods. Atop Mt. Mitchell, the highest point on the

Eastern seaboard, newly planted trees are lost within an

immense built memorial. At the end of this built

memorial, the sea reclaims it.

In arguing the critical need for dissent, legal scholar

Cass Sunstein has suggested that the problem with conformity is that it deprives society of the information

that it desperately needs (Sunstein 2003). It is through

our public space and the landscape of these memorials

that we begin to understand what is included and

excluded from this public interpretation of a tragedy

firmly and rapidly embedded in our nation’s history.

But we must look closely at these memorials as multiple

social meanings that can be nested within seemingly 

uniform symbolic design. We wonder whether we are

witnessing an expression of uncertainty through the 

22

New Jersey Transit Train at G.R.A.C.E.

Memorial, Glen Rock, NJ

WTC Memorial Garden, Middletown, NJ
JOURNEY 06 SITES

Bergen County September 11

Memorial in Overpeck Park

Leonia, NJ

Carteret 9/11/01 Memorial

Carteret, NJ

Coopers Pond 

September 11 Memorial

Bergenfield, NJ

G.R.A.C.E Memorial at 

Veterans Park

Glen Rock, NJ

Saddle River Park

Memorial Tree

Fairlawn, NJ

Wyckoff Community Park

September 11 Memorial

Wyckoff, NJ

Hoboken September 11

Memorial Tree Grove

Hoboken, NJ

Monmouth County 9-11

Memorial

Atlantic Highlands, NJ

New Jersey Living Memorial, A

Grove of Remembrance

Jersey City, NJ

Waterfront Statues and Plaques

Jersey City, NJ

WTC United Family Group

Memorial

West Orange, NJ

September 11 Memorial at

Richard W. DeKorte

Meadowlands Park

Lyndhurst, NJ

Rutgers Newark Campus Tree

Newark, NJ

September 11 Memorial at

Bergen Catholic High School

Oradell, NJ

An American Remembrance in

the Manalapan Arboretum

Manalapan, NJ

Bergen County Police Chiefs

Association September 11, 2001

Memorial in Paramus Mall

Paramus, NJ

Bergen County Regional 

Medical Center

Paramus, NJ

EPA Office

September 11 Memorial

Edison, NJ

Franklin Lakes Municipal

Complex Memorial

Franklin Lakes, NJ

Marlboro Township Living

Memorial

Marlboro, NJ

Memorial of Remembrance at the

Shrine of St. Joseph

Stirling, NJ

Richard Cudina Memorial

Glen Gardner, NJ

WTC Memorial Garden

Middletown, NJ

Hazlet Township 9-11 Tree and

Garden Memorial,

Hazlet, NJ

repetition of design. This uncertainty may stem from

various sources, including the lack of the corpse, the 

sudden and perhaps ubiquitous loss of a physical center,

and the burden of interpreting history in real time.

23

It is through our public space and

the landscape of these memorials

that we begin to understand

what is included and excluded

from this public interpretation of

a tragedy firmly and rapidly

embedded in our nation’s history.

Wyckoff Community Park, Wyckoff, NJ
24

The less-visible but as powerful social links to places 

like Boston (from which American Airlines Flight 11

departed) and Los Angeles (where Flight 11 was bound

before it was hijacked) remind us that there are forgotten

cities of September 11. The lack of proximity to one of the

physical crash sites may be a blessing as well as a curse,

diverting social services and other needed resources away

from the city, but also giving its residents the space and

capacity to approach a memorial on their own terms,

with slightly less public scrutiny. By not having a WTClike site in Boston on which to focus everyone’s anguish

and various hopes for an appropriate memorial, the

importance of community-based sites is amplified.

September 11 family members were forced to face their

most private losses in an extraordinarily public context.

Rituals of mourning that usually focus on family and

close friends were available for public scrutiny, were

often conducted by public officials, and were often

political in nature.

“For a lot of us, we didn’t receive any remains, so there’s

no resting place. That’s a hard thing to deal with. Losing

someone is one thing, but in our culture usually you get to

see their body and you get to bury them or cremate them.

It is something that we expect. And in our cases, in many

of our cases we just did not have that opportunity.”

—Peg Ogonowski, wife of Captain John Ogonowski

TO MANY PEOPLE ACROSS THE UNITED STATES, SEPTEMBER 11 IS FOREVER ASSOCIATED

WITH NEW YORK CITY, THE PENTAGON, AND SHANKSVILLE, PA, AS THESE ARE THE

LOCATIONS OF THE THREE CRASH SITES. 

This journey contains a number of sites that are all linked

through the memorial at the Boston Public Garden, which is a

node in a geographic and a social network.

Journey 07 New England Families
Years after the tragedy, many family members are still

waiting for some remains or memento to be recovered

from the wreckage and released to them. Thus, they did

not have the ability to create a conventional gravesite, a

space where they could go to connect with their loved

ones. In response, many family members set out to create

or lend support to other local memorials that honored

their loved ones, from land preservation projects, to 

single tree plantings at civic grounds, to events and dedications at family members’ schools and workplaces.

Although New England families lack these resources

that are so central to memorialization—the sacred space

created by the burial of a body, the physical place where

the tragedy occurred—they drew upon other resources,

such as a shared history and identity as New Englanders.

We found evidence of “Yankee patriotism” infused

throughout many of the memorials. This sort of patriotism honors individuals who served the country or

who died, going all the way back to the tradition of the

Minutemen and the Revolutionary War. It celebrates

fidelity to the country, but does not necessarily blend

events or seek retribution on a very different front, in

Iraq. It is expressed through the landscape in sites of

significance such as town churches, battlegrounds, and

historic homes such as Concord’s Old Manse.

The notion of the commons—be it in the form of town

green, town park, garden, or woodland—is another

resource upon which the New England families relied.

The Massachusetts 9/11 Family Fund chose the Boston

Public Garden as the site for its central memorial,

which is the more formalized space directly adjacent to

the Boston Common. The immaculately preserved

space is tended year-round by gardeners and there is a

moratorium on all other memorials within the space,

making the September 11 memorial that much more

significant. Indeed, the Public Garden is considered by

many Bostonians to be a sacred, historic site and many

family members had stories from their childhood or

throughout their lives about visiting the garden or riding

the swan boats there. As the sketches of this journey

illustrate, the Public Garden is the central node in the

network of sites that we visited.

“The Public Garden reminds us of everything that is

Bostonian. Here’s what we learned from the families. We

learned that they all had a connection to the garden, and

it was generational. They had lived abutting it, they’d had

apartments in Beacon Hill as newlyweds, they had

brought their children their to feed the ducks and see the

Make Way for Ducklings sculpture, schoolchildren had

taken trips where they had walked across the bridge or

seen the swan boats. So every family could say, ‘I came

here with so and so, or so and so loved it.’”

—Linda Plazonja, former Executive Director of the 

Massachusetts 9/11 Family Fund

25

Lee and Eunice Hanson at Groton Painted Post Road

Hanson Family Memorial, Groton, MA

Kent Kannenberg and Anne Heffernan with Erika

Svendsen at Nellie’s Point, Woods Hole, MA
26

Boston is a dynamic metropolitan area with new immigrants and a diverse, changing population. September 11

affected a particular segment of Boston most directly,

given the cluster of memorials in suburbs and rural

areas northwest of the city. Still, questions remain

about how broadly and for how long the Public

Garden—or any memorial—will resonate as a collective, historic icon. What resources might future

populations draw upon to share their stories? What

narratives, memories, and sites will they hold sacred? 

