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The last column removed from the original World Trade Center building after the September 11, 2001 attacks returned to Ground Zero yesterday. The beam, and its graffiti messages and mementos, was raised up and put in place—it will be part of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. An ironworker told the Daily News , "For this to go up evokes emotion. It shows the rest of the world that even if you knock us down we'll get right back up." The 60-ton, 36 -foot beam's official name is "Column No. 1,0001 B of 2 World Trade Center," but besides the "last column," the NY Times calls it a "makeshift steel shrine," the Post dubs it the "solemn column," and the Daily News writes it was a "symbol of defiance in the face of terror." Retired firefighter Lee Ielpi , whose firefighter son Jonathan died on 9/11, "I spent nine months in recovery after losing my son. Seeing the column taken out was a happy-sad day. No...

The time has come to cross the t’s and dot the i’s. The development of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center is far enough along that officials are now asking the victims’ next of kin to confirm the accuracy of the names that are to be inscribed around the memorial pools. They are also asking family members to share stories and mementos from the victims’ lives to incorporate into a permanent display. In doing so, they are showing some preliminary new images — still quite conceptual — of what the museum’s memorial exhibition hall would look like. The north half of the museum is devoted to history. The part that sits under the south memorial pool, within the structural footprint of 2 World Trade Center, is devoted to commemoration. This exhibition hall, far underground and close to bedrock, would be approached by a small footbridge across a trough with visible remnants of the south tower’s perimeter columns. Visitors would clearly know they were ente...

Tridents They are Obsessed with reflecting pools. The theme of the day at the press conference to unveil the new design of the September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion : "appropriate scale." That's architect-speak for "the thing's much smaller now"—or, as Snohetta architect Craig Dykers put it, "With the new Pavilion, we strived to create a building that's an appropriate scale to its surrounding without overwhelming the experience with a more singular or monolithic form." Super! Sure thing! Tinyriffic! Anyway, that's the redesigned pavilion, there at middle left between the north and south waterfall pools. The day's other big reveal: that primary access from the Pavilion to the September 11 museum, which is mostly below-ground, will come courtesy of a sloping floor that creates a continuous room between and ground level to the museum below. All that, and more, revealed in the photo gallery above. Still to come: construction up...