page_title: Pentagon Memorial
section_title: Design and construction
hierarchical_section_title: Pentagon Memorial / Design and construction
caption_attribution_description: Construction of the Pentagon Memorial, as of September 2007
context_page_description: The Pentagon Memorial, located just southwest of The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, is a permanent outdoor memorial to the 184 people who died as victims in the building and on American Airlines Flight 77 during the September 11, 2001 attacks.
  Designed by Julie Beckman and Keith Kaseman of the architectural firm of Kaseman Beckman Advanced Strategies with engineers Buro Happold, the memorial opened on September 11, 2008, seven years after the attack.
context_section_description: The Pentagon Memorial was constructed from a design by Julie Beckman and Keith Kaseman of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with design support from Buro Happold and [Delta Fountains], that was chosen following a design competition. The design competition included a group of 11 judges, including Terence Riley, the chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, and two former secretaries of defense, Melvin Laird and Harold Brown. They viewed 1,126 memorial proposals from around the world. Of the six international finalists selected, all were designers: Jean Koeppel and Tom Kowalski, Mason Wickham and Edwin Zawadzki, Jacky Bowring, Shane Williamson, Michael Meredith, and Julie Beckman and Keith Kaseman.
  The design by Beckman and Kaseman consisted of 184 illuminated benches, arranged according to the victims' ages, starting with Dana Falkenberg, age 3, to John Yamnicky Sr., age 71, in a landscaped 1.93-acre (7,800 m²) plot. Each bench is engraved with the name of a victim. The benches representing the victims that were inside the Pentagon are arranged so those reading the names will face the Pentagon's south facade, where the plane hit; benches dedicated to victims aboard the plane are arranged so that those reading the engraved name will be facing skyward along the path the plane traveled. A shallow lighted pool of flowing water is positioned under each memorial bench. If more than one member of a family died during the attack, family names are listed in the reflecting pool under the bench, in addition to the separate benches that have been created for each individual.
  A wall along the edge of the Memorial begins at a height of 3 inches and rises to a height of 71 inches, the ages of the youngest and oldest victim of the attack, and about 85 crepe myrtle trees are planted on the memorial grounds.
  As of May 2007, $13.8 million had been raised for construction of the memorial. Donations include $250,000 from American Forests towards planting trees at the memorial, and $1 million from the government of Taiwan.
  Construction began on June 15, 2006. By November 2006, site excavation, re-routing of existing utility lines had been completed, and water lines laid for the fountain pools.  By May 2007, the foundation of the perimeter wall was built and concrete pilings poured for each bench.
caption: Construction of the Pentagon Memorial (September 2007)
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