JOURNEY 07 SITES

Boston Public Garden 

September 11, 2001 Memorial

Boston, MA

Brian Joseph Murphy Prayer 

Garden at Genesis Spiritual 

Life Center

Westfield, MA

Captain John Ogonowski

Memorial Preservation Farmland

Dracut, MA

Captain John Ogonowski

Memorial Square

Dracut, MA

Christine Lee Hanson 

Treatment Center

Boston, MA

Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo

Hanson Exploration Station 

and Backyard Habitat

Bridgeport, CT

Groton Painted Post Road

Hanson Family Memorial

Groton, MA

Immaculate Conception

Cemetery September 11, 2001

Memorial

Lawrence, MA

Nellie’s Point at Nobska

Lighthouse

Woods Hole, MA

New Colony Baptist Church

Prayer Garden

Billerica, MA

Old Manse Memorial Trees

Concord, MA

September 11, 2001 

Tree in the Memorial Park

Needham, MA

Sons of Erin Hall Memorial

Westfield, MA

Town of Acton 

September 11 Memorial

Acton, MA

Brian Joseph Murphy Memorial

Preservation Land

Westfield, MA

Joel Barlow High School

Monument

Easton, CT

Acton Conant School Memorial

Tree to Madeline Amy Sweeney

Acton, MA

Christine’s Tree at the Old

Academy Nursery School

Easton, CT

Foxborough Regional Charter

School

Foxborough, MA

Susan L. Blair Memorial at

Needham High School

Needham, MA

The Memorial Labyrinth at Boston

College

Chestnut Hill, MA

University of Massachusetts at

Lowell September 11, 2001

Memorial

Lowell, MA

Groton Community Hanson

Family Memorial

Groton, MA

Lowell Firehouse Mural

Lowell, MA

Memorial Tree to Michael

McGinty at Foxborough 

Bethany Church

Foxborough, MA

TJX Family Memorial Garden

Framingham, MA

Peg Ogonowski at Captain John Ogonowski

Memorial Square, Dracut, MA

Dedication attendees at the Boston Public

Garden September 11, 2001 Memorial,

Boston, MA

The notion of the commons—

be it in the form of town green,

town park, garden, or woodland—

is another resource upon which the

New England families relied. 
Depending upon how far back in time one chooses to

go, the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791, the tragic Johnstown

Flood of 1889, and the completion of the Pennsylvania

Turnpike in the early 20th century are all cited as cataclysmic events which changed the social and economic

landscape of this remote community in south central

Pennsylvania at the top of the Allegheny Plateau.

The crash of Flight 93 in a former Pennsylvania strip

mine site in the Somerset County town of Shanksville

triggered a long tradition of civic action and local land

stewardship. Volunteer fireman throughout the county

rushed to their firehouses and kept vigilant watch

overnight in the chance that their services might be 

needed. Hundreds crowded the steps of the county courthouse asking officials what they could do to help. As the

weeks wore on, a volunteer docent program emerged

after concerned citizens realized they had a unique

responsibility to interpret and play host to the site where

this tragedy occurred. Many visitors became lost on the

winding country roads, needed a place to rest, and 

initially misinterpreted where the plane had actually

crashed. Unexpectedly, Somerset County became a place

where thousands came to unburden themselves.

“They wanted to tell you about their experiences, as well

as get the facts. They just really wanted to talk about where

they were on September 11, how they felt about it, what

they thought the government should be doing, how they

felt about the Taliban. And we ran into a number of

people who had lost people in New York or Washington

and for one reason or another couldn’t go there or didn’t

WHEN ASKED TO RECALL WHETHER THERE WAS ANOTHER EVENT WHICH IMPACTED

THEIR RURAL LIFE IN A MANNER COMPARABLE TO SEPTEMBER 11, THE CITIZENS OF

SOMERSET COUNTY OFTEN TAKE A LONG TIME TO ANSWER. 

The memorials in this journey radiated out from the Flight 93

crash site and are dispersed throughout this largely rural

county in sites of local meaning.

27

Somerset County, PA Journey 08
28

want to go there, and so they came to our site, because they

could, it was accessible, or closer, or they didn’t drive in

urban areas but they could drive to a place like this, and so

they were coming to Shanksville to grieve for New York.”

—Donna Glessner, Flight 93 volunteer docent

Visitors left mementos, which eventually warranted the

construction of a temporary shrine at the crash site.

These personal-public artifacts were diligently cleared

and cleaned by the historians at the Somerset County

Historical Society and museum, which primarily focuses on the area’s agricultural past. Museum historians

and volunteers sought not to immediately display these

materials but instead stored them safely, allowing time

to season their interpretation. But even history is now

subject to compression of time and space. Because of

what the public has learned about the actions of passengers aboard Flight 93, the crash site, a small grove of

hemlock trees in the middle of a cleared forest, was

immediately considered by the National Park Service

for preservation status akin to a Civil War battleground.

At least for a century or more, this landscape will no

longer retreat back into the forest but is instead captured in time so that it can exist as a stark and hallowed

reminder. This barren landscape has already become

embedded in the history of this community, its hills,

and the nation.

Still, radiating out from this crash site, there are many

local memorials that serve different populations and

evoke other meanings. A memorial garden with a hero’s

path winds around the front of the Shanksville High

School. This garden was funded by a group from Texas

and has since drawn so many visitors that it has distracted teachers and students in the classroom, forcing

them to close their window shades in the middle of the

day. There is a new roadside Chapel specifically dedicated

to September 11 that beckons those who need to sit,

reflect, and renew. While some frequent the chapel,

others drive past it with reactions ranging from slight

“And we ran into a number of people

who had lost people in New York or

Washington and for one reason or

another couldn’t go there or didn’t

want to go there, and so they came

to our site, because they could, it

was accessible, or closer, or they

didn’t drive in urban areas but they

could drive to a place like this, and

so they were coming to Shanksville

to grieve for New York.” 

– Donna Glessner, Flight 93 volunteer docent

Volunteer docent at Flight 93 temporary

memorial, Somerset, PA

Flight 93 memorial chapel, Somerset, PA
curiosity to outright disdain. The Lummi Nation of

Washington carved and transported a large totem pole

from the west coast to Shanksville, permanently erecting

it in a public park. It is part of the Lummi Nation’s

effort to commune with spirit by connecting with the

land surrounding each of the three crash locations.

The Legacy Groves sites are strategically positioned in

places of local social meaning. These sites of newly

planted groves of trees represent what is considered

sacred about this community. While the national Flight

93 memorial is for the country, the Legacy Groves 

project is for the local community. The groves serve as a

subtle reminder of a Pennsylvania landscape populated

by sugar maples, fueled by agriculture and resource

extraction, and connected by a host of traditions

including pancake breakfasts and fire house dinners. In

this way, the Legacy Groves mark what one might consider to be an early example of social networks created

across space and time: rural life.

While Somerset County residents have never indicated

that the crash was a burden, they voiced a concern about

losing control over what is sacred in their lives and how

to successfully navigate the waters of a rapid change. The

Somerset County memorials which emerged then, now,

and will emerge in the future symbolize how a community re-establishes its identity through the physical

orientation of physical space in the days and years 

following such a tragic and unexpected event.

