Memorial Juror’s Long Days of Decision

 by Etta Sanders

The World Trade Center memorial jurors could not breathe a word of what they heard or saw during their months of deliberation. For Julie Menin, Downtown’s only resident on the jury, the pressure may have been greater than for most. After all, the results of the jury’s decision would one day land in her neighbors’ backyard.

“Once the competition was announced, there was not a day that would go by where someone wouldn’t want to talk to me about the memorial,” she said.

Julie Menin in her office at Wall Street Rising Phot: Carl Glassman

But for this juror, the founder and president of Wall Street Rising, silence was not the only pressure she faced. Menin was more than six months pregnant when she was picked. “I kept thinking through all those hearings we had, ‘I hope I don’t go into labor.’”

Her son, Max, made his appearance on June 26, just five weeks before the daunting task to sift through more than 5,000 designs began.

For the first two weeks of August and in early September, the 13 jurors met five days a week, all day, at 120 Broadway. Rows of boards lined up on easels in room after room awaited them. By lunchtime on some days, they had reviewed hundreds of designs.

“Some of them took less time to go through than others,” she said, “Honestly, some of them had two words written on them.” Others, she said, were too complicated, too graphic or too literal. “There were ones that had full-scale replicas of airplanes.”

Menin said that the job was made easier because many of the designs had elements in common—sound, light, water or rocks, for example—providing informal categories from which the outstanding entries could emerge.

The overarching goal of jurors, she said, was to find a balance between “civic and solace.”

“We wanted a memorial that first and foremost pays tribute to the lives that were lost, but that also recognizes incredible acts of generosity and kindness and hope and renewal.”

Menin was also looking for a memorial that would convey to future generations what happened that day. “That is why I think the Michael Arad scheme is the right scheme. You look at those voids and it’s unmistakable what happened.” And as a Downtown resident, she said, she advocated strongly for green open space and easy street level access.

By late fall the thousands had been narrowed to 50 and the decisions turned tougher. Discussions were “very heated, very passionate, but very collegial,” Menin said. “No one raised their voice. No one screamed.”

When the eight finalists went on display in November. the public’s criticism soon followed. But as one negative story after another appeared in the papers, the jury was meeting with the designers, seeking many of the refinements that critics were calling for. “We were very aware of the drawbacks of the designs,” she said.

When it came down to the final three, Menin liked Michael Arad’s Reflecting Absence. But like many others, she felt that the nearly bare stone plaza surrounding the footprints in his proposal was too stark. She needed to see green space.

A final meeting with Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker, who had been added to the design team, proved to be crucial. The austere plaza had blossomed into an urban forest. The design now not only reflected absence, but teemed with life as well. In a final anonymous vote, Reflecting Absence emerged as the winner.

Menin looks back on her juror’s job as both an honor, and a wearying task.

It was her new son Max who provided a welcome respite.

“When you’re looking at 5,201 designs that have to do with this horribly tragic day, it’s really very difficult,” she said. “For me, I had my baby, which was really a saving grace.”