September 11 hit everyone by surprise, and no one was prepared to forget the World Trade Center. After the destruction, the Sphere by Fritz Koenig stood strong, reminding us all of lost lives.
Before September 11, 2001, the Sphere stood in the center of the World Trade Center Plaza, as a monument to world peace. After the attack, it was recovered, with holes and dents, and inside it was another story—a Bible, an airline seat and even papers from an office. People found it significant that the statue was able to endure after such a dramatic attack. The Sphere currently resides in Battery Park, alongside an eternal flame, as a memorial to those lost in September 11.
The 25-foot statue is hard to miss when you walk in Battery Park. Its once smooth exterior is almost unrecognizable—the Sphere now resembles a broken-down soccer ball. While in old pictures it is proud and shiny, the statue is now dull, perfectly symbolizing the state of the country after September 11. However, seven years after the attack, it seems as though people have forgotten why the memorial is there.
“I hate abstract art,” stated one student at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). Even after learning about the memorial and its significance to the world, she simply saw it as another form of abstract art. Yet while the sculpture may seem abstract at first, Koenig has captured the perfect representation of the broken-down world.
The Sphere has gone through a major transformation from its first installment in 1971. It was created by the German sculptor Fritz Koenig and was issued to pay tribute to peace through the World Trade Center. Koenig was born in 1924 in Germany and is famous for his metal geometric-form sculptures. Koenig actually created memorials for Nazi concentration camps in Austria and various others in Israel, but he did not want the Sphere to become another memorial for the lost ones. However, after seeing the new worn-down beauty of the Sphere, he commented that it “now has a different beauty, one I could never imagine. It has its own life—different from the one I gave to it.”
With the constant flow of people in and out of Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty ferries and the various acrobats and animated Statues of Liberty, it seems as though the Sphere has become just another tourist attraction for New York City. Battery Park is the perfect place for a tourist attraction, and the placement of the Sphere in that park could not be more appropriate. Along with three other significant memorials in lower Manhattan—one at a firehouse adjacent to ground zero, one at the civil courts building and one across the river at Exchange Place—the Sphere brings together the tourists and the natives, the past and the present.
While the Sphere was a popular lunch location for workers before the attack, since its relocation it has become one of the many attractions in Battery Park. “Of course I know the Sphere. I was once a tourist,” states Robert Kim, a student at Rutgers-Newark. The monument is more widely known to tourists than to the people who live 40 minutes—or even 10 minutes—away from it.
“I’ve actually never been to Battery Park, but the Sphere seems pretty cool. I mean, it’s a symbolic representation of 9/11, right?” questioned Sadaf Ali, a student at New York University.
Has the Sphere lost its appeal along with its small missing pieces? While tourists may know about the Sphere now, before the attack it had simply been a piece of abstract artwork in the center of the World Trade Center. Nobody really honored the Sphere because it was unveiled at the time of the Watergate scandal, and therefore was pushed somewhat to the side. People would have forgotten about the Sphere if its strong alloys did not stand up to the attacks on 9/11.
Even adults who have worked in New York City for at least ten years cannot truly remember a significant memorial in the city. “Oh, you mean the Sphere that used to be by the towers? I thought it was just one of the many art pieces in New York,” states Alex Chaey, a financial advisor at JPMorgan. Many people have passed by the Sphere, and they took it as nothing more than a centerpiece for the World Trade Center, and now for Battery Park.
Memorials have long been created in order to remember those people who had innocently lost their lives in a tragic event. While the original plan for memorials was for the city to remember lost ones and recognize what they have done for us, now people simply glaze over them every day. Have memorials lost the thought and appeal the artists once put into them?
While I explained to people about the Sphere, Tom Vega, a student at NJIT asked me, “Don’t you think it changes the original meaning of the monument to put it in Battery Park as a memorial?” Simply listening to what I had to say about the Sphere got one person thinking more about the memorial he had never known about.
Some do believe that using the Sphere as a memorial changes the original thoughts of the artist. However, the sculpture now stands for something greater and has truly become a memorial of New York City.
The Sphere was a monument dedicated to world peace, and now it is a memorial for the September 11 victims. Without an explanation or discussion, people would have never known about one of the many memorials located all around Battery Park.
There are approximately 23 monuments and memorials in Battery Park. When there are that many memorials located in just one park, how many other memorials is the city slowly forgetting? The monuments and memorials are becoming merely pretty pieces to look at rather than to admire for the work and thought the artists put into them.
While the memorials may be preserved, the lives and history that inspired them can be lost.
Eudora Min, formerly a Rutgers-Newark student, now attends New York University. Posted September 2008.