JOURNEY 08 SITES

Central City Memorial Park

Central City, PA

Flight 93 National Memorial

Somerset, PA

Legacy Groves of Somerset

County, Johnstown Area Heritage

Association Festival Park

Somerset, PA

Legacy Groves of Somerset

County, Somerset County

Volunteer Firefighters Regional

Training Center Site

Somerset, PA

Legacy Groves of Somerset

County, Windber Coal Heritage

Museum Site

Windber, Somerset, PA

Legacy Groves of Somerset

County, Windber Community

Library Site

Windber, Somerset, PA

Legacy Groves of Somerset

County, Windber Junior and

Senior High School Site

Windber, Somerset, PA

Legacy Groves of Somerset

County, Somerset Vocational

Technical Center Site

Somerset, PA

Shanksville High School Memorial

Garden

Shanksville, PA

29

Greater Johnstown Area High School students planting the 

Legacy Grove at Folkfest Park, the Johnstown Area Heritage

Association’s park, Somerset, PA

Somerset County Courthouse, Somerset, PA
30

There are multiple memorials existing simultaneously

at different scales and serving different populations,

including the nation, the defense community, the 

victims’ families, the District, various neighborhoods,

and individual schools and towns. Many of these

memorials retain a certain amount of formality in

their design, as if stewards were aware of the public

scrutiny on monuments and memorials in and around

the nation’s capital.

The Pentagon is a major employer and the military is a

strong cultural presence throughout Arlington and

Fairfax counties. Officials at the Pentagon worked to

rebuild and reinforce the building in record time.

Remaining true to the original façade and surface

details was considered critical, so much so that even

flaws in the original design were replicated, according

to Marilyn Jajko of the U.S. Department of Defense.

However, there was one major change: an interfaith

chapel was created inside the Pentagon on the side of

the building where the plane crashed. Invisible from the

outside and inaccessible to the public, this chapel was

created to serve those most directly affected by the

tragedy within a private space. Moving beyond the

boundaries of a closed community, by necessity, the

Department of Defense recognized the need for a 

public memorial. Bringing the public in contact with

Pentagon grounds is almost antithetical to values of

security and privacy, but it was warranted by the events

of September 11.

Design competitions became a primary means for

selecting memorial forms and creators at all three crash

sites. These competitions seek to avoid the pitfalls of

THE MEMORIALS OF WASHINGTON, D.C. AND ARLINGTON, VA, ARE INEVITABLY SHAPED

B Y T H E R E G I O N ’ S R O L E I N N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C S A N D M I L I TA RY L E A D E R S H I P. 

This journey starts in Arlington and Fairfax counties near the

Pentagon and then crosses the rivers that bound the

Washington, D.C. to memorials scattered throughout the District.

Journey 09 Washington, D.C. – Arlington, VA
design by committee by including panelists and judges

with some amount of expertise in creating monumental

places. The competition for the Pentagon Memorial was

administered primarily by the U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers, though the memorial development closely

involves the Department of Defense. Its selection committee included three former secretaries of defense and

Lynn Cheney. The competition was announced on June

11, 2002, and attracted more than 5,000 entrants from

60 countries. A design by Keith Kaseman and Julie

Beckman of New York City was eventually selected. This

memorial will be a formally designed living memorial,

featuring reflecting pools and a bench for each individual

who died—arranged according to the age of the victim—

interspersed with colorful trees.

“A vivid canopy of color and light provides shade throughout the site, as trees are clustered in conjunction with the

disbursement of memorial units. Several maple species,

especially the paperbark maple (Acer griseum) serve this

scheme well. The paperbark is one of the last maples to

drop their leaves, retaining their beautiful fall foliage well

into the winter months—this suspension of time will contribute to the sublime beauty of the park. Upon maturity,

the cinnamon-colored bark begins to exfoliate, exhibiting

exquisite texture and color and overall year-round interest. On an intimate level, the interplay between leaves,

light, bark, gravel, grasses, water, and the senses will be

greatly enhanced with these elegant trees.”

—Kaseman Beckman Amsterdam Studio, Pentagon

Memorial Design Description

With an awareness of the ever-changing memorial at

the World Trade Center, the Family Commission at the

Pentagon placed a “design lock” on certain aspects of

the memorial’s form to ensure that the design selected

would be the design that was created. Their letter noted

that design locks had previously been used at the

Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial and the Oklahoma City

National Memorial.

In seeming recognition of the fact that the tragedy took

place in Arlington rather than Washington, the District’s

memorial will be more understated than the formal

space at the Pentagon. The District has chosen Kingman

Island in the Anacostia River as the site of its living

memorial. The small island was created in the 1920s

when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged the

Anacostia and left two filled areas—Kingman and

Heritage Island. The creation of a formal park on the

island fits with the District’s recent attention to developing the Anacostia waterfront both as a natural resource

and as real estate. The memorial, originally designed by

David Kamp and Jeff Lee to be a healing landscape, features a pathway and several “nodes” through varied and

naturalistic terrain. The memorial will take additional

years to develop as the community gives input on the

park, and the memorial design shifts.

Since the memorial at Kingman Island will take some

time to develop, a partnership of public agencies along

31

Wilton Woods Memorial Garden, Alexandria, VA

Kingman Island, Washington, DC
with the nonprofit Green Spaces for DC worked to create ward-based living memorials across the district.

Some of these groves have already been completed,

including the first grove at the Congressional Cemetery

in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Just 10 minutes 

down river from the central Kingman Island site,

Congressional Cemetery officials saw the grove as an

opportunity to revitalize the living landscape of the

cemetery, to attract additional visitors, and as a fitting

tribute to September 11. Congressional Cemetery is both

a sacred resting space as well as vibrant public space used

by neighborhood residents for dog walking, by area birdwatchers, and by Girl Scouts in pursuit of their history

merit badges. The Lummi Nation selected this site as the

installation site for one of their Healing Totems until the

point when the Kingman Island site is completed.

“We felt like, as a cemetery, we were a logical place to

continue the sense of memorial. I guess you would fit this

[living memorial] into the larger memorials or cenotaphs

(empty tombs)—and Congressional has a long history of

that. And while the marker for this “empty tomb” is 

different in that it’s trees, rather than a monument,

there’s a long tradition here of not just headstones but

also memorials to other events.”

—Linda Harper, Association for the Preservation of

Historic Congressional Cemetery 

Finally, smaller scale memorials dot the region, located

primarily at civic grounds, such as municipal buildings

and schools. Single tree and symbolic tree plantings

dominate across the expanding Virginia suburbs

reminding us that these traditions are a time-honored,

even habitual, response to tragic events.

JOURNEY 9 SITES

American Forests Living 

Memorial Project

Arlington, VA

Fairfax Memorial Garden

Cemetery Memorial

Fairfax, VA

Memorial Grove at Veterans

Amphitheatre

Fairfax City, VA

Memorial Tree to LTC 

Dennis M. Johnson and all 9/11

Victims at Burke Lake Park

Fairfax, VA

Pentagon Memorial

Arlington, VA

Washington D.C. 

September 11 Memorial Grove 

at Kingman Island

Washington, DC

Washington D.C. September 11

Memorial Grove in Ward 5:

Langdon Park

Washington, DC

Washington D.C. September 11

Memorial Grove in Ward 6:

Historic Congressional Cemetery

Washington, DC

Wilton Woods Memorial Garden

Alexandria, VA

Bertie Backus School

Memorial Tree

Washington, DC

Gardens of the World at Patrick

Henry School

Arlington, VA

Leckie Elementary School 

Garden Memorial

Washington, DC

Robert J. Hymel Memorial 

Tree at Hoffman Boston

Elementary School

Arlington, VA

9/11 Memorial Grove at Fairfax

County Government Center

Fairfax, VA

September 11 Memorial Grove at

Congressional Cemetery, Washington, DC

32
As Robert Pogue Harrison has eloquently detailed in

his essay, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization, the forest

remains a paradox. He notes that Western religion

depicts forests as both places of profanity and sacredness. They are lawless but they are also “havens for

those who take up the cause of justice.” They have 

been used to describe notions of wildness, danger,

and abandonment, yet “evoke scenes of enchantment.”

