Empty Sky (memorial)
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Empty Sky is the official New Jersey September 11 memorial to the state's victims of the September 11 attacks on the United States. It is located in Liberty State Park in Jersey City at the mouth of Hudson River across from the World Trade Center site. Designed by Jessica Jamroz and Frederic Schwartz, it was dedicated on Saturday, September 10, 2011, a day before the tenth anniversary of the attacks.
The design was chosen by unanimous vote of the Families and Survivors Memorial Committee, out of 320 qualified entries in the international design competition. The memorial is dedicated to New Jersey's "746 innocent loved ones who were violently and senselessly murdered that day at the World Trade Center as well as in 1993, the Pentagon and in Shanksville, PA.The New Jersey 9/11 Memorial Foundation has stated that the goal of this memorial is to "reflect the legacies of those whose lives were lost, that their unfulfilled dreams and hopes may result in a better future for society. Their unique qualities and characteristics enriched our lives immeasurably and through this memorial, their stories live on.
The memorial includes twin walls, transecting a "gently sloped mound anchored by a granite path that is directed toward Ground Zero. Two 30-foot-high rectangular towers stretch 208 feet, 10 inches long — the exact width of the World Trade Center towers, the proportion of the walls a symbolic representation of the buildings as if they were lying on their sides.The name of each of the 746 victims is etched in stainless steel in 4-inch-high letters. A granite passage is oriented to face the site of the twin towers. The name of the memorial is taken from the Bruce Springsteen song "Empty Sky", which is about the "empty sky" where the towers once stood.
