Memorial Museum Next Stop For Survivor Stairs

POSTED APRIL 1, 2008

Click here for the Tribeca Trib Video about the Survivor Stairs

Cushioned and cradled atop a framework that looked like part of an old roller coaster, 38 disembodied stair treads inched forward on Sunday morning, March 9. Known as the “survivor stairs,” they were lifted by crane onto the carrier and moved a mere 200 feet. But for preservationists and survivors of the Sept. 11 attacks, the effort to save those stairs—the only above-ground remains of the World Trade Center—has been a very long journey.

From a platform near the center of the World Trade Center site, Richard Zimbler, president of the World Trade Center Survivors Network, watched as the stairs slowly disappeared from view.

“It’s been a tough struggle but today’s the day we’ve been looking forward to,” said Zimbler, who has been a leading advocate for the stairs over the past four years.

“Stairs and stairways are such a common denominator in most survivor of 9/11 stories,” Zimbler added. “The fact that this is the only remaining stairway just naturally made it a symbol for all stairways and all survivors.”

Many workers on Sept. 11 fled down the stairs, which led from the World Trade Center Plaza to Vesey Street. Their treads will be placed in the National September 11 Memorial Museum beside the stairs that lead to bedrock.

“Millions will be able to go right up to these stairs and really understand what they represent,” said Joe Daniels, president of the museum. “The story of survival.”

Last year, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. had proposed demolishing all but a few of the treads and placing them at the entrance to Larry Silverstein’s Tower 2, which will be built where the stairs had stood. Preservation groups, who were among the consultants in a federally mandated review of historical features of the site, sought to keep the entire 170-ton ruin intact.

Under the Spitzer administration and new LMDC leadership, a compromise was worked out that would allow all the treads to be preserved, but away from their original site.

“We were presented with a false choice,” said LMDC president Avi Schick. “Get rid of that remnant and allow building to go forward or keep the remnant and the memory and stop the rebuilding. We said you can honor memory…and survival yet respect the need for rebuilding to go forward.”

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