Forests are places where what is rational and irrational

intertwine. They are places were ‘our subjective categories are confounded’ (Harrison 1992, ix-x). In this

sense, the forest remains open to interpretation

depending upon time, place, and people.

Memorial forests exist in a range of sizes and forms,

from tiny urban fragments to highly designed, formal

spaces, to large wilderness areas. In Sterling Forest’s

memorial, in Tuxedo, NY, one can get lost in the beauty of

dying hemlock trees and an understory replanted with

white pines. September 11 families and other victims 

of global violence participate in this unique bereavement

program where persons of all ages are invited to plant,

hike, eat, sleep, swim, laugh, and cry. The Sterling Forest

program uses the forest to convey the notion that 

environmental restoration—like human recovery—is a

lifelong pursuit, which holds unexpected and healing

rewards. Near the Great Swamp, within New Jersey’s

northern forests, the Shrine of St. Joseph’s September 11

memorial emerges just at the forest clearing, subtly rising up to meet its visitors. Similarly, the Brian Joseph

Murphy Land Trust connects larger tracts of forest land

back to the city of Westfield, MA, for future generations

to experience in memory of a September 11 victim who

grew up in the town.

This journey is dispersed throughout the northeast and is

organized by site-scale geography: from small urban 

fragments, to more formally designed memorial forests, to

larger wilderness areas.

BECAUSE THEY WERE ONCE ABUNDANT, FORESTS PLAY AN ENORMOUS ROLE IN OUR

CULTURAL IMAGINATION. THE FOREST IS PART OF OUR COLLECTIVE MEMORY. 

Forests Journey 10

33
“This section here is known as 100 acres, this was our running and romping grounds as kids...You come down here

as a kid, and lie on the dike, and the hawks fly over, and you

see the deer come by and we’ve got tons of moose down here

now. People are seeing them all over the place. Every holiday Brian would come home and we’d go up on the dike

and we’d drive along and we’d talk and it would be where

we would go to reconnect with what we had done as kids

and look at this and that... We wanted to preserve it the way

it was. One of the guys we worked with is a Harvard

trained landscape architect and site planner and a really

awesome guy. And we were like, ‘David, what should we

do?’ And he said, ‘nothing, don’t be stupid!’”

—Harold Murphy, brother of Brian Joseph Murphy

But not all forest memorials are adjacent to large wooded parcels. Rededicated as a September 11 memorial,

the Endor Community Garden in the Bronx is within

earshot of the Henry Hudson Parkway. Located in the

remnant and scrappy woods, it’s difficult to tell if you’re

in a city or in a garden. Located in a township park with

large, cleared areas for recreation, the memorial to

September 11 victim Richard A. Cudina begins with a

highly designed, formal entryway. Behind the built

memorial, the trail disappears into a previously unmanaged edge of the park. Visitors find themselves ‘lost’ in a

forest reminiscent of those Richard’s widow, Georgia

Cudina, experienced during her childhood in Germany.

Other memorials are no more than a grove of trees, yet

they embody the forest in their social meaning. Even a

single memorial tree can be planted with that same

impulse to connect to a larger system. While single trees

are often interpreted as symbolizing a particular person

or event, they hold meaning beyond the moment, often

enabling those who participated in the planting to

acknowledge death and return to life.

Other memorials are no more than

a grove of trees, yet they embody

the forest in their social meaning.

Even a single memorial tree can be

planted with that same impulse to

connect to a larger system. 

Endor Community Garden, Riverdale, NY

Volunteers at Sterling Forest, Tuxedo, NY

34
We chose to characterize certain September 11 memorials as ‘forests’ as these sites are places where individuals

go to fulfill a desire to ‘lose oneself’ or ‘detach oneself’

from the public sphere. Several forest memorials were

completely anonymous. Interviews with the creators of

these spaces revealed a deliberate intent to connect with

a larger, more resilient system from which they might

come to terms with tragedy, and satisfy a desire to heal.

In this way, forest stewards do not wish to particularize

this experience through design but rather, attempt to

minimize inscriptions leaving the memorial open to

personal needs. There are forest memorials that include

large granite stones—at first reminiscent of shrines and

found space we had observed in New York City due to

their use of grave-like headstones, candles, and the

presence of personal mementos. However upon closer

observation these stones also signify the forest. And

again, Harrison’s essay reminds us that since the days of

antiquity, both wooden and stone pillars were used to

harbor the souls of sacred trees. In this sense, there may

be times when city becomes forest. At that time both are

anonymous, belonging to everyone—and compelling us

to be at one with a larger ecology.

It is the resilient process within both forest and city that

many have tried to initially capture in the design and

designation of their memorials. Yet forests, like cities,

are neither closed nor stable systems of regeneration.

There is disturbance in any forest. And there is death.

Perhaps these memorials are distinct because in some

intangible way they help us understand how to confront

what, at times, we cannot choose to deny.

JOURNEY 10 SITES

September 11th memorial forest

Quantico, MD

Sterling Forest

Tuxedo, NY

Endor Community Garden

Riverdale, NY

Long Island Pine Barrens

September 11th Community

Forestry Restoration Project

Port Jefferson, NY

Garden of Healing in the Staten

Island Botanical Garden

Staten Island, NY

Memorial of Remembrance at the

Shrine of St. Joseph

Stirling, NJ

Richard Cudina Memorial

Glen Gardner, NJ

WTC Memorial Garden

Middletown, NJ

Brian Joseph Murphy Memorial

Preservation Land Trust

Westfield, MA

Joel Barlow High School

Monument

Easton, CT

September 11th memorial forest, Quantico, MD

Shrine of St. Joseph, Stirling, NJ

35
In addition to their role as centers of knowledge and 

academic learning, schools are institutions of socialization that play a role in the formation of identity.

Schools are a type of community with which individuals often have close ties. They are communities that,

after September 11, reached out to claim “their own”,

making connections to September 11 family members

whether they sought out these connections or not.

There is a likely variation between memorials that were

created by schools at the request of family members

and those that were created by schools, independent of

family member interest; though this difference remains

to be fully researched and understood.

It is clear that although schools have curricula and 

standards, they are in no way uniform. They vary 

geographically and promote messages that are embedded

in a place, a culture, and a set of beliefs. As such, the

memorials we observed are products of a variety of

motivations: to teach, to create, to display patriotism, to

encourage community service, and to honor other, local

tragedies in addition to September 11.

Some school memorials were created to learn from

September 11 as a “teachable moment” and to create a

mechanism for healing. Students discussed concepts of

life and loss and used nature in their memorials to

connect to these cycles in a tangible, physical way.

These memorials often focused on spreading peace

FROM KINDERGARTENS TO UNIVERSITIES, SCHOOLS HONORED STUDENTS AND ALUMNI

WHO WERE LOST ON SEPTEMBER 11 AS A WAY TO CONNECT WITH THE TRAGEDY

THROUGH THEIR COMMUNITY. MANY OTHER SCHOOLS WITH NO CONNECTION TO A

VICTIM ALSO TOOK TIME TO MEMORIALIZE THE EVENT.

These memorials are found across the country both at schools

that had connections to September 11 victims as well as at

those that simply wanted to mark the day.

36

Journey 11 Schools Journey
and going through the process of creation—whether it

be through poetry, art, design, or physical planting.

