The Marines
I-beam from the World Trade Center installed at the Marine Corps Museum
The 10-foot-long solid iron I-beam weighs about 1,200 pounds. For about 30 years, it was part of the skeleton supporting one of the World Trade Center buildings—which for a time were the tallest skyscrapers in the world.
But the destructive forces of 9/11 were strong enough to warp the massive iron beam. Now, instead of standing straight, it curves.
“It’s so heavy and thick, but look at the amount of distortion,” said Chuck Girbovan, chief of exhibits at the National Museum of the Marine Corps, where the I-beam was installed Tuesday as part of the 9/11 exhibit, which is scheduled to open in April.
“If you think about how tall and massive those buildings were, and these are the things that were holding it up—it’s actually really disturbing to see the amount of destruction.”
The beam, which the museum acquired in 2011, has been on display elsewhere in the building, but not in an upright position.
“None of us have seen it standing up before,” said Jennifer Castro, the museum’s curator of cultural and material history. “It looks so much bigger this way.”
“I look at it as a piece of cosmic art. It’s beautiful in and of itself,” she continued, contemplating the beam. “And it does speak to the devastation that occurred [at the World Trade Center site].”
The museum has been preparing for its “final phase”—which will bring the story of the Marines up to the present— for the past six years. The physical space to “complete the circle” is finished and galleries dedicated to the period of time between World Wars I and II, the War on Terror and others are under construction and expected to open piece by piece through 2020.
A combat art gallery, an expanded children’s section and a movie theater opened in 2017. The continuation of the Legacy Walk—the timeline of Marine history that will include the 9/11 exhibit—will be the next to open, in April.
“If you think about Marine Corps history, we are documenting world history as well, and 9/11 was the deadliest terror attack on American soil,” Castro said. “There were Marines at both of those sites and many died. There were also those involved in the recovery.”
The event was also a catalyst for many young men and women to join the armed forces and the Marine Corps in particular, she said.
On Tuesday, a crew of seven from Chantilly-based A&A Transfer installed the I-beam in a pit, which was poured for it years ago when the building was constructed.
“I was on edge putting it up,” said crew member Aron Kinney, an A&A account executive.
For Kinney—whose father worked in 2 World Trade Center and would have been there during the attack had he not been on a business trip—it was “an honor” to participate in installing the exhibit.
The crew also installed a cornice-piece from the Pentagon alongside the I-beam.
Castro was one of two museum staff members who were allowed to access the section of the Pentagon destroyed in the attacks on Oct. 3, 2001, to retrieve art and artifacts that belonged to the Marine Corps.
They were also able to collect objects from the building to document the attack. Some of those will be on display in the 9/11 gallery, including a partially-melted wall clock that stopped at 9:40 a.m.—just three minutes after the plane struck the Pentagon—and a framed sign that had been sitting on the desk of the staff judge advocate declaring that the day’s threat condition was “normal.”
The museum’s 9/11 gallery will also display the medal of honor awarded posthumously by the New York Police Department to Michael Curtin, a retired Marine sergeant major who was a member of the NYPD’s elite emergency service unit. Curtin died responding to the attacks, but not before he and his team helped an estimated 25,000 people escape.
Curtin’s Marine Corps dress blues and his NYPD uniform will also be part of the exhibit.
When the gallery is complete, the I-beam and Pentagon cornice will be lit from below and carpeting will come right up to the mounts.
“It will look really clean and simple, like they are growing right out of the ground,” Girbovan said.
They won’t be behind glass, but will be open for visitors to touch.
“People have already connected with [these pieces] so much,” Girbovan said.
https://www.fredericksburg.com/news/local/i-beam-from-the-world-trade-center-installed-at-the/article_959a8f60-954b-53bb-bae8-fa24ececc016.html