A steel beam from the Twin Towers will be the centerpiece of a 9/11 memorial outside a fire station in Park Ridge.
A design by Evanston architecture firm Myefski Architects, Inc. was selected Feb. 21 by the Park Ridge Public Art Commission. The city received the beam last year through the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Sept. 11 Families’ Association.
The nine-person commission proposed the memorial last year after Park Ridge was selected to receive the 6-foot beam. Commissioner Judy Brady said Myefski’s design was selected based on the quality of the portfolio it presented.
“We really liked everything else they had done,” she said. “They did a lot of stuff that was simple and spoke to the community.”
The firm’s portfolio includes the Munich Airport and the Sony Center in Berlin as well as storefronts in Chicago and Winnetka.
John Myefski, the principal of the firm, said the design for the memorial, which is still in progress, will be centered around the steel beam. The steel will be encapsulated in a glass case that is to scale of one of the towers, and a light will shine from the bottom, illuminating both the glass and the beam. The names of emergency responders will be written on a wall surrounding the memorial.
The firm also designed the memorial at an angle to represent a feeling of disjointedness after the attacks. Myefski said he intended the design to allow each viewer his own personal experience with the memorial.
“It’s just supposed to be a place that you can enter and have a small brief moment of solitude,” he said. “It’s really about reflection.”
Juliana Maller, staff liaison to the commission, said the location was picked to honor the firefighters who responded to the attacks, as well as to ensure the monument’s security by putting it in an area under constant surveillance.
“It won’t be in a place where it is not being watched,” Maller said. “The piece of steel is rough so (the commission) wanted to make sure that it wasn’t in a location like a park where children could climb on it.”
Myefski praised the Port Authority and the Families’ Association for allowing the entire country to share in the commemoration process through the steel beam distribution program.
“It’s a wonderful tribute to anybody and everybody that was impacted by 9/11 that the commission determined that pieces of steel would go around the country,” he said. “It’s a fantastic opportunity when something like that can become a part of all of us and be placed in individual communities.”
Brady said the memorial will ensure Park Ridge remembers the horrors of the 9/11 attacks.
“Like any other memorial, it’s to make sure people don’t forget what happened, because we tend to repeat our mistakes, and so we can grow as a country and move on from it,” she said.