The Whispering Pines Elementary School “Friendship

and Tolerance Garden” in Boca Raton, FL, literally

embodies these values through students’ plantings,

handprints, artwork, and ongoing stewardship of the

land. Nearly 400 students assisted in the design and

development of the Leckie Elementary School memorial

in Washington, D.C., which honors one teacher, one 

student, and two parents who were lost on September 11.

Balloon launches and dove releases were also commonly

used to help literally spread messages of peace and hope

beyond the physical site of the schools.

“Recognizing the need for the children in the community to

express their emotions about the terrorist attack, East Islip

Schools Superintendent [Michael] Capozzi requested that

the project be student driven, from design to completion.

The memorial will thus provide the children with vehicles to

express their feelings and emotions about the tragedy of

September 11, 2001, as well as creating a special place that

will tell the story of September 11 and the world's reaction

to the tragedy, as told through the hearts and souls of East

Islip students....This will be a place where these students can

return, years from now with their children, to share with

them what happened on September 11, 2001, and how it

affected the world. Elements of the memorial will be reflective of the students’ expressions of emotion. An environment

will be created that will honor heroes, mourn for the lives

that were lost, and offer hope and healing for the future.

The memorial also offers students a unique opportunity to 

apply what they have learned in the classroom to a real life 

project...and to help foster a stronger understanding of the

meaning of community.”

—East Islip, NY 9-11 Memorial Project Description

Other memorials had an explicit focus on patriotism,

with events occurring on national holidays and featuring

red, white, and blue plantings. Symbolic trees were

planted to represent the Twin Towers or to represent

37

“The memorial will thus provide

the children with vehicles 

to express their feelings and 

emotions about the tragedy of

September 11, 2001, as well as

creating a special place that will

tell the story of September 11...”

– East Islip, NY 9-11 Memorial Project Description

Teacher and student at Whispering Pines Elementary School

Friendship & Tolerance Garden, Boca Raton, FL

Memorial tree to Madeline Amy Sweeny, Acton Conant School,

Acton, MA
strength. Ripon Elementary School in Modesto, CA,

planted two redwoods and Fairfield University in

Connecticut planted two English oaks, each symbolizing

the Twin Towers. Dedication remarks at these types of

memorials often commented on the size and longevity of

the tree, as stewards hoped for a memorial that would last

for generations. Local newspaper articles often mentioned

the solemnity of these events and the silence of the students—who were invited to light candles or dress in

patriotic colors. Patriotic songs were sung, the Pledge of

Allegiance was recited, and often elected officials and

emergency responders were invited to participate.

“Dedicated to freedom's heroes of September 11, 2001,

and the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93, among

them Pepperdine alumnus Thomas E. Burnett, Jr., who

sacrificed their lives to overcome terrorists intent on

destroying American lives and landmarks in our nation's

capital. We shall never forget.”

—Plaque at the Pepperdine University Heroes Garden

Schools also used memorials as mechanisms for promoting service-learning, in the spirit of a community

“barn raising.” Newspaper articles about these memorials featured the amount of funds and the mechanisms

students used to raise them—from collecting pennies, to

selling baked goods, to holding events. Often, physical

memorials were dedicated in conjunction with a 

donation to a fund that benefited either victims’ families or various nonprofits. Another means of dedication

was the creation of honorary scholarships. These

memorials are motivated by the simple need to “do

something” to connect with the tragedy that occurred.

The “11 Laps of Love” fundraiser, which involved members of the school community seeking sponsorship as

they walked around the school track at Orange Park

High School in Jacksonville, FL, raised $1,200 for the

creation of a school memorial garden. Students at

Eastside Elementary School in Hernando County, FL,

sold American flag key chains to raise money for their

memorial garden and for the American Red Cross.

We observed a blending of events as schools particularized the September 11 tragedy in the context of their

own losses. Often, if a student or teacher passed away in

that same year, schools chose to create joint memorials

for their own and for those lost on September 11.

Recognizing and responding to loss in this public way

seemed to be a vehicle for healing, as it was for students, teachers, and staff at Acacia Middle School in

Hemet, CA, which lost a number of members of its

community to cancer right around the time of

September 11.

The question remains: Why do schools become the

most prevalent civic grounds for these various memorials to September 11? This was not necessarily the case

with World War II or the Vietnam War, which certainly

touched the lives of many thousands of young people as

well. Perhaps it is due to the fact that, particularly on

the east coast, the entirety of the brief but tragic events

of September 11 was experienced during school hours.

38

September 11 Memorial at Bergen Catholic

High School, Oradell, NJ

Memorial to Susan L. Blair at Needham

High School, Needham, MA
For many students and the parents who went back to

retrieve them, the tragedy will forever be remembered

in the context of the school day. As with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, teachers and schools had to

give improvised explanations for the inexplicable.

Some used the moment as an opportunity to teach

while some shielded children from information.

America’s institutions are taking varied approaches to

making sense out of an unprecedented event. As time

goes on they will, unfortunately, have similar choices to

make about future tragic events.

JOURNEY 11 SITES

9-11 Memorial Tree Grove at

Chapin High School

El Paso, TX

Cossatot Community College of

the University of Arkansas

De Queen, AR

Knoxville Freedom 

Trees Memorial

Knoxville, IA

Memorial Courtyard at 

SUNY Binghamton

Binghamton, NY

Open Road

New York, NY

Penn State Mont Alto September

11 Memorial Planting

Mont Alto, PA

Pepperdine University 

Heroes Garden

Malibu, CA

Princeton University Alumni

Memorial Garden

Princeton, NJ

PS4K Paradise Garden

Brooklyn, NY

September 11, 2001 

Memorial at Farmingdale 

State University of

New York

Farmingdale, NY

Whispering Pines Friendship &

Tolerance Garden

Boca Raton, FL

Bertie Backus School

Memorial Tree

Washington, DC

Gardens of the World at Patrick

Henry School

Arlington, VA

Leckie Elementary School Garden

Memorial

Washington, DC

Saint Anthony's 

High School Memorial

South Huntington, NY

Alumni Memorial Fields at

Riverdale Country School

Riverdale, NY

Garrison Elementary School

American Patriot Garden

Garrison, NY

9-11 Seaford High School

Memorial

Seaford, NY

Acton Conant School Memorial

Tree to Madeline Amy Sweeney

Acton, MA

Christine's Tree at the Old

Academy Nursery School

Easton, CT

Foxborough Regional 

Charter School

Foxborough, MA

Susan L. Blair Memorial at

Needham High School

Needham, MA

The Memorial Labyrinth at

Boston College

Chestnut Hill, MA

University of Massachusetts at

Lowell September 11, 2001

Memorial

Lowell, MA

Legacy Groves of Somerset

County, Somerset Vocational

Technical Center Site

Somerset, PA

Shanksville High School 

Memorial Garden

Shanksville, PA

Rutgers Newark Campus tree

Newark, NJ

September 11 Memorial at

Bergen Catholic High School

Oradell, NJ

Robert J. Hymel Memorial 

Tree at Hoffman Boston

Elementary School

Arlington, VA

39

University of Massachusetts at Lowell September

11, 2001 Memorial, Lowell, MA
40

Journey 12 New Civic Grounds

At these sites, September 11 memorials are located

alongside memorials to wars, other tragedies, and

famous local citizens. The memorials are created and

maintained by municipal agencies and politicians along

with concerned citizens out of a sense of the need to

formally remember the day. Although they are often

highly visible in the center of a town, they are not necessarily sites that are interwoven into the daily activities

of people’s lives. They are symbolic sites that are visited

during times of ritual and remembrance, such as the

anniversary of September 11 and national holidays

such as Independence Day and Memorial Day. Nearly

50 percent of the Living Memorials tracked in this

study are located on some form of civic grounds.

But civic memorials also are found in less expected

places, at emerging sites of social significance. Although

the towns remain—as do their conventional civic

grounds—new nodes and centers are developing as the

social centers of towns are reconfigured. The changing

location of our memorials reflects the changing form of

American cities, including the sprawling edge city without a single, civic center.

“In towns such as ours, we’re 32 square miles, there is no

town center. We don’t have a village square or center

where people can meet as they do in Europe, but we are

creating this as a center. This is the heart....it’s because of

people like [Patricia Schriver] who are determined to find

the center and find a way of bringing people together.”

—Eileen Swan, former Mayor of Lebanon Township

These memorials are found nationwide at both traditional town

centers as well as at new civic grounds where people work, 

shop, pray, and drive, reflecting the changing form of the

American city.

MEMORIALS OFTEN ARE FOUND WHERE WE MOST EXPECT TO FIND THEM. THEY ARE

LOCATED ON TRADITIONAL CIVIC GROUNDS AT TOWN CENTERS, SUCH AS TOWN

GREENS, CITY HALLS, PUBLIC LIBRARIES, AND NEAR OTHER MUNICIPAL BUILDINGS. 
41

People find community not just through local government centers but through where they work, where they

shop, where they pray, and even where they drive. Of

the memorials on civic grounds, 50 percent are located

on school grounds, 14 percent are at “traditional” town

centers, 8 percent are at businesses, and 5 percent are at

religious institutions.

In addition to the sites with symbolic links to

September 11, such as fire stations, police departments,

airports, embassies, and religious institutions, we found

memorials in shopping malls, hospitals, train stations,

museums, social service centers (for youth, homeless,

etc.), retirement villages, and gated communities.

Beside an International House of Pancakes restaurant

in Wichita, KS, there is a living memorial of three lilac

bushes dedicated to the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, the

1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building,

and the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center.

One example of a new town center is the corporate

office park. Raytheon, Sun Microsystems, HewlettPackard, GM, and UNUM Provident all held tree

plantings or created memorials at their corporate campuses in honor of the day. Whereas town centers were

once civic, retail, and business cores, it is an established

phenomenon over the last several decades that many

American corporate headquarters are alongside 

highways rather than in downtowns. While some urban

planners might bemoan the loss of the city center, it is

noteworthy that corporate campuses have become

nodes and centers of community in their own right.

These corporate parks feature exercise facilities, child

care, cafeterias, and some are equipped for 24-hour-aday activity.

The TJX Corporation in Framingham, MA, lost seven

female employees who were buyers bound for California

on September 11. TJX spent more than a year working

with family members and the firm Sasaki Associates in

...civic memorials also are found 

in less expected places, at 

emerging sites of social significance.

Although the towns remain—

as do their conventional civic

grounds—new nodes and centers

are developing as the social 

centers of towns are reconfigured. 

TJX Family Memorial Garden, Framingham, MA

Bergen County Police Chiefs Association

September 11, 2001 Memorial in Paramus Mall,

Paramus, NJ
developing and designing a memorial sensory garden

that is permanently located at one of the entrances to

their office building and also is open to the public. The

garden has become a part of the employee orientation

and tour, and features etched glass panels with names

and personal sentiments as well as favorite flowers of the

women who were lost. It is a site for sitting and eating

lunch or for quiet contemplation.

Is this expanded interpretation of civic grounds simply

a function of the changing form of American cities

from compact town to edge city? Could this reflect that

the influence of traditional town centers is waning as

new nodes and civic grounds continue to emerge?

Much like the aging civic grounds themselves, how long

will these memorials last? 

JOURNEY 12 SITES

A Celebration of Life - Ramapo's

Walk of Rememberance

Ramapo, NY

Alabama Veterans Memorial

Foundation and Park

Birmingham, AL

Arbor Day Trees as Tribute

Bloomingdale, Il

Freedom Blooms in Troy

Troy, AL

Freedom Trees Veterans

Memorial Stadium

Cedar Rapids, IA

Freehold Township 9/11 Living

Memorial Tree Grove

Freehold Township, NJ

Oak Ridge Cemetery Quercetum

Petersburg, IL

Sharon's Arboretum September

11th Memorial Hemlock Grove

Durham, NH

We Remember 

September 11, 2001

Santurce, PR

9/11 Memorial Grove at Fairfax

County Government Center

Fairfax, VA

Mahopac American Patriot

Garden

Mahopac, NY

Orangetown American Patriot

Garden

Orangeburg, NY

Scarsdale American Legion

Memorial Garden

Scarsdale, NY

September 11 Memorial at

Jacobi Medical Center

Bronx, NY

Town of Clarkstown American

Patriot Garden

New City, NY

Town of Highlands American

Patriot Garden

Highlands, NY

September 11 Memorial at

Malverne Train Station

Malverne, NY

Rutgers Newark Campus Tree

Newark, NJ

September 11 Memorial at

Bergen Catholic High School

Oradell, NJ

An American Remembrance in

the Manalapan Arboretum

Manalapan, NJ

Bergen County Police Chiefs

Association September 11, 2001

Memorial in Paramus Mall

Paramus, NJ

Bergen County Regional 

Medical Center

Paramus, NJ

EPA Office 

September 11 Memorial

Edison, NJ

Franklin Lakes Municipal

Complex Memorial

Franklin Lakes, NJ

Marlboro Township Living

Memorial

Marlboro, NJ

Groton Community Hanson

Family Memorial

Groton, MA

Lowell Firehouse Mural

Lowell, MA

Memorial Tree to Michael

McGinty at Foxborough 

Bethany Church

Foxborough, MA

TJX Family Memorial Garden

Framingham, MA

42

September 11 Memorial at Jacobi Medical Center,

Bronx, NY

September 11 Memorial at Malverne Train Station,

Malverne, NY
References

Durkheim, E. 2001.

The elementary forms of religious life. Oxford, UK: Oxford

University Press. 358 p.

Everett, H. 2002.

Roadside crosses in contemporary memorial culture.

Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press. 160 p.

Fraser, N. 1992.

Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. In: Calhoun, Craig,

ed. Habermas and the public sphere. Cambridge, MA:

M.I.T Press: 110-142.

Harrison, R.P. 1992.

Forests: the shadow of civilization. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press. 288 p.

Harrison, R.P. 2003.

The dominion of the dead. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press. 208 p.

Lynch, K. 1964.

The image of the city. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press. 194 p.

Sunstein, C.R. 2003.

Why societies need dissent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press. 246 p.

43
A Celebration of Life -

Ramapo’s Walk of

Rememberance

Ramapo, NY

12

Acton Conant School

Memorial Tree to Madeline

Amy Sweeney

Acton, MA

7 11

Alabama Veterans Memorial

Foundation and Park

Birmingham, AL

12

Allen Liberty Garden

Allen, TX

NR

Alumni Memorial Fields at

Riverdale Country School

Riverdale, NY

3 11

American Forests Living

Memorial Project

Arlington, VA

9

An American Remembrance in

the Manalapan Arboretum

Manalapan, NJ

6 12

Angels’ Circle

Staten Island, NY

5

Arbor Day Trees as Tribute

Bloomingdale, Il

12

Bedford Canine Tribute Park

Katonah, NY

3

Bergen County Police Chiefs

Association September 11,

2001 Memorial in Paramus Mall

Paramus, NJ

6 12

Bergen County Regional

Medical Center

Paramus, NJ

6 12

Bergen County 

September 11 Memorial in

Overpeck Park

Leonia, NJ

6

Bertie Backus School

Memorial Tree

Washington, DC

9 11

Boston Public Garden

September 11, 2001 Memorial

Boston, MA

7

Breezy Point Memorial

Breezy Point, NY

4

Brian Joseph Murphy

Memorial Preservation 

Land Trust

Westfield, MA

7 10

Brian Joseph Murphy Prayer

Garden at Genesis Spiritual

Life Center

Westfield, MA

7

British Memorial Garden at

Hanover Square

Manhattan, NY

NR

Brooklyn Bridge Park

Coalition Memorial Garden

Brooklyn, NY

1 2

Captain John Ogonowski

Memorial Preservation

Farmland

Dracut, MA

7

Captain John Ogonowski

Memorial Square

Dracut, MA

7

Carteret 9/11/01 Memorial

Carteret, NJ

6

Cedarhurst Park 

September 11 Memorial

Cedarhurst, NY

4

Central City Memorial Park

Central City, PA

8

Christine Lee Hanson

Treatment Center

Boston, MA

7

Christine’s Tree at the Old

Academy Nursery School

Easton, CT

7 11

Clark Botanical Garden

Memorial Grove

North Hempstead, NY

4

Clinton Community Garden/

Hell’s Kitchen Fire Heroes

Benefit Concert

Manhattan, NY

NR

Connecticut’s 9-11 

Living Memorial

Westport, CT

2

64th Street 

Community Garden

Brooklyn, NY

4

9/11 Memorial Grove at Fairfax

County Government Center

Fairfax, VA

9 12

9/11 Mural on Richmond

Terrace

Staten Island, NY

5

9-11 Memorial Tree Grove at

Chapin High School

El Paso, TX

11

9-11 Seaford High School

Memorial

Seaford, NY

4 11

Index of Projects

This is an index of all of the living memorial

projects that are either in the National

Registry or were interviewed or photographed by Erika Svendsen and Lindsay

Campbell. It is not an exhaustive list of all

memorials in the United States. The Living

Memorials Project is still growing and 

anyone can visit 

www.livingmemorialsproject.net/

registry.asp to register their site. 

Project Name or Site Location, 

1 Journey Number National Registry NR

Site Typologies

Forest

Park

Community Garden

Civic Ground

Found Space

Event Related

44
Fairfax Memorial Garden

Cemetery Memorial

Fairfax, VA

9

First Quincy Street 

Garden Memorial to 

NYC Black Firemen 

Brooklyn, NY

4

Flight 93 National Memorial

Somerset, PA

8

Foxborough Regional

Charter School

Foxborough, MA

7 11

Franklin Lakes Municipal

Complex Memorial

Franklin Lakes, NJ

6 12

Freedom Blooms in Troy

Troy, AL

12

Freedom Trees Veterans

Memorial Stadium

Cedar Rapids, IA

12

Freehold Township 9/11

Living Memorial Tree Grove

Freehold Township, NJ

12

G.R.A.C.E Memorial at

Veterans Park

Glen Rock, NJ

6

Garden of Healing 

in the Staten Island 

Botanical Garden

Staten Island, NY

5 10

Garden of Reflection

Yardley, PA

NR

Gardens of the World at

Patrick Henry School

Arlington, VA

9 11

Garrison Elementary School

American Patriot Garden

Garrison, NY

3 11

Gateway Greening 

9-11 Orchard

St. Louis, MO

NR

God Bless America Mural

Staten Island, NY

5

Groton Community Hanson

Family Memorial

Groton, MA

7 12

Groton Painted Post Road

Hanson Family Memorial

Groton, MA

7

Grove of Healing at 

Sunset Park

Brooklyn, NY

2

Grove of Healing in Seaside

Nature Park

Staten Island, NY

2 5

Halls Pond Park

September 11 Memorial

West Hempstead, NY

4

Harmony Grove Peace Walk

and Labyrinth

Bronx, NY

3

Hazlet Township 9-11 Tree

and Garden Memorial

Hazlet, NJ

NR

Healing Trees Project

Yonkers, NY

2 3

Heroes Walk at Twin Lakes

Preserve

Bellmore, NY

4

Highbridge Park Living

Memorial

Manhattan, NY

3

Hoboken September 11

Memorial Tree Grove

Hoboken, NJ

2 6

Immaculate Conception

Cemetery September 11,

2001 Memorial

Lawrence, MA

7

In God We Trust, United We

Stand, September 11, 2001

Memorial Garden

Beaumont, TX

NR

Indian River Boulevard

Memorial

Vero Beach, FL

NR

Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo

Hanson Exploration Station

and Backyard Habitat

Bridgeport, CT

7

Coopers Pond

September 11 Memorial

Bergenfield, NJ

6

Cossatot Community College

of the University of Arkansas

De Queen, AR

11

Crescent Beach Park—

Flagpole/Memorial for 9/11

Victims

Staten Island, NY

5

East Islip 9-11 Memorial

East Islip, NY

4

East Village Murals

Manhattan, NY

1

Eisenhower Park American

Patriot Garden

Hempstead, NY

4

Endor Community Garden

Riverdale, NY

3 10

EPA Office

September 11 Memorial

Edison, NJ

6 12

Erhart Clam House Mural

Freeport, NY

4

45
Legacy Groves of Somerset

County, Windber Coal

Heritage Museum Site

Windber, Somerset, PA

8

Legacy Groves of Somerset

County, Windber Community

Library Site

Windber, Somerset, PA

8

Legacy Groves of Somerset

County, Windber Junior and

Senior High School Site

Windber, Somerset, PA

8

Liberty Garden

Ocala, FL

NR

Living Memorial Grove 

of Survivor Trees at 

Brooklyn Bridge

Manhattan, NY

1

Living Memorial Trail

Bronx, NY

1 3

Long Island Pine Barrens

September 11th Community

Forestry Restoration Project

Port Jefferson, NY

4 10

Lowell Firehouse Mural

Lowell, MA

7 12

Lower Manhattan Engine 10

Firehouse

Manhattan, NY

1

Lower Manhattan

Streetscape

Manhattan, NY

1

Mahoning Valley 9-11

Memorial

Youngstown, OH

NR

Mahopac American 

Patriot Garden

Mahopac, NY

3 12

September 11 Memorial at

Malverne Train Station 

Malverne, NY

4 12

Marlboro Township Living

Memorial

Marlboro, NJ

6 12

McCourt Memorial Garden

New London, CT

NR

Memorial Courtyard at SUNY

Binghamton

Binghamton, NY

11

Memorial Grove at 

Veterans Amphitheatre

Fairfax City, VA

9

Memorial of Remembrance

at the Shrine of St. Joseph

Stirling, NJ

6 10

Memorial Peace Garden

Saxonburg, PA

NR

Memorial Park

San Ramon, CA

NR

Memorial Tree to LTC Dennis

M. Johnson and all 9/11

Victims at Burke Lake Park

Fairfax, VA

9

Memorial Tree to Michael

McGinty at Foxborough

Bethany Church

Foxborough, MA

7 12

Memorial Treeway of

Champion Trees in Calvary

Cemetery

Queens, NY

2

Michael E. Brennan Memorial Tree

Long Island City, NY

1 4

Million Flower Garden

Seattle, WA

NR

Monmouth County 

9-11 Memorial

Atlantic Highlands, NJ

2 6

Montauk Lighthouse 

9-11 Memorial

Montauk, NY

4

Montauk Rock

Montauk, NY

4

Nellie’s Point at Nobska

Lighthouse

Woods Hole, MA

7

International Peace Garden

9/11 Memorial

Dunseith, ND

NR

Jes’ Good Rewards/Benjamin

Keefe Clark III Memorial

Children's Learning Center 

and Wildlife Habitat Garden

Brooklyn, NY 4

Joel Barlow High School

Monument

Easton, CT

7 10

Jones Beach State Park

Hempstead, NY

4

Keep Fremont 

Nebraska Beautiful 

Liberty Tree Planting

Freemont, NE

NR

Knoxville Freedom 

Trees Memorial

Knoxville, IA

11

Leckie Elementary School

Garden Memorial

Washington, DC

9 11

Legacy Groves of Somerset

County, Johnstown Area Heritage

Association Festival Park

Somerset, PA

8

Legacy Groves of Somerset

County, Somerset County

Volunteer Firefighters Regional

Training Center Site

Somerset, PA 8

Legacy Groves of Somerset

County, Somerset Vocational

Technical Center Site

Somerset, PA

8 11

46
Penn State Mont Alto

September 11 Memorial

Planting

Mont Alto, PA

11

Pentagon Memorial

Arlington, VA

9

Pepperdine University

Heroes Garden

Malibu, CA

11

Princeton University Alumni

Memorial Garden

Princeton, NJ

11

PS4K Paradise Garden

Brooklyn, NY

11

Remember Me 

Rose Garden

Multiple Sites

NR

Richard Cudina Memorial

Glen Gardner, NJ

6 10

Robert J. Hymel Memorial

Tree at Hoffman Boston

Elementary School

Arlington, VA

9 11

Rockaway Partnership

Waterfront Tribute Park

Rockaways, NY

2

Rockland County American

Patriot Garden

Haverstraw, NY

3

Rutgers Newark Campus Tree

Newark, NJ

6 11

Saddle River Park 

Memorial Tree

Fairlawn, NJ

6

Saint Anthony’s 

High School Memorial

South Huntington, NY

4 11

Scarsdale American Legion

Memorial Garden

Scarsdale, NY

3 12

School with Yellow Ribbons

Staten Island, NY

5

September 11 Family Group—

Russian Family Memorial

Brooklyn, NY

4

September 11 Memorial at

Bergen Catholic High School

Oradell, NJ

6 11

September 11 Memorial at

Jacobi Medical Center

Bronx, NY

3 12

September 11 Memorial at

Richard W. DeKorte

Meadowlands Park

Lyndhurst, NJ

3 6

September 11 Memorial

Grove in Prospect Park

Brooklyn, NY

4

September 11, 2001

Memorial at Farmingdale

State University of New York

Farmingdale, NY

11

September 11, 2001 Tree in

the Memorial Park

Needham, MA

7

September 11th 

memorial forest

Quantico, MD

10

September the 11th

Community Memorial

Garden in Forest Park

Queens, NY

4

Shanksville High School

Memorial Garden

Shanksville, PA

8 11

Sharon’s Arboretum

September 11th Memorial

Hemlock Grove

Durham, NH

12

Shreveport’s Liberty Garden

Shreveport, LA

NR

Sons of Erin Hall Memorial

Westfield, MA

7

Sterling Forest

Tuxedo, NY

10

Sunflower Project NYC

Manhattan, NY

1

New Colony Baptist Church

Prayer Garden

Billerica, MA

7

New Jersey Living Memorial,

A Grove of Remembrance

Jersey City, NJ

2 6

Nursery with USA Sign

Staten Island, NY

5

Oak Ridge Cemetery

Quercetum

Petersburg, IL

12

Old Manse Memorial Trees

Concord, MA

7

Open Road

New York, NY

11

Orangetown American

Patriot Garden

Orangeburg, NY

3 12

Park Slope Street Tree

Brooklyn, NY

1

Patriotic Painted House

Staten Island, NY

5

Peninsula Village 

Freedom Garden

Louisville, TN

NR

47
Town of Clarkstown

American Patriot Garden

New City, NY

3 12

Town of Highlands American

Patriot Garden

Highlands, NY

3 12

Trees for Life and Unity—

Bronx and Brooklyn, NY

3 4

Trees New York 

Living Memorial

Manhattan, NY

1

Trees of Hope

Portland, OR

NR

Union Square Park

Manhattan, NY

1

University of Massachusetts

at Lowell September 11,

2001 Memorial

Lowell, MA

7 11

Village of Cold Spring

American Patriot Garden

Cold Spring, NY

3

Washington D.C. September

11 Memorial Grove at

Kingman Island

Washington, DC

9

Washington D.C. September

11 Memorial Grove in Ward 5:

Langdon Park

Washington, DC

9

Washington D.C. September 11

Memorial Grove in Ward 6:

Historic Congressional Cemetery

Washington, DC

9

Waterfront Statues and

Plaques

Jersey City, NJ

2 6

We Remember 

September 11, 2001

Santurce, PR

12

West 104th St. Garden Hope

of Harmony Garden Bed

Manhattan, NY

NR

Whispering Pines Friendship

& Tolerance Garden

Boca Raton, FL

11

Wilton Woods Memorial

Garden 

Alexandria, VA

9

Long Island Nursery

LMDC Tree Tagging for

WTC Memorial

Manhattan, NY

2

WTC Memorial Garden

Middletown, NJ

6 10

WTC United Family 

Group Memorial

West Orange, NJ

2 6

Wyckoff Community Park

September 11 Memorial

Wyckoff, NJ

6

Centennial Park 9/11

Memorial Garden

Ellicott City, MD

NR

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Liberty Oaks

Brooklyn, NY

4

NYC Parks Department 9-11

Memorial Firehouse Trees

Staten Island, NY

5

Twin Tower 

Memorial Garden

Far Rockaway, NY

1 4

Sunset Park Mural

Brooklyn, NY

1

Suntowers

Manhattan, NY

1

Susan L. Blair Memorial at

Needham High School

Needham, MA

7 11

Tammany Trace Trail

Lacombe, LA

NR

The Daffodil Project

New York, NY

1

The Healing Garden of the

Federated Garden Clubs of

New York State

Staten Island, NY

5

The Memorial Labyrinth at

Boston College

Chestnut Hill, MA

7 11

TJX Family Memorial Garden

Framingham, MA

7 12

Town of Acton 

September 11 Memorial

Acton, MA

7

Town of Babylon September

11 Hometown Memorial

Babylon, NY

4

48
EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION 

Living memorials are spaces created, used, or reappropriated by people as they employ the landsca

to memorialize individuals, places, and events. Ranging from single tree plantings, to the creation of n

parks, to the rededication of existing forests, hundreds of groups across the country created a vast netw

of sites that continues to grow.

“Land-markings: 12 Journeys through 9/11 Living Memorials” is a multimedia exhibition that compres

four years of research data and analysis on over 700 living memorials into 12 digitally authored journe

Social science researchers, urban ecologists, designers, and architects collaborated in order to colle

analyze, and present this dispersed collective response to the tragedy of September 11, 2001. As a res

this interpretation presents memorials not only as mechanisms by which we mark events and individu

but also interprets the function and spatial location of these remembrances, treating them as emerg

forms that outline how we interact with our public landscapes.

Living Memorials Project

http://www.livingmemorialsproject.net/

NRS-INF-1-06
584

SITES SHOWN 667

TOTAL SITES

Living Memorials Project

http://www.livingmemorialsproject.net/

The cover of this catalog is an image taken

from the interactive Living Memorials

Project National Map. It shows the location

and site type of approximately 700 living

memorials created, used, or rededicated in

honor of September 11, 2001. These sites

were documented by USDA Forest Service

researchers from 2002-2006, and cataloged

in an archive of thousands of images that will

soon be made available to the